Xi Jinping enthroned in China
Mao Zedong died at the age of 82, after ruling the People's Republic of China he founded for almost three decades, and if everything goes as expected by current president Xi Jinping and he is in good health, he could lead China until 2036. By then, he would be 83 years old.
If so, Jinping, who has already become a totem of his country and has recently been elected to govern for another five years, will have been in power for 23 years, seven years less than Mao, but enough to be on a par with Zedong, who is considered the father of the Cultural Revolution.
The president has been leading China since March 2013 and has a certain fixation with the historical figure of the dictator considered the foundation of the current China; of humble and peasant origin, Mao added to his ranks Xi Zhongxun, Jinping's father, who for a certain sector is classified as one of the Eight Immortals of the Communist Party of China (CPC) for his participation in the Maoist revolution although he ended up distancing himself from the regime, according to the magazine Blog Weekly.
During his childhood, Jinping had to live through the regime's persecution of his father after having held various posts. In 1975, in the twilight of an ageing Mao, Zhongxun managed to be politically rehabilitated, which allowed Den Xiaoping to incorporate him into his government after the revolutionary leader's death.
Under Xiaoping, Xi's father served as second secretary of the CCP in Guangdong province, at a time when there was talk of a more liberal economic development strategy to counterbalance the Maoist heritage. His father's influence is profound on Jinping who sees himself more as a technical and pragmatic politician - locked in his office behind his desk - than knowing the real problems of the people in the cities, provinces and villages.
At the most recent meeting of the Political Bureau of the CCP Central Committee, which ended on 22 October, Jinping endorsed the power he has amassed during his years in office: he becomes the most powerful ruler since Mao's time. A modern 21st century emperor who combines socialism, market capitalism and Marxist theory as guides for his nation.
China has returned to its worst days of ostracism, secrecy, persecution and omnipotent power concentrated in a single figurehead, augmented as a deity to be worshipped and venerated.
On 11 March 2018, the National People's Congress voted a series of amendments to the Constitution to pave the way for Jinping's perpetuity in power, until death takes him away, after eliminating the limit of terms in government of a maximum of two five-year terms to stipulate an indefinite presidency for the head of state. Jinping would follow in the footsteps of Mao, who was only defeated by illness and death.
"Uncle Xi", as the president likes to be called by the people, especially the younger generations, has been gradually dismantling the political framework inherited by Deng Xiaoping, the reformist president with whom his own father worked. During the Xiaoping government, the Constitution stipulated time limits for political office. This was intended to prevent the emergence of another dictatorship.
Under Jinping, China increasingly resembles a dictatorship in the concentration of power, in the way government centralisation is exercised, in the inclusion of his ideology and political thinking in the Constitution, in classrooms, in books and in the fierce praise of his person. He has seized every opportunity to amass more control in society, to date, the country remains closed to international visitors.
Under the pretext of the pandemic, with the health measures to control the spread of the coronavirus, he has kept the Chinese population, the largest on the planet with 1.412 billion inhabitants, under his iron fist.
Tight confinements in provinces such as Wuhan, cities such as Jilin, Xian, Hainan, Yiwu and Shenzhen - among others - with strict surveillance of the population are revealing; the separation by gender in a kind of ghettos for coronavirus sufferers reveals the treatment of human rights.
With the re-election for five more years, Jinping is president of the nation, general secretary of the CCP Central Committee and chairman of the Party's Central Military Commission.
For this term, he has decided to move positions within his strategic political team in the hope that they will stand up for him as he becomes increasingly reluctant to travel. During the more than two years that the world has known about the pandemic declaration, he has hardly been seen outside Beijing, both internally and externally. And it does not look as if his plans are likely to change much for the time being.
After 30 months without leaving his country, last September he travelled to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to meet his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin and then took part in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Samarkand.
Jinping is expected in Bali, Indonesia, for the work of the G20 Summit, which the Russian leader will also attend on 15-16 November.
During the closing acts of the CCP conference in Beijing that brought together 2,338 delegates, after the election of scrutineers and a secret ballot, the 20th Central Committee was made up of 205 titular members and 171 substitutes with Jinping at the head, defending in front of those present -almost undaunted- that "the world needs more China".
Jinping, who studied politics and chemical engineering in his school days, did a doctorate in Marxist theory at Tsinghua University; he is a faithful admirer of the German economist and thinker Karl Marx and not once but many times has praised, quoted and celebrated him, as happened in the Great People's Palace during the bicentenary of Marx's birth. It is another line of conduct that brings him closer to Mao.
For this new five-year term, Jinping has pledged to "rejuvenate socialism" and "rejuvenate the nation" and to this end he has decided to surround himself with his loyalists by narrowing the circle of stalwarts and has dismissed several of his officials.
First, he achieved a couple of amendments to the CCP Constitution with the inclusion of two sections: the Two Establishments and the Two Safeguards that place Jinping as the central axis of the Communist Party and his political thought as the ideology to follow. Jinping is ambitious, he wants to control the Politburo, the Standing Committee and the Central Committee, and also to impose his own forces.
"Today I want to tell you to dare to fight, dare to win, bury your heads and work hard. You must be determined to move forward and we will do that," Jinping said almost without gesturing.
Among the key moves in his political team are Li Qiang, who will become party secretary for Beijing and will be Jinping's number two, replacing Li Keqiang. One of the men loyal to former president Hu Jintao (2003 to 2013), Hu Chunhua, has also been removed, while politicians Zhao Leji, in charge of anti-corruption in the CCP, and Wang Huning, director of the Political Investigation Office of the CCP Central Committee, will continue in their posts; Cai Qi, secretary of the CCP, Ding Xuexian, director of the general office of the CCP, and Li Xi, head of the Communist Party Disciplinary Commission, will be added.
In addition to Keqiang's departure, Li Zhanshu, Wang Yang and Han Zheng are leaving, the official version according to the press is that the government has decided to dismiss them for reasons of retirement.
After his re-election, Jinping remarked that the Chinese economy has "great resilience and potential" and that its strong fundamentals and positive trajectory will in no way change.
The China of the future
Jinping has been "heartily" and almost immediately congratulated by the Russian dictator. Putin and Jinping often treat each other as friends and are, at least in public, lavish with displays of affection.
"I am sure that the decisions of the Congress will contribute to the successful implementation of the large-scale socio-economic tasks facing China, as well as to strengthening the country's position in the international arena," Putin wrote.
So has North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un in a letter wishing China "a bright future"; the dictator has always been respectful of Jinping's advice.
For his part, here in Spain, during a seminar organised by the Embassy of the People's Republic of China in Madrid, Wu Haitao expressed his pleasure at the new horizon of success that is emerging for his country.
"This means that strategic measures have been adopted and symbolic advances and successes have materialised for the country, and that they have been proposed in the political, economic and cultural spheres. We have worked and are working on more reforms, on stability, on strengthening domestic policy, on making progress in diplomacy, in sectors such as defence, on strengthening party discipline, on increasing the country's development and on the discipline of the army," said the Chinese ambassador.
Haitao stressed that his country has a modestly well-off society, "one of the objectives of the first centenary", which means that extreme poverty has been eradicated; another of the objectives that the diplomat considers to have been achieved is the revitalisation of the Chinese economy, which has placed it among the world's leading economies.
Before a miniscule group of Spanish analysts - all with ties to the Asian giant in different areas - the ambassador highlighted China's interest in strengthening a multilateralism that benefits everyone.
Of socialism as the guiding principle in his country, Haitao underlined his conviction that having its own Chinese characteristics combined with Marxist theories has allowed for "improving the country's system of governance" and has provided an institutional guarantee for the country and its institutions.
Where do we go from here? The representative of Chinese diplomacy in the Iberian country points out that the new objective is to integrate the country's different ethnic groups and revitalise China. The deadlines for taking concrete steps range from 2020 to 2035; and from this year onwards to have a modern and democratic socialist country.
What will happen between China and Taiwan? President Jinping is clear: there will be reunification under the mechanism of "one country, two systems" because the island is considered an essential objective for the proposed rejuvenation, but he will always seek it under the formula of peaceful coexistence.
We will have to wait and see how China-Taiwan relations will finally play out. For the time being, the Western press, especially newspapers such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Le Monde and El País, have all written editorials highlighting the growing power of an increasingly despotic Xi.