The Chinese Communist Party and Its Emerging Next-Generation Leaders

The China Rising Leaders Project, Part 1:

John Dotson

• The 18 th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), expected to convene sometime in autumn 2012, will inaugurate a major leadership transition in China. On the Standing Committee of the CCP Politburo, the executive committee that serves as the highest decision-making body in China, seven of nine incumbent Members are expected to retire.
• Of the remaining 16 Members of the full Politburo, another seven are expected to retire. 
• If the transfer takes place without incident, it will represent the first leadership transition not set in place by powerful officials of the CCP’s revolutionary generation. 
• It will also mark the increasing institutionalization of offices at the top ranks of the Party, and signify the Party’s success in formalizing its procedures for leadership turnover.
• The rising officials expected to assume the top posts in the new hierarchy – the “Fifth Generation” leadership of the Communist Party – will be the first to have spent their entire lives in the People’s Republic, and to have passed most of their adult lives in the post-Mao era of social and economic reform. 
• Many, however, have faced formative experiences in the more harrowing chapters of recent Chinese history, to include many who suffered directly as a result of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). 
• Unlike a majority of officials in the CCP’s current circle of senior leaders – who were generally trained as engineers –the rising generation of CCP leaders tend to have backgrounds in the social sciences, and to be educated at a higher level than their predecessors.
• Despite increasing institutionalization, patron-client ties and personal connections are still the coin of the realm in CCP politics, and the Fifth Generation figures are largely grouped into two broad factions.

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Series Introduction

A sea change is quietly underway in Chinese politics. 

The 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), expected to convene in autumn 2012, will mark only the second transition of power since the death of paramount leader Deng Xiaoping – and it will be the first one not set in place by Deng’s own unrivalled authority. 

The 2012 transition to a “Fifth Generation” of Party leadership will test both the procedures for orderly succession established by the CCP over the past two decades, as well as the ability of the Party’s senior ranks to overcome factional divides and coalesce under a new collective leadership. 

In exchanges kept behind closed doors and out of the public eye, jockeying and negotiations among institutional interests; factional and patronage networks; contending ideologies; and powerful personalities are shaping up the leadership ranks for the rising generation of leaders that will guide China’s course well into the 2020s.  

In this critical period, the views and policy preferences of these rising leaders will have tremendous influence on the character of China’s emergence as a great power. 

The CCP cadres on track to assume senior positions in 2012 and beyond come from a variety of backgrounds, but tend to have a number of factors in common: they are better educated than their predecessors; they have all gained experience in  provincial government administration; and arguably have outlooks that are more technocratic and less ideological than earlier generations of CCP leaders. 

A disproportionate number are also “princelings,” the children of prominent revolutionary-era Communist officials. Whatever their individual background, however, all share a commitment to maintaining and strengthening the unchallenged ruling status of the Chinese Communist Party. 

This political transition within the CCP is taking shape as other factors affect the emergence of new leadership cadres in the Party’s armed forces: the four branches of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). 

The officers now emerging into the senior flag ranks of the PLA have fundamental differences with China’s military leaders of the revolutionary generation, in that they are better educated, less directly involved in domestic politics, and more professionally and technically oriented. 

However, they have also never had the experience of actual warfighting, leaving questions as to their preparedness to match theory to practice in modern warfare. Many of them also display sharply nationalistic attitudes, and a deep suspicion of the United States.

Leadership changes at the top are also occurring as new trends are changing the relationships between the Party leadership and state-owned industry. As the Chinese government maintains control over a number of “strategic” and “heavyweight” economic sectors, and as state-owned enterprises (SOEs) still constitute the majority of China’s gross domestic product (GDP), the management of state-owned industry remains one of the Party’s highest priorities. 

Additionally, a number of larger SOEs have come to occupy prominent roles as “national champions” whose operations are closely tied to state policy goals. Over the past decade, a clear pattern has emerged of senior officials from prominent SOEs moving back-and-forth between corporate management and senior-level positions in government administration, thereby blurring the line between the party-state and the business world.

This series of papers will seek to identify the rising figures in the CCP bureaucracy, the military, and the state-owned economy who appear to be on track to assume positions of increased authority after the 18 th CCP Party Congress and in the years to follow. It will also examine the social, political, and economic trends involved in the Party’s selection of cadres for higher leadership posts, and analyze the likely policy implications for the United States

The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission

China Rising Leaders Project Research Report Series

 Part 1: The Chinese Communist Party and Its Emerging Next-Generation Leaders (March 2012)

 Part 2: China’s Emerging Leaders in the People’s Liberation Army 
(forthcoming June 2012)

 Part 3: China’s Emerging Leaders in State-Controlled Industry 
(forthcoming August 2012)