by Chow Chung-yan in South China Morning Post, Oct 25, 2017
The list of new faces who are set to join China’s supreme political body, the seven-member Politburo Standing Committee, underscores President Xi Jinping’s desire for continuity and consensus-building, but it also prepares the ground for greater changes in the future.
After months of intense discussion, the ruling Communist Party is ready to unveil the top leadership group for the next five years at 11.45am today in Beijing. The South China Morning Post will provide live coverage.
Ahead of the official announcement, the Post can exclusively reveal the likely line-up of the committee. Five out of the seven present committee members will be replaced.
President Xi Jinping, whose status has been elevated to new heights after his name was enshrined in the party’s charter yesterday, will stay and he will retain Premier Li Keqiang as his number two.
If these predictions are correct, they may surprise some China watchers as they had expected Xi, as the most powerful leader in China for decades, to introduce more drastic changes:
● No putative successor to Xi is likely to be named. Guangdong party chief Hu Chunhua – the widely tipped successor – and the president’s protégé, Chongqing party chief Chen Miner, are both likely to be missing from the Politburo Standing Committee. Instead, they will join the Politburo, which is one rank lower.
● Wang Qishan, the feared anti-graft tsar and Xi’s trusted ally, has stepped down from the standing committee. This is confirmed as his name did not appear in the list of the new Central Committee members released yesterday – Politburo members must be on the list. Chinese media had widely expected Xi to break an unwritten retirement-age rule to retain Wang.
● Xi’s chief of staff Li Zhanshu will not take over from Wang, as many have thought. He is now most likely to head the country’s parliament – the National People’s Congress – as the country’s number three.
● Party organisation chief Zhao Leji is almost certain to be the new anti-graft chief – a move partly confirmed yesterday after his name appeared on the list of new staff of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.
● Shanghai party boss Han Zheng is tipped to take over the top political advisory body, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.
● The party’s chief theorist, Wang Huning, is likely to win promotion to the power apex – even though many have deemed him to be too “academic”. He will be in charge of ideology, propaganda and party organisation. His fellow scholar-politician, Liu He, will take over from Wang to provide ideological support, against earlier predictions that he would become a vice-premier.
● Vice-premier Wang Yang will also win promotion and will help Li Keqiang to run the State Council – China’s cabinet.
So what do these unexpected changes signal?
● Xi, for all his power and prestige, still values political norms and continuity. The new line-up, if confirmed, shows that he is careful not to break the age rule and to follow the order of seniority. These political norms are critical for the 89-million member Communist Party to have consensus at the top and maintain stability.
● But Xi is also not blindly following the established path. He has made a decision with far-reaching consequences in not naming a clear-cut successor and promoting his choice to the Politburo Standing Committee. This opens the way for China to rethink its power transition mechanism and to give several possible candidates time to prove themselves. The breakaway from the designated successor system introduced by paramount leader Deng Xiaoping is a highlight of this leadership reshuffle.
● By putting Li Zhanshu – his most trusted ally – as head of the National People’s Congress and Zhao Leji, the youngest among the seven, as the anti-graft chief, Xi has signalled a desire to further institutionalise the party and state power. Li could help Xi push for legal reform that will clarify grey areas in the legal system and enhance the party’s governance through legal means. Zhao, with his background in personnel arrangements, can introduce more systematic changes to anti-graft work.
● The elevation of Wang Huning and Liu He, if confirmed, would signal the pressing need for the president to craft new theoretical support for his reform programmes, which is different from the western understanding of liberalism. The president will restructure the party and the state to improve efficiency, tighten discipline and guard against the influx of western ideas.
Changes at the state level, such as who will head the NPC or the CPPCC, will only be announced early next year.
Other than the Politburo Standing Committee line-up, the changes of personnel at two little known but influential departments will also be important. The party’s general office and the central secretariat – its nerve centre in charge of day-to-day operations – will also change leaders.www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/2116838/what-xi-jinpings-choices-his-new-leadership-team-show
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