The Political Logic of Xi Jinping’s July 1 Speech

—Where Is the CCP’s Political Line Heading After Reform and Opening?

Li Zhide（李志德）

In his speech marking the 105th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping（习近平）reviewed the Party’s history, praised its achievements, restated its founding mission, and called on the whole Party to keep struggling. The structure is familiar. Major commemorative speeches by the CCP usually follow a set pattern: first history, then the road, then theory, and finally future tasks.

On the surface, this was a commemorative speech. What deserves real attention is how it rearranged the CCP’s historical narrative. Xi placed the Party’s 105-year history into four stages: “revolution, construction, reform, and the New Era.” This may look like a routine division of Party history. In fact, it sends a strong political signal.

Within the CCP’s own historical narrative, the revolutionary stage solved the problem of seizing power. The construction stage solved the problem of building a socialist system and an industrial foundation. The reform stage solved the problems of development, the market, and opening to the outside world. The New Era, in turn, tries to solve the problems of building a strong country, national rejuvenation, security, and long-term rule. These four stages are not simply placed side by side. They also replace one another. Revolution replaced old China. Construction replaced revolutionary mobilization. Reform replaced the rigid planned system. Now the “New Era” is replacing reform and opening as the highest political theme.

This does not mean the word “reform” will disappear. On the contrary, the official discourse will continue to speak of reform, even of “further comprehensively deepening reform.” But the nature of reform has changed. In the past, reform and opening was the direction of the times. It was the general line for escaping poverty, releasing social vitality, and bringing the market and the world into China. Today, reform is more often a tool of governance. It serves Party leadership, national security, high-quality development, technological self-reliance, and Chinese-style modernization. Reform used to carry a certain openness. Today it has a stronger purpose. Reform used to mean decentralizing power. Today it more often means reshaping power, reorganizing resources, and strengthening state capacity.

The China expert Deng Yuwen（邓聿文）has commented that “the era of reform and opening is over.” This does not mean that reform has come to a complete stop as policy. It means that reform is no longer treated as the highest value. It has moved into the position of instrumental reason. The highest value in the Xi era is no longer “opening brings development,” but “Party leadership ensures rejuvenation.” This is a major clue.

The Core of the Speech Is a Renewal of Political Authorization

The 105th anniversary is not a round-number centenary like the 100th anniversary. In ordinary terms, its symbolic weight is not as great as the centenary. Yet Xi chose this moment to deliver a systematic speech and to fold into it the newly proposed thought on Party building. This shows that the speech was not simply meant to commemorate. It was an act of political reauthorization.

Political reauthorization means explaining again why the CCP can continue to lead China, why centralized and unified leadership must continue, and why the Party must become stronger as future risks grow. The so-called “six excellent qualities” in the speech are really answering one question: Why can the CCP still rule for the long term?

These six qualities roughly include pursuing truth, being rooted in the people, seizing strategic initiative, following the tide of development, daring to struggle, and strengthening itself. They are not ordinary words of praise. They are a repackaging of the legitimacy of future rule.

“Pursuing truth” deals with ideological legitimacy. It means that the CCP is not an ordinary interest group, but is guided by Marxism and by the Sinicized theories of Marxism. “Being rooted in the people” deals with popular legitimacy. It means that the Party is not an external ruler, but represents the people. “Seizing strategic initiative” deals with historical legitimacy. It means that only the Party can look far ahead and set the direction. “Following the tide of development” deals with the legitimacy of modernization. It means that the Party is not a conservative force, but the vanguard of the age. “Daring to struggle” deals with the legitimacy of risk. It means that the greater the external pressure and internal challenge, the more the Party must be firm. “Strengthening itself” deals with organizational legitimacy. It means that through self-revolution, the Party can remove corruption and political viruses, and therefore can continue to renew itself.

The hidden logic of this discourse is clear. China is not moving into a stage of looser control, dispersed power, and free adjustment. It is moving into a stage that places greater stress on organizational mobilization, disciplinary integration, risk response, and state capacity. Here, thought on Party building is not a matter of internal Party work. It is a concept of governing the country. The Party must govern itself, but more than that, it must govern the state, society, cadres, and direction through the governance of itself.

This speech fully reflects the inner structure of Xi Jinping Thought. At a deeper level, Xi’s thought can be summarized in six words: Party, state, history, security, struggle, and rejuvenation.

The “Party” is the center. Without Party leadership, nothing else stands. The “state” is the object. State capacity, national unity, and national security are the policy goals. “History” is legitimacy. History proves the Party correct, and the future must also be led by the Party. “Security” is the method. All development must be placed within a security framework. “Struggle” is the mental posture. In the face of external competition and internal problems, one must not retreat.

“Rejuvenation” is the final narrative. In the end, all policies serve the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.

This body of thought is not a matter of simple personal preference. It is a Leninist reorganization of the state in an age of crisis. It tries to use a highly organized Party to lead a country of enormous scale, to preserve stability amid external competition and internal transformation, and to complete the project of becoming a strong nation. Its strengths are concentration, mobilization, long-termism, and strategic execution. Its weaknesses are the suppression of feedback, the reduction of social spontaneity, a higher cost of policy correction, and a tendency to politicize and securitize complex social problems.

Reform and Opening Has Changed from a “Value-Oriented” Project to an “Instrumental” One

One key to understanding Xi Jinping Thought is to see how Xi handles the legacy of the Deng Xiaoping（邓小平）era. The core of the Deng era was to solve the problem of legitimacy through development. Poverty was not socialism, so reform was necessary. China was backward, so opening was necessary. The market was effective, so the market had to play a role. Cadres had to focus on economic construction, so ideology gave way to growth. The political language of that era was pragmatic. It was not necessarily free, but it left space for society. The private economy, local competition, foreign investment, an active intellectual world, urbanization, and the middle class all grew within that space.

The Xi era has not fully rejected this legacy, but it has rearranged its position. Development still matters. The economy still matters. Reform still matters. But all of them must serve higher goals: the Party’s comprehensive leadership, national security, common prosperity, technological self-reliance, social stability, and national rejuvenation.

This is what may be called “instrumental reform.” Reform is not meant to give society more autonomous space. It is meant to make the state machine more effective. It is not meant to release plural forces. It is meant to direct resources toward strategic goals. It is not meant to let the market expand naturally. It is meant to make the market serve the will of the state.

From this angle, the CCP’s future economic policy will not simply return to Mao-style planned economy, nor will it return to Deng-style market decentralization. It is more likely to move toward a kind of “state-strategic market economy.” The market will remain. Private enterprises will remain. Foreign investment will still be needed. But all of them must stand within the goals of the state. The platform economy must submit to regulation. Finance must serve the real economy. Real estate must not hijack growth. Technology companies must take part in self-reliance and controllability. Local governments must compete again around national strategy.

This direction will bring a contradiction. The more the state seeks to raise its control capacity, the more social vitality may be limited. The more the state stresses security, the harder it becomes for the market to form long-term confidence. The more the state stresses strategic concentration, the more local governments and enterprises will wait for signals from above. Xi’s policy difficulty lies here. He wants security and growth at the same time. He wants control and innovation. He wants unified will and market vitality. This is not impossible, but it is extremely difficult.

The phrase in the speech about “high winds and rough waves, even stormy seas” is not new. But its reappearance in the 105th-anniversary speech shows that the narrative of risk has become a fixed part of Xi’s political language. It shows that bottom-line thinking is becoming the highest method of governance. In simple terms, bottom-line thinking means imagining the worst-case scenario first. China may be contained from outside. Risks may arise inside. The economy may decline. Corruption may erode the Party. Society may become unstable. Taiwan may become a flash point. Technology may be choked off. Finance may face systemic risk. Since the worst may come at any time, governance must prepare in advance.

This will deeply change decision-making. In the Deng era, an awareness of opportunity outweighed an awareness of risk. China judged the general trend of the world to be peace and development, so it seized the opportunity and expanded opening. In the Xi era, risk awareness has risen sharply. The “great changes unseen in a century,” international turbulence, strategic competition with the United States, supply-chain restructuring, ideological confrontation, and tensions in the Taiwan Strait all push the CCP to treat development as a security issue.

Future policy will have several features. First, the priority of security will continue to rise. Economic security, food security, energy security, financial security, technological security, data security, and ideological security will all move into the center of policy. Security will no longer be only the business of public security organs and the military. It will become a common task for all departments.

Second, policy will value resilience more than efficiency. In the past, the pursuit was low cost, high speed, and global division of labor. In the future, the emphasis will be on self-reliance and controllability, domestic substitution, backup in key links, and supply-chain security. Economic efficiency may fall, but the weight of security will rise.

Third, decision-making will become more centralized. The more risk is stressed, the more unified command is needed. The space for local experimentation will shrink. Cadres will become more cautious. Policy implementation will place greater stress on political discipline.

Fourth, the language of struggle will remain. Struggle is not merely a slogan. It is an organizational psychology. It tells cadres and society that the future will not be calm, that they must not fantasize about the external environment naturally improving, and that they must not imagine internal problems will disappear on their own.

One Nerve Line, Three High-Pressure Lines

The proposal of Xi Jinping’s thought on Party building shows that the CCP is raising Party building into the central pivot of national governance. Party building is not only the work of the Organization Department, the discipline inspection system, and grassroots Party branches. It is the “nervous system” of the whole national governance system. Through Party building, the Party is turned into the central nerve of the state.

Why is Party building so important? Because Xi judges that the CCP’s greatest risk is not only economic decline, nor only external pressure. It is the Party’s own corruption, looseness, loss of control, and loss of fighting capacity. The collapse of the Soviet Union has always served as a negative lesson for him. If a large party grows organizationally weak, loses its faith, loses control of the military, and produces cadres who dare not struggle, it will collapse.

So he uses comprehensive strict Party governance to rebuild organizational discipline, anti-corruption to remove political risk, ideological education to unify language, grassroots Party building to penetrate society, and the centralized and unified leadership of the Central Committee to hold down centrifugal forces within localities and departments.

This logic is strong, and it is also dangerous. Its strength lies in the fact that it can indeed improve organizational mobilization and reduce some forms of loss of control. Its danger lies in the possibility that an excessive stress on political discipline may depress the flow of real information. For the sake of safety, cadres may say less that is true and more that is correct. To avoid blame, local governments may innovate less and wait more for instructions. To stay out of trouble, society may express less and remain silent more often.

If a system strengthens obedience but does not strengthen correction, it will face the problem of “high-pressure stability and low-efficiency feedback.” On the surface, it is highly unified. At a deeper level, errors become harder to expose in time. This is an old problem that all highly centralized systems must face.

At the end of the speech, Xi singled out military strengthening, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan, and young people. This was not a casual arrangement. These three areas are likely to be the key directions for the CCP in the future. Military strengthening, the Taiwan Strait, and youth are the three high-pressure lines of the CCP’s future.

Military strengthening is the first line. The year 2027 marks the centenary of the founding of the People’s Liberation Army, and the CCP has long set the goal of achieving the centenary objectives for the armed forces. In the next few years, military modernization, technology-driven military strength, unmanned and intelligent warfare, joint operations, anti-access capabilities, and preparations for operations in the Taiwan Strait will all continue to advance. Military strengthening is not only a military issue. It is also a political issue. It serves the narrative of national security, and it also serves the narrative of national rejuvenation.

Taiwan is the second line. The speech reiterated opposition to “Taiwan independence” and external interference, showing that the Taiwan Strait remains at the center of the CCP’s political agenda. The future path may not be immediate war, but pressure will continue to intensify. More likely, we will see military deterrence, legal warfare, cognitive warfare, economic and social integration, compression of Taiwan’s international space, and united-front work inside Taiwan proceeding in parallel. The CCP will try to place unification within the timetable of national rejuvenation, while also calculating the costs of war. It will not easily give up pressure, but it will not easily ignore risk either.

Youth is the third line. Why should a Party-anniversary speech speak specifically to young people? Because young people are tied to future legitimacy. Economic decline, employment pressure, and slower social mobility will affect how young people feel about the system. In the future, the CCP will place greater emphasis on ideological work among young people, employment guidance, patriotic education, governance of online space, and the organization of youth. It wants to prevent young people from “lying flat,” becoming cynical, falling into political apathy, or even turning into a factor of instability.

Reform and Opening Has Been Completed; China Has Entered the Era of Party-State Rejuvenation

The most important signal in Xi’s July 1 speech is that it places the CCP within a narrative “after reform and opening.” Reform will not disappear, but it is no longer the era itself. The New Era is the master framework. The core of this New Era is not market expansion, nor social opening, but Party-state rejuvenation.

The CCP’s future line will most likely follow this path: politics will become more centralized, security will take higher priority, the economy will become more strategic, society will become more governed, the military will become more modernized, the Taiwan issue will come under greater pressure, youth will become more organized, and ideology will become more systematic.

This path will not necessarily produce an immediate crisis, and it is not without governing capacity. It can show high efficiency in certain areas, especially infrastructure, industrial policy, technological breakthroughs, social mobilization, and crisis response. But it will also accumulate another kind of risk: insufficient social vitality, weak confidence among private businesses, a tense international environment, a conservative cadre system, difficulty in getting real information upward, and a declining sense of opportunity among young people.

Xi’s political logic is to use the strength of the Party to respond to the uncertainty of the world. The problem is that a society’s uncertainty cannot be absorbed by organizational strength alone. It also needs open information, real feedback, social creativity, market confidence, local trial and error, and personal freedom. If these spaces continue to shrink, short-term security may grow stronger, but long-term vitality will suffer.

Taken together, the content of the speech and Xi’s line over the past decade or more allow us to make a broad forecast of the CCP’s future decision-making direction.

First, politically, the Party’s comprehensive leadership will continue to be strengthened. Major policies will place greater emphasis on setting the tone at the Party Center. Cadre evaluation will focus more on political loyalty and execution. Anti-corruption will not stop. It may even move toward deeper political purges and more institutionalized supervision.

Second, economically, China will continue to follow a path of “securitized development.” High-quality development, new productive forces, technological self-reliance, manufacturing upgrading, and industrial-chain security will outweigh a simple impulse for GDP growth. The private economy will be reassured, but it will not return to the earlier model of relatively unrestrained expansion.

Third, social governance will continue to become more intelligent and grid-based. Risk early warning, grassroots governance, data governance, online public-opinion management, social credit, and public security will become key areas of governance. Stability will no longer mean only passive maintenance of stability. It will mean active prediction and early intervention.

Fourth, foreign policy will continue to run on two tracks. On one track, China will speak of a community with a shared future for mankind, the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative, the Global Civilization Initiative, and the Global Governance Initiative. On the other track, it will prepare for long-term strategic competition. In other words, diplomatic language will speak of cooperation, while strategic preparation will speak of struggle.

Fifth, policies toward Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan will continue to stress national integration. Hong Kong and Macao will be further folded into the overall framework of national development. Taiwan will continue to face political, military, economic, and international pressure. Cross-strait exchanges will not stop, but they will increasingly serve the narrative of unification.

Sixth, ideology will continue to strengthen the narrative of the “New Era.” Reform and opening will not be denied, but they will be placed inside the framework of the New Era. In the future, the official discourse will increasingly stop treating reform and opening as an independent spirit of the age. It will more often treat it as one stage in the Party-led process of national rejuvenation.

In short, the 105th-anniversary speech was not an ordinary Party-anniversary speech. It was more like a declaration of line: reform and opening has withdrawn as the marker of an era, while the New Era is being fixed as the framework of Party-state rejuvenation. Only by understanding this can we understand the direction of China’s future policy. It will not simply return to the Mao era, nor will it return to the Deng era. It will continue to follow a Xi-style road: using the Party to integrate the state, using security to reshape development, using struggle to shape cadres, and using the narrative of rejuvenation to hold society together.

The success or failure of this road depends on one core question: can a highly centralized Party-state machine preserve social vitality while controlling risk? If it can, it may form a kind of strong-state modernization. If it cannot, it will fall into a cycle of high-pressure stability and low-efficiency feedback. This is where the real drama of Chinese politics will lie in the coming years.