China wraps up 20th Party Congress with Xi set to become most powerful leader in decades | CNN

At this 12 months’s twentieth Celebration Congress, observers are paying specific consideration to attendees from China’s beleaguered non-public sector.

Other than officers and political leaders, the almost 2,300 delegates on the congress additionally embody professionals from totally different sectors.

However because the fallout continues over Xi Jinping’s unprecedented crackdown on non-public enterprise, there’s hypothesis the variety of non-state workers attending the congress may very well be shrinking — particularly if the previous few congresses are something to go by.

Shrinking numbers: On the 18th Celebration Congress in 2012 — the place Xi was appointed head of the Communist Celebration, changing former chief Hu Jintao — there have been 34 attendees from the non-public sector.

On the time, China’s economic system was booming because it built-in extra carefully with the remainder of the world. Simply 4 years earlier than, China had shocked the world with the extravagant Beijing Summer time Olympics. 

However 5 years later on the nineteenth Celebration Congress in 2017, as Xi additional consolidated energy and purged political enemies, that quantity had fallen to 27.

Crackdown on capital: Then in 2020, Beijing launched a sweeping crackdown on a few of the nation’s greatest non-public enterprises, transferring to limit what it noticed as overly highly effective corporations, particularly in Massive Tech.

However it’s come at a heavy price. Greater than $1 trillion has been wiped off the market worth of Alibaba and Tencent — the crown jewels of China’s tech trade — over the past two years. Gross sales development within the sector has slowed, and tens of 1000’s of workers have been laid off, resulting in file youth unemployment.

Murky numbers this 12 months: To this point there have been no state media studies or authorities statements on the variety of attendees not employed by the state – or a lot protection at the entire non-public sector’s significance or contribution to the economic system, in distinction to earlier congresses.

Nevertheless, a look on the full record of delegates reveals there are a number of high-profile entrepreneurs, who had attended earlier congresses, lacking this 12 months — comparable to tools producer Sany Group’s Chairman Liang Wengen.

And through Xi’s opening speech final Sunday, he emphasised the necessity to proceed the social gathering’s “anti-monopoly” crackdown and regulate “extreme incomes,” an indication that he’ll proceed to get robust on massive companies and rich people.