The results of a contentious and secretive leadership transition, standing before you
By T.P. | BEIJING
WITH ITS UNIQUE and mystifying blend of pageantry, ritual and secrecy, China’s ruling Communist Party Thursday morning revealed the identities of the seven officials it has chosen to lead the nation in the coming years.
Ending the tremendous suspense it has generated over the course of a politically tumultuous year, the party made public its newly selected Politburo Standing Committee by sending them striding, in order of seniority, across a red carpet and into the view of journalists and television cameras crowded into Beijing’s Great Hall of the People.
Leading the pack was Xi Jinping, 59, the party’s new general secretary. This much was no surprise. Since 2007, Mr Xi has been assiduously groomed and unambiguously tipped for the top job. The selection of the second-ranking figure, Li Keqiang, 57, was also widely expected.
But the makeup of the rest of this core group, and even its size, was the focus of intense factional infighting by contenders for top-level power, and the subject of fevered speculation by observers in China and around the world.
The other members of the standing committee are Zhang Dejiang, 65, a vice premier who this year also took on the job of Chongqing party boss (replacing the disgraced Bo Xilai, who fell in a spectacular political scandal); Yu Zhengsheng, 67, party boss of Shanghai; Liu Yunshan, 65, director of the party’s propaganda department; Wang Qishan, 64, a vice premier and former mayor of Beijing; and Zhang Gaoli, 65, party chief of the northern port city of Tianjin.
All the new members are men. The only woman in contention for a spot, Liu Yandong, was all along considered a dark-horse candidate and did not make the cut. The reduction from nine members to seven was expected, but far from certain until the announcement.
The new members are also heavily weighted towards the so-called “elitist” or “princeling” faction of the party. Only two of the seven members, Li Keqiang and Liu Yunshan, are identified with the party’s other main faction, which is seen as having a more populist bent.
These designations, however, are somewhat fuzzy and can only be taken as a rough guideline to the real contours of China’s top-level political landscape, and to the question of whether the new leadership tilts more towards conservatives or reformers. Factional lines are drawn not only over policy differences, but also on personal, regional, and patronage networks about which outsiders have only incomplete knowledge. But it does seem clear that Jiang Zemin, who left the top party job a decade ago, has managed to place many of his own protégéson the standing committee, and that the newly departed general secretary, Hu Jintao, came up with the shorter end of the stick.
What this new leadership group inherits is a country facing vast and daunting new challenges. Social and economic pressures are growing hand in hand. The global economic slowdown has been matched by declining growth in China. Public sentiment is ever more soured by growing inequality, persistent corruption, environmental degradation, and a sense that the party has lost touch with the lives of ordinary people.
In his speech introducing the new leadership, Mr Xi addressed these concerns directly, but with much the same sort of rhetoric the party has been using for years. In one important departure from recent practice, however Mr Xi was also named as head of the party’s powerful central military commission, also on November 15th. In the last leadership transition, Mr Jiang kept things a bit more muddled by waiting two years before relinquishing that job.
The announcement of new leaders came a day after the close of the party’s 18th National Congress, at which the outgoing Mr Hu gave his swansong address to the nation (in the form of a stultifying, jargon-laced 64-page speech). This autumn’s change of party leaders will be followed next March by the shifting of government positions. Mr Hu will retain his title as Chinese president until then, when Mr Xi is expected to take it over. At the same time, Li Keqiang is expected to take over from Wen Jiabao as premier.
