Analysis: CCP's Fourth Plenum, the Trump-Xi Meeting and Taiwan

TaiwanPlus News

The Chinese Communist Party is holding its Fourth Plenum meeting in Beijing—the most important Party meeting of the year. Jonathan Czin of the Brookings Institution explains why China’s Fourth Plenum matters for the country's next five-year plan, recent military personnel purges and Beijing’s continued focus on techno-industrial policy. He also discussed the timing of the meeting ahead of an expected Trump-Xi meeting at the APEC summit in South Korea and the plenum's impact on cross-strait policy.

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00:00For those who might not follow Chinese politics very closely, what exactly is this fourth plenum

00:05meeting? And what do we expect to see out of it? You know, when you were in the Biden administration

00:08or the CIA, is this the kind of meeting that you would watch very closely?

00:12Yeah, absolutely. And a big part of the reason that we will watch it so closely is that it's

00:16really the most important political meeting of the year. And what the plenum is, is it's the

00:20entire central committee of the Chinese Communist Party. And so what that means is, it's the top

00:25200 or so officials from across China, right? Provincial officials, heads of various provinces,

00:33key military leaders. For this particular plenum, I think it's going to be especially consequential

00:39for two reasons. Number one, on the policy side, the party will kind of endorse the next five-year

00:46plan and won't be fully finalized until next spring. But we'll get an outline of the next

00:50five-year plan, which will lay the groundwork for China's development in the coming five years from

00:542026 to 2030, which of course would bleed over into Xi Jinping's fourth term.

00:59The other big piece of the equation here is the personnel side of the equation. We just saw this

01:04last week where a number of members of the military high command were purged, including the Central

01:10Military Commission vice chairman, the number three officer in the military, was purged. And that's

01:17the first time that's happened since the start of the Cultural Revolution under Mao. So what's going on

01:21on the personnel side with the purges, and especially within the military, is really quite

01:26dramatic. And it's something that we've seldom seen in the post-Mao era.

01:29You mentioned that the five-year plan won't be finished until next spring, but there will

01:33be a communique coming out of the fourth plenum on Thursday. What do we expect to see in that

01:38communique? Will we find out what was said behind closed doors?

01:42Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because as important as this meeting is, this is not a debating society,

01:48right? They've already, to a fair extent, already pre-cooked the outcomes of this, right? So I think

01:55that the documents are important because it is the most authoritative document that you're going to get

02:00from the party in a given year. I fully expect since Xi Jinping is this far along in his tenure,

02:06I think he feels very confident in the trajectory of his economic policy and his industrial policy that

02:11this focus on advancing China's techno-industrial prowess, advancing its manufacturing prowess.

02:17I think he sees it as being on the right path, even with the problems that it's causing.

02:21This plenum comes just a week before Xi Jinping is scheduled to meet with US President Donald Trump

02:26at the APEC Summit in South Korea. Do you see any significance there?

02:30I think it's no accident that Xi Jinping scheduled the plenum to occur just before he's supposed to meet

02:35with Trump, right? There's no fixed date for the plenum, right? So that he can have this big meeting

02:41at home that would enhance his R of authority going into this summit with President Trump.

02:47And what's striking to me as an American and disconcerting is the juxtaposition, right?

02:52Xi is going to walk in this meeting having just put his imprimatur on the next five-year plan for

02:56China. And meanwhile, the US government here in Washington may or may not still be shut down.

03:02What about cross-trade relations? Is anything coming out of this fourth plenum meeting or the

03:06five-year plan expected to change China's cross-trade policy or the relations between

03:12Beijing and Taipei?

03:13So I don't see the plenum itself having a big impact. One of the things that I am still on the

03:20lookout for as we get to the end of the year, though, is that they did a big cross-trade exercise,

03:27straight thunder, back in April of this year. But it was a straight thunder A, which means that they

03:31will probably do like they did last year, a straight thunder B at some point. I think the other point

03:36of discussion on cross-trade issues that's been more consequential here in Washington, at least,

03:42is this discussion about, is Taiwan going to come up in the conversation or in subsequent

03:45conversations between President Trump and President Xi? Switching from not supporting Taiwan

03:52independence to actually opposing it, the kind of distinction that might be lost on a leader like

03:57Trump, who's not necessarily immersed in these issues. But what I've been hearing more recently

04:02is actually the Chinese don't want to set the precedent that this is up for negotiation,

04:07right? They don't want to introduce this into the equation because they want to be able to say,

04:11we have a principled approach to Taiwan, and so we're not going to talk about it,

04:14talk about this at all with the Americans right now, especially since they don't have

04:18that kind of trust in Trump that whatever they agree to, he'll actually stick to it.

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