quoting Elizabeth Economy via War on the Rocks
Last year in October, President Xi Jinping strutted to the podium at the Chinese Communist Party’s 19th Party Congress to read his work report. For more than three hours, Xi forced his colleagues to sit and listen in one of the most ostentatious displays of that infamous Chinese phrase, “you listen, I speak,” to which anyone has ever been subjected. More than any other event of the last six years, the 19th Party Congress pressed home Xi’s influence on the Chinese party-state. His ideas were incorporated into the constitution. No obvious successor emerged, suggesting Xi would hold the reins of power indefinitely.