Secret meeting before G20, elders scold China’s Xi Jinping

It will be the first time that Chinese President Xi Jinping has skipped the G20 summit, which he has consistently championed as China’s top leader. The annual meeting of outgoing and retired leaders of the Chinese Communist Party in the seaside resort of Beidaihe in Hebei province has been high-profile this year. The informal discussions are never officially disclosed, but details of this year’s closed-door talks are starting to emerge. In short, the experience of the conference was quite different from the 10 previous Beidaihe meetings that have taken place since Xi became party general secretary in 2012.

Sources said at this year’s gathering, a group of retired party elders rebuked the top leader in ways he had not done so far. According to media reports, Xi later expressed his disappointment to his closest aides. This Beidaihe meeting was held without the presence of the most prominent party elders. Former President Jiang Zemin died last November at the age of 96 and Xi’s immediate predecessor, Hu Jintao, is now 80. China is not in a good position today. Its economy has been declining in invisible ways since reform and opening up began in the late 1970s. The real estate sector is in tatters, symbolizing the struggles of leading developer Evergrande Group. The youth unemployment rate worsened to the point that Chinese officials stopped releasing the figures this summer.

The army has been in turmoil since the firing incidents came to light in July following the removal of two top generals of the Rocket Force. Foreign Minister Qin Gang has been removed from that post for unknown reasons, which has created an atmosphere of suspicion in the ministry. The upheaval has worried many veterans who ran the party during China’s economic heyday. Sources said that ahead of Beidaihe, party elders called their own meeting to brief their opinion before conveying it to the current leaders. The meeting was probably held in the suburbs of Beijing.