Li Keqiang’s sermon has lasted for almost an hour. The Chinese premier read the parish sheet with the only background sound of his nearly 3,000 listeners turning the pages of the written speech before them in unison. The few interruptions came when all those present coordinated to applaud after particularly flattering paragraphs with the political management of the Government or some patriotic exaltation.
Beneath the Stalinist gilded ceilings of the Great Hall of the People, the main auditorium of the behemoth hemicycle jutting out west of Beijing’s Tiananmen Square and fulfilling the role of legislator, China’s political elite, draped by delegates from all corners of the country , has met this Sunday to open the first session of the National Popular Assembly (APN), the annual political conclave.
The outgoing Premier Li Keqiang, who is retiring at the age of 67 after this assembly because he has reached the end of his second five-year term, was in charge of inaugurating the meeting by reciting a work report in which he reviewed the work of the government led by the omnipresent Xi Jinping, put the pending challenges on the table and presented some key figures.
Like the forecast for GDP growth this year: around 5% after the economy rose 3% in 2022, one of the worst data in more than half a century, dragged down by the zero Covid policy. The blockades are behind us and the Asian giant, with its locomotive at full capacity, is coming out of the well.
“China has secured a victory over the coronavirus pandemic,” Li said. In the economic section, the prime minister also set out the goal of creating 12 million jobs in urban areas, keeping unemployment at 5.5% and for inflation to be around 3%, as is the fiscal deficit.
The second most significant point in the report goes hand in hand with a complex international scenario where Beijing is dealing with growing tensions with the United States, the shadow of an invasion of Taiwan, border disputes with India in the Himalayas and the shock waves that are coming of the war in Ukraine. The prime minister said that the military budget would increase by 7.2% (last year it was 7.1%). Although from Washington they always point out that this budget announcement is very opaque and that the actual spending is much higher.
“The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) should step up military training and readiness across the board to boost combat readiness,” the prime minister said. Li also referred to the situation in Taiwan, the self-ruled island that Beijing considers a rogue province, where the Chinese government must “take decisive steps to oppose independence and promote peaceful reunification,” although Chinese leaders have repeatedly said that, if necessary, that reunification could be carried out by force. In the past three years, as Taiwan has drawn ever closer to Washington, its main arms supplier, the Chinese military has intensified its military activity around the island.
The increase in defense spending this year will help the modern facelift that President Xi seeks for his armed forces, which have the largest infantry in the world, before 2035. The PLA roadmap, marked out in the latest plan It seeks to expand its stockpiles of missiles, warships like the homemade aircraft carrier unveiled last year, submarines and planes, including nuclear-capable bombers, and advanced J-20 stealth fighters.
Below the auditorium stage, listening intently to the report, were delegates from across the country, all wearing masks. On paper, they are the ones who should supervise the work of the Government in this assembly, but when it comes down to it, they follow a choreographed operation in which they have no decision-making power in the economic, social, technological and environmental policies that are They debate in the APN.
Their votes, during the eight days that the meeting lasts this year, will follow what was decided in advance by the power leadership led by Xi Jinping, who was sitting in the central part of the stage, surrounded by the 25 strong men of the Politburo, the maximum the policy-making body of the Communist Party (CCP), who in turn also occupy seats among the 170-member NPC Standing Committee, where barely a dozen women were to be seen at Sunday’s inauguration. According to the Xinhua news agency, among the nearly 3,000 delegates present in the auditorium, only 26.5% are women.
The second amphitheater of the hemicycle, on the third floor, just to the left of a table for invited foreign diplomats, sat accredited journalists and photographers. The opening of this session, unlike previous years, hardly had correspondents residing in China because their seats had been occupied by guest journalists from Latin American and African countries. Beijing, which is increasingly used to closing itself off and deepening its anti-Western rhetoric, sits media from like-minded countries in its Parliament, displacing critical journalists to watch important sessions on television, where the state channel summarizes the prime minister’s speech making stressed that all deputies support the unwavering leadership of Xi Jinping, mentioned up to 14 times in the report presented by Li.
In this assembly, Xi will consecrate a third term as president, endorsed at the CPC congress last October, which gave him more authoritarian power, and will carry out a reorganization of senior officials at the head of the country’s most important institutions. Li Keqiang, after his last great elocution, bids farewell to make way for Li Qiang, the president’s new right-hand man, who has surrounded himself with his most faithful comrades, whom he will distribute to ministerial posts in the coming days. most relevant.
Before leaving the stage, the still prime minister wanted to wink at the “success” of past resolutions from the APN, such as when a national security law was approved in 2020 that swept away the autonomy of Hong Kong and, a year later, Political opposition in the former colony was erased with a reform so that only “patriots” could present themselves in local elections.
“The principle of patriots running Hong Kong has been firmly upheld and applied,” said Li, who said goodbye revealing China’s need, amid the hail of US sanctions against its most cutting-edge technology industries, of “building self-sufficiency in science and technology”. For this, he assured, public spending on basic research will double in the next five years.
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