{"id":8973,"date":"2021-11-17T07:30:32","date_gmt":"2021-11-17T07:30:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/focus.cbbc.org\/?p=8973"},"modified":"2021-11-18T07:06:56","modified_gmt":"2021-11-18T07:06:56","slug":"whats-in-chinas-6th-plenary-session-communique","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focus.cbbc.org\/whats-in-chinas-6th-plenary-session-communique\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s in China’s 6th Plenary Session communiqu\u00e9?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The communiqu\u00e9 of the Communist Party’s recent Sixth Plenary Session sets the tone for China’s domestic politics and society for decades to come. So what’s in it? And how does Xi Jinping compare to his predecessors Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping?<\/h2>\n

The prognostications of most China analysts turned out to be right, and speculation over whether President Xi Jinping had the base to pass what is only the third \u2018Resolution on History\u2019 of the CCP\u2019s existence was unfounded. Still, those putting forward such analyses were correct to draw attention to the fact that this week\u2019s meeting presented the last chance for political horse-trading among senior CCP officials before next year\u2019s Congress, even though the headline result was only ever going to go one way: the Party\u2019s is in full support of President Xi.<\/p>\n

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As the communiqu\u00e9 explains (read the full text in English here<\/a>), the Party needed to review its history because it is about to embark on a new journey: what it calls the Beginning of a New Phase to Achieve the Second Centenary Goal, which is the Great Rejuvenation of China. It is important to note that the communiqu\u00e9, which acts as a kind of executive summary to the Resolution (which FOCUS will explore in more detail in a future post), does not put forward a revisionist history of the Party, differentiating it from its predecessors.<\/p>\n

Mao and Deng\u2019s \u2018Historical Resolutions\u2019 both applied a historiographical lens to the events that afforded the Party\u2019s coming to power and criticised previous Party leaders \u2013 making alterations to the CPP\u2019s records where needed \u2013 but President Xi\u2019s Resolution appears solely focused on substantiating China\u2019s current position. By proving that the Party has achieved its first centenary goal of building a \u2018moderately prosperous society\u2019 that each previous leader contributed to by fulfilling their \u2018mission\u2019 while in office and that \u201cMarxism has been fully tested as a scientific truth,\u201d the communiqu\u00e9 is teeing up a resolution rooted in ideology rather than consideration of the past.<\/p>\n