China's new president will face harsh realities

Yesterday, in a ceremony in the Great Hall of the People in Tiananmen Square, delegates to the National People's Congress, China's rubber-stamp parliament, appointed Mr Xi to run the country for the next 10 years.

The 59-year-old was also elected head of the Central Military Commission, a parallel government post to the party's top military position which he already holds, ensuring he has full power over the party, state and armed forces.

That there was virtually no opposition among the carefully selected legislators to Mr Xi becoming president came as no surprise, with just one no vote and three abstentions from almost 3000 delegates.

Feted in the Chinese media as a man of the people who shuns the usual trappings of his position, many Chinese hope Mr Xi will bring change to a country that is an economic giant but which remains marred by income inequality, corruption and environmental destruction left over from past administrations.

The harsh reality Mr Xi faces is that it will take more than limiting military banquets to solve the PLA's problems and enable it to become one of the world's most sophisticated militaries. Likewise, Mr Xi will have his work cut out when it comes to tackling China's other pressing issues of income disparity, civil liberties, the environment and foreign affairs.

To take the first of these, both official figures and independent research paint a troubling picture of unprecedented income and wealth disparity that will likely grow worse in the future.

Generally speaking, societies with huge gaps between rich and poor invariably display more symptoms of social distress and political instability. Where those disparities have risen meteorically the impact on society is profound. China is the ultimate case in point.

Paying lip service to communist egalitarianism is one thing, but when combined with rising income inequality it poses an existential political threat and will be one of the critical challenges facing the nation's new leadership headed by Mr Xi.

The new president's policy measures aimed at reforming the huge – but concealed – non-salary income of government officials and executives at state-owned enterprises will be welcomed by many Chinese.

So too will the monitoring of income and investment of officials and their families and any crackdown on illegal income obtained through corruption.

The acid test, though, is likely to be whether the country's ruling elite – Communist Party members among them – will willingly give up their privileges and the financial largesse that comes from them.

As the headline to an article by Professor Minxin Pei, an expert on governance in China, put it recently: "Until China's Communist Party can convince the people it values China's national well-being above its own survival, nobody should take its promises seriously."

Inextricably linked to China's rise as an economic powerhouse are its colossal environmental and pollution problems. In recent days the rotting bodies of about 6000 dead pigs floating in the Huangpu river that supplies tap water to Shanghai has resulted in a public outcry. It's estimated that by 2020 the volume of urban rubbish in China is expected to reach 400 mil-lion tonnes, equivalent to the figure for the entire world in 1997.

China's growth sweeps all before it. Only last week, Bo Guangxin, the head of a major forestry group, told Chinese parliamentarians the country uses 20 million trees each year to feed its disposable chopstick habit.

In the last forest survey published in 2009, research showed levels of rampant deforestation the likes of which caused a massive mudslide that killed 700 the following year. So sensitive is the issue that some reports on deforestation have been censored on the Chinese web. This of course is nothing new.

While Chinese people probably enjoy far greater freedoms now than at any time since the 1949 revolution that brought the Communist Party to power, this is still a country where Nobel Peace laureate Liu Xiaobo languishes in prison and those who dare challenge the state face the harshest of consequences.

Writing online in response to an article on President Xi's appointment, one UK-based Chinese blogger made the point that "breaking the rules is our version of freedom. People will take big risks to make small money. The biggest threat to China is China itself. The West has little to fear".

When it comes to both civil liberties and foreign policy, the Chinese government has long since recognised the internet as a crucial battlefield the struggle for which is played out both home and away. As recent cases that have stained relations with the United States have highlighted, China is deploying cyber- warriors. Whether it be hacking think tanks engaging in corporate espionage or undermining critical foreign news stories and organisations, Beijing has upped the ante in militarising cyber- space.

Only time will tell whether Mr Xi will seek further confrontation or co-operation with the US. Certainly there are reasons to be optimistic. During a visit to the US last year, as vice-president, he called for a "new type of relationship between major countries", built on respect for each other's "core interests and major concerns".

With that in mind perhaps, Mr Xi appears at least to be putting together a new foreign-policy team consisting of US and regional specialists. According to the respected US-based magazine Foreign Policy, senior Chinese Communist Party sources have confirmed promotions for veteran diplomats Yang Jiechi, Wang Yi and Cui Tiankai.

The three are known for "favouring negotiation over bluster" and suggest Mr Xi may be re-examining China's diplomatic relations with Washington.

For years, China's political and diplomatic machinations have been something of a challenge for Western foreign affairs analysts trying to read or predict the direction in which this vast nation is moving.

With his appointment as president, Mr Xi is at least far better understood than his predecessor Hu Jintao.

Let's not forget, however, that behind the apparent rapprochement, bureaucratic streamlining and talk of limiting military banquets to four dishes and a soup, Mr Xi remains general secretary of China's Communist Party. As such, he has the most to lose should the party ever start to fall apart.