Editor’s note for March 7, 2023

My thoughts today:

China’s biggest annual political gabfest, the Two Sessions, continues in Beijing today. Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 gave a speech at one of the many meetings that comprise the Two Sessions that made the front page of the Party newspaper, the People’s Daily. It’s a relatively concise summary of the concerns animating Chinese leaders this year.

These are the four most important messages from his speech:

• He talked up the Party’s wise handling of COVID-19 and its record of maintaining stability in China.
• Xi gave reassuring words on the economy. He encouraged the private sector, but also reminded business people of their social responsibilities and that they must work with the Communist Party, not against it. “Private entrepreneurs are our own people” (民营企业家当作自己人 mínyíng qǐyè jiādàng zuò zìjǐ rén), he said — a welcome, but also a warning!
• He discussed the importance of “self-reliance in science and technology.”
• Xi spoke of the “unprecedented and severe challenges to China’s development,” giving a rare explicit mention of the U.S. as leading “Western countries…to impose all-round containment, blockade, and suppression of China.”

To translate: The Communist Party is large and in charge and proud of its recent record. Xi believes the Party can play a larger role in the market economy at the same time as it increasingly tells companies what to do.

But foreign forces are trying to constrain and weaken China. This is going to mean a struggle for years to come, and it dictates that China becomes self-sufficient in technology and energy, and develops ways to trade and work with the non-Western world.