The China of the Future

All spiffed up and vaccinated for the most important political event of the year. At the beginning of March, in Beijing, in the Great Hall of the People in Tiananmen Square, approximately three thousand members of the National People's Congress met, the closest thing China has to our parliament. For one week each year, delegates from every part of the country meet in the capital for discussion and closed-door votes, or better, considering the current political system, to learn about and ratify the national legislative measures. This year they had to approve the 14th Five-Year Plan, the direction that the second largest economy in the world will take in the next five years.

The opening message, given as usual by the Premier Li Keqiang, left no doubt regarding the optimism with which the most populous nation in the world looks to the future. Thanks to its economic strength and the solidarity of its people, Beijing successfully navigated the difficult year of 2020. Despite the pandemic, the hostility of many first-world countries, the demographic crisis, and the resistance of Hong Kong to be governed according to communist principles, under Xi Jinping China has proven it is capable of achieving the goals it has set for itself and being sincerely considered an alternative model to liberal democracies. Actually, it is precisely this point that will be emphasized on the one hundredth anniversary of the Communist Party, that will be celebrated with great fanfare next July.

Last year the leadership announced the national security law that in less than a year, through arrests, swept away any form of dissent in the former British colony; this year, a change has been approved to Hong Kong's election law that ensures the city will be "governed by patriots," that is, the number of directly elected members of the mini-parliament will be reduced. In fact, although the complicated system that governs the LegCo is constructed in order to safeguard the status quo, there was the concrete possibility that the pro-democracy movement could earn the majority of the seats and force the governor Carrie Lam to resign. This possibility is provided for by Hong Kong's mini-constitution, that evidently scares Beijing. The People's Republic has no intention of losing face, and its authority cannot be called into question. 

What stands out the most, though, are the signs of the end of the era of double-figure economic growth and the growing attention to reducing the public debt. The second largest economy in the world is beginning to suffer seriously from the same weaknesses as liberal democracies, especially on a demographic level. The various mentions of the "low fertility trap" not only stress the 15 percent decrease in births compared to the previous year, but highlight a social trend that now seems possible to invert: people get married less and later, divorce is increasing, as are couples that choose to have only one child. It is not yet clear how the state intends to intervene on this issue.

On the other hand, we see an increasing degree of activism on the international stage. This is the framework in which to consider the constant increase of military spending. This year it will be 6.9 percent, slightly above that of 2020. Under Xi Jinping defense has become a priority, and the People's Liberation Army, of which Xi is the commander-in-chief, now has a budget second only to that of the United States. In the past twenty years, spending has also been oriented towards modernization and programs for expansion of the fleets that patrol the Pacific, especially the contested waters of the South China Sea and those of Taiwan. And it should be stressed that the new Five-Year Plan specifically mentions the project that will exert pressure on the current the geopolitical equilibrium: the so-called "Polar Silk Road" that will attempt to bring under Beijing's control the energy resources and new Arctic routes that will open up due to the melting of glaciers.

Investments in research on artificial intelligence, quantum computing, neuroscience, semiconductors, genetics, and biotechnology, as well as the more prosaic goal of increasing agricultural production, are to be read as a sign of the desire to reduce dependence on the outside world, that in the Sino-centric view, is currently subject to uncontrollable chaos. Lastly, the promise of economic growth above 6 percent, "will allow for facing every challenge and overcoming every difficulty." Thus says the Prime Minister.