Editors note: This is a translated and edited version of an article originally posted at Singapore’s Lianhe Zaobao (联合早报). The article is a forecast of who will become the new members of the Politburo Standing Committee in the political succession that will take place during the 2012 National Congress meeting. The author, Zheng Yongnian explains the logic behind his predictions, and discusses the necessity of electing younger officials, as well as the new social problems that the next generation of China’s leadership will have to deal with.

Members of the Last Politburo Standing Committee

In the fall of 2012, the Communist Party of China (CPC) will convene the 18th National Congress. During this meeting, the next generation of China’s top leadership will be elected. The Politburo Standing Committee, China’s highest political body, which makes major policy decisions for the government, will elect nine new members. The Secretary General (currently Hu Jintao) and the Premier (currently Wen Jiabao) are chosen from these nine Standing Committee members. The new Standing Committee members are expected to be chosen from the 25-member Politburo, which is the second highest political body in the CPC. Suffice it to say, this political succession process has piqued the attention of a lot of people and evoked many guesses as to who these new Standing Committee members will be.  

While many believe that China's leadership succession process is "shrouded in mystery" and completely opaque, there are scholars out there who believe that the methodology behind political succession in China, particularly at in the top leadership positions, has actually become quite systematic and relatively predictable. In the build up to the next National Congress, the shortlist for the new Politburo Standing Committee members is pretty clear – of the nine open seats, there are at least five whose future occupants are pretty much sure-fire bets.  

"Seven up, eight down" and order of hierarchical ascension

Dr. Zheng Yongnian, head of the East Asian Institute at the National University of Singapore believes that we can predict who the next nine members of the Politburo Standing Committee will be by applying two unofficial rules: "seven up, eight down" and order of hierarchical ascension.

In a nutshell, the "seven up, eight down" rule states that candidates will be allowed to keep office as long as they are 67 years old or younger in the first year of their new term. Candidates who are 68 years or older are ineligible to seek re-election and must retire. This rule appears to have been followed during last two National Congress sessions, and there is no evidence suggesting that it will not be used this time as well.  Likewise, the "order of hierarchical ascension" states that candidates are generally promoted one step at a time through the hierarchy of the Chinese political system and rarely skip steps, i.e., you don’t go from mayor of small rural village to mayor of Beijing overnight.

On July 12, at the "FutureChina Global Forum", Dr. Zheng stated that, according to this "seven up, eight down" rule, and factoring in that the CPC almost always follows the strict hierarchy of the political system when promoting officials, it is almost certain that Xi Jinping (who is 58) will be the next Secretary General, and Li Keqiang (who is 56) will be the next Premier. Incidentally, one of the few times that the CPC has broken this hierarchy "rule" in recent years was when Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang were picked from the Central Committee to be part of the Politburo Standing Committee, effectively skipping the Politburo Committee step of the process.

Dr. Zheng believes that applying these two rules, we can determine with some degree of certainty that there are nine people currently vying for the remaining seven Politburo Standing Committee seats (the Secretary General and Premier are the other two members). Of the 25 Politburo members currently serving on the CPC Central Committee, there are only nine members who will not be 68 or older for next year’s new National Congress: Vice Premier Wang Qishan (63), Central Propaganda Minister Liu Yunshan (64), State Council member Liu Yandong (66), CPC Central Committee Organizational Department Minister Li Yuanchao (61), Guangdong Party Secretary Wang Yang (56), Tianjin Party Secretary Zhang Gaoli (65), Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang (65), Shanghai Party Secretary Yu Zhengsheng (66), and Chongqing Party Secretary Bo Xilai (62).

And, as China’s political circles highly value a strong record of service, Dr. Zheng believes that, Yu Zhengsheng, Liu Yunshang and Zhang Dejiang, who are all two-term Politburo members, are highly probable candidates for the Politburo Standing Committee. The remaining six Politburo members have all served one-term, and according to Dr. Zheng have all "proven themselves as viable candidates". Therefore, each has an equal chance at winning one of the remaining four Standing Committee seats.

No room left for a "strongman" in the current political system

After the forum, addressing criticisms of his belief that the new generation of China’s leadership will only be selected from these nine candidates, Dr. Zheng commented, "The ‘political strongman’ way of politics was predominant during Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping's eras. This "strongman" relied on their individual willpower to quickly ascend the political ranks; no strongman wanted to rely on the system itself. Now that relying on the established political system is so important in China [following the rules of "Seven up, eight down" and order of hierarchical ascension], it is unlikely that the strongman of the past will reemerge." Dr. Zheng also noted that, if the CPC elected a "dark horse" candidate to the Politburo Standing Committee, it would upset the country’s political stability, so it is highly unlikely it would do so. For this reason, we should assume that the new leadership will be chosen from these nine Politburo members. 

Younger Standing Committee members

Originally, the Politburo Standing Committee only had five members, after that it increased to seven members, and now it has nine members. Recently, some analysts have speculated that it will soon increase to eleven members. But Dr. Zheng doesn’t really care about the number of members on the Politburo Standing Committee. He is more interested in the age of the members, hoping that today’s "seven up, eight down" will become "six up, seven down" and so on. Dr. Zhang noted: "The trend of selecting younger high officials is inevitable; every country does this. But whether or not China will follow suit with next year’s National Congress we do not know."

There is a wide-held belief that electing younger high officials is the only way to effectively resolve China’s new and complicated social problems, hold the people’s trust, and maintain political legitimacy – all major challenges the next generation of China’s leadership will be faced with.

Another speaker at the FutureChina Global Forum concurs with Dr. Zhang’s comments. University of Hong Kong China Media Research Project Director Qian Gang believes that with Weibo, Twitter and other similar platforms becoming immensely popular in China, the Internet has become "a market for freedom of expression", often serving as the main source for news for many people. In a society where there is an overflow of information, its distribution is difficult to control, and social problems will become known much more rapidly than before. Therefore, the CPC must find ways to better address these new social problems and work with the new system.

The future of political reform

But not everyone is convinced that China’s leadership is ready to confront these new social problems. Professor Huang Jing of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore believes that China's leadership currently lacks confidence in itself to elect younger, more reform-minded Politburo Standing Committee Members.

Not to say that Huang Jing believes that a "Jasmine Revolution" will happen in China (he doesn’t), but regardless, he seems to think that the CPC is quite nervous about these developments in the Middle East, and is therefore holding back on political reforms. China must wait until its leadership regains this confidence in itself to see new reforms carried out. And especially at a time when the current leadership is going to make way for the next generation, the outside pressure on the CPC is getting bigger; so for the time being, the new leadership will probably be more reluctant to change.
 

Source: zaobao.com
 

Related links
Who Will Be the Next Chinese Leaders? Speculations about Successors
Hu, What, Where, Wen – a Quick Guide to the NPC & CPPCC
China’s Next Five-Year Plan: 10 Things that Can be Improved

Warning：The use of any news and articles published on eChinacities.com without written permission from eChinacities.com constitutes copyright infringement, and legal action can be taken.

Keywords: China 2012 National Congress forecasting China’s next leadership next Politburo Standing Committee China 2012 political succession