China releases names of delegates for big political reshuffle

Beijing on Sunday released all the names of the delegates elected to the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, which is slated to start on October 16. At the gathering, Chinese leader Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 is expected to secure his unprecedented third term as leader of the country (i.e. national chairman or president), to have his leadership of the Communist Party itself extended, and to have his command of the People’s Liberation Army renewed.

Xi and all current members of the Politburo are on the list of delegates to the Party Congress: The 2,296 names on the list, which “contains very few surprises,” the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reports, are a key part of the political reshuffle that will determine the Chinese Communist Party’s most powerful decision-making body: the 25-member Politburo.

• The list consists of “people of all ethnic groups,” reads a precursor to an editorial in state-run mouthpiece People’s Daily, but diversity is limited: Only 620 of the 2,296 people are women, and 260 came from the nation’s ethnic minorities (per SCMP calculations, female representation grew 3 percentage points to 27%, while the number of ethnic minority delegates stayed the same as the previous congress at 12%).
• Also included in the list are officials who are over the unofficial retirement age of 68, which had been in place since the CCP’s first orderly exchange of power in 2002: Xi, who turned 69 this year, will be the party’s first leader older than 68 since the death of Máo Zédōng 毛泽东 in 1976.

Xi’s inclusion on the list further debunked the rumors swirling on social media since Saturday, the Guardian reports, ranging from mutterings of a military coup to Xi being held under house arrest (he hasn’t been seen in public since his first foreign trip outside China since the start of the pandemic).

• The rumors appeared to start with postings from Falun Gong members and other exiled dissidents, and were amplified by Indian social media users and some overseas Chinese journalists.

There has also been a deep purge of the Chinese leadership in the lead up to the conclave, which has only added fuel to the speculative fire:

• Former justice minister Fù Zhènghuá 傅政华, the “iron-handed” ex-cop who led the charge on a number of anti-corruption campaigns, was given a death sentence with a two-year reprieve for taking bribes and helping criminals evade the law — including concealing information about his brother’s alleged “serious crimes” in 2014 and 2015.
• Former deputy public security minister Sūn Lìjūn 孙力军, and three other former police chiefs, were also handed prison sentences by the same court for corruption.
• Láo Dōngyàn 劳东燕, a criminal law professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing who is well known for her critique of Beijing’s policies, woke up two weeks ago to find her entire social media account had been wiped clean.

“The 20th Party Congress will just be largely a formality to endorse the party leadership’s decisions and directions…By now, the Politburo members should have a pretty clear idea of the upcoming reshuffle,” Alfred Wu, an associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, told SCMP.