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Xi Jinping will get a new five-year term as general secretary of China’s Communist Party.
During his decade in power Xi Jinping has had far-reaching influence at home and abroad.
Since Xi came to power there have been notable changes in China from demographics to foreign policy.
Xi Jinping will upend Chinese political traditions cementing his status as one of the world’s most powerful leaders — and take on the U.S. to become the dominant superpower — when members of the country’s ruling Communist Party extend a third term as general secretary at the Party’s 20th National Congress.
The conclave kicks off Sunday and runs for about a week.
Xi, 69, ascended to China’s top job in 2012. During his decade in power, he’s had far-reaching influence at home and abroad. He has centralized power and relentlessly cracked down on dissent. He has poured billions into international infrastructure projects and aggressively pursued island construction and militarization in the South China Sea.What is China’s Communist Party Congress, and what happens now?
Xi is already poised to remain in power for the rest of his life after China’s lawmakers abolished the two-term limit on the presidency, a largely ceremonial title. Xi will be reconfirmed as president next March.
About 200 top members of the Party will be backed to join the policy-making Central Committee. The Central Committee, in turn, will select 25 people to join the Party’s Politburo, a kind of inner circle of this executive branch. These 25 people will then determine who makes up the Politburo’s standing committee, a group of seven elite Party members headed by Xi, in the general secretary role.
Geremie Barmé, an Australian academic, once called Xi the “chairman of everything.”
Here are several ways China has evolved since Xi’s been in charge. China experienced slower economic growth
When Xi became leader China’s economy was expanding at an annual rate of 7.9%, according to World Bank data. The country’s economic growth rate got smaller every year since, until bottoming out with a 2.2% GDP increase in 2020 (largely due to the coronavirus pandemic). China’s economy grew 8.1% in 2021.
Overall, the size of China’s economy in GDP terms has doubled from about $8.5 trillion in 2012 to almost $18 trillion in 2021. The U.S. remains the world’s largest economy – but for how long?Is China’s military powerful?
At $240 billion, China spends more on its military than any other country, with the exception of the U.S., which spent $801 billion in 2021, according to Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimates. China opened its first overseas military base, in Djibouti, in 2017.
