Chinese president consolidates power at home and abroad

It’s been a busy week since the Chinese Communist Party gave President Xi Jinping the title of “core leader,” placing him in the ranks of powerful Chinese leaders like Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, and Jiang Zemin.

The symbolic title represents Xi’s rapid consolidation of power in the past four years. Not only is he president and party secretary, he’s appointed himself the military’s commander in chief and the head of economic reform. He obtained his latest title a year before the important 2017 Party Congress, when the new Standing Committee will be formed.

Party mouthpiece People’s Daily argued that in order to deal with economic and international challenges, “the party center and the whole party must have a core.” This means differing opinions within the leadership will be silenced and benefits bestowed on those who fall in line.

As Xi tightens his grip on China, he faces the challenge of unrest in Hong Kong while trying to establish dominance throughout Southeast Asia.

On Tuesday, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak met with Xi in Beijing, eager for Chinese investments amid a financial scandal that has prompted a U.S. government investigation. The leaders also signed an agreement that their navies would cooperate more in the South China Sea, a surprising move for two countries with competing claims to the area. Southeast Asian countries like the Philippines, Vietnam, and Malaysia won a victory in July when a United Nations tribunal invalidated China’s claims to much of the South China Sea. But Malaysia agreed to continue discussions with China one-on-one.

Razak is the second leader involved in the dispute to kowtow to Beijing in the last few weeks: Controversial Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte arrived in Beijing two weeks ago, praising the China-Philippine relationship and downplaying the South China Sea dispute.

While Xi makes inroads with his neighbors, he’s having less success with Hong Kong. A surprising legislative election in September voted in six young anti-China localists, who used their swearing-in ceremony on Oct. 12 to send Xi a message. Two of the newly elected lawmakers purposely changed the oath and held flags that read “Hong Kong is not China.” They swore allegiance to the “Hong Kong nation,” and one lawmaker used an offensive term for China.

The oaths were deemed invalid, and the furious Hong Kong government filed a legal challenge to bar Yau Wai-ching, 25, and Sixtus Leung, 30, from taking their seats in the Legislative Council. The body’s president, Andrew Leung, prevented them from retaking their oaths until the court rules on the issue. Still, the duo defied orders and entered the main chamber surrounded by pro-democracy lawmakers, as pro-Beijing protesters standing outside the legislature called Yau and Leung traitors.

The kerfuffle caused China to step in even before the judicial review began: Beijing’s Standing Committee announced it would interpret Hong Kong’s constitutional Basic Law, rather than allowing the city’s judges to resolve the issue. Eric Cheung, a law professor at Hong Kong University, told The Guardian such a move “seriously undermine[s] the rule of law in Hong Kong” because it is equivalent to “having Communist Party leaders give directives to Hong Kong judges on how to run.” The Standing Committee’s decision is binding.

This is the fifth time Beijing has interpreted the Basic Law since Great Britain returned Hong Kong to Chinese rule in 1997, and it reflects the government’s fear of independence talk. A Hong Kong government source told the South China Morning Post that during the annual plenum, many were indignant about Yau and Leung’s oaths and called for “effective actions” to rein in any move toward independence.