Money isn’t everything. That is Xi Jinping’s central message – even if he takes rather longer to say it. When the 2,300 delegates to the Communist Party of China’s congress unanimously voted to add Xi Jinping’s Thought to its constitution on Tuesday, they cemented his unrivalled authority: challenge him now and you challenge the party itself. But this was more than a symbol. As ruthlessly realistic as the leadership is, words matter – not only to those it rules, but to the rest of us, with China’s rise and the faltering and retreat of the US.

For those yet to read the full text of this week’s resolution, or to parse last week’s speech from Mr Xi, there is much to sift through (his marathon address included a pledge to oppose “unprincipled nice guy-ism”). But at the core is the idea that China, and so all of us, are entering a new age.

The full title of his ideological contribution is Xi Jinping’s Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era – a mouthful only made comprehensible by a brief skim through party history. Mao believed ideas could remake the world – leading to the disasters of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. The reaction of survivors was intensely pragmatic. Deng Xiaoping said he didn’t care if a cat was black or white, as long as it caught mice: he introduced socialism with Chinese characteristics – capitalism within a Leninist political cage. Jiang Zemin’s “three represents” co-opted the powerful forces of business, which might otherwise challenge the party. Defining Hu Jintao’s Scientific Outlook on Development was always a struggle, but the name indicated its technocratic approach: an attempt to resolve the emerging contradictions by simply managing better.

Mr Xi’s vision is grander; ideology with a capital I is back. It suggests firstly that the Chinese people, relieved from desperate poverty, are looking beyond immediate material needs; this is politically expedient, since the high growth years are over, and psychologically astute. Secondly, it demands greater global stature for the nation, building on his existing “China dream” of national revival: “Our Chinese civilisation shines with lasting splendour and glamour,” he said.

These ideas are not completely new. Leaders had already begun to look beyond poverty alleviation. And since the bloody crackdown on the Tiananmen protests in 1989, the party has used patriotic education as a source of legitimacy, ramming home Mao’s portrayal of the party as the saviour of China after 100 years of humiliation by foreigners. Mr Xi has dared to break with Deng’s oft-cited maxim for foreign affairs: “hide our light, bide our time”. But implicit even in that cautious phrase was the expectation that China’s time would come.

Now state media tell us it is here: “By 2050, two centuries after the opium wars, which plunged the ‘Middle Kingdom’ into a period of hurt and shame, China is set to regain its might and reascend to the top of the world,” announces a Xinhua commentary.

It is easy to mock the peculiarities of Chinese political discourse – its euphemisms, its attempts to elide contradictions, and its fixation on enumeration, from the Two Whatevers to Mr Xi’s Four Comprehensives. But allowing the verbiage to put us off does a disservice to ourselves, not the party. This is a statement of intent. We should listen.