Editor’s note for Monday, October 18, 2021

My thoughts today:

The next big meeting: The Chinese Communist Party has announced (in English, Chinese) the date of the Sixth Plenum of its 19th Central Committee “during which a key resolution on the major achievements and historical experience of the Party’s 100 years of endeavors will be reviewed.”

We can expect Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 to receive extremely high marks for his contribution to those achievements, and the stage to be set for him to continue ruling indefinitely.

Speaking of Xi’s achievements, on October 15, the Party’s journal, Qiushi, published To Firmly Drive Common Prosperity (扎实推动共同富裕), an article by Xi Jinping based on a speech he gave in August which relaunched the concept of “common prosperity” into China’s political lexicon.

Adam Ni of Neican has translated the article. For two quick takes on the speech, see Twitter threads from The China Project’s Kaiser Kuo, or from Singapore-based law professor Henry Gao.

Related: See Chinese State Capitalism — Diagnosis and Prognosis, a paper for the Center for Strategic and International Studies by Jude Blanchette and Scott Kennedy.

Our word of the day is hypersonic weapon 超音速武器 chāo yīnsù wǔqì

Upcoming events you might be interested in:

• October 21: Reading the Red New Deal: Part 2 – Entertainment and Culture under Xi Jinping’s Nanny State with me, Kaiser Kuo and Jiayun Feng.
• October 21: Implications of the New U.S.-China Trade Policy for U.S. Business, a China Corner Office live podcast.
• October 27: The future of crypto in China.

—Jeremy Goldkorn, Editor-in-Chief