Fourth Plenum of Chinese Communist Party Central Committee announced

The Plenum had not met for 20 months. According to observers, the delay is due to fears of criticism of Xi Jiping for the US war on duties and tensions in Hong Kong.

Beijing (AsiaNews) - The Fourth Plenum of the 19th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party will take place from October 28 to 31 in Beijing. Xinhua announced it this afternoon, saying the decision was taken this morning at a Politburo meeting chaired by Xi Jinping.

The plenum brings together full members and provisional members (in turn) of the Central Committee, in all more than 300 members. According to Xinhua, the next meeting will discuss how to improve the socialist system and the style of government.

Observers note that this Plenum comes about 20 months after the last one and question the meaning of this delay. The most accredited opinion is that Xi Jinping did not want to gather the Central Committee for fear of being strongly criticized by some factions of the Party that accuse him of having made the wrong moves in the trade war with the United States, detaching himself from the tradition of "humility"preached by Deng Xiaoping and preferring a more combative attitude. In recent months, tensions in Hong Kong have also increased criticism of the party's general secretary.

At the 2017 Party Congress, Xi Jinping mandated his "lifetime" leadership of the Party, later confirmed with an amendemnet to the Constitution in 2018.