Rejected titles included “Profiles in Courage”, “The Outcome of the Chinese Election” and “Seven Guys Named Mao”. Unfortunately, the seven members of the Politburo Standing Committee (PSC)- China’s highest governing body- aren’t truly elected, didn’t get where they are through great personal courage and are not all named Mao, even if 6 of the 7 did attend the Party Congress in identical suits with identical red ties.
Despite all this, they will almost certainly have more impact on the world in the next 5 years than any other world leader besides Barack Obama (and quite possibly more than him). It would make sense to know a bit about them, right? So read on, and become informed.
For the past 10 years, the head of the PSC and General Secretary of the Communist Party- the head honcho, the big cheese, etc etc- has been Hu Jintao. Before that, it was Jiang Zemin. The Chinese have a mandatory retirement age for PSC members, but it doesn’t prevent anyone pulling strings behind the scenes. A majority of the new PSC are seen as being Jiang’s guys, not Hu’s guys, even though Hu has had 10 years to consolidate power. Hu is regarded as having been a bit more open to reform than Jiang (“reform” in the context of China basically means “more open to capitalism and democracy”, although this is relative), and so there’s been some knee-jerk reactions about China’s leadership becoming more conservative (which in the context of China means more censorship, less political freedom and less economic freedom).
An examination of the track records of these guys, however, suggests that the knee-jerk response will be spot on when it comes down to cracking down on dissidents and corruption but that the new PSC will actually be very supportive of Chinese entrepreneurship… as long as it doesn’t do bribes or sloppy safety standards where it will embarrass China in front of the neighbours.
Secondly, there is a very strong theme of this PSC being made up of “princelings”- sons (and they are all sons, although there are now 2 women on the wider 25-person Politburo, doubling the previous total of 1: progress!) of famous party leaders and generals. The families Kennedy, Gore, Bush and Romney would feel right at home here. The Chinese are definitely getting the hang of US-style capitalist government.
Thirdly, there are two oddities here which could point to a succession plan of some kind. The PSC has been reduced from 9 men under Hu to 7 men now, which conveniently ducks the problem of the next 2 highest profile leaders being “reformers” and also of promoting more people ahead of them and publically snubbing them. All the PSC members except for new leader Xi Jinliang and new #2 Li Kequiang will have to retire at the next party congress in 5 years due to the mandatory retirement age. There is a plausible argument that the backroom compromise was 5 more years of consolidation under more conservative policies, and then the younger more reform-minded guys get in.
Without further ado, then, the 7 members of the new Chinese leadership:
Xi Jinping
Xi would be a magnificent US Presidential candidate. The son of Mao Zedong’s earliest cabinet ministers, for 7 years as a young man he lived in a cave in a remote rural district when his father fell out of favour during the Cultural Revolution; the Chinese equivalent of living in a log cabin. Xi frequently uses this experience to claim he understands the common peasant in Main Field (then his father got his job back and Xi went straight back into a life of privilege and jobs on a platter, but at least his hardship was more genuine than needing to sell part of his share portfolio).
Until a few years ago he was more famous for being the husband of a Chinese folk singer than for politics, and to some extent he seems to owe his rise to being a competent but un-threatening compromise candidate not tied to either Hu or Jiang. He has held top positions in two of the more economically dynamic provinces in China before becoming party boss of Shanghai in 2007 (which, it goes without saying, is at the heart of “capitalism with Chinese characteristics”), from where he was propelled into the highest ranks of government.
His daughter attended Harvard. Yes, that Harvard. Like most top Chinese officials, his public speeches are heavy on general ideals such as fighting corruption, but short on giving away his policy preferences. Like I said, he’d make a great US Presidential candidate, especially as he seems to have a certain talent for appearing warm and human at public appearances (something that evaded Hu Jintao). There are good reasons to believe he will try to continue down the general path of mild reforms and speedy economic growth promoted by Hu.
Li Kequiang
The new Premier of China (the #2 role, despite the title) is probably the most “liberal” member of the PSC. He is not a princeling, and he is most definitely Hu Jintao’s guy. Along with Xi, the only PSC member young enough to serve for more than the next 5 years.
Li grew up as a peasant, got the opportunity to go to university in Beijing after the Cultural Revolution (by being a diligent young Communist Party member), and studied law. He translated into Mandarin “The Due Process of Law” by the famous British Lord Denning, Master of the Rolls of the House of Lords but became a full time political player, ending up on the secretariat of the Communist Party Youth League (then run by Hu) before becoming (in 1998) the youngest provincial governor in China. Publically cultivates a friendly, governing-by-consensus image but you can’t become Premier of China by being Mr Nice behind closed doors. Still, Li at least appears to be one of the best hopes for reform-minded Chinese on this new PSC.
Zhang Dejiang
From the law-translating liberal to the economist who literally studied at the University of Kim Il Sung in Pyongyang, North Korea. The #3 member of the PSC is being reported everywhere as the “troubleshooter” because it was he who took over from the disgrace Bo Xilai as the boss of Chongqing province: Bo Xilai being the guy whose wife murdered a Westerner and who turned out to be massively corrupt, having previously been regarded as a serious candidate for the PSC himself. The North Korean connection and the fact that he is a Jiang Zemin protégé cast him as a conservative but he spent 5 years recently as boss of Guangdong province, the province which faces Hong Kong and contains the Shenzhen economic zone (home to high tech manufacturers such as Foxconn, makers of iPhones), the most populous province in China and one of the richest. He doesn’t seem to have done anything to crack down there on private business there, and the current boss of Guangdong province, Wang Yang, is the highest profile “reform” leader in the Politburo. Nonetheless, insiders say Zhang is in favour of state-owned enterprises and heavy censorship and repression, so while he might not do anything to raise the price of iPhones I wouldn’t rely on him to float China’s currency any time soon. Oh, and he’s also the son of a General of the Red Army.
Yu Zhengsheng
Yu has a very interesting story. He’s a princeling. However, his elder brother defected to the United States in the 80s and exposed China’s best mole in the CIA, so it’s pretty surprising that he wasn’t locked away forever just to be safe or out of spite or something, which probably speaks to his political skills and how connected he and his father were. Nonetheless, it took him out of the top political circles for a decade or so. He’s the current Shanghai party boss and is seen as a slight reformer (in part thanks to Wikileaks, which revealed diplomatic cables where Yu displayed concerns over environmental issues and sustainable development, and partly due to his role in promoting the export of Chinese brands such as Tsingtao Beer into Western markets) but he also has a lot of connections to Jiang Zemin, so it’s hard to say for sure what his game really is.
It would be hilarious, of course, if he turns out to be a turncoat like his brother and has been spying for the CIA all this time.
Liu Yunshan
Liu is the head of the propaganda department now, and is expected to oversee propaganda, censorship, information control and so forth now that he is on the PSC.
Despite Liu being the chief of sticking fingers into the leaky dam which is China’s “great firewall”, Liu’s son is a wealthy private-equity investor, Liu is a Hu Jintao man and is not a princeling (he actually began his working life as a working journalist before ending up in propaganda) so there’s plenty of signs that he would support a more reformist agenda as long as it doesn’t include freedom of speech.
Wang Qishan
The best-known of the PSC members to the Western diplomatic community, since he has spent a lot of time leading negotiation teams for economic treaties and agreements and the like, as well as spending several years as head of the China Construction Bank. He also became Mayor of Beijing in 2004 at the height of the SARS epidemic and won plaudits at home and abroad for his cooperation with the World Health Organization and humane policies. He is a princeling and married to a princessling too. Despite or perhaps because of his suspiciously Western capitalist resume, seems to make a point of being a conservative nationalist (whether this is true or just for domestic consumption, well, your guess is as good as mine).
Zhang Gaoli
Little is known about Zhang Gaoli’s views. He was party boss of the aforementioned Shenzhen in 1998, suggesting he presided over early stages of Shenzhen’s entrepreneurial boom, but since then has moved into larger roles (provincial vice-governor and governor) in less visible regions of China. Like Zhang Dejiang, his last role before this was as a “troubleshooter”, moving “down” to being the city boss of the city of Tianjin to clean up a corruption scandal. He is understood to be a Jiang Zemin ally, and so is assumed to be generally conservative.
So there you have it. The 7 men who control China and who scare the bejeesus out of a bunch of conservative old men in America… ironic, eh?
Image: Flickr
