Fifth Plenum; Wooing foreign financiers; Kashgar outbreak

It is Fifth Plenum week as the fifth plenary session of the 19th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party meets in Beijing from Monday through Thursday. Today Xi gave a work report and presented the “discussion drafts” of the proposals for the 14th Five-Year (2021-2025) Plan for Economic and Social Development and future targets for 2035.

There is always speculation around Plenums about personnel changes. I am not assuming there will be any particularly interesting ones, and I expect that more people will realize it has become obvious that there are no clear successors to Xi in the current top leadership and so third terms for Xi as General Secretary, President and Chairman of the Central Military Commission at the 2022 20th Party Congress are nearly assured.

Friday was the 70th anniversary commemoration for the PLA’s entry into the Korean War, and in his recounting of the CCP’s version of the history of the conflict Xi used some tough language that was directed at the US.

Al…