March surprise?
The chances of a Xi Jinping solo at the National People's Congress
There was a little flurry of interest earlier this week when Chinese premier Li Qiang cancelled his planned annual press conference (yes, annual, as in “once a year”). This was a headline with pizzazz, compared with the usual news from the National People’s Congress, China’s once a year (yes, that’s right) legislative session.
This is the kind of thing that gets China watchers abuzz. Is Li Qiang being sidelined, already? (he’s only been officially on the job since last year’s NPC). Is the economy doing so poorly that he can’t answer a single question about it, even if the question is vetted and pre-approved? Maybe he just doesn’t want to upstage his boss. Which is probably wise!
This got me thinking: What if Xi Jinping gave a press conference instead? Is that the reason the premier’s traditional conference got cancelled?
I decided to give the idea a whirl on my very first Substack post. That way, if I am right, I am right, and if I am wrong, well, there aren’t many witnesses here. Yet.
The reasons it is unlikely are pretty obvious.
1> This is Xi’s 12th National People’s Congress as general secretary/president/chief honcho, and he didn’t give a press conference at any of the previous 11.
2> If he does it this year, he’ll have to do it every other year from now on.
3> Maybe he doesn’t want to answer questions about the economy either.
4> He doesn’t give press conferences in general.
5> The last premier, Li Keqiang, really leaned into his annual press conference gig and now he’s dead. Probably Xi wouldn’t want to invite comparisons.
BUT, there’s an outside case why he might.
One thing I have noticed about Xi Jinping is that he likes to take center stage when there’s no-one else around to steal the limelight. An obvious example is he turned up in Davos in 2017, when it was guaranteed that no American president could make it. Apparently he was quite pleased with how it all went, too.
Another thing about Xi is that he has an aversion to two centers of power, or even the appearance of two centers of power. He feels things are safer if there is clearly only one person in charge (guess who). The tradition of the premier giving a press conference while the gensec/president/guy actually in charge does not is one of those traditions that creates the confusing impression of two centers of power.
Why does this tradition exist anyway? I suspect it dates back to the late 1990s when premier Zhu Rongji was presiding over a whale of an economic mess. He held press conferences to explain how he was fixing it, and keep foreign investors and the Chinese public on-side. Transcripts of these press conferences got published in a book entitled Zhu Rongji Meets the Press, a classic of the genre.
At the time, Zhu wasn’t really upstaging anyone because the general secretary/president/big man on campus in the 1990s was Jiang Zemin, who absolutely loved meeting the press. Jiang even sang at press conferences and banquets, which many foreign journalists didn’t appreciate as much as they objectively should have.
Next up was Hu Jintao and his premier, Wen Jiabao. Hu Jintao really didn’t love meeting anyone in public (exception: songfests at the Great Hall of the People) but Wen Jiabao was a people person and didn’t mind spontaneous interactions. So it made sense for Hu to do his thing behind the scenes and Wen to be the public face of their joint administration.
All of which means that by 2013, when Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang sailed into their first NPC, there was a tradition of press conferences by the premier, not the general secretary/president/actual boss. As it became more obvious that these two didn’t see eye to eye, Li Keqiang seemed to be using his public appearances for political signalling. Sometimes that backfired. I remember one NPC press conference when the political strains seemed greater than normal, and the Chinese journalists and Ministry of Foreign Affairs handlers in the audience managed to send out a vibe that was borderline rude.
It’s not crazy to think that Xi Jinping chafed under this set-up and might think that as the actual guy in charge, he should be the one giving the press conference.
It’s not like Xi doesn’t have experience with this. Back when he was in Fujian province, he gave interviews all the time, and occasionally press conferences. These were probably not free-flowing barrages of independent questions, but there’s no reason a Xi Jinping press conference at the NPC wouldn’t be carefully controlled anyway.
Moreover, that’s what presidents do in the rest of the world. So why not him?
But can he sing?
UPDATE: He didn’t do it.