The 6th Plenum: What are the key takeaways?

Professor Steve Tsang (Director, SOAS China Institute)

Topic

Although a great deal of media attention was paid to Xi Jinping’s defiant warning, issued at the CCP’s centenary celebrations, that any would-be foreign challengers would have “their heads dashed against a great wall of steel forged by over 1.4 billion Chinese people,” his repeated references to the history of the Party itself went largely unnoticed (the term “history” appeared nearly two dozen times in his address). The notice last month that the Party’s delayed Sixth Plenum will be held in November has led to a new round of speculation that the Central Committee may be preparing to vote on a new resolution on Party history (following the first and second history resolutions, in 1945 and 1981, respectively). Whether or not the Sixth Plenum decides to issue a formal resolution, it is clear that as early as 2017, Xi had already set in motion a process of redefining the Party’s past in order to chart a shift in course for the Party’s future. A consideration of some of the new initiatives concerning Party history now underway thus offers strong indications of where the CCP’s ‘core’ is heading in the next few years.

Biography

Steve Tsang is the Director of the SOAS China Institute and Professor of Chinese Studies at SOAS. He is also an Emeritus Fellow of St Antony’s College at Oxford, and an Associate Fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House). He regularly contributes to public debates on different aspects of issues related to the politics, history, foreign policy, security and development of the People's Republic of China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and East Asia more generally. He is known in particular for introducing the concept of 'consultative Leninism' as an analytical framework to understand the structure and nature of politics in contemporary China. He has a broad area of research interest and has published extensively, including five single authored and thirteen collaborative books. He is currently working with Olivia Cheung on a research project ‘The Political Thought of Xi Jinping’.

Organiser: SOAS China Insitute

Contact email: sci@soas.ac.uk