Xi Jinping looms larger than ever over China

In most countries, the cancellation of a press conference would barely warrant a murmur.

But the sudden announcement this week that China’s premier would no longer hold a customary media briefing at the annual gathering of the country’s rubber-stamp parliament has captivated political watchers of the week-long session, which ends on Monday.

The press conference at the conclusion of the National People’s Congress was the only time each year the man in charge of the world’s second-biggest economy took questions from global and domestic media. It also served as a rare public platform for China’s number-two official.

Alongside a legal revision further enshrining the ruling Communist party’s control over the State Council, the government cabinet headed by the premier, the briefing’s cancellation pointed to increasing opacity and centralisation of power under Xi Jinping, China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong.

“Zhongnanhai has always been a black box and now it’s just even more so,” said Chong Ja Ian, associate professor of political science at the National University of Singapore, referring to the former imperial garden, located next to the Forbidden City in Beijing, where top party leaders are headquartered. “It makes trying to invest and make longer-term decisions about China even more difficult.”

At the NPC’s opening session in the main auditorium of the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Tuesday, thousands of delegates clapped in slow unison as Xi and his top cadres filed on to the podium and a military brass band blared out the “March of the Volunteers”, the national anthem.

The only sound thereafter was the synchronised turning of pages as the delegates studiously accompanied Premier Li Qiang’s reading of the 31-page “work report” detailing his government’s economic targets for the year.