Your Monday Briefing: Xi consolidates power

By Amelia Nierenberg

Writer, Briefings

Good morning, and welcome to the week. We’re focusing on Xi Jinping’s third term as China’s leader. Plus, we check in on British politics and Russia’s war.

Xi Jinping tightens his grip

To no one’s surprise, Xi Jinping has formally secured a third term as head of China’s Communist Party.

He thoroughly shook up the party’s top tiers, elevating loyalists and forcing out moderates. In so doing, Xi consolidated his power and created a new ruling elite primed to elevate his agenda of bolstering national security and turning China into a technological great power. And in a moment packed with symbolism, Hu Jintao, who presided over one of China’s more open and prosperous periods, was ushered out of an important political meeting.

Xi chose six men with longstanding ties to him for the Politburo Standing Committee, the top echelon of the party. Wang Huning, his chief theoretician, remains on the body, a sign that hard-line policies and the role of ideology will persist. Xi also appointed to the Politburo, the party’s second tier, a number of domestic security officials and military commanders, as well as several people with backgrounds in science and engineering.

As Xi tightens his control, Beijing is likely to remain defiant in the face of international criticism of its authoritarian policies. Notably, at the party congress this week, Xi did not mention two long-repeated maxims about peace and strategic opportunity. The omissions revealed Xi’s anxieties about an increasingly volatile world, and warned of a looming conflict with the U.S. for global dominance.

Analysis: To supporters, Xi’s centralized control and continuity are strengths. But some argue that ousting critics could leave Xi’s government vulnerable to failures like its mismanagement during the early days of Covid-19.

Standing Committee: New appointees include Ding Xuexiang, Xi’s right-hand man, and Li Qiang, who worked under Xi when they were local officials in Zhejiang Province. Li oversaw a contentious Covid lockdown in Shanghai and is now in line to become China’s new premier.

Other updates:

• For the first time in decades, no women will be on the Politburo.
• Hu Chunhua, once seen as a potential successor to Premier Li Keqiang, has been sidelined: He’s not in the Standing Committee or the Politburo.
• From Opinion: Ai Weiwei, an artist and outspoken critic of the Chinese government, argues that the Communist Party has suppressed all possible dissent, despite hopes that capitalism and the internet would create opportunities for rebellion.

Boris Johnson bows out

Britain’s Conservative Party plans to select a new prime minister this week, days after Liz Truss resigned.

One thing is for sure: It won’t be Boris Johnson, who was forced to resign as prime minister in July. Johnson pulled out of the race yesterday evening, despite speculation that he was eyeing a return to power.

Rishi Sunak, the former chancellor of the Exchequer who had lost to Truss, is now the favorite to win. He had lined up at least 147 votes by late afternoon yesterday, according to a tally by the BBC.

Sunak could become prime minister as early as today: If only one candidate receives 100 or more nominations from the 357 Conservative members of Parliament, that person will become the next prime minister.

Analysis: Some experts link Truss’s downfall to the bitter factions Brexit created in the Conservative Party.

Russia resettles Ukraine’s children

Since Russia’s invasion started in February, thousands of Ukrainian children have been transferred to Russia, often against their will, to be adopted and become citizens.

Russian authorities have celebrated the adoptions with patriotic fanfare. On state-run television, officials offer teddy bears to new arrivals, who are portrayed as abandoned children being rescued from war.

But this mass transfer of children is a potential war crime. Some were taken after their parents had been killed or imprisoned by Russian troops, according to Ukrainian officials. And while many did come from orphanages and group homes, the authorities also took children whose relatives or guardians want them back.

“I didn’t want to go,” one 14-year-old girl told my colleague Emma Bubola. “But nobody asked me.”

Fighting: Russian forces pounded Ukraine’s power plants with some of the heaviest missile strikes in weeks.

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THE LATEST NEWS

• Five Australian women have sued Qatar two years after they underwent invasive medical procedures when a newborn was found in an airport bathroom.
• Pakistan’s election commission effectively barred former Prime Minister Imran Khan from office, escalating a political showdown and raising the possibility of mass unrest.
• Indonesia has banned cough syrup sales amid worries that tainted product from India may be connected to the deaths of dozens of children in Gambia.
• BTS members can still perform at South Korean national events during their upcoming military service, The Korea Times reports.

• The Jan. 6 committee subpoenaed Donald Trump for testimony and documents.
• At least 50 people died when security forces in Chad opened fire on protesters, who were demanding that the military junta stick to a promise to hold elections.
• Palestinians have moved into caves as Israel tries to expel them from their villages and demolish their homes, which could amount to a war crime.

• Steve Bannon was sentenced to four months in prison for defying a Jan. 6 committee subpoena.
• A U.S. court temporarily blocked the Biden administration from canceling any student debt.
• Protests, a riot and gunshots: Here’s how a fire at a notorious Iranian prison spread.

There is a name for the specific type of grief that both refugees and migrants experience. It’s “cultural bereavement.”

Lives lived: Peter Schjeldahl, an art critic whose enthusiasm and elegant reviews helped define New York’s art scene, died at 80. Read his witty essay from 2019 on his lung cancer diagnosis.

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GLOBAL GASTRONOMY

Noma in Kyoto

Noma, the celebrated Danish restaurant, will open a 10-week pop-up in Kyoto, Japan. It will span sakura (cherry-blossom) season and incorporate ingredients and methods from the region, which is the historic center of Japanese Buddhism.

The very structure of the meal also references Buddhist culinary traditions. The ubiquitous modern tasting menu has its roots in kaiseki, a carefully orchestrated progression of small plates that grew from a Buddhist tea ceremony into a luxurious cuisine in Kyoto. In the late 1960s, elements of the meal began to flow from Japan into fine dining, often through the influential Tsuji culinary school in Osaka.

The conceptual approach to ingredients was partially born in kaiseki, too: Kyoto’s kaiseki menus have always changed to reflect the seasons. That idea has given rise to foraging, restaurant gardens and the farm-to-table movement.

“I was taught that the tasting menu was invented by the French and then reinvented in Spain,” René Redzepi, Noma’s chef, told The Times. “I had no idea of the vast repository of ideas and techniques that is Japanese food.”

Details: Noma Kyoto will be open from March 15 through May 20. The meal will cost just over 850 euros (about $839) per person and reservations will open on Nov. 7 on Noma’s website.

PLAY, WATCH, EAT

You only need one pan for this shrimp scampi with crispy gnocchi.

Taylor Swift’s new album, “Midnights,” comments on life as a deeply observed figure.

“Is Mother Dead,” a harrowing Norwegian novel, features a middle-aged painter desperate to reconcile with her estranged parent.

Play the Mini Crossword, and a clue: British baked good (five letters).

Here are the Wordle and the Spelling Bee.

You can find all our puzzles here.

That’s it for today’s briefing. Best wishes for a great week. — Amelia

P.S. The Concorde made its last commercial flight 19 years ago today.

Start your week with this narrated long read about Yiyun Li, a novelist beloved for her powerful distillations of grief. And here’s Friday’s edition of “The Daily,” on Liz Truss’s downfall.

You can reach Amelia and the team at briefing@nytimes.com.

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