PEOPLE BEHIND XI JINPING AS KINGMAKERS

After Xi Jinping came to power, he began to strengthen national security and used this logic to rule China. The negative effect of his approach is the massive withdrawal of foreign investment and the economic recession. In addition, the concentration of political power has resulted in dictatorship and a lack of transfer of information. As a result, he can be called as the chief reverser (总倒车师), because the Xi Jinping era seems to have repeated the characteristics of the Brezhnev stagnation era in the Soviet Union.

In the early 1980s, the top leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had the so-called third echelon succession plan. One of its characteristics was asking the families of the national leaders to select their children as potential successors of the people in power and facilitate their path to officialdom by helping them acquire the experience needed and become promoted. For example, Deng Xiaoping recommended his son Chen Yuan, Bo Yibo recommended his son Bo Xilai, and Xi Zhongxun recommended his son Xi Jinping. In the early 1980s, Xi Jinping was selected to move to Ding County, Hebei Province, and serve as the county party committee secretary. Obviously, that was a formal process. The Xi family only hoped to give Xi Jinping all the qualifications to gain grassroots experience, but more importantly, continue to be promoted. Xi Jinping’s mother even wrote a letter to Gao Yang, the First Secretary of Hebei Province, hoping that Gao would take care of her son and promote him. However, Gao Yang was an honest person, and Xi Jinping’s political performance in Zhengxian County was not good, so he was not willing to promote Xi Jinping, a representative of the second red generation.

The Xi family once again arranged for Xi Jinping to serve as the deputy mayor of Xiamen through their relationship with Xiang Nan, the Secretary of the Fujian Provincial Party Committee. However, similarly, Xi Jinping’s political performance and reputation in Xiamen were not good either. In 1986, Xiang Nan stepped down because of the counterfeit drug case he was involved in. Following that, it was Jia Qinglin, the Deputy Secretary of the Fujian Provincial Party Committee and later the Secretary, who took care of Xi Jinping. That was the earliest connection between Xi Jinping and Jiang Zemin’s faction.

Xi Jinping has had decades of experience in officialdom. After Xi took on the role of General Secretary, he promoted people who had experience working with him. First, Li Qiang, Premier of the State Council, was mainly Xi Jinping’s Secretary-General during his time in Zhejiang. During the COVID-19 period, Li Qiang was in Shanghai to implement Xi Jinping’s zero-clearance (清零) policy and enforced the lockdown of Shanghai, which led to the decline of Shanghai’s economy. Cai Qi worked with Xi Jinping in Fujian and Zhejiang, and they shared close ties. Cai Qi’s most controversial action as the Secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee was the expulsion of the “low-end populations” (低端人口), namely the demolition of dwellings and expulsion of migrant workers, in which Xi Jinping participated. Ding Xuexiang, who worked with Xi Jinping in Shanghai and was the former director of the General Office of the CPC Central Committee, played an important role. Li Zhanshu and Xi Jinping worked together in Hebei, and Li Zhanshu also served as the director of the CCP’s General Office. Li Zhanshu recently became the focus of attention after being photographed by reporters as he was apparently scolded by Xi Jinping at the National People’s Congress meeting in March of this year. Wang Huning was placed in the role of a consultant and an advisor and has a distant relationship with Xi Jinping.

The main scenario of the succession of power plan has been that Xi Jinping will gradually select the successor of the General Secretary after 2030. I think Cai Qi, Li Qiang and others mentioned earlier are unlikely to be the candidates. First, they are quite old and none of them will be suitable to serve as the General Secretaries in ten years. Second, these type of political officials have been working in the officialdom for a long time. The party has many members and complicated relationships, which are difficult for Xi Jinping to control. Finally, these officials lack professional training in various disciplines, especially science and engineering. To put it simply, they may help Xi Jinping in his political struggle, but they are unable to govern China. 

Therefore, in a normal transfer-of-power scenario, technocrats may have an advantage. They have the ability to develop the national science and technology, and their relationships and backgrounds are relatively simple, so they pose less of a threat to Xi Jinping’s status. For example, these future politicians major in science and technology, and three of them graduated from Tsinghua University, except Yuan Jiajun. Take Chen Jining, for example. He received a rigorous Western scientific education. He was hired by the Tsinghua University in 1998 and promoted to the president in 2013. In 2015, through the recommendation of Chen Xi, the head of the Organisational Department and also a Tsinghua alumnus, Chen Jining was promoted to the Minister of the Department of Environmental Protection and officially entered officialdom. He was promoted to the Mayor of Beijing in 2017. In other words, it is quite incredible that he was promoted to the Mayor of Beijing two years after entering officialdom. Previous mayors, such as Meng Xuenong, Liu Qi, or Guo Jinlong, all served for no less than 25 years in the local positions to the Mayor of Beijing. Therefore, Xi Jinping must have supported Chen Jining in his career. Although Yin Yong, the current Mayor of Beijing, has not yet been elected as a member of the Politburo, he is only 55 years old and deserves attention in the future. 

The second scenario is that if Xi Jinping has major health problems before 2030, that will cause chaos and instability in the Zhongnanhai’s political system. The three current core Xi faction members, including Cai Qi, Li Qiang, and Ding Xuexiang, will try to compete for power. Moreover, this is a zerosum competition, and a coup may occur when Xi Jinping is too weak to control political affairs.

These remarks were presented by Dr. Wen-Hsuan Tsai at Global Conference for New Sinology (GCNS), 2024