National Day Holiday; Common Prosperity; RMB intervention; Xizang
The PRC is going into holiday mode for the weeklong National Day Holiday. Today’s newsletter is a bit thin, I will start a weekly thread tomorrow but then I will not be publishing next week unless something really interesting is going on.
Xi and the rest of the leadership will attend a Martyr’s Day event Friday in Tiananmen Square. I may have been wrong in my assumption that there will be an end of the month Politburo meeting, as a Politburo meeting was already held September 9, as discussed in the newsletter that day.
Xi and the rest of the leadership will likely be out of site for at least a week. Be wary of whatever new rumors may start circulating over the next few days…
Summary of today’s Essential Eight:
Common Prosperity and the 20th Party Congress - The announcement of the Party Congress dates stated that Common Prosperity would be one of the key agenda items, though no details were given, nor should we expect a detailed program to be laid out at at the Congress. But it has not gone away as some suggested earlier this year, and I doubt it is going to be as “benign”, at least from the perspective of private enterprises and investors, as mainly just “making the cake bigger”.
Mortgage rates to drop - The PBoC says some localities can lower mortgage rates, but emphasizes again that "houses are for living in, not for speculating on".
RMB intervention coming? - So says Reuters, using overseas branches of state banks. The PBoC hates it when foreigners make too much shorting the Yuan.
US-Pacific Islands Summit - Really looks like US-China competition may turn out to be very beneficial to the long-neglected, at least here in DC, Pacific Islands Countries. And contrary to earlier reporting the Solomons did endorse an 11-point statement of vision
Interesting new books on China - One by former official and long-time scholar Susan Shirk called “Overrreach”, two by scholar and current white House NSC official Julian Gewirtz - “Never Turn Back: China and the Forbidden History of the 1980’s” and “Your Face My Flag”.
Diplomacy in the New Era - Officials talked about the successes of the PRC’s Diplomacy in the Xi Era. Foreign media focused on the “wolf warrior” themes, the PRC focused more on the efforts to promote reform of the global governance system. "Wolf Warrior" is a pithy term, but they really are all Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy Warriors, and it is a feature not a bug of the XJPTD.
August Political Discourse - The monthly report from the China Media Project for Sinocism. This bit about the recent history of visits to the Deng park in Shenzhen gives useful perspective for Li Keqiang’s recent visit and the speculation his comments sparked.
Xizang - Are officials and official media changing the English names used for Tibet to Xizang?
Thanks for reading, and I hope to see many of you in the weekly thread tomorrow.
The Essential Eight
1. Common Prosperity and the 20th Party Congress
The announcement of the Party Congress dates stated that Common Prosperity would be one of the key agenda items, though no details were given, nor should we expect a detailed program to be laid out at at the Congress. But it has not gone away as some suggested earlier this year, and I doubt it is going to be as “benign”, at least from the perspective of private enterprises and investors, as mainly just “making the cake bigger”.
China is expected to increase its push for shared wealth as a key “strategic goal” during next month’s 20th party congress, a senior party ideologist said, amid growing anxiety over Beijing’s policies to tackle inequality...
The notion of common prosperity dates back to the 1950s and Mao Zedong, and after being repeated by Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s, Xi’s rhetoric on common prosperity surged last year.
Beijing’s top leadership will deliver a clearer and more detailed road map on the push for so-called common prosperity when the five-yearly party congress begins on October 16, said Han Baojiang, professor and director of the economics department at the Central Party School of the Communist Party of China.
“China will place a further emphasis on narrowing [various socioeconomic] gaps, which will become an important policy objective and strategic goal for us,” he said on Wednesday.