Chinese President Xi Jinping attends a press conference for the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa’s five emerging economies) press conference in Johannesburg, South Africa, on the 24th (local time)./ Yonhap News
Japan’s Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported on the 5th that Chinese President Xi Jinping was enraged last month when he heard an admonition from a group of elders from the Communist Party leadership that society was in chaos.
According to reports, a group of Chinese elders held a preliminary meeting last month prior to the Beidaihe conference and gathered opinions to be passed on to the current leadership. Since then, only a few representatives of the elders have attended the Beidaihe conference.
Beidaihe is a famous resort in Hebei Province. Chinese former and current leaders hold the “Beidaihe Conference,” a two-week summer vacation and secret meeting, at a large-scale resort here in late July or early August every year to decide the direction of the country. It is customary to have a large number of political elders as well as active leaders participate in the discussion, but influential elders within the party were absent from the meeting this summer.
At this meeting, former Vice-President Zeng Qinghong, who was an aide to the late President Jiang Zemin, told Xi, “You must not confuse him any more.” It is said that it was a different strong tone than in the past. It is known that the elders pointed out that there are problems with China’s atmosphere, including politics and society as a whole, as well as China’s economic downturn.
After hearing the elder group’s unexpected admonition, President Xi later summoned his aides to another location and said, “All the problems left by the past three generations have come over me.” It is said that he burst into anger, saying, “Is this my fault?” The Nikkei analyzed that the chaos criticized by the elder group is a negative legacy accumulated through the Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, and Hu Jintao regimes, and is not a problem for them to take responsibility for.
The Nikkei evaluated the conflict between President Xi and the senior group as “a sign of confusion in internal affairs,” and saw that the reason why Prime Minister Li Chang, the second-in-command instead of President Xi, attended the G20 summit was related to this atmosphere. He judged that there is a possibility that President Xi would lose face if issues about the Chinese economy shaken by the real estate crisis and high youth unemployment were discussed in public.
Previously, President Xi attended the BRICS summit held in South Africa at the end of last month, right after the Beidaihe meeting, but canceled his speech scheduled at the business forum at the last minute and had it read. Even against this background, the Nikkei reported that there were concerns that an unexpected question might lose face.
In addition, Nikkei analyzed that while the improvement of relations with the United States was not speeding up, it was also burdensome for President Xi to laugh and talk with US President Joe Biden on the occasion of attending the G20 summit. The Nikkei added, “Amid this trend, it is also unclear whether President Xi will attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in the United States in mid-November.”
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2023-09-05 13:37:28
