Beijing Letter: Xi Jinping showing no sign of weakness at Two Sessions conference

As they stepped off the buses lined up on the south side of Tiananmen Square, the delegates looked across at the famous gate to the Forbidden City with its huge portrait of Mao Zedong. More than 80 per cent male and mostly dressed in suits, they milled around in the warm spring sunshine, shaking hands and posing for pictures in front of the Great Hall of the People.

They were here for the Two Sessions, a week-long meeting of the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). The NPC is China’s main legislative assembly, with almost 3,000 members, and the CPPCC is an advisory body with more than 2,000.

The atmosphere outside the Great Hall of the People was jovial in a sedate kind of way, like a corporate agm or an old-fashioned trade show. Security was thorough but discreet, with no evidently armed guards but hundreds of trim, black-suited men with earpieces keeping everything under control.

In a throwback to life before the end of zero-Covid last December, everyone had spent the previous night in quarantine at hotels around the city after doing a PCR test. But unlike the strict regime in the old days, we were free to leave our rooms, eat together in the dining room, drink in the bar and pop outside for a smoke.

Meet the Irish man who is China’s top whiskey influencer

---

China’s foreign minister criticises Washington and EU while lauding Sino-Russia relations

---

After a fashion: Young Chinese people turning to homegrown designs

---

Fine lines and facelift pitfalls in the hot pursuit of beauty

---

A Chinese government official told me that the hotel for the journalists, which was very comfortable, was more salubrious than the one where the diplomats were quarantining. If true, this is the first time such a thing has happened since the dawn of western diplomacy when Menelaus and Odysseus went to Troy.

Inside the Great Hall, the 10,000-seat Great Auditorium was set up for the second plenary session of the NPC, with two rows of desks and a podium downstage and four rows behind them. The delegates sitting in the stalls had red and green lights on their desks for when they would vote on various resolutions, and printouts of the work reports that would be read out during the session.

[ Economic growth and Taiwan on agenda as China’s National People’s Congress gets underway ]

As they came onstage, the pecking order among the top delegates was clear, as those in the back rows wore masks while those in the front two went without. In the middle of the second row, with 15 delegates on either side of him and a space between him and his immediate neighbours, sat president Xi Jinping.

As each of four delegates were introduced to deliver their reports, they would come towards the foot of the stage, bow to the delegates below and then turn around and bow towards Xi before approaching the podium. Every so often, the delegates would applaud a line in the speech and Xi would clap too, but more gently and more briefly than the others.

While most delegates studied the text in front of them as it was being read out, Xi would pick up another script and flick through it, occasionally exchanging a word with the figures to his left and right. His manner was easy, his expression unreadable but, throughout the two-hour session, he had about him that air of quiet insouciance so common among the powerful.

If Xi did not look up when his name was mentioned, it was perhaps because it was spoken so often. Every few paragraphs included a reference to “the party Central Committee with comrade Xi Jinping at its core” or “the guiding role of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era”.

[ More protests are a bridge too far as China prepares for Two Sessions ]

The content of the reports reflected the development under Xi’s leadership that has seen the party extend its decision-making power at the expense of the State Council, China’s chief administrative authority. The party will set up a central committee to oversee the science and technology sector, and a new financial regulatory body will form part of a broader government restructuring that is likely to strengthen the party’s position.

By the end of the Two Sessions next Monday, Xi’s men will be confirmed in the most senior government positions including the role of premier, which will go to Li Qiang, one of his most long-standing allies. After the demonstrations last November and the abrupt end to zero-Covid, some western analysts speculated that Xi’s position had itself become vulnerable.

Watching him in the Great Hall of the People this week as the party tightened its control of China’s policy levers, such speculation looked wide of the mark.