China’s Communist Party Congress: For His 3rd Term, Xi Jinping Surrounds Himself With Loyalists (Published 2022) (2024)

China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has created a new ruling elite packed with loyalist officials primed to elevate his agenda of bolstering national security and of turning China into a technological great power.

Mr. Xi on Sunday revealed the new lineup for the Politburo Standing Committee, the Communist Party’s top echelon. The six men who will work under Mr. Xi all have close ties with him, and none are from a different factional background. Mr. Xi will lead a government where there is no doubt that he dominates, for better or worse.

“Xi now truly owns the system, but any mistakes will also be his — unmistakably,” Dali Yang, a professor at the University of Chicago who researches Chinese politics, said in an interview. “He was dominant already and is even more dominant now. He owns it.”

New appointees to the Politburo Standing Committee include: Li Qiang, who worked under Mr. Xi when they were local officials in Zhejiang Province; Ding Xuexiang, a senior aide to Mr. Xi; and Cai Qi, the party secretary of Beijing whose ties to Mr. Xi go back decades.

They took up posts on the Standing Committee that were vacated when four officials retired, including Premier Li Keqiang, who in theory could have stayed on the committee under informal age rules. Hu Chunhua, once seen as a potential next premier, was not in the seven-member Standing Committee, nor even in the wider, 24-member Politburo, meaning that he had been demoted.

The unveiling of China’s new leaders came after a weeklong Communist Party congress at which Mr. Xi emphasized his view that China had to bolster its security against a range of threats: political, economic, social, military and technological.

The membership of the new Politburo — the second tier of party power — reflected the priority he has attached to addressing such risks.

Its two dozen members include two commanders who serve as Mr. Xi’s vice chairmen on the Central Military Commission, including Gen. Zhang Youxia, 72, who has stayed in office past the usual retirement age. The minister of state security, Chen Wenqing, also joined the Politburo, suggesting that he will take up a powerful role in domestic security.

“National security and the party’s political security is clearly a higher priority than achieving high rates of economic growth,” said Drew Thompson, a researcher at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore.

Several provincial and regional leaders who have risen from the country’s space and science sectors also joined, indicating that they are being prepared for bigger roles. They include Yuan Jiajun, the party secretary of Zhejiang Province, who once oversaw China’s manned space program.

Some of Mr. Xi’s most immediate challenges lie in the economy, with the housing market sinking, exports stalling and debt rising. Mr. Xi tried to reassure. “China’s economy is resilient, has ample potential and has ample room for maneuver,” he said.

Xi Jinping has appointed to the party’s Politburo Standing Committee, the apex of power, officials who have longstanding ties to him, sometimes dating back decades, or who have vigorously carried out his agenda and promoted his ideology.

The members are:

Mr. Xi: As well as party leader, he retains his title as head of the military, and is likely to remain state president.

Li Qiang: A new member. As party chief of Shanghai, he oversaw a contentious Covid lockdown. But his longstanding ties to Mr. Xi appeared to help him through.

Zhao Leji: The low-key head of the party’s agency for investigating corruption and disloyalty.

Wang Huning: The party’s veteran ideological seer, who has shaped Mr. Xi’s nationalist ideas. He may get a new role.

Cai Qi: A new member. His ties to Mr. Xi go back over two decades to Fujian Province. Mr. Xi showed his trust by appointing him party chief of Beijing, the all-important capital.

Ding Xuexiang: A new member. A close aide to Mr. Xi, he almost always travels with the top leader, and helps him manage party matters.

Li Xi: A new member. He is the party secretary of Guangdong Province, where he tightened top-down control. He is set to lead the party’s agency for investigating corrupt or disloyal officials.

A two-month lockdown in Shanghai earlier this year looked at the time as though it might doom the political career of the city’s Communist Party leader, Li Qiang. Confined in their homes or in shoddy quarantine facilities, residents struggled to obtain food and fought with police officers clad in white hazmat suits.

Despite the lockdown, Mr. Li, 63, retained the support throughout of the one man who really counts: Xi Jinping, China’s top leader. And on Sunday, Mr. Li emerged on the stage at the Great Hall of the People as China’s second-highest official after Mr. Xi himself.

Mr. Li’s ranking puts him in line to become China’s new premier next March, a post that will give him broad authority over the vast bureaucracy of the Chinese government.

“The connection with Xi Jinping is crucial — there is no lack of competent administrators in the Communist Party, so the patron-client system of promotion remains important,” said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a professor emeritus of political science at Hong Kong Baptist University.

The promotion of Mr. Li contrasts with Mr. Xi’s removal of both top officials in Hubei Province in early 2020 after the new coronavirus first emerged in the provincial capital, Wuhan, and prompted a lockdown of nearly 11 weeks.

Mr. Li was born and grew up in prosperous Zhejiang Province, just south of Shanghai, and worked his way up the provincial bureaucracy. His career took off after he served as essentially the chief of staff for Mr. Xi, who was the province’s Communist Party secretary from 2002 to 2007.

Two months after Mr. Xi became China’s top leader in 2012, he named Mr. Li the governor of Zhejiang Province. Three years later, he promoted Mr. Li, appointing him the Communist Party secretary of Jiangsu Province, an affluent hub of industrial activity. And in 2017, he named Mr. Li as Communist Party secretary of Shanghai — traditionally a steppingstone to the Standing Committee of the Politburo, including for Mr. Xi himself.

Mr. Li worked closely with multinational executives and Chinese business leaders alike in Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Shanghai. But he has not worked in Beijing and has no experience in overseeing the State Council, China’s cabinet or the dozens of ministries under the State Council.

That lack of Beijing experience means that Mr. Li will be heavily dependent on Mr. Xi’s continued support, said Yang Zhang, a professor at American University’s School of International Service. “He will have to rely upon Xi’s authority and other aides — most of whom will be Xi’s associates from other sources — to make the State Council function,” he said.

No one expected that a woman would join Xi Jinping’s inner circle this week when he announced his new leadership team.

But many China watchers were surprised when not a single woman was promoted to the Politburo, the party’s second-most powerful group and its executive policymaking body, a break with a two-decade tradition.

“It does certainly send a message that the Chinese Communist Party does not have an interest in advancing women’s political status,” said Minglu Chen, a senior lecturer at the University of Sydney who studies gender and politics in China.

“The Chinese Communist Party really is still a patriarchal institution,” Ms. Chen said.

In his speech at the opening of Communist Party congress last Sunday, Mr. Xi pledged to “adhere to the basic state policy of gender equality.” Yet when it comes to promoting women into positions of power, the party has a poor record.

A woman has never been on its highest decision-making body, the Standing Committee. In the party’s seven-decade history, eight women have made it close, sitting on the larger Politburo.

One of those women, Sun Chunlan, had the credentials to be elevated to the Standing Committee, but she will step down from the Politburo this week, having surpassed the typical retirement age.

Another woman, Shen Yiqin, had been widely expected to be promoted to the Politburo to take Ms. Sun’s place on the body, which now has 24 members. Ms. Shen was promoted to the 205-member Central Committee, along with 11 other women.

While there has never been an explicit rule that there must be a woman on the Politburo, for two decades it has always had at least one female representative. The last time a woman was not promoted to the Politburo was during the 15th Communist Party congress in 1997.

Ms. Shen might have made for a strong voice there, had she been promoted. She is the only woman to hold the title of provincial party secretary and is one of just four Chinese women to have ever secured that role. She is also a member of the Bai ethnic minority group, the kind of unofficial qualification that has tended to put female candidates on a fast track.

Chinese state media has not covered Ms. Shen often, but in one rare appearance in 2020, she demonstrated humility when accepting her promotion to party chief of Guizhou Province. “I solemnly promise that I will treat comrades honestly and will never act like a patriarch who calls all the shots,” Ms. Shen was quoted as saying in local state media at the time.

There were other strong female contenders for a position on the Politburo: Yu Hongqiu, the only woman among eight deputies at the Communist Party’s anti-corruption body, and Shen Yueyue, president of the All China Women’s Federation. Only Ms. Shen was promoted to the Central Committee this weekend.

With little female representation in government, some women’s issues are likely to continue to be seen as a direct challenge to the party leadership‌. A sudden outburst of feminist discussion and support for victims of sexual assault, for example, has been swiftly extinguished over the past few years.‌ ‌

In the United States and Europe‌, #Metoo claims have forced politicians out of office, but in China they are censored. When the tennis star Peng Shuai accused a top Chinese official of sexual assault, she was silenced by censors and disappeared for several weeks.

Zhang Gaoli, the now-retired official she accused, has not been cast aside by the party. He was given a prominent seat at the opening of the 20th party congress in the front row.

HONG KONG — Thousands of posters condemning China’s top leader have appeared on college campuses in New York, Barcelona, Stockholm, Tokyo and elsewhere over the past few days as Chinese students and dissidents spread the message of a lone protester in China.

The posters — paper pasted onto just about everything — have one common theme: Oust the “despotic traitor,” Xi Jinping.

Those words first appeared in Beijing on Oct. 13. As Mr. Xi, China’s top leader, was expected to coast to a third term during the Communist Party congress, someone whose identity has not been confirmed, managed to hang a banner on a busy bridge calling for Mr. Xi’s dismissal. On Sunday, that third term was confirmed.

The protest slogans on the banner also included “Elections, Not Dictatorship” and “Citizens, Not Flunkies.”

The appearance of such strong dissent before an important Communist Party meeting, in a heavily policed city, astonished the whole country. The protester was taken away by police, and online discussions were quickly censored.

Dissidents, however, then found ways to amplify the message overseas. The protest slogans on the Beijing bridge have popped up on bulletin boards, poles and bus stations at more than 200 colleges across at least 20 countries, as many international Chinese students said they were saluting the protester and fighting Mr. Xi’s autocracy.

“I used to be surrounded by a deep powerlessness over political resistance, but the Beijing protester inspired me, showing there are ways to fight,” said Xintong Zhang, 24, a Chinese student at the University of Toronto, who sobbed when seeing the protester’s banner on social media. She later put up dozens of “Dictator Out” posters around campus at dawn.

Compared with other autocracies such as Russia, Iran and Myanmar, China is regarded by many human rights organizations as even less hospitable to free speech and government protest. Under Mr. Xi, opposition and criticism is heavily suppressed with a mix of state security, online censorship and the threat of severe punishment. No independent media and civil society organizations remain 10 years into his rule. Freedom House, a U.S. pro-democracy group, has ranked China last in internet freedom for eight consecutive years.

Ms. Zhang said many Chinese — especially her peers, who started high school after Mr. Xi came to power — did not know how to fight authoritarianism whether at home or abroad.

“Now we have the Beijing protester, and I can look up to him,” she said. “I know I should speak out and how to do it.”

Some of the new activists are concerned that even outside China, there are risks that come with opposing the Chinese government.

A student at the University of Texas at Austin who posted anti-Xi posters on campus said that he was worried about being targeted and harassed by nationalist Chinese students. The student, who is surnamed Zhou, declined to be identified by his full name, citing the same reason.

Ms. Zhang said she worried about being harassed by other Chinese students, assuming the majority were nationalists. As a result, she wore a mask when putting up posters to avoid being identified.

She found most of her posters had been torn down and some had been left half hanging from bulletin boards. “I felt heartbroken but then relieved,” she said. “It’s okay if they tore down my posters as long as I keep posting until the party congress finishes.”

The overseas anti-Xi slogans gained traction after they were collected and shared by pro-democracy Instagram accounts run by anonymous volunteers, mostly Chinese citizens living abroad.

“A brave man should have an echo,” one of the groups, Citizens Daily CN, posted on Instagram.

For all the bluster on politics and ideology, the next generation of Chinese leaders tend more toward satellites, manned spacecraft and retrieval missions to Mars.

The ambitions of Xi Jinping, China’s leader, to strengthen the country’s technological prowess have spawned a new breed of officials with backgrounds in science and engineering. Promotions on Sunday to the powerful 24-member Politburo included several officials who made their mark in cutting-edge sectors like the space program.

Mr. Xi has swapped out an earlier class of technocrats in finance and economics in favor of those who are experts in fields such as aerospace. Premier Li Keqiang, China’s second-ranked leader and a steward of the country’s economy, is set to retire, another sign that market considerations will take a back seat to the state’s promotion of high-tech industries.

The new members include Ma Xingrui, the party secretary of Xinjiang Province and the former head of China’s space program; Zhang Guoqing, the party secretary of Liaoning Province, an electrical engineer and former executive of one of China’s largest defense contractors; and Yuan Jiajun, the party secretary of Zhejiang Province, who directed China’s Shenzhou manned spaceflight program.

Known among some observers as “the cosmos club,” the aerospace politicians are confirmation that high-end technologies will play a central role in Mr. Xi’s next term. “It’s a recognition that there are huge technological challenges that ideology alone can’t solve,” said Chris Marquis, a business professor at Cambridge University in Britain and co-author of “Mao and Markets.”

The number of technocratic leaders has jumped during Mr. Xi’s tenure. More than half the promotions of China’s senior leaders during the 2017 party congress went to technocrats, up from 14 percent when Mr. Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, led China, according to a study by MacroPolo, a research institute.

“The whole socialist project since the beginning — from the Soviet Union — has had a technocratic aspect,” said Joel Andreas, a sociology professor at Johns Hopkins University. “They always needed engineers to build up key industries to stay competitive.”

Deng Xiaoping, who led China to prosperity after coming to power in the late 1970s, like his successors, placed a heavy focus on “red engineers,” people with the technical chops to steer and accelerate the country’s nation-building efforts, over career politicians.

At the beginning of the 2000s, as markets took on a central role in the economy, the party began to promote leaders in economics and finance who could help steer market reforms. As a result, technocrats dropped off.

Now, as Mr. Xi’s obsession with national security grows, that style of nation building is returning. Rather than being experienced in heavy industries such as steel and petroleum, Mr. Xi’s preferred technocrats specialize in the semiconductor, aeronautics and advanced manufacturing sectors.

In his nearly two-hour long speech last Sunday, Mr. Xi made almost no mention of the internet economy, a sector that has brought significant change and benefits to China, focusing instead on aerospace and space travel, fields associated with great-power rivalries.

“There’s a sense of growing siege from the West,” said Tai Ming Cheung, a professor at the University of California, San Diego, of Mr. Xi’s policy motivations. “It’s like a full-fledged Cold War.”

Chris Buckley contributed reporting.

If one person was considered almost certain for promotion to the Standing Committee, it was Ding Xuexiang.

On paper, Mr. Ding would seem a less likely candidate than some other contenders. He has never led a province, either as party secretary or governor. He has worked largely as a behind-the-scenes technocrat, including in his most recent post directing the office of the Communist Party Central Committee, the roughly 200-member group of the party’s top officials. That role is heavily administrative. Some have compared Mr. Ding to a chief of staff for Xi Jinping, China’s leader.

It is precisely that proximity to Mr. Xi that probably worked in Mr. Ding’s favor. As Mr. Xi has sought to purge political rivals and surround himself with allies, loyalty has become a key criteria for advancement. And Mr. Ding, who also serves as a secretary to Mr. Xi, is perceived as one of the leader’s most reliable backers.

When Mr. Xi traveled to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan last month, on his first trip abroad since the coronavirus pandemic began, Mr. Ding accompanied him. Mr. Ding also traveled with Mr. Xi to Washington in 2015. And he is by Mr. Xi’s side when he travels domestically.

He is also widely believed to be the office director for China’s National Security Commission, a secretive body that has grown more influential as Mr. Xi has put more emphasis on guarding against foreign and domestic threats.

Mr. Ding’s history with Mr. Xi dates to 2007, when Mr. Xi was briefly party chief in Shanghai and Mr. Ding a long-serving party official there. Mr. Ding moved to Beijing in 2013 to join the Central Committee’s general office and has led it since 2017. That year, he ascended to the 25-member Politburo, even though he had been only an alternate member for the much larger Central Committee five years earlier, a promotion that some took as a sign of Mr. Xi’s patronage.

At 60 years old, Mr. Ding is the youngest of the Standing Committee members. But many analysts say he is unlikely to be a successor to Mr. Xi, given his lack of leadership experience at the provincial level. In that sense, he may be a best-of-both-worlds pick for Mr. Xi: loyal but not threatening.

If there is one policy that has come to define Xi Jinping’s leadership in recent years, it is China’s approach to the pandemic.

The policy, known as “zero Covid,” relies on frequent mandatory mass testing, costly lockdowns and quarantine. It has left China isolated from much of the world, sent its economy into a downward spiral and frustrated many ordinary people whose lives have been disrupted for nearly three years.

Despite the rising toll, Mr. Xi doubled down last week on what he called a “people’s war,” saying at the opening of the Communist Party Congress that it was the only way to protect the lives of Chinese citizens.

Local authorities tightened restrictions this last week, even as the total number of Covid-19 cases began to fall. As of Monday, 30 cities and 225 million people were under some form of lockdown, according to research from Nomura.

As vaccines have lowered the risk of death from Covid-19, the authorities have made few changes to their approach in trying to contain the virus. Healthy residents found to have been in the same building or area as someone who has tested positive are barricaded inside until local officials deem them no longer a threat.

Officials in at least one district in Beijing began to erect blue sheet metal around the homes of some residents on Thursday night, leaving a portable toilet inside the fenced area for one resident living on a street that uses communal toilets. On Friday, Beijing reported 15 cases of Covid.

Citizens are resorting to acts of defiance. One man in Beijing hung banners earlier this month over a bridge, criticizing zero Covid and calling for “freedom not lockdowns.”

In New York City, a Chinese art student held his own protest in Times Square, hoping to draw attention to the physical and mental toll of zero Covid by dressing in layers of the white protective clothing that has become synonymous with pandemic health care workers.

“The control makes me feel like I’m suffocating,” said Zhisheng Wu, who moved to the United States earlier on in the pandemic. At first, Mr. Wu said, he felt angry. The death of Li Wenliang, a doctor who was punished for trying to warn authorities about the virus early on, overwhelmed him with emotion.

But as the number of episodes highlighting the cost of zero Covid piled up, both in public and among his family and friends, Mr. Wu said, he just felt sad. Mr. Wu’s mother was unable to visit his ailing grandmother. His father, a professor, was reprimanded for trying to escape a campus lockdown. Many of his friends are unemployed and cannot find jobs.

During his protest, Mr. Wu said, he felt short of breath. “I want to show that, as an individual living with continuous Covid restrictions, your personal feelings are side-lined and you feel helpless.”

Speaking out while China’s most powerful politicians gather in Beijing to promote the next cohort of policymakers, has helped give Mr. Wu a sense of agency, he said. In China, such a protest would come with heavy-handed punishment.

“The party congress is a symbol of the highest power,” he said. “That is contrasted with the little power that I have.”

A decade ago, China looked as though it had reached a milestone: Its politics, which earlier had been dominated by mercurial strongmen, seemed to have solidly crossed over to stable, predictable governance.

Xi Jinping’s elevation to the helm of the Communist Party, in 2012, followed another peaceful transfer of power between two leaders in 2002. Term limits, along with new norms that eschewed unilateral decision-making and the formation of personality cults, all seemed proof that China’s authoritarian system could adapt and rein in its own excesses.

That all changed under Mr. Xi, who now bestrides China like an all-powerful patriarch. Shortly after assuming the highest political position of General Secretary, he launched a withering campaign against corruption, rooting out factional rivals along with deserved culprits. Among the targets was Zhou Yongkang, China’s fearsome security czar. Since 2013, most members of Mr. Zhou’s faction —alongside over a million lower-ranking officials —have been punished or stripped of power.

Mr. Xi’s crusade against graft has been a pillar of his power-consolidating efforts, said Ian Johnson, a senior fellow for Chinese studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Most campaigns last for a couple years and they fade away,” he said. “But this one is their version of the forever war —it’s ongoing.”

Even as Mr. Xi has razed competing factions, he has incubated his own. On Sunday, he replaced four senior officials and promoted four of his allies to the Standing Committee, the highest ranking body of the Communist Party.

During his first term, Mr. Xi bestowed new titles on himself. Unsatisfied with the standard portfolio of president, head of the party and head of the military, he now sits atop committees that govern, among other things, the economy, internet security and relations with Taiwan. As unilateral power replaced collective decision-making, Mr. Xi became known as the “chairman of everything.”

“He’s become the sole decider on a large number of policy issues,” said Victor Shih, a professor of Chinese politics at U.C. San Diego and the author of “Coalitions of the Weak.”

The norms and processes observed by his two past predecessors are now largely gone. In their stead, Mr. Xi has created a party apparatus that hails, and encircles, him as “the core.” He has minted his own creed and has revived — in a manner redolent of an older generation of Communist heroes such as Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong — a culture of worship. Mr. Xi has downplayed the historical achievements of top leaders, and promoted his own in an effort to match his status to that of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. In 2018, in a stunning reversal of precedent, Mr. Xi lifted the term limits on the presidency, paving the way for a lifetime in power.

Wang Huning, the soft-spoken theoretician, is staying in China’s top decision-making body, a sign of continuity in the Communist Party’s hard-line policies and the persistent role of ideology in Xi Jinping’s next five-year term.

Formerly head of China’s top organizational body, Mr. Wang is poised to move up to head either China’s legislature or its top political advisory body. His retention stands out amid a high-turnover transition that saw Xi loyalists replace four senior officials. It points to the vital role Mr. Wang has played, and will continue to play, in legitimizing Mr. Xi’s growing power, with the leader staying on for a precedent-breaking third term and possibly longer.

Handpicked by former President Jiang Zemin from a Shanghai university in the 1990s, Mr. Wang has had a long political career, serving as an ideological adviser to Mr. Jiang as well as his two successors. In 2017, during Mr. Xi’s second term, Mr. Wang was elevated to the Politburo Standing Committee, the highest rung of Chinese politics.

Unlike many of his peers, Mr. Wang gained little to no governing experience as he ascended the party ranks. A scholar by training, he made a name for himself as a propagandist, blending the ideas of Marx, Confucius and top party leaders into digestible Chinese slogans. He has helped to write numerous high-profile documents and speeches.

He has left his imprint on all three of the last Chinese leaders’ defining mottos, most recently, the “China Dream”: the idea that China, under Mr. Xi’s wise and steady hand, will reach a new era of global ascendancy.

During Mr. Xi’s rule, Mr. Wang has had a central role in policymaking. He has held leadership posts on committees controlling vast sectors of society including propaganda, education, cybersecurity and legal reform.

“He’s no longer just an ideologue,” said Matt Johnson, a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. “Wang has been at the center of everything.”

Though Mr. Wang hails from a different faction than Mr. Xi, their thinking now appears to be in lock step: the academic’s rise has been synchronous with Mr. Xi’s expanding hard-line agenda: a growing suspicion of Western ideas and influence, constriction of internet freedoms, and a revival of traditional Chinese values as they are interpreted by the party.

In the 1980s, Mr. Wang helped popularize a theory known as “neo-authoritarianism,” the idea that a country as poor and big as China needed strongman rule to maintain order while pushing through market reforms. The idea would later form the basis of the “China model,” the state-controlled capitalist system Mr. Xi now touts as one of China’s signature achievements.

More recently, Mr. Wang has helped meld the language of the party around the idea of Mr. Xi as a man of destiny.

These formulations “aided and abetted Xi Jinping into thinking he was justified to stay in power,” said Geremie R. Barmé, a Sinologist in New Zealand. “He’s facilitated Xi Jinping’s domination of the party for the next 20 or 30 years.”

Mr. Wang’s promotion on Sunday, which extends his political longevity, suggests that his thought work has been tremendously successful — and remains unfinished.

Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, has worked to turn the country into a more state-led society that often puts national security and ideology before economic growth. On Sunday, he promoted one of his closest aides to the Politburo to carry out his vision: He Lifeng.

Together with Li Qiang, who is in line to become China’s new premier, Mr. He will be responsible for addressing some of China’s most serious challenges. Debt is high, the housing market has slumped, young people face widespread unemployment and the country faces growing political friction with crucial export markets in Europe and North America.

Some of Mr. Xi’s policies to reinforce the authority of the Communist Party and the state have worsened these problems. A broad regulatory crackdown has triggered job losses in the tech and education sectors, and has prompted many entrepreneurs to flee the country.

Mr. Xi and Mr. He have worked together off and on since 1985, when they were officials in the Xiamen Special Economic Zone, an early experiment in free markets in southeastern China’s Fujian Province. Mr. He now routinely accompanies Mr. Xi on domestic and international trips.

“He Lifeng is one of Xi Jinping’s few most trusted aides,” said Alfred Chan, the author of a new biography of Mr. Xi and a professor emeritus at Huron University College in London, Ontario.

The Communist Party Central Committee on Sunday named Mr. He, 67, to the Politburo without specifying the precise role he will play in setting the direction of China’s economic policy.

Mr. Xi has also made it clear that one of his priorities is to regulate the accumulation of wealth as part of what he calls “common prosperity,” a sometimes vague concept of redistributing income.

“Common prosperity requires them to do tax reform, to tax the super rich and the rich,” said Cheng Li, an expert on Chinese politics at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

Mr. He endorsed the common prosperity goal in a column he wrote for People’s Daily last year and called for China “to increase the proportion of labor remuneration.”

Mr. He went to work in Xiamen, in Fujian Province, in 1984 and stayed in the province until 2009, when he became deputy Communist Party secretary in Tianjin. He oversaw the construction of a vast new city of skyscrapers on Tianjin’s outskirts that was intended to become an ultramodern financial district but has failed to attract many businesses and pay its many debts.

After Mr. Xi became China’s top leader in late 2012, he brought Mr. He to Beijing as deputy minister and then minister of the National Development and Reform Commission. The commission drafts China’s five-year plans and has tight control over large investment projects across the country. Mr. He has also overseen the Belt and Road Initiative, a plan by Mr. Xi to develop investment links with developing countries. Many poor countries are now struggling to repay loans obtained under the project.

Li You contributed research.

Ten years ago, when Xi Jinping ascended to his first term as China’s top leader, he pledged to steer the country to prosperity and rejuvenation, a vision he termed the “Chinese Dream.”

As Mr. Xi now begins a precedent-breaking third term, with nearly unfettered power, political analysts as well as some ordinary citizens fear that he will lead China backward, economically and geopolitically. But for others, Mr. Xi has made good on his promise — and they see little reason for that to change.

“Anything you want you can buy, and people’s living standards are getting more and more prosperous by the day,” said Huang Shaotao, a retiree in Beijing. “This is primarily because the party’s policies are good.”

It is nearly impossible to measure public opinion in China, given the regime’s quickness to censor or jail its critics. On Sunday, as Mr. Xi secured an additional five years in power, Chinese social media had been scrubbed of dissenting voices, with platforms indicating that comments on posts about the congress were being screened.

But many Chinese do feel confidence in their country’s direction. In interviews in Beijing this week, residents cited improvements in their daily lives as reasons for feeling China was on the right track.

Li Suzhi, a lifelong Beijing resident in her 80s, said one of the biggest changes she had noticed in the past decade was the forced demolition of old houses and relocation of their inhabitants, in the name of beautifying the capital. (Critics have said the practice was devised to promote commercialization and evict migrants and other so-called low-end residents.)

“Giving people new homes, better homes — how is that not good?” Ms. Li said.

Cai Qi, a longtime associate of Mr. Xi and the party secretary of Beijing who oversaw that campaign, was elevated to the top-level Standing Committee on Sunday.

Mr. Huang, the retiree, was volunteering as a neighborhood monitor at a busy intersection in the capital’s affluent Chaoyang District. He said that his pension had grown steadily over the last 10 years, and that he had obtained Beijing residency, meaning he could seek medical care in the city rather than having to return to his hometown in Hubei Province.

“I think the Chinese Dream has largely been achieved,” said Mr. Huang, who added that he was a party member.

Challenges still loom. In particular, the government has shown no sign of easing its “zero Covid” policy, which has battered the economy and stirred discontent.

Parts of Beijing itself were under lockdown on Sunday, as the city has recorded several dozen infections in recent days. The authorities erected blue metal fencing around some residents’ homes and hired temporary security guards to stand outside. Additional health checks had been installed at some malls around the city.

In a sign of the authorities’ uncertainty about public sentiment, the state broadcaster turned off the commenting function below its online livestream of the new leadership announcement on Sunday, allowing users only to send hearts.

The effects of stringent epidemic controls are apparent even to those expressing optimism. At a notice board near a Beijing park, where the authorities post newspapers for public perusal, a 60-year-old man reading the day’s headlines said he was proud of the country’s technological and economic growth.

But, noted the man, who gave only his surname, Zhou, “if it weren’t for this epidemic, it would be even faster.”

It was a moment packed with symbolism.

China’s frail former leader, Hu Jintao, who presided over one of China’s more open and prosperous periods, was shepherded out of the closing session of an important political meeting on Saturday, a rare disruption in a highly choreographed proceeding.

Mr. Hu, 79, was sitting in the front row next to his successor, Xi Jinping, when two attendants approached his table. One tried to lift him out of his chair, an effort Mr. Hu resisted. But then he stood up by himself, as the attendants continued standing behind him, while some of the senior officials nearby looked on in apparent concern.

After a brief exchange with the attendants, Mr. Hu, who appeared hesitant and possibly confused, said a few words to Mr. Xi, who gave the elder leader an expressionless nod, and Li Keqiang, who as China’s premier is the nation’s second-ranking official. Then Mr. Hu was led out of the hall.

Observers cycled through possible explanations: A positive Covid-19 test? Something else health-related? Or a scripted political gesture for international cameras to capture and frame?

The truth, like much else with Chinese politics, will probably never be revealed. But the timing, moments after reporters were allowed to enter the hall, was at least suggestive.

“Given how carefully these meetings are rehearsed and arranged, the fact that they let this happen in front of everyone, in front of the media, is the most important thing,” said Henry Gao, a law professor at Singapore Management University.

Last Sunday, in his keynote speech at the opening of the Party Congress, Mr. Xi went down a list of dissatisfactions, those accumulated during the decade before his rule. They included weakness in the Party, in the economy, and in national security, as well as the Party’s posture toward Hong Kong and Taiwan.

“With Xi, he doesn’t do these things for nothing,” Mr. Gao said. “Hu was the one in power 10 years ago.”

Mr. Hu, who led China from 2003 to 2013, represented a different, more open era. His leadership style was more consultative — the result of a balance of party factions in the top leadership. He also oversaw the Beijing Olympics and a decade of double-digit economic growth. China’s global reputation had improved, and the discussions on the internet were relatively free.

That has all changed under Mr. Xi. On Saturday, Mr. Xi hurried into retirement several senior figures of a more moderate political stripe, many of them former associates of Mr. Hu. They were replaced by Xi loyalists.

“It’s All the King’s Men now,” said Kaiser Kuo, a host of Sinica, a podcast on Chinese current affairs.

In Xi Jinping’s China, buildings have gone up, science projects like a massive radio telescope have been built, and the high-speed rail has connected ever more remote parts of the country.

Yet at the street level, the most noticeable physical change has been the surveillance cameras. They have been installed by the millions along sidewalks, above bike paths, on beaches, atop traffic lights, and in some places, inside taxis and buildings.

The cameras are the visible part of a largely hidden, sophisticated surveillance system that police have assembled under Mr. Xi’s leadership. Many of the cameras not only record footage of day-to-day life, but also send it to data centers where computer vision algorithms work to identify people by their faces, look out for gathering crowds, and track cars by their license plates. Other systems monitor phone signals, energy usage, hotel stays, and train and plane travel for signs of trouble.

Although the Chinese Communist Party’s emphasis on social controls existed long before Mr. Xi, under his leadership the country has spent heavily to use technology to track its citizens. More recently, in the name of controlling the spread of the coronavirus, the government has tapped expansive local networks, often of party members, to keep tabs on people’s comings and goings. Taken together, the efforts have become one of the most obvious symbols of Mr. Xi’s obsession with security.

During Mr. Xi’s speech at the opening of the party congress, he made frequent mention of security, which in Chinese Communist Party terms means crushing all ideological and geopolitical challenges to the party’s rule. In one less remarked-upon line, he called for the “establishment of a social governance community” in which everyone plays a part and has responsibility. That is an indication that the human web of watchers who help implement Covid controls is likely to remain long after the pandemic controls subside.

“Manpower is a huge component to surveillance,” said Jessica Batke, a senior editor at ChinaFile, who has studied China’s surveillance system.

The mass surveillance that has come with the pandemic “matches what they wanted to do anyway. They’ve wanted to know what people are doing,” she said.

The technology is also likely to continue to get strong support, said Maya Wang, a researcher at Human Rights Watch who has studied China’s surveillance state. Already, new technologies that seek to combine data to predict human behavior have been applied to blacklisted groups of people, like those with a criminal record or a history of mental illness. Police purchased one system built to anticipate and stop protester trips to Beijing before they could happen.

“What we can see over the past 10 years is the party places enormous importance on social control, and I would expect it would keep pumping money into these mechanisms of social control,” Ms. Wang said.

Just a decade ago, Chinese people could post adulation of their idols, make memes of political leaders and even discuss democratizing China.

Under Xi Jinping, China’s leader, that freedom has vanished. Upon taking power in 2012, Mr. Xi made quelling online dissent a priority. He created a new bureaucracy to oversee censorship, presided over the formation of an internet police force and repeatedly stressed that without internet security, there could be no national security.

“The censorship machine is improving on a daily basis,” said Edward Luo, a 23-year-old financial worker in Shanghai who runs a current affairs blog on the ubiquitous social media app WeChat. He recalled how once it had been possible to post censored photos upside down or rotated to evade detection. Now, systems capture even images with scribbles atop them.

That success in gaining control has come at the expense of dynamism. In recent years, Chinese regulators have cracked down on the tech companies that were once the champions of Chinese innovation. The harsh enforcement of rules on monopolistic behavior, data protection and censorship have laid low companies like the e-commerce giant Alibaba and the ride-hailing firm Didi.

Censors, police and professional online content reviewers work to ensure that in China the internet is under the government’s control. The Cyberspace Administration of China, which was consolidated into a powerful oversight body during Mr. Xi’s first years in office, oversees those efforts. Its workers report content to be taken down, oversee online propaganda initiatives and, in extreme cases, report users to the local police. They nip in the bud viral posts that could lead to government criticism, using either a government response or censorship.

Their work has shown other authoritarian governments that, with enough effort and technology, the power of the internet can be bottled up and molded to serve the will of the government.

“Big data, artificial intelligence and cloud computing have become technologies of control for the Communist Party, helping it to rule and monitor the entirety of society,” said Xiao Qiang, a research scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, and the founder and editor in chief of China Digital Times, which tracks internet controls.

During sensitive political times, like the recent party congress, authorities go above and beyond. This month, a man hung a protest banner that called Mr. Xi a “despotic traitor” on a Beijing bridge. A song titled with the name of the bridge disappeared. People who shared even oblique references to the event had their accounts on social media apps suspended. A hashtag for China’s capital, Beijing, disappeared.

China has also sought to extend its influence over the internet abroad. The government has used its diplomats, state media workers and influencers to help spread its messages on platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Bot armies bought and maintained by state-run companies shout down critics of China and try to drown out with propaganda discussion of sensitive topics like the mass internment of minorities in the country’s west.

Still, Chinese people have found ways to voice their discontent. During a two-month lockdown in Shanghai this year, residents who had been barricaded inside their buildings complained using government hashtags and embedded video complaints in other videos to slip past automated filtering technology.

In 2014, less than two years after he came to power, Xi Jinping traveled to China’s far western Xinjiang region and set the stage for a harsh crackdown, calling for “absolutely no mercy” in an all-out “struggle against terrorism, infiltration and separatism.”

The region, which is home to the Uyghurs and other predominately Muslim groups, had experienced waves of repression under Chinese rule before. But what followed was more extreme than anything in memory.

The authorities placed hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs, Kazakhs and others in indoctrination camps for common behavior such as travel abroad or having foreign messaging software like WhatsApp on their phones. Networks of surveillance cameras, police stations and checkpoints mushroomed across the territory.

Groups of Uyghurs have been enrolled in work programs that critics said likely amounted to forced labor. Religious and cultural sites were demolished. And researchers say China has attempted to restrict populations of Uyghurs and other groups through restrictive measures including forced sterilization.

“The party is no longer content with acquiescence,” said James Leibold, a professor at La Trobe University in Melbourne who researches Chinese policy in Xinjiang. “Uyghurs are now required to act and think like the Han Chinese if they have any chance of survival in Xi Jinping’s ‘new era’ of Han state racism.”

The United States, an unofficial tribunal in Britain and some parliaments in Western countries including France, Britain and Canada have said China’s treatment of Uyghurs and other groups in Xinjiang amounts to genocide. A landmark United Nations human rights office report in August accused China of serious human rights violations in the region that may amount to “crimes against humanity.”

“The Chinese policy toward Uyghurs of assimilation and discrimination has always existed, but after Xi Jinping took power it turned into a genocidal policy,” said Dolkun Isa, president of the World Uyghur Congress, an exile group. “Now people are put into concentration camps, there is forced sterilization, forced labor.”

While the United States has imposed trade sanctions on goods from Xinjiang, China has been able to thwart a wider response. Earlier this month it defeated a resolution at the U.N. Human Rights Council to hold a debate on the human rights office’s report.

Policies in Xinjiang have shifted somewhat in recent years, with the government relying less on indoctrination camps. But China’s approach to the region remains highly repressive. The number of detention sites has increased in Xinjiang and a growing number of people have been sentenced to lengthy prison terms. More recently, parts of Xinjiang have been placed in lockdown for weeks as part of China’s exceptionally stringent policies aimed at eliminating the spread of Covid-19. The measures, which confined residents to their homes, have led to shortages of food, medicine and other essentials.

Mr. Xi made no mention of Xinjiang policy during his lengthy speech at the start of the party congress. But exiles from the region say they see little possibility of the crackdown easing under his continuing leadership.

“Xi Jinping will continue his genocidal policy toward the Uyghurs,” Mr. Isa said. “It is a disaster not only for the Uyghurs but for all human beings.”

After the Communist Party began its twice-a-decade congress in Beijing on Sunday, John Lee, Hong Kong’s chief executive, posted a picture on Facebook of himself watching the proceedings, his nose inches away from a screen.

He appeared to be watching so closely that some commenters warned that he would harm his eyesight.

“We should conscientiously study the spirit of the 20th party congress,” Mr. Lee said in his post. Later in the week, he declared the speech by Xi Jinping, China’s leader, “the guide to action for our future work.”

Such abject devotion to China’s leader is common around the country, but for Hong Kong it is the latest sign of the territory’s transformation since Mr. Xi came to power 10 years ago.

The city, a former British colony that returned to Beijing’s control 25 years ago, has long been the freest place in China. Unlike the mainland, Hong Kong has had strong protections for the press, free speech and other civil and political rights.

Efforts to roll back those rights were often met with mass protest, which forced the authorities to retreat. But after demonstrations washed over the city for much of 2019, Beijing stepped in. It imposed a strict and sweeping national security law that the local authorities have used to crush dissent. A colonial-era sedition law that had gone unused in recent decades has also been revived to clamp down on critical speech.

Dozens of opposition lawmakers have been jailed for more than a year awaiting trial on subversion charges under the law. Others have fled abroad, fearing prosecution. Most of the leading independent media outlets have closed including Apple Daily, the biggest overtly pro-democracy newspaper. Its founder, Jimmy Lai, is in prison for participating in a vigil to commemorate Beijing’s 1989 crackdown on protesters in Tiananmen Square. He is expected to go on trial later this year on foreign collusion and sedition charges.

“A sea change occurred in 2020,” said John P. Burns, an emeritus professor at the University of Hong Kong. “Wiping out the opposition and their support, intimidating many others, encouraging them to leave or stay silent, making protests here virtually unknown.”

Mr. Xi’s comments last Sunday about Hong Kong, in which he said China had restored order to help it thrive, were celebrated by the city’s pro-Beijing camp. But to others, including those exiled in the crackdown, they signal more heavy-handed control from China.

“When Mr. Xi talks about ‘stability,’ he has in mind not a democratic system of government that brings Hong Kongers genuine satisfaction, but the party’s increased suppression of dissent,” said Jeffrey Ngo, a Hong Kong pro-democracy activist and a doctoral candidate in history at Georgetown University.

Mr. Ngo compared the fate of Hong Kong to China’s repressive policies in the far western Xinjiang region, where hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim groups have been held in camps, and Beijing’s policies toward Taiwan, the democratic, self-ruled island it claims as part of its territory.

“Developments along the frontiers, like his ongoing genocide against Uyghurs, will define his third term as much as events on the mainland itself,” he added.

The tension between Beijing and Washington is likely to grow and become more dangerous, as China’s leader, Xi Jinping, shapes the nation to be the primary challenger to the United States around the world.

Near Taiwan, for example, the Chinese military activity on the sea and in the air is more intense than ever. The Chinese military continues to prepare for war against the island less than 100 miles away. President Biden has said four times that the United States would defend Taiwan if it were attacked. A declaration of independence by Taiwan, a self-governed democracy of 24 million people, is a red line that Beijing has warned could provoke the use of force. Yet sentiment for separation is growing on the island.

In his speech to the Communist Party congress last Sunday, Mr. Xi did not set a timetable for taking control of Taiwan, but he has made it clear that he wants the island to become part of China during his rule.

“He will react harshly to perceived challenges to Chinese interests, including signs that Taiwan is moving closer to permanent separation or formal independence,” said Jessica Chen Weiss, professor of China and Asia-Pacific Studies at Cornell University, referring to Mr. Xi.

Just a week before the congress opened, the Biden administration announced export controls aimed at decapitating China’s semiconductor industry and curbing its tech ambitions. Some China experts called the move economic warfare, payback for what the United States says is years of China stealing America’s tech secrets.

“This is the biggest thing Biden could do in institutionalizing a new Cold War,” said William H. Overholt, a senior research fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School.

The new rules ban American citizens and green card holders from working in ways that contribute to China’s production of advanced chips. The restrictions extend to such chips made with U.S. equipment in places like Taiwan, South Korea and the Netherlands. Overall, they aim at crimping China’s military advancements — like stealth and hypersonic weapons — and at halting China’s goal of dominating artificial intelligence by 2030.

Washington announced the new rules as Mr. Xi was absorbed in preparations for the party congress. With it over, China is expected to retaliate, perhaps by banning the export of its valuable rare earths to the United States.

When Mr. Xi arrives at the Group of 20 summit in Indonesia in mid-November, it will be his first major international outing since he stopped traveling in early 2020 as Covid-19 took hold.

Europeans have soured on China because of its tacit support of Russia in Ukraine. But the blowback in Asia, where China is going head to head with the United States for influence, is less severe. Mr. Xi is expected to meet with Mr. Biden in Indonesia in their first face-to-face encounter since Mr. Biden became president.

They first met in China in 2011 when Mr. Biden tried unsuccessfully to coax Mr. Xi onto the basketball court. In 2015, on an official trip to the United States, Mr. Xi had warm words for Mr. Biden. The meeting next month is unlikely to be so friendly.