China's Xi Jinping Era

China’s Communist Party meets every five years to outline, among other things, its goals for the next half decade, lay out its plans for political succession, and state its economic goals. The idea is to maintain stability through continuity while advancing the kinds of programs that have transformed China into the world’s second-largest economy. This year, though, the party congress, which just concluded, had some significant new elements It enshrined the “thought” of Chinese President Xi Jinping into the party’s constitution, an honor previously accorded only Mao Zedong; second, it did not reveal a successor to Xi, who under the current rules must step down in 2022; third, it did not outline a plan for the kind of double-digit economic growth that China has enjoyed over the past two decades The political consequences,