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Beijing CNN –
Thousands of delegates from across China are gathering in Beijing this week for the start of the country's most significant annual political event, where leaders will signal how they will steer the world's second-largest economy in the coming year – and try to calm growing concerns about it to diffuse the challenges it faces.
Expressing confidence is likely to be high on the agenda for Chinese leader Xi Jinping and his top Communist Party officials during the day-long, highly choreographed event, the so-called “two sessions,” that brings together China's rubber-stamped legislature and top advisory body.
The largely celebratory gathering takes on greater significance this year as China's economy is rocked by a housing crisis, high local government debt, deflation, a stock market crisis and technical tensions with the United States – raising questions about whether the country will lose out Steam before it achieves its goal of becoming a developed world power.
It will also include a significant break with precedent: the scrapping of a final press conference with the Chinese premier, a political tradition that has played a role in the meeting for three decades – and at a time that offers a rare glimpse into the thinking of China's second largest Leader provides who is nominally responsible for the economy.
The press conference will also not take place for the rest of the current five-year political cycle “unless there are very special circumstances,” spokesman Lou Qinjian told reporters in Beijing on Monday ahead of the opening day of the legislative session, citing other interview opportunities for the Media the event over time. This year's legislative assembly will also last just seven days, a shorter format than was usual before the pandemic.
The changes are likely to raise concerns about the transparency of Chinese policymaking and further weaken the prime minister's profile, already dented by Xi's tough control over all policy areas, including the economy. Under Xi, the prime minister and the State Council, which serves as China's cabinet, have been increasingly sidelined.
“They inherently want only one vote – from the (Communist) Party. They don’t want other voices to weaken the voice of the party controlled by Xi,” said Alfred Wu, an associate professor at the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.
It also means Xi is very much in the spotlight as China's economic crisis has led to growing frustration. The gathering comes a year into his groundbreaking third term as president, after he consolidated power at the top of the party and filled its leadership with a series of officials seemingly chosen for both loyalty and experience.
A year later – with the expected recovery from the Corona crisis not yet fully realized, young people struggling to find jobs, investors struggling with market losses and small business owners struggling to stay afloat – skepticism is growing his new team follows the direction given by the manager and the government. Xi also caused a political upheaval within his own ranks, which further disrupted the start of the new term.
These challenges may not pose a threat to Xi, who is China's most powerful and authoritative leader in decades. But how his team handles these concerns will have implications not only for the future of China and its 1.4 billion people, but also for the global economy as a whole – and Xi's top officials will likely feel that pressure as they attend the meeting .
Policymakers, investors and entrepreneurs in capitals around the world will also be watching closely, especially in a year when the U.S. presidential election could further strain relations between the world's two largest economies.
“The government wants to use this platform to send signals that China's economy is generally fine and on the right track,” said Chen Gang, senior researcher at the National University of Singapore's East Asian Institute.
“Now there are a lot of doubts and suspicions about the performance of the new government… (so) they want to show that this government, the new government led by (Xi's number two) Premier Li Qiang, is capable of solving economic problems.” cope,” he said.
AFP/Getty Images
Last spring, people attended a job fair in the southwestern city of Chongqing, China.
The meeting, held in Beijing's cavernous Great Hall of the People, is the only time a year that the nearly 3,000-member legislature, the National People's Congress, meets in person.
The body has little power to set the country's course because policy direction is largely set by the party, whose elite members make decisions in closed meetings throughout the year.
But the two sessions provide China's notoriously opaque government with an important platform to lay out its economic, social and foreign policy strategy and announce key indicators including China's economic growth target, its budget deficit limit and military spending for the coming year.
It is also an opportunity for elite leaders to hear from delegates who come from across the country and from different social sectors – although the space for such exchanges at the gathering and in general has shrunk as Xi tightens ideological control and a campaign to suppress views that deviate from the Communist Party's line.
Such controls have also emerged in the recent debate over the economy, with some prominent economic analysts facing restrictions on social media that appeared aimed at restricting their expression.
“The regime often uses the annual conference to secure the support of Chinese society and boost confidence in the market,” said Xuezhi Guo, a political science professor at Guilford College in the US.
“This is particularly important given challenges such as the real estate downturn in China, the stock market crisis, high unemployment and weaker demand,” he said.
Observers will analyze how leaders discuss or comment on key issues such as China's position on the self-ruled island of Taiwan, its relations with the United States and its efforts to boost innovation as Washington strengthens controls on technology exports.
“It is conceivable that Xi will adopt a more conciliatory stance toward the US, temporarily putting confrontational 'wolf warrior diplomacy' on hold and redirecting efforts toward supporting both the bureaucracy and technocrats to ensure the stability of China's economy.” said Guo.
Such a change in tone could also be signaled by the appointment of a new foreign minister at this year's meeting – something analysts said ahead of the meeting could happen in the coming days, although no personnel changes were mentioned in the event's agenda announced Monday.
The role has been filled by senior diplomat and former foreign minister Wang Yi in what many viewed as temporary since July, when his newly appointed successor Qin Gang was removed without explanation after disappearing from public view.
That dramatic moment was followed just weeks later by the disappearance and subsequent removal and replacement of another of Xi's hand-picked third-term officials: then-Defense Minister Li Shangfu. Again, this happened without explanation, accompanied by an anti-corruption drive and an apparent purge of the Chinese military.
While analysts said the surprise shakeup posed no threat to Xi's iron grip on power, it still raised questions about his judgment, with remaining vacancies from those removals still a reminder.
In addition to the role of foreign minister, two high-ranking positions in the Chinese cabinet previously occupied by Li and Qin also remain open.
Pedro Pardo/AFP/Getty Images
An unfinished apartment complex in central China's Henan province is one of many projects across the country left unfinished by developers amid a crisis in the real estate sector.
Signs ahead of the meeting suggest the Chinese government is preparing to support economic growth in the coming year, but China is unlikely to announce any major stimulus measures.
“Beijing is likely to use the two sessions to announce tactical measures aimed at boosting confidence in China's economy in the near term, but without changing Xi's underlying strategy of state-led development,” said Neil Thomas, a fellow at the Center for China of the Asia Society Policy Institute analysis.
The announcement of the 2024 economic growth target, which Premier Li is scheduled to make on Tuesday, is among the key issues to be addressed during the two sessions.
Analysts widely expect Li to announce a relatively ambitious growth target of “around 5%,” showing that policymakers are still focused on economic growth even as challenges mount.
Observers will also be watching closely to see how the markets react. Ahead of the meeting, many are skeptical that the confidence forecasts and measures announced at the event will be enough to restore optimism.
But even if they don't, it's unlikely to diminish Xi's power.
“The country's economic woes are undermining ordinary people's confidence in the leadership's ability to deliver higher growth and better living conditions,” said Asia Society's Thomas.
“However, Xi doesn’t need to win elections, so elite control is more important to him than popular approval.” And the economy appears far from a collapse that could overwhelm the party’s sophisticated repressive apparatus.”