Susan Shirk

China’s Congress: an inflection point?

Susan Shirk, David Li, Hui Shan, Allison Nathan

The 20th National Party Congress of the Chinese Communist Party is expected to solidify President Xi Jinping's third term as General Secretary, shifting China away from collective leadership toward a personalized concentration of authority. Expert analysis regarding the event's economic and geopolitical outcomes presents a divergence: while Goldman Sachs predicts the continuation of strict pandemic controls and structural policies that suppress long-term growth, Tsinghua Professor David Lee anticipates a necessary reprioritization of economic growth to ensure social stability. Concurrently, analysts warn that although Xi may harbor ambitions to resolve the Taiwan issue, the catastrophic risk to his leadership and the cautionary context of the Ukraine war currently act as significant deterrents to military action.