The main event of the hermetic Chinese political scene, the Congress of the Communist Party corresponds, despite its pomp and ritualistic grandeur, to a tiny window half-open for attempts to X-ray internal struggles for power and the direction of the ideological winds.
The last edition, which ended last Sunday, fueled analyses, in many moments, to rescue a contemporary version of “kremlinology”, name of readings of the mysterious and opaque Soviet leadership.
With limited access to official sources of information and unable to closely follow a palace dynamic, observers committed to scrutinizing communist regimes cling to few signs with a chance of revealing political reality. And the congressional scene, with former leader Hu Jintao driven to withdraw from the table to accommodate party leaders, fueled a torrent of analysis.
The episode, in an image rotating around the world and lasting only about a minute, drew attention in two ways. First, for breaking the Bolshevik liturgy of a plastered congress, with rehearsed steps and working with the precision and rigor of a Swiss clock. Second, for involving the almighty Xi Jinping and his predecessor, Hu Jintao.
In the official version, Hu would face health problems, reason for leaving in the middle of work and in front of several cameras. Analyzes saw an attempt to show strength by Xi, as he brushed aside key party leadership.
The debate will go on indefinitely. The fact is that the current leader, at the end of the event, emerged as imagined: with a third term at the head of the Communist Party and intensifying the centralization of command, becoming the most powerful leader since Deng Xiaoping, patriarch of the economic reforms initiated in 1978.
From the point of view of analysis, the attentive reading of the opening speech of the communist confabulation offers more consistency. And surveys proliferate, for example, on the frequency with which certain expressions appeared in speech echoing in the hall of the Great Palace of the People, in Beijing.
“National security” emerged as the most striking expression, according to a study by the American think tank CSIS, when it was repeated 91 times in the nearly two-hour speech. The same Xi, at the same time as the 2017 congress, used these words on 54 occasions.
Described in official rhetoric as the “foundation of national rejuvenation”, the expression embodies the Communist Party’s concern with achieving balance in power while economic reforms advance and a more urban society emerges, with more middle class and, therefore, a more challenging scenario. to maintain the one-party regime.
In the historical challenges of unraveling fencing among leaders of a universe of Bolshevik characteristics, the story of Myron Rush (1922-2018), a prominent “Kremlinologist” emerges.
It was 1955, with a bloody struggle in Moscow for the succession of dictator Josef Stalin (1878-1953). An avid reader of the Soviet press, Rush noticed that, from a certain moment, the expression “first secretary”, used to describe Nikita Khruschev’s partisan office, began to be spelled, at first, with capital letters.
Rush then nailed the outcome of the succession struggle to the Kremlin. It was the sign of Khrushchev’s victory. The “Kremlinologist” was right.
With a wealth of experience honed over 4+ years in journalism, I bring a seasoned voice to the world of news. Currently, I work as a freelance writer and editor, always seeking new opportunities to tell compelling stories in the field of world news.
