Shanghai. When the top of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) meets behind closed doors in Beijing this week, important decisions will be made. At its plenary session, the CPC Central Committee (CC) is preparing for the party congress next fall, where China's new political leadership will be determined.
Above all, it is unclear whether state and party leader Xi Jinping, according to many observers the most powerful politician in the People's Republic since the country's founder Mao Zedong, will run for a fourth time. At his instigation, the constitution was changed in 2018 to remove term limits for the presidency.
According to observers, the personnel restructuring at the top of the party has long since begun, partly through “purges”. Of the 376 full and candidate members who were elected to the Central Committee in 2022, only 291 are expected to appear at the plenary session, estimates the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI). 28 members were excluded. Proceedings have been initiated against dozens more or they have disappeared. An anti-corruption campaign is officially underway.
The People's Liberation Army is hit hardest. The Central Military Commission, the highest military leadership body of the People's Republic of China, now only consists of Xi and his confidant Zhang Shengmin. Xi also removed Zhang Youxia, until recently the highest-ranking general, and Ma Xingrui, the former party chief of the Xinjiang region.
Good connections in Xi's environment are considered a prerequisite for staying in power. This is how Xi secures his influence – and probably also his political legacy.
Xi will be 74 years old in 2027. So far there is no indication that he will not run again. “I assume that he will remain in office for another ten years, possibly with a five-year probationary period for his successor,” says China expert and political scientist Victor Shih from the University of California in San Diego. For that you would need an official who was born in the late 1970s or early 1980s. “I don’t see such an official on the horizon at the moment,” says Shih.
The long-time former president of the European Chamber of Commerce in China, Jörg Wuttke, also expects Xi to serve another term. After more than two decades in the People's Republic, Wuttke now lives in the USA, but travels regularly to China, like this week, and still has contacts in the elite.
From his perspective, a key challenge for Xi is the financial situation of municipalities and corporate debt. In his opinion, this will lead to financial experts increasingly rising to political leadership.
In recent years, Beijing has increasingly relied on financial experts from central banks and supervisory authorities as deputy provincial governors. A 2024 technical study examines 31 of these executives who are sent to the province. 22 of them had doctorates, and around 80 percent were sent to their posts without personal or family connections.
The authors Chen Li and Shidai Zhang, who teach and research China's politics and financial reforms in Hong Kong, see this as an instrument to carry central government guidelines to the provinces - and at the same time a career path for future top executives.
An example of this type is Zhu Zhongming, the new mayor of Shanghai. Important posts in Shanghai are seen as a stepping stone to the front row in Beijing. China's head of government Li Qiang, for example, was once party leader of Shanghai, and former Prime Minister Zhu Rongji was mayor.
Zhu Zhongming is 54 years old and belongs to the generation of people born after 1970 that is now moving up. But his area of expertise is crucial: He is a finance expert, was previously Vice Minister of Finance and has administrative experience in financial authorities as well as in the provinces of Zhejiang and Hunan.
This is not a change of course, but a correction in the selection of cadres: For years, China's political elite was characterized by technical experts and engineers. In a 2022 analysis, the political scientist Li Cheng describes this type as “technocrats 2.0”.
This refers to civil servants with scientific or engineering training, often with long experience in large state-owned companies and in local politics - who are also considered politically reliable and have contacts at the top.
In his book “Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future,” the Chinese-born author Dan Wang even describes China as an “engineering state,” which, in contrast to the US, which is dominated by lawyers, has a different understanding of these issues.
Such cadres worked in the areas of aviation, nuclear technology, semiconductors, artificial intelligence or robotics. The party secretary of the city of Chongqing, Yuan Jiajun, is a rocket scientist. Previous heads of state and government such as Jiang Zemin and Zhu Rongji were electrical engineers or engineers. Xi Jinping studied chemical engineering at Tsinghua University in Beijing, then embarked on a political path early on.
Scientific and application-oriented technical expertise is considered career-enhancing in China.
According to political scientist Li Cheng, the rise of this group reflects the leadership's priorities: technological self-reliance, industrial competitiveness, foreign independence and national security. His investigation included 187 top officials. There were only 20 women among them, only two of them held ministerial positions.
The survey shows: The front row of politics is almost exclusively occupied by men - Xi Jinping does not promote women in top positions, not even in local administrations.
The era of engineers is not over, but financial professionals are increasingly playing a role.
Ultimately, China's debt is a problem that requires more fiscal policy expertise in leadership circles. Since the real estate bubble burst and new construction projects stopped, the provinces have been missing an important source of income: the sale of building land.
For years there has been a struggle for tax reforms that would provide the regions with more revenue. Some regions outside of the metropolitan regions around Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Chongqing, Chengdu and the southern Chinese province of Guangdong supported in the five-year plan are sometimes considered to be left behind and disadvantaged when it comes to investments. Instead, additional burdens are being imposed on them, for example by buying up excess housing from the market in order to cushion the consequences of the crisis.
This deepens the debt problem. According to available information, the official national debt was around 69 percent of economic output at the end of 2025. In a broader calculation, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), however, puts the public sector's liabilities at 127 percent of economic output, as the Finnish think tank Bofit reports.
According to observers, the state's ability to act has been suffering for years as a result. Economic growth was 4.5 percent in the third quarter, below the five percent in the first quarter. While high-tech industries are booming, others are under pressure from price wars and fierce cut-throat competition.
According to some observers, Xi can currently score points in foreign policy. Russian President Vladimir Putin has proposed a three-way summit with US President Donald Trump and Xi on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Shenzhen on November 18-19. It should also be about the Ukraine war. The Kremlin confirmed talks. Ukraine has not yet been involved.
In China and elsewhere, the meeting is seen as a possible boost to Xi's image. Wuttke considers it to be an “upgrading of the president” if it takes place like this.
The meeting and the trade talks between the European Union and China are also likely to play a role in the talks by Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. He begins his state visit on Tuesday in Anhui Province and will meet Prime Minister Li Qiang and President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Friday.
Steinmeier last made a state visit to China in 2018. As a former head of the Chancellery and Foreign Minister, he is one of the German politicians with many years of experience in the volatile German-Chinese relations. His term ends in 2027 after ten years. The trip to China is intended to be the end of his official trips to Asia.
