Predicting the outcome of China's upcoming leadership succession has become a popular parlor game in certain Washington circles. But a focus on power plays in Beijing misses the real story: China is facing a hidden crisis of governance. Whoever they are, the new leaders will have to deal with a failing state, an ailing party apparatus, and rising social tensions if they wish to sustain China's economic growth.
Minxin Pei, Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, is completing a book titled China's Trapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy.
MORE THAN MUSICAL CHAIRS
Predicting the outcome of China's upcoming leadership succession has become a popular parlor game in certain Washington circles. The curiosity aroused by the transition is understandable, given the huge stakes involved for the world's largest country. If all goes well, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is scheduled to select a new and younger leadership at its Sixteenth Party Congress this fall. The incumbent CCP general secretary, 76-year-old Jiang Zemin, may step down and be replaced by China's Vice President Hu Jintao, who is 59. The all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee will see most of its members retire, as will the important Central Committee. In addition, Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji is to step down in March, and Li Peng, the leader of the National People's Congress (the country's legislature), may be heading for the exit as well.
In a country ruled largely by man, not law, succession creates rare opportunities for political intrigue and policy change. Thus, speculation is rife about the composition, internal rivalries, and policy implications of a post-Jiang leadership. The backgrounds of those expected to ascend to the top unfortunately reveal little. By and large, the majority of new faces are technocrats. Some have stellar resumes but thin records; other front-runners boast solid experience as provincial party bosses but carry little national clout.
In any case, conjectures about the immediate policy impact of the pending leadership change are an exercise in futility, because Jiang will likely wield considerable influence even after his semiretirement. A truly dominant new leader may not emerge in Beijing for another three to five years. And regardless of the drama that the succession process might provide, a single-minded focus on power plays in Beijing misses the real story: China is facing a hidden crisis of governance. This fact ought to preoccupy those who believe that much more is at stake in Beijing than a game of musical chairs.
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Communist China's drive for major power status-an urge to narrow the gap between herself and the two superpowers-has been the central objective of her campaign for economic development. In pursuit of this goal, Chinese planners have concentrated on expanding as rapidly as possible the country's capacity to produce capital goods and military matériel. For this purpose, a mechanism for institutionalizing a high rate of involuntary saving and for channeling it into the desired lines of investment had to be fashioned.
Over the past decade, China's leaders have pursued rapid economic reform while stifling political change. The result today is a rigid state that is unable to cope with an increasingly organized, complex, and robust society. China's next generation of leaders, set to take office in 2002-3, will likely respond to this dilemma by accelerating political reform -- unless a new cold war with the United States intervenes.
Washington need not worry about China's economic boom, much less respond with protectionism. Although China controls more of the world's exports than ever before, its high-return high-tech industries are dominated by foreign companies. And Chinese firms will not displace them any time soon: Beijing's one-party politics have bred a timid business culture that prevents domestic firms from developing key technologies and keeps them dependent on the West.
