On Thursday, the Chinese Communist Party elevated General Secretary Xi Jinping to the “core” of its leadership, making him even more powerful in the run-up to the 19th National Congress.
The announcement came after the end of the Sixth Plenum, a meeting of 400 top party leaders to discuss changes in the party.
The move places Xi “on par with previous leaders such as: Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, and Jiang Zemin,” according to analysts at BMI Research, and is a change-up from the consensus-style leadership of recent years. Jiang Zemin was the last Chinese leader at this level following the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989.
The term “core” was created by Deng who said that Mao, Jiang Zemin, and he were examples of such leadership. Notably, Hu Jintao, Xi’s predecessor, was not named “core.”
Christopher K. Johnson, an expert on Chinese politics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington told The New York Times’ Chris Buckley, it “confirms that he is no first among equals, but just first.”
It's notable that Xi has been elevated to "core" in the run-up to the party's 19th National Congress, which will take place in autumn 2017. Then, 11 seats of the 25 member Politburo will open up, including five of the seven-member Politburo Standing Committee, essentially the party's top leadership. The two not retiring are Xi and Premier Li Keqiang.
"We believe that Xi's elevated status and growing reputation as the most powerful leader since Deng Xiaoping will increase his chances of appointing his own people to the Standing Committee," the analysts at BMI Research wrote.
However, Xi's stronger political posture "also means that he will likely become more accountable with regard to the performance of the mainland economy," they added.
Interestingly, a handful of provincial party heads started using "core" to describe Xi slightly less than a year ago. But, as the Financial Times' Lucy Honry reported, "the designation was pointedly not repeated at the time by [Xi's] most senior colleagues, the six other members of the Politburo Standing Committee" and "it prompted unusually public opposition."
China, the world's second largest economy, has been one of the biggest competitors of the United States.
"The US intelligence community and the foreign policy establishment are most assuredly paying very close attention to Xi's elevation to 'core' leader status," Scott Kennedy, a leading expert on Chinese participation in global regimes at the Center for Strategic and International Studies told Business Insider. "A strengthened Xi should be able to more faithfully carry out his own policy preferences in every area, including the economy, domestic governance, and foreign policy."
Kennedy added that Xi's elevation does not mean China is going to be more cooperative or combative, but it certainly means China is likely to be "more clear-cut and less ambiguous" in what it says or does.
Earlier this month, leaked excerpts of paid speech made by the presidential candidate Hillary Clinton revealed that the Democratic nominee praised Xi as "a better politician" than his predecessor Hu.
"He's a more sophisticated, more effective public leader than Hu Jintao was," Clinton said, according to hacked emails released by WikiLeaks, "He has consolidated his power quite quickly over the military and over the Communist Party."
In her speeches, Clinton said during her days as secretary of state, she was concerned that the Chinese military was "acting somewhat independently" from China's foreign policy under Hu, but "Xi is doing much more to try to assert his authority," Clinton said.