The sudden promotion of a cadre who did not previously hold a senior government position is indicative of the extent to which Xi values loyalty above convention and experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He Lifeng, another Xi ally, is expected to be appointed as vice-premier responsible for economic policy, as well as being considered for the role of party chief of the People\u2019s Bank of China. One of the rumoured changes is the establishment of a new party committee that would oversee the central bank and other financial institutions. Such a change, with He at the helm of the government and the central bank, would centralise decision-making under Xi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cUnder Xi the party and government have been pushed together. The government has become less distinct and less effective,\u201d said Richard McGregor, a senior fellow at the Lowy Institute thinktank, and author of a book about the CCP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n China\u2019s President Xi Jinping is free to rule for life. Photograph: Noel Celis\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another rumoured change is that the Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of State Security could be removed from the State Council\u2019s portfolio, and placed under the oversight of a newly created, party-controlled, internal affairs committee. \u201cBy moving so many of these core functions away from the oversight of the state, it would arguably weaken the state while greatly strengthening the power of the party\u2019s Central Committee and, of course, Xi Jinping himself,\u201d said Patricia Thornton, a professor of Chinese politics at Oxford University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Last week the CCP and the State Council published a joint opinion on legal education. The document calls on state institutions to \u201cpersist in following Xi Jinping Thought\u201d on the rule of law and that schools should \u201coppose and resist western erroneous views\u201d such as \u201cconstitutional government\u201d and \u201cindependence of the judiciary\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some analysts expect the opinion to be formalised in some way at the NPC. The language in the opinion echoes that of the \u201cTwo Establishes\u201d and the \u201cTwo Safeguards\u201d, CCP slogans that establish Xi and his ideology as the \u201ccore\u201d of the party. The \u201cTwo Safeguards\u201d were added to the party charter in 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The NPC is also due to consider amendments to the legislative process. One of the proposals is to allow laws to be passed on an \u201cemergency\u201d basis. Changhao Wei, a \u200b\u200bresearch fellow at the Paul Tsai China Center, said the provision \u201cshould be a cause for concern to those who value legislative openness and predictability, for the draft doesn\u2019t define \u2018emergency\u2019 or tie it to existing emergency response mechanisms, so the legislature has complete discretion to decide whether an emergency exists.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Aside from the political changes, the NPC will also announce the government\u2019s GDP growth target for the year ahead. Analysts expect it to be between 5% and 6%, which would be a significant improvement on the 3% achieved last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Other proposals submitted to the NPC by delegates \u2013 which have little hope of progressing without support from the top leadership \u2013 cover a range of issues, from regional tensions to animal welfare, cyberbullying and boosting the birth rate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n NPC deputy Li Yihu is proposing efforts to promote \u201ccivil exchanges\u201d between China and Taiwan to further Beijing\u2019s push for what it terms \u201creunification\u201d. Screenwriter and NPC delegate Zhao Dongling wants all children born after 2024 to enjoy free education through to their last year at university, while other delegates want more equal rights between married and unmarried women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n NPC delegate and agricultural scientist Zhao Wanping has also suggested authorities should return a little more freedom to people when it comes to fireworks. Hugely popular in Chinese celebrations, many cities have since banned fireworks and firecrackers for noise and safety reasons, but Zhao suggested designated venues for setting them off could be a good compromise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Xi Jinping is preparing a profound overhaul of China\u2019s government and party institutions at this year\u2019s National People\u2019s Congress (NPC), China\u2019s rubber-stamp parliament, which begins its annual session on Sunday. On Tuesday, the Chinese Communist party (CCP) trailed changes of \u201cfar-reaching significance\u201d that are expected to include a reorganisation of the bodies tasked with managing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":29985,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[8299,7358,10766,5777,6263,6682,3977,887,287,9651,7421,9331,8307,8263,6693,10484,423,4028,1237,2264,6543,8601,5406,10342,12329,3459,9974,9665,8340,8235,9652,9349,12150,5572,9650,11973,3983,1198,2344,5424,3805,11243,10313,5278,10722,8810,8943,5655,5601,7199,2711,6675,12664,12605,214,3954,5320,594,7898,8327],"class_list":["post-29984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-animal","tag-bank","tag-bank-of-china","tag-banned","tag-beijing","tag-birth","tag-central-bank","tag-chief-of-staff","tag-children","tag-china-communist-party","tag-chinese","tag-city","tag-communist","tag-communist-party","tag-congress","tag-convention","tag-education","tag-freedom","tag-gdp","tag-government","tag-growth","tag-independence","tag-judiciary","tag-law","tag-laws","tag-leader-xi-jinping","tag-leadership","tag-li-keqiang","tag-li-qiang","tag-lockdown","tag-mao-zedong","tag-married","tag-mcgregor","tag-military","tag-national-peoples-congress-npc","tag-one","tag-oxford-university","tag-parliament","tag-patricia","tag-politics","tag-president","tag-president-xi","tag-professor","tag-quality","tag-removed","tag-schools","tag-scientist","tag-security","tag-shanghai","tag-src","tag-taiwan","tag-technology","tag-third-term","tag-uk","tag-university","tag-will","tag-women","tag-who","tag-xi","tag-xi-jinping"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29984\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"China\u2019s](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/02d4615722eb0afbf365cab2d7de3e750b89bdbe\/0_130_3042_1825\/master\/3042.jpg?width=445&quality=85&dpr=1&s=none\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n