Heading into his third term, Xi Jinping surrounds himself with loyalists

China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has created a new ruling elite packed with loyalist officials primed to elevate his agenda of bolstering national security and of turning China into a technological great power.

Xi on Sunday revealed the new lineup for the Politburo Standing Committee, the Communist Party’s top echelon. The six men who will work under Xi all have close ties with him, and none are from a different factional background. Xi will lead a government in which there is no doubt that he dominates, for better or worse.

“Xi now truly owns the system, but any mistakes will also be his — unmistakably,” Dali Yang, a professor at the University of Chicago who researches Chinese politics, said in an interview. “He was dominant already and is even more dominant now. He owns it.”

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New appointees to the Politburo Standing Committee include: Li Qiang, who worked under Xi when they were local officials in Zhejiang province; Ding Xuexiang, a senior aide to Xi; and Cai Qi, the party secretary of Beijing whose ties to Xi go back decades.

They took up posts on the Standing Committee that were vacated when four officials retired, including Premier Li Keqiang, who in theory could have stayed on the committee under informal age rules. Hu Chunhua, once seen as a potential next premier, was not in the seven-member Standing Committee nor even in the wider, 24-member Politburo, meaning that he had been demoted.

The unveiling of China’s new leaders came after a weeklong Communist Party congress at which Xi emphasized his view that China had to bolster its security against a range of threats: political, economic, social, military and technological.

The membership of the new Politburo — the second tier of party power — reflected the priority he has attached to addressing such risks.

Its two dozen members include two commanders who serve as Xi’s vice chairmen on the Central Military Commission, including Gen. Zhang Youxia, 72, who has stayed in office past the usual retirement age. The minister of state security, Chen Wenqing, also joined the Politburo, suggesting that he will take up a powerful role in domestic security.

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“National security and the party’s political security is clearly a higher priority than achieving high rates of economic growth,” said Drew Thompson, a researcher at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore.

Several provincial and regional leaders who have risen from the country’s space and science sectors also joined, indicating that they are being prepared for bigger roles. They include Yuan Jiajun, party secretary of Zhejiang province, who once oversaw China’s manned space program.

Some of Xi’s most immediate challenges lie in the economy, with the housing market sinking, exports stalling and debt rising. Xi tried to reassure. “China’s economy is resilient, has ample potential and has ample room for maneuver,” he said.