China’s Communist Party may be on the verge of a radical transformation, but Xi’s grip on power is stronger than ever – The Irish Times

When Xi Jinping spoke at the Great Hall of the People on Wednesday to mark the 105th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, he highlighted its history of “unceasing struggle” and warned against arrogance and complacency. But his dominant tone was one of confidence, not only in the party’s achievements and its position, but also in its future as a central player in China’s history.

“No matter how strong the enemy, how perilous the road or how serious the challenge, our party has always been totally fearless and has never flinched, inspiring the people across the country to continually advance from victory to victory with an iron will that remains firm and unwavering regardless of the storms,” he said.

The last time Xi gave a speech about the party on its anniversary was during a centenary celebration in Tiananmen Square in 2021, when he struck a defiant note, declaring that the days when China could be bullied and mistreated by others were gone forever. But Xi and the party faced stormy weather conditions at home and abroad. Few predicted that they would both emerge in as strong a position as they occupy today.

China’s zero Covid policy was successful throughout 2020 and 2021, with strict controls, testing and quarantine effectively suppressing the spread of the virus while the economy continued to operate at a high level. But as the virus has mutated, measures such as Shanghai’s three-month lockdown in spring 2022 have proven intrusive, disruptive and ultimately inadequate. That policy collapsed at the end of that year, triggering a wave of infections for which health services were insufficiently prepared.

The expected post-Covid economic rebound failed to materialize as domestic demand and consumer confidence continued to struggle under the weight of China’s years-long crisis in the property market. Youth unemployment has reached record levels as millions of graduates each year drop out of higher education to enter an increasingly bleak job market.

Internationally, Joe Biden’s administration maintained most of Donald Trump’s coercive policies toward China and added some of its own, limiting the sale of advanced semiconductors and attempting to rally an “alliance of democracies” to counter what it saw as an axis of autocracies including Beijing, Moscow, Tehran and Pyongyang.

Relations with the European Union, already bruised by the mutual imposition of sanctions over the treatment of Xinjiang’s Uyghur minority, collapsed after Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, when China offered economic and diplomatic support to Russia.

As Xi enters the final year of his third five-year term as China’s leader, the party has more than 101 million members. If we add the members of the Communist Youth League, this number rises to almost 200 million. The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection has sanctioned a record 983,000 party members in 2025, while Xi’s anti-corruption campaign is still in full swing.

Those purged include some of the party’s top officials and much of the military leadership, heightening speculation of sweeping personnel changes at next year’s party congress. Most of the seven members of the Politburo Standing Committee, the party’s top leadership, are too old to serve another five-year term.

There is no indication that Xi is preparing to abandon his own leadership roles and the removal of term limits means he can serve at least five more years. But if those immediately below him are replaced, the party leadership will undergo a dramatic generational transformation.

Most of today’s leaders belong, like Xi, to a generation shaped by the experience of the Cultural Revolution, which saw the chaos unleashed by Mao Zedong for nearly a decade. The next generation of leaders will remember little of what happened before Mao’s death and the reform and opening up that followed under Deng Xiaoping.

In his speech on Wednesday, Xi highlighted the party’s enduring commitment to Marxism “as a powerful ideological weapon to transform both the subjective and objective world.” But he also acknowledged that the country owes its enduring monopoly on power in China to its willingness to move with the times and adapt accordingly.

“It actively recognizes, responds to and seeks change, moving forward with determination; it ensures that all its work reflects the character of its times, respects the underlying laws and is rich in creativity; and it leads the country and the nation forward in the logic of the progress of history and in the flow of development of the times, making it a worthy vanguard of the times and the backbone of the nation,” he said.