Xi Focus: Xi Jinping and China's new era : The Standard

President Xi Jinping took his place on Tian'anmen Rostrum on Tuesday at a grand celebration marking the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. It was there on Oct. 1, 1949 that Mao Zedong announced the birth of New China. Over the seven decades, the socialist country has blazed an extraordinary trail, rising from a "poor and blank" state to a major country on the world stage. Xi, the first top Chinese leader born after 1949, is at the helm in a new era, steering the country through wind and waves to a brighter future. Into new era

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Xi was elected general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee on Nov. 15, 2012. The world at that time was transforming. The impact of the 2008 global financial crisis still lingered. Emerging economies were rising. And China, after overtaking Japan as the second-largest economy, had entered a critical period in its modernization. Two weeks later, Xi proposed the "Chinese Dream" of national rejuvenation.

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The Party's authority was further emphasized in October 2017, with the establishment of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era. Xi demanded full and strict governance over the 90 million-member CPC.

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"Every day, we brush our teeth, wash our faces, clean the house and do the laundry. For Party building, we must do the same," he said. An unprecedented anti-corruption campaign has left no stone unturned. In the first five years of Xi's leadership, 440 centrally-administrated officials -- mostly ministerial-level or above -- were punished. "Xi and his colleagues preside over the world's largest and most successful Marxist-Leninist organization, and they are determined to ensure that it remains so," Foreign Affairs magazine said in an article. In late 2016, Xi's core status in the CPC Central Committee and the whole Party was established. He was re-elected general secretary of the CPC Central Committee in October 2017 and Chinese president in March 2018.

Reform to the end

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China aims to basically achieve socialist modernization by 2035 and build itself into a great modern socialist country by the middle of the century. Xi has said China today is closer than ever before to national rejuvenation, which is part of the Party's founding mission. In 2018, the Chinese economy surpassed 90 trillion yuan, cementing its place as second in the world. Between 2013 and 2018, it grew by 7 percent on average every year compared to just 2.9 percent of the global economy. China has the world's most complete production chains. The output of more than 220 industrial products ranks No. 1 in the world. China has laid down the longest mileage of high-speed rail tracks and sent a lunar rover to the dark side of the moon. For the first time, a total of 129 Chinese companies made the Fortune 500 list in 2019, more than any other country. Xi drafted market-oriented reforms for state-owned enterprises and has supported the development of the private sector. In 2018, at an unprecedented private enterprise symposium, Xi said private companies and entrepreneurs are "our own people."

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Innovation, too, has received support, with Xi once saying that vital, core technologies are something that China cannot obtain through "begging." Thanks to reform and opening-up, China's investment environment has continued to improve. According to the World Bank "Doing Business 2019" report, China advanced to a global ranking of 46th, up from 78th in just a year. Moreover, China's consumer market is edging closer to becoming the largest in the world. Despite trade and economic frictions started by the United States, China saw more than 24,000 new foreign-invested enterprises established in the first seven months of 2019. Foreign direct investment inflows in actual use grew by 7.3 percent to reach 530 billion yuan.

Serve the people Xi considers employment "pivotal" to people's wellbeing. He supports e-commerce and the new economy, which create jobs that never existed before. Every day in China, about 16,500 new enterprises are established, and 40,000 people find new jobs in towns and cities. In total, China has created more than 80 million new urban jobs over the past seven years, equal to the entire German population. "CPC members must wholeheartedly serve the people," Xi often reminds Party cadres. This connection with the people can be traced back to a time when Xi lived and worked in a remote village in Shaanxi Province as an adolescent and young adult for seven years. He has said that he understands the hardships of the people because he once lived in an impoverished corner of the country. He has been known to check the toilets and washrooms of ordinary homes, offer advice on garbage sorting, and show concern for students' poor eyesight. In 2013, Xi put forward "targeted poverty alleviation" and set a goal to eliminate extreme rural poverty by 2020, a deadline that is ten years earlier than the goal set by the United Nations. Over the past seven years, more than 82 million Chinese people left poverty behind. Xi said extreme poverty "would be historically solved in the hands of our generation." Kishore Mahbubani, a professor at the National University of Singapore, said the most outstanding achievement of China in the last 70 years had been the dramatic improvement in the living conditions of the people. Reviewing China's long history, Mahbubani said even at previous peaks of glory, the bottom 50 percent of the population had to struggle to make ends meet. But today even low-income people have access to nutritious food, education, healthcare, housing, employment and even the ability to travel.

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