Forecast of New Situation and Issues for China's Communist Party Construction

Major Chinese newspapers have voiced their support for this amendment. They believe that Xi's current centralization is different from Mao's in the past, because the centralization is now based on a legal system and regulations, not individualism like Mao's time. In particular, in order to achieve the set goals, implementing

The “Chinese Dream” is that China today needs to be concentrated under the leadership of the Communist Party of China with Xi Jinping as its core. And anyway, under Xi Jinping, the people's compliance with the Party's leadership now comes from their own will due to their interests being satisfied, rather than from threats. Xi Jinping Thought or Chinese Socialism with Chinese Characteristics is not so attractive that many people are willing to die for the ideal, as in Mao's time. But some other opinions believe that there should be a specific limit on the leadership's term in office, even if it can be more than two terms. With Xi Jinping currently holding too many important positions ( specifically: General Secretary; Chairman of the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China; President; Chairman of the Central Military Commission of the People's Republic of China; Head of the Central Leading Group for Deepening Reform; Head of the Cyber Security and Information Technology Leading Group; Head of the Central Leading Group for Deepening Defense and Military Reform of the Central Military Commission; Head of the Central Leading Group for Economic and Financial Affairs - which was previously held by the Prime Minister. China currently has 22 subcommittees, the remaining subcommittee heads are held by members of the Politburo Standing Committee and members of the Politburo of the Central Committee), his power is too great and too concentrated, making people see signs of individualism like in Mao Zedong's time returning, and there is a risk of a dictatorship emerging because Xi Jinping, as the core leader, has the right to veto disagreements within the Party and make his own decisions. The Chinese Communist Party still claims to use intra-party democracy to promote the people. Meanwhile, the Chinese Party and State are engaged in an ambitious effort to control society with the help of technology. In addition to the careful filtering of domestic internet traffic to eliminate content that could form the basis for collective action, there is also online censorship and widespread use of facial recognition software, which has reached its most extreme form ever in the country’s predominantly ethnic Chinese periphery.

minorities live, especially in Xinjiang. A sophisticated surveillance system that operates everywhere and makes people afraid has been established [62, p.11]. This also partly affects the relationship between the Party and the masses because it shows that the Party no longer trusts the masses and the people are dissatisfied with the lack of democratic rights. In general, since the 18th National Congress, the Communist Party of China has been trying to resolve some shortcomings from the situation of focusing on the government system, underestimating the role of the Party system, and the risk of moving away from the Party's leadership by emphasizing the Party's comprehensive and all-round leadership role. However, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China needs to make more efforts to focus on resolving all three relationships: the relationship between the Party and Chinese society; the relationship between the Party and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and the state administrative apparatus; Only with internal party system relations can the set goals be achieved and contribute to the implementation of the people-centered ruling viewpoint, continuing to maintain its long-term ruling position.

4.1.3 Forecasting the new situation and issues facing the work of building the Communist Party of China

Since the 18th National Congress, the Communist Party of China has made important achievements in Party building. However, the Communist Party of China is facing and will continue to face many difficulties and challenges that cannot be overcome in a short time and still achieve the expected results. Specifically:

First, corruption in the new era is still a big risk.

At the 2nd plenary meeting of the 18th Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, Xi Jinping stated: "Currently, negative phenomena in some areas still easily occur and occur frequently, some serious violations of law and discipline have caused shock, the trend of fighting corruption must still be strictly implemented, and the masses are still dissatisfied with many areas. Building a clean party and fighting corruption is a long-term, complicated and extremely difficult task, and cannot be done in one go" [123, p.13]. Although the anti-corruption work during the 18th Congress has always been maintained at a strong intensity and achieved unprecedented results, the issue of anti-corruption

Corruption still faces many difficulties. At the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, Xi Jinping said that since the 18th National Congress, some corrupt elements have continued to do as they please, refusing to stop and even becoming more dangerous. The danger of corruption is that it is corruption in large quantities over a long period of time, with sophisticated methods and complicated details, surprising everyone who knows about it. In some localities, there is even systematic corruption [169, pp. 182-183]. To fight corruption more effectively, the Communist Party of China needs to pay attention to solving the following issues:

First , the establishment of the National Supervision Commission. The purpose of the reform of the supervision system and the establishment of the National Supervision Commission is to strengthen the Party's centralized and unified leadership over anti-corruption work. Unlike before, instead of China combining the Party's anti-corruption agency (the Commission for Discipline Inspection) with the State's anti-corruption agency (the Ministry of Supervision and the Anti-Corruption Crime Investigation Bureau of the Procuratorate) under the management of the State Council, China now establishes the National Supervision Commission. This commission is a merger of anti-corruption agencies into a single agency including the Ministry of Supervision, the State Anti-Corruption Bureau, the Anti-Corruption Crime Investigation Bureau of the Procuratorate, and is decided by the National People's Congress, responsible to and supervised by the National People's Congress. The combination of the National Supervision Commission and the Discipline Inspection Commission is now reflected in both organization and operation, and can still be called the "one house, two doors" model. But this model has been upgraded, this structure performs both disciplinary inspection and supervision functions covering all civil servants and public employees exercising public power. Local administrative levels also have a similar model. In terms of relationships, the National Supervisory Commission is under the leadership of the Party and is responsible to the National People's Congress, which will increase the mutual binding of the three legislative, executive and judicial bodies. However, questions arise such as: How effective is the National Supervisory Commission? Can it accelerate the implementation of the goal of "not daring to be corrupt, not being able to be corrupt and not wanting to be corrupt"? How is the supervisory power supervised? The Standing Committee of the National People's Congress supervises the issue of

How can the National Anti-Corruption Commission limit the risk of corruption occurring within the anti-corruption agency?, etc. are all issues that China needs to address to increase the legal basis for fighting corruption.

Second , although China has joined many international conventions to cooperate in capturing corrupt officials who have fled abroad, the process of implementing cooperation in suppressing transnational crimes between China and other countries still faces some institutional barriers. Due to the incomplete legal foundation and the limited awareness and capacity of the country's judicial agencies, the proactive application of the Convention to deploy cooperation in capturing corruption suspects in many developed countries in the world has so far had little tangible results.

Third, corruption is a common disease in many countries around the world, but the problem is that China is at the top of the list. The rampant corruption with a huge corruption value that could be entered in the Guinness Book of Records has made the people resentful. What is especially shocking is that all these corrupt officials, from the Politburo Standing Committee member (Zhou Yongkang) to the party cell secretaries in the rural areas, are all party members. Therefore, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China must persistently put the fight against corruption and the building of integrity in the party in a prominent position in the work of party building and consider it an urgent task, otherwise it will lead to unpredictable harm to the Communist Party of China.

According to the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) of China from 2012 - 2019 below, China is still a country that is progressing too slowly in its anti-corruption efforts. In 2019, the Corruption Perception Index reached 41 points, equal to 2017, higher than previous years but still not reaching the global average because the current highest score globally is 87 points [253]. This requires the Communist Party of China to continue to take more specific measures in building and perfecting anti-corruption institutions and mechanisms, strengthening education, cultivating good qualities of Communist Party members and maintaining the determination to punish corruption with high intensity.

China's CPI ranking globally from 2012-2019

Year

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

Score

Sort

rank/total rank

80/176

80/177

100/175

83/167

79/176

77/180

87/180

80/180

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(Source: based on data from Transparency International, China's CPI index over the years is evaluated on a 100-point scale) [263]

Second, challenges from the external environment in the new era

It can be seen that after more than 40 years of reform and opening up, the construction of socialist modernization of the Communist Party of China has been continuously built, and the work of party building has achieved certain results. Since the 18th National Congress, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China led by Xi Jinping has implemented many effective measures to implement comprehensive and strict party management. However, the complex and unpredictable international situation and the emergence of unilateralism have caused difficulties and obstacles to the development of economic globalization and multilateralism. The strong development of the fourth industrial revolution, in which digital technology and robots have become the focus of competition among many countries in the world. The Chinese government has quickly grasped and promoted the "4.0 Revolution" in reforming and developing the fields of economy - society, politics - security, national defense, etc. However, on the other hand, it has to deal with the consequences of the negative side of the revolution.

4.0 leads to the social and political fields. Without appropriate measures, related to the construction of a high-quality employment policy framework, talent incentive policies, etc. to meet the requirements and trends of the 4.0 revolution, China will have many workers lose their jobs, social stratification will deepen, the gap between rich and poor will become more serious, the socialist nature of the market economy will be eroded, and social conflicts will increase. These are the issues raised for Party building and political system building in general.

Competition in terms of strength in the political, economic, cultural and military aspects among countries is also increasingly fierce, gradually destroying the existing balance in the world. Moreover, the new world rules have not yet been formed, the emergence of social media and online information has weakened and even negatively affected the image and leadership of the Party, causing the Communist Party of China to face challenges and difficulties from the wave of social ideology in the world, directly affecting the Party building work. The Communist Party of China is in power in a complex situation, so it is necessary to clearly perceive the potential risks from the outside, grasp the main contradictions and the right to take the initiative. At the same time, by ensuring stable development in all aspects, gradually strengthen the Party building work, making the Party's progressiveness not only suitable for the rapid development of the current economy but also able to respond to the current risks and challenges at home and abroad:

One is the challenge from the outside world to a country led by the Communist Party and a rising power. China, thanks to a strategy of hiding its strength and biding its time, has now developed into one of the most powerful countries, directly challenging the US-led order. Under Xi Jinping, China has encouraged the Philippines to distance itself from the US, supported South Korea’s efforts to take a softer line toward North Korea, and supported Japan’s stance against US protectionism. China has also built an offensive military system capable of controlling the seas and airspace in the island chains without relying on fishing vessels or domestic law enforcement agencies to enforce its sovereignty. It has even begun military activities outside Asia, including establishing its first overseas base in Djbouti, etc. All these moves show that China no longer intends to play second fiddle to the US but has directly challenged the US in the Indo-Pacific region [195, p.31]. They want to push the US out and become the political, economic and military hegemon in the Indo-Pacific region, and globally China is willing to put the US in the leading position but they want to be strong enough to counter the US when necessary. In October 2018, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke out against China at every turn [195, p.36].

Previously, when the SARS epidemic in the early first decade of the 21st century passed, China's economy quickly recovered and returned to its growth trajectory. However, the recovery situation has been different each time. The SARS epidemic broke out at the same time as China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO), global capital poured into China to build factories, forming a "China fever" among global investors. However, currently, the Covid 19 epidemic spreading globally is happening at the right time of the new cold war between the US and China and foreign investment is gradually withdrawing from China due to the trade and technology war, the epidemic has caused many factories in China to stop operating, China's exports are continuously affected, etc. In addition, in the face of the current situation of climate change and natural disasters and floods, China is falling into more difficult situations than favorable ones. China's "One Belt, One Road" initiative represents great ambition. With the participation of nearly 70 countries in Asia, Europe, Africa and Latin America, this strategy is like a big bet in China's foreign economy, it not only has many potential risks but is also being heavily impacted by the pandemic.

Therefore, it can be said that many objective factors will bring challenges and difficulties, interrupting China's revival. On the one hand, China's economic development trend requires expanding its influence in the world, which has created certain conflicts with Western countries led by the United States, which plays a leading role in the world situation. Competition for changing interests and different social institutions will inevitably lead to contradictions and conflicts. The escalating tension in China-US relations has led to a trade war that broke out in June 2018 and has yet to end. The United States also believes that China is an ideological threat, because the Chinese Communist Party considers "socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era" a model for other ethnic nations to follow in the development process. Currently, when taking power in place of Mr. Trump, Mr. John Biden's main goal is to consolidate America's world leadership position. Therefore, the overall US policy towards China will not change. Competition will still be the main trend in US policy. However, there may be some

more constructive dialogue between the two powers in the face of current tensions in relations.

On the other hand, the global threats of terrorism, radical conservatism, separatism, etc. may spread to China. Ideological competition remains of particular importance in geopolitical competition in the international arena. Plots to carry out peaceful evolution activities, promote "color revolutions" in politically sensitive areas such as Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, etc. The serious events of large-scale protests in Hong Kong against the Extradition Bill and Beijing's National Security Law in recent times are an example. The anti-government protests in Hong Kong not only erode confidence in the principle of "peaceful reunification, one country, two systems" for Hong Kong, but more importantly, they are a catalyst for separatist forces in Taiwan, indirectly benefiting Tsai Ing-wen (Democratic Progressive Party) to continue winning the election in January 2020. The US's official signing of the Taipei Act right after the presidential election, aiming to strengthen economic and trade relations and support Taiwan's participation in international organizations, also partly demonstrates the US's support for Taiwan to maintain a strong democracy. In addition, taking advantage of the Covid-19 pandemic, China has continued to carry out its ambitions in the East Sea, causing most countries to no longer believe in the goal of "building a community of shared destiny" with China. Therefore, the Chinese Communist Party has determined that it must be proactive in responding to these risks and challenges.

Second, the impact of the market economy on the Party's progressiveness and purity. Since the reform and opening up, China's economy has developed at a high speed, and material life has become increasingly rich. Facing the attraction of power and material benefits, a number of leaders have been unable to maintain their ideal beliefs, as well as their political will and "party spirit". Many leaders at local and unit levels, for the sake of profit, disregard risks, are willing to sacrifice the environment, and do not care about the suffering of the masses; some even believe that everything can be exchanged for material things, buying and selling positions; some people take advantage of their positions for personal gain, using power to convert into money; some party officials

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