This content was originally published by Radio Free Asia, and it is now being reprinted with permission.
According to analysts, Wang Huning, a leading thinker of the ruling Chinese Communist Party and ‘ United Front ‘ king Wang Huning, who on Thursday attended the funeral of Vietnamese head Nguyen Phu Trong, appears to have been favored in a recent walk by party chief Xi Jinping following a major political meeting in Beijing.
Wang, who is the fourth-ranked part of the all-powerful , Politburo Standing Committee, has been appointed” first lieutenant head” of the writing group for the , next plenary session , of the party’s Central Committee, state media reported, in what experts said is an indication of a bigger role for him at the expense of Cai Qi, Xi’s chief of staff.
Wang, Cai, and Ding Xuexiang serve as deputies under Xi’s leadership, according to state news agency Xinhua, who will be in charge of creating detailed policy based on the meeting.
However, Wang is ranked first among those deputies, while Cai’s predecessor had previously served in the role, commentators said.
The move indicates a more important role for Wang, the architect of Xi’s personal brand of ideology,  , Xi Jinping Thought, who previously headed the party ‘s , United Front , outreach and influence arm.
It likely means that that the government’s economic policies will likely be long on spin and , short on substance, while continuing Xi’s insistence on , top-down economic planning , that owes more to Marxist economics than to the economic reform era begun by late supreme leader Deng Xiaoping, according to Xia Ming, politics professor at New York’s City University.
Xi Jinping will undoubtedly need to come up with various political and propaganda tricks because he is no longer able to actually change the economy, he said. The 20th Central Committee’s third plenum was dedicated to carrying out United Front work, strengthening external propaganda, and manipulating people’s ideas to give away a false sense of legitimacy.
” Wang Huning is a veteran writer and spin doctor, and his role will be to exercise a form of political deception”, he said.
Ideology-minded Wang
Independent political commentator Chen Daoyin agreed, claiming that former propaganda ministers in China are typically ideologically neutral.
Wu said Cai Qi and other Politburo Standing Committee members were better at ideological analysis, Chen Chen said, adding that the precedent’s break also shows how powerful Xi himself has become at the highest levels of leadership.
Because Xi Jinping has the freedom to choose which standing committee members to work for him, it also demonstrates to us that he is the only one with real power in the party.
Feng Chongyi, a professor at the University of Technology in Sydney, claimed that Xi has broken numerous rank and precedent laws since taking office in 2012, and that Wang’s elevation may be a result of recent media reports suggesting Cai was gaining power.
Cai, a fifth-ranked Politburo Standing Committee member, has an unusual political clout, according to a report from Bloomberg in January, and is” seen as one of China’s most influential politicians.”
Cai was” the only member of China’s top decision-making body to publicly travel abroad with Xi during his decade-plus in power,” according to the article, citing Cai’s appearance next to Xi at summits with U.S. President Joe Biden, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.
It said Cai’s role had put him on a level with second-ranking premier Li Qiang.
” ]Xi] is very sensitive to what people are saying”, Feng said. He made a point of visiting the Vietnamese embassy to prove that he knew about them when there were rumors that he had a stroke.
Rumors that Xi , suffered a stroke , during the third plenum, which ran in Beijing from July 15-18, have been widely seen on Russian social media platforms.
Xi Jinping paid his respects to the Vietnamese embassy in Beijing on July 20th after the passing of Nguyen Phu Trong, the late General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, according to state news agency Xinhua.
” Of course he’s sensitive to the rumors that Cai Qi has too much power, and could challenge him”, Feng said. ” So he is sharing out some of Cai Qi’s power with Wang Huning, so he does n’t become too dependent on him”.
” Then he’ll let them fight it out between them, because they are all dependent on him in any case.”
