Some call Xi Jinping a Chinese Putin. Others a 21st-century Mao.



On Wednesday morning he was China’s Hugo Chávez, testing his comrades’ eyelids – and their bladders – with a three-and-a-half hour, 65-page sermon in which he outlined his brave new vision for the Communist party, and the world.

“The Chinese dream is a dream about history, the present and the future,” Xi declared towards the end of his unexpectedly long-winded address to the opening of China’s 19th party congress. By the conclusion of this eastern answer to Aló Presidente! more than a few of Xi’s audience appeared to have entered a dreamlike state.

Q&A Why is corruption such a problem in China's Communist party? Show Hide China's president, Xi Jinping, called corruption the greatest threat to the Communist party’s survival in his opening speech to the week-long congress meeting on Wednesday. However, the problem is largely a product of the one-party political system he leads. Three decades of breakneck development has produced vast wealth in China - and much of this is controlled directly or indirectly by the party. That means there are eye-watering money-making opportunities for cadres looking to supplement their modest salaries by cashing in on their positions and their contacts.



At the same time, the party’s stranglehold on the media means that independent reporting that might expose high-level corruption is all but non-existent, unless authorised by the party itself. Impunity, therefore, has traditionally been almost guaranteed. Xi now hopes to change that with his war on graft.



Xi’s soliloquy began shortly after 9am in the Great Hall of the People, a vast scarlet-carpeted theatre in Tiananmen Square that is the ceremonial heart of Communist party rule.

The party’s 64-year-old general secretary, who is celebrating the end of his first five-year term, strolled calmly out on to the dais, followed by a cluster of besuited party elders, and took his place at a wooden lectern beneath a giant golden hammer and sickle.



“Comrades,” Xi began. “On behalf of the 18th central committee of the Communist party of China, I will now deliver a report to the 19th national congress.”

Over the next 203 minutes Xi waxed lyrical on a miscellany of themes, from housing to Hong Kong independence; soil erosion to the South China Sea; rural poverty to the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation; cyber-security to corruption; Marxism to military modernisation; global governance to global warming.

One moment Xi was an environmental evangelist. “Lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets,” he said. “We should be good friends to the environment … for the sake of human survival.”

The next he was a theoretician: “Everyone in the party should develop a good grasp of the essence and rich implications of the Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era and fully and faithfully apply it in our our work,” Xi said. “Our revolutionary ideals soar beyond the skies.”

Finally, after more than three hours, Xi became a moral beacon. “We must foster values like loyalty, honesty, impartiality,” he pronounced. Double-dealing and “unprincipled nice-guyism” were out.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest The former Chinese general secretary Jiang Zemin feels the strain during the speech. Composite: Reuters/AP/EPA

Five years ago, at the opening of China’s last such congress, Xi’s dour predecessor, Hu Jintao, gave a 90-minute lecture in which he poured cold water on any hopes of political reform and warned that corruption could put an end to Communist party rule.



But after 90 minutes of Xi’s talkathon, the end was nowhere in sight and through binoculars it was possible to see party officials beginning to flag.

Jiang Zemin, who was general secretary until 2002 and is now 91, yawned, dozed and occasionally grappled with a large white magnifying glass in an apparent effort to stay awake. Every so often he peeled back his left sleeve to check a wristwatch before turning his gaze back towards Xi and pouting. To Jiang’s left, one of the party’s few female leaders, Liu Yandong, scribbled furiously on to her copy of Xi’s tract with a red pencil.

As the minutes, and then hours went by, a succession of senior leaders wandered off stage through a golden curtain, as biological necessities began to speak louder than political loyalty.

Up in the press gallery there was fidgeting too. Black-clad security guards amused themselves by posing for photographs. At the two-hour 15 mark, a text message flashed up on the Guardian’s mobile phone from another spectator: “Jinping Castro,” it said.

However, as delegates streamed out of Xi’s far-reaching declamation there was nothing but admiration for the thoughts of a man increasingly seen as China’s most powerful – and feared – leader since Mao.

“It wasn’t long, it wasn’t long – it was absolutely wonderful,” beamed Wang Wenxia, a teacher from Hebei province, one of the 2,280 Communist party delegates attending this year’s congress.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest College students wave national flags as they watch the opening of the 19th Communist party congress in Huaibei in China’s eastern Anhui province. Photograph: STR/AFP/Getty Images

“What an exciting speech!” gushed Fu Chunli, a delegate from the far western region of Xinjiang. “Such a good report, written into the hearts of 1.3 billion people!”

“Yes [long] – but exciting,” agreed Tang Jialing, a third emissary. “I hope all party members – like me – can turn this blueprint into reality as soon as possible.”

Liu Jianhua, a delegate from the ministry of finance, concurred: “When Xi talked about ‘standing tall and firm in the east’, it made my blood stir.”

There was foreign applause too.



Robert Kuhn, an American writer and investment banker who is reporting on the event for the party’s English-language channel, said he had been struck by the scope of Xi’s vision. “The ambition was enormous,” said Kuhn, the author of How China’s Leaders Think, as he stepped out of the Great Hall into the lunchtime drizzle.

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Might Xi’s address have been too long? “I think he just read it a little bit slower,” Kuhn replied, diplomatically. “And in a very confident way.”

Others found themselves literally unable to react to Xi’s mammoth monologue.



“I can’t hold it any more,” one female delegate confessed, declining an interview request as she made a dash for the toilets outside the hall’s main auditorium. “I really need to go to the loo!”

Additional reporting by Wang Zhen

