CNN
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Chinese leader Xi Jinping has officially entered his third term in China with an iron grip on power, breaking recent precedents to secure another five years in power as he unveiled a supreme leadership body stacked with loyal allies.
On Sunday, after the conclusion of the Communist Party congress, seven men—Xi Jinping, Li Qiang, Zhao Lijie, Wang Huning, Kai Zhi, Li Xi, and Deng Shuixiang— were announced. Members of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureauthe highest governing body in China.
They now form the Politburo Standing Committee, China’s most powerful decision-making body, and will sit at the helm of the party to lead the world’s second-largest economy for the next half-decade.
The line-up was further stacked with loyal Xi loyalists that some observers of elitist Chinese politics had come to expect — showing that Xi consolidated his power in the public eye and in closed meetings where leadership decisions are made.
Notably absent from the line-up is Huo Chunhua, 59, an out-of-Xi deputy prime minister who was previously touted as a potential successor to Xi and a candidate for the Standing Committee.
Instead, Xi filled the four open points in the seven-member body with Wuxi’s longtime allies Li Qiang, Kai Zhi, Deng Shuxiang, and Li Shi, paving the way for him to rule for a third term with a minimal interior. Resistance — and assertion that rapprochement with Xi trumps everything else in China’s current political landscape.
said Chen Gang, a senior research fellow at National. East Asian Institute of the University of Singapore.
“As for the party’s decision-making process, I think we’ve really entered a new era, where Xi now controls almost every aspect related to policy-making and decision-making…we are witnessing a kind of re-centralized bureaucracy in China, which will certainly affect the future course of economic foreign policy. for China”.
