Contact is taking a holiday!

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JEREMY PAGE  (Wall Street Journal)  updated Nov. 12, 2013 2:53 p.m. ET

BEIJING—China’s Communist Party plans to establish a new state security committee that analysts say will potentially enhance President Xi Jinping’s powers, cementing his hold on the military, domestic security and foreign policy in ways that eluded his recent predecessors.

The establishment of the committee, which analysts said would work like the U.S. National Security Council, was one of few concrete measures released Tuesday after a policy meeting of the party’s Central Committee, composed of its top 376 leaders.

The move further casts Mr. Xi as China’s most individually powerful leader since Deng Xiaoping, who oversaw China’s market-oriented reforms in 1978 and remained paramount leader until his death in 1997, analysts said.

 Mr. Xi, who took power a year ago, has already set himself apart from China’s last two presidents by quickly establishing his authority over the military and launching unusually lengthy and intense campaigns to fight corruption and enforce ideological orthodoxy in the party.

The new body, which he is almost certain to head, will likely allow him to coordinate foreign and defense policy with less interference from fellow members of the seven-man Politburo Standing Committee—the top decision-making body.

That could help ease relations with the U.S. Washington has often cited a lack of consensus among leaders and absence of communication between the Chinese military and other agencies as obstacles to improving discussions on security and management of maritime disputes in Asia.

The new body could also give Mr. Xi greater control over China’s domestic security services, which grew extremely powerful over the past few years under the supervision of Zhou Yongkang, the internal security chief who retired last year.

“I think this is huge. They’ve been talking about this forever and Xi Jinping has gone and done it in his first year in office,” said Christopher Johnson, a former CIA China analyst now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington D.C.

“He’s showing that he controls all the levers of power.”

A communiqué released Tuesday said the new committee would “improve the national security system and national security strategy to ensure national security.” It gave no further details.

Two Chinese experts on international relations and security said it would likely be modeled on the NSA and headed by Mr. Xi with representatives from the military, the foreign ministry and intelligence agencies.

“China’s external relations and its domestic situation have both become more complicated,” said Jin Canrong, an international relations expert at Renmin University in Beijing.

“Domestic agencies have become more and more fragmented and need more coordination,” he said. “Another reason is that the new leader’s political position is stronger than his predecessor.”

He and other experts said the idea was first proposed in the 1980s and that Jiang Zemin, who was party chief from 1989 to 2002, had tried to establish one in the 1990s. That failed largely because of resistance from the military and from other members of the Politburo Standing Committee who wanted to maintain their say in foreign and security policy, Chinese experts said.

Opponents also argued it would overlap with existing party bodies.

“I think Xi Jinping is now all powerful,” said Shi Yinhong, another international relations expert at Renmin University. “He’ll have more power than previous leaders to conduct foreign policy and security affairs.”

Some experts said the body would likely focus on domestic security to a greater extent than its U.S. counterpart. China’s security agencies play a key role in suppressing political dissent and controlling separatist movements in the far western regions of Xinjiang and Tibet.

Its remit will depend on membership, experts say, including who takes the position beneath Mr. Xi on the body and whether that person has a similarly powerful role to the U.S. National Security Adviser.

They said one leading candidate is Wang Huning, a former international relations scholar who has headed the party’s powerful Central Policy Research Office since 2002 and was promoted last year to the Politburo – the party’s top 25 leaders.

Another candidate named by analysts is Meng Jianzhu, a Politburo member and former police chief who now heads a party body that oversees the police, judiciary and intelligence agencies.

“The problem has been stove-piping in the bureaucracy – A didn’t know what B was doing,” said Mr. Johnson of CSIS. “That was a problem back in the day, but didn’t matter as much as it does now because it didn’t have such global implications. They have to have a better coordinated system.”

China’s foreign and security policies have been influenced by an increasingly diverse group of actors in recent years, including hawkish generals, large state-owned companies and leaders of export-oriented provinces.

Since 2000, the party has had a National Security Leading Small Group including military, foreign affairs and economic officials, but it has no regular meeting schedule, no fixed participant list and only a small research staff, experts say.

Under Mr. Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, that body also had limited clout because its office director was Dai Bingguo, China’s top diplomat at the time, who wasn’t a member of the Politburo and was outranked by the army’s top generals.

Mr. Dai’s successor, the former Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, is also not a member of the Politburo.