Is an anti-Xi resistance emerging?

From the 1980s to 2017, at least every five years, China’s National Party Congress would be a moment of intriguing flux in the usually staid public politics of the Chinese Communist party. Rising stars are promoted, the old retired and, every other Congress, a new Secretary General would be appointed. Beforehand, a flurry of papers and opinion editorials would be published as various factions jostled for influence.

This year’s Congress wasn’t meant to be exciting. Having abolished term limits, this is the moment when Xi Jinping is meant to be affirmed in his third term. There are few viable successors on the horizon.

Nevertheless, an opening salvo in the pre-Congress war of words has been fired: last month, a 60-page Chinese essay entitled ‘An Objective Evaluation of Xi Jinping’ was published on overseas Chinese forums. It lambasted the President’s track record on everything from the Belt and Road Initiative to the Covid response, scathingly tearing apart his character and his agenda.