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China’s Communist Party hails Xi Jinping as ‘helmsman’
The term “helmsman” was once reserved for the founder of modern China, Mao Zedong. However, it is now used to describe Xi Jinping, to emphasise his importance in the current Chinese political and social framework.
President Xi Jinping is the country’s “helmsman” whose “core leadership” is of crucial importance for China’s rejuvenation, an official from the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC) said on Friday.
“By resolutely upholding Xi Jinping’s core position on the Central Committee and in the Party as a whole, the Chinese people now have a backbone and the huge ship named ‘the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation’ has a helmsman,” said Jiang Jinquan, an official from CPC central committee’s policy research office.
A key CPC conclave on Thursday adopted a “historical resolution” that highlighted its achievements under Xi’s leadership since 2012 and elevated the Chinese leader’s stature, cementing his power ahead of next year’s once-in-decade party congress.
The CPC further explained the importance of the four-day plenum and Xi’s role at a press conference on Friday.
By defining the guiding role of ‘Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era’, Jiang said, “the CPC will be able to stick to the right direction and deal with risks and challenges so as to lead the people to continuously strive for the bright prospects of great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”.
The term “helmsman” was once reserved for the founder of modern China, Mao Zedong.
However, it is now used to describe Xi, to emphasise his importance in the current Chinese political and social framework.
It was used, for example, in 2020, at the end of a similar four-day CPC plenum in Beijing.
A communique issued after the 2020 plenum noted, “Experience has repeatedly indicated that with comrade Xi Jinping as the core of the “central party authorities” and with the core of the party being the “navigator and helmsman”. “We can definitely win over various difficulties and impediments on the road ahead,” it said.
On Thursday, the central committee of China’s ruling party declared Xi’s ideology the “essence of Chinese culture”, adding it was “of decisive significance” for “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”.
Xi Jinping is widely expected to pursue a third five-year term as party general secretary at the 2022 party congress.
“The resolution is a guiding piece of literature of Marxism, a political declaration the CPC members made to bear in mind the party’s founding mission and uphold and develop socialism with Chinese characteristics, as well as an action guide for achieving the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” said Qu Qingshan, head of the institute of party history and literature of the CPC central committee .
At Friday’s press conference, the CPC members also took the opportunity to criticise the democracy summit announced by US President Joe Biden for next month, calling it a “farce”. It is undemocratic to measure different political systems in the world using “a single ruler” and to look at mankind’s different political civilisations from “a monotonous perspective”, said Jiang.
“The democracy summit to be held by the United States is a farce in the face of the growing pile of democratic issues in some Western countries, Jiang said at the press conference, according to state-run China Daily newspaper. Washington’s attempt to divide the world into two or several groups will not succeed, he added.
