Xi Jinping’s 3.5 hour speech before the 19th CPC National Congress is actually a succinct introduction to China’s road-map for the future

by Adam Garrie, The Duran:

Xi Jinping’s speech was longsighted, but most importantly thoroughly doable, based on China’s impressive track record.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has addressed the opening session of the 19th Communist Party Congress. Thus far, the most ubiquitous comments about the speech relate to its monumental length, which ran over three and a half hours.

While enduring such a lengthy speech is not particularly easy, in hindsight, Xi’s speech represents a markedly succinct summary of China’s contemporary achievements while offering an easily understood road-map for China and indeed her partners, for the remainder of the 21st century. When trying to condense and synthesise over 100 aggregate years of past successes and future planning, listening to three and an half hours of a speech is actually far briefer than the copious policy documents and analysis that one might otherwise have to read in order to garner such essential information.

Because of this, many western mainstream media outlets have decided to hide the full speech, blaming its length for the fact that in reality, many such “journalists” do not wish to confront China’s rise to its position as a foremost superpower in the modern world.

Here, you can watch the full speech. Below the video I shall illustrate what I felt were the most important points:

Xi Jinping’s address was framed by the theme of his Presidency: the further development of Marxism with Chinese characteristics. This essentially means embracing traditional Chinese cultural and socio-economic habits within the context of the market socialist economic pioneered by Deng Xiaoping who was Chin’a paramount leader from 1978-1989.

The most revolutionary aspect of the speech included a commitment to build on China’s industrial, infrastructural and financial progress to make China an ever more prosperous country internally. While words like “luxury” still carry some stigma in the context of a Communist Party, in reality, Xi was promising just that.

As Chinese workers have laboured tirelessly to transform China from a struggling agrarian economy to a thriving economy that will soon fully overtake the US in terms of total economic power (in many other areas, China has overtaken the US some time ago), Xi illustrated that now it is the time for Chinese men and women to enjoy more of the benefits of the wealth they created.

To achieve this, Xi spoke of several stages of developing “great modern socialism”, the natural outgrowth from the market socialism of Deng.

Practically, this will require two things. First of all, One Belt–One Road will help to connect the Chinese model of economic growth with other dynamic and growing economies throughout multiple global regions. The outward looking concept behind One Belt–One Road is critical to Xi’s idea of a China that will be not only open but more open than ever before. By sharing the Chinese experience with others and linking economies of the world, China is creating a world in which developing countries can enhance their productivity while crucially maintaining full political independence. Secondly, Xi has a wide ranging programme designed to pivot China’s internal investment from primarily infrastructure based projects to projects which improve the micro-management of daily life. In many ways, such programmes at an urban level, are already well under way.

China’s reticence to intervene in the political issues of foreign countries was in fact a recurring theme of Xi’s speech. This was designed to reassure China’s new partners, but it also is part of a wider declaration that in the Chinese dominated 21st century, this will be an organic economic dominance and a dominance in terms of available resources, but not one of imperialistic, political nor ideological dominance. In many ways, there is no better place to assure partners of China’s lack of interest in exporting ideology than during a Communist Party Congress. In this sense, it was made clear that China’s ideological dialectics are meant only for China and not partners. In a single phrase, one could summarise this as: “Great modern socialism in one-state and One Belt–One Road for all independent partners”. To put it another way, “Many political systems, one common goal of prosperity”.

Between the present day and the year 2020, China will work to solidify economic and social gains for the last decade, something which will be capped-off by the completion of the modernisation project for the People’s Liberation Army in 2020, as well as enhanced efforts to totally eliminate rural poverty and expand modern agriculture and industrial sectors outside of China’s modern urban regions.

Between 2020 and 2035, China will work to build a country that is “prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious, and beautiful”. In more practical terms, this means a country wherein real Chinese living standards continue to increase, while conditions remain free of the peaks and troughs that have plagued western societies in recent decades.

While capitalists often criticise socialist countries for lacking sufficient luxury items and leisurely pursuits for citizens and where inversely many socialists criticise capitalist countries for making culture inaccessible and stable living impossible, Xi’sprogramme looks to offer both stability, consistently liveable residential and working environments, while also enhancing the ability of ordinary people to enrich their lives with cultural activities and the new avenues of social enhancement made possible through modern technologies which China has both braced and pioneered.

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