[ABSTRACT: Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, the heir apparent of Hu Jintao has risen to the elite levels of politics during the 17th Congress. Unlike Hu, who held the vice-chairmanship of the Central Military Commission before official succession, Xi currently holds no military official authority. In 2012 when Xi supposedly takes over the country and party leadership, will he face the same awkward predicament as Hu of not having access to the CMC full chairmanship? This paper analyzes the politics behind the power transfer from Jiang Zemin to Hu, and then applies the same analysis to the transition from Hu to Xi, based on known information of situational changes and character difference to make predictions about this new succession.]
Note: All points and researches stated in this paper are fully referenced. However, to prevent plagurism by scholars to conveniently just duplicate the sources without reference to this paper, the sources are all deleted. For a full version of this paper with full referencing, please email to info@contemporarychinalearning.com
Introduction
When Shanghai Gang leader Jiang Zemin passed the leadership baton to Hu Jintao in 2002, the transition was not complete as Jiang only passed the party and country leadership to Hu, and not the military one. This resulted inevitably in a paradoxical situation where Hu, while having the authentic authority over the country and party, could not efficiently leverage on the military for crucial affairs like SARS. As such, animosity supposedly developed between Jiang and Hu.
The purpose of this paper is to trace the underlying political development of this Jiang-Hu power handover transition, and then use the conclusion as a reference to predict the scenario of Hu handing over his power to his heir apparent Xi Jinping. This paper also specifically analyzes the aftermath of the full transfer of formal authority from Jiang to Hu, namely the fall of Jiang’s protégé Chen Liangyu and the political implications behind it. This is important as Hu’s action against Chen is seen as a response to Jiang’s imperfect power handover process; by inference, Hu will be able to implement a relatively better succession plan and to avoid the very imperfections that he saw and experienced with Jiang’s succession plans.
Flying the Red Flag to Beat the Red Flag
Power transition in a democracy is relatively more structural. The “rules of game” predetermine how the leaders are selected with legality. However, in a communist country like China, power transition is relatively less clear cut and transparent. One tactic in the political transition and struggle in China is known as “flying the red flag to beat the red flag”. As an example, during the Cultural Revolution, Mao Zedong clearly pointed out that there are people making use of Mao’s name to attack Mao.
At this point, it is interesting to note that Hu personally approved and launched the publication of Jiang Zemin Wen Xuan (“Jiang Xuan”) in August 2006. This served the following purposes from Hu to Jiang: (1) As an apparent present for Jiang’s coming 80th birthday; (2) To encourage the whole Chinese Communist Party (“CCP”) to learn from the Jiang Xuan and (3) to praise Jiang for being the originator of the Three Representatives.
The content in Jiang Xuan included much discussion on anti corruption, and that no matter who is involved in the corruption, investigation must carry on strictly, especially towards the involved parties’ own family members. Hu first approved the publication of Jiang Xuan, then announced the strict adherence to Jiang’s teachings to clean up corruption in Shanghai proactively. Such a move is seen as optimally concerted in the political sense, since Jiang should rightfully have no reason to interfere when Hu is endorsing the following of Jiang’s teachings.
However, only 40 days later, the core member of the Shanghai Gang Chen Liangyu was arrested. Chen was not only the Mayor of Shanghai City, and a Politburo member, he is also an important protégé of Jiang. With this, observers expressed surprise at Hu’s hitherto hidden political tactics as a reaction against the differences between Jiang and Hu.
The animosity between Hu and Jiang apparently began in 2002 during the 16th CCP Congress when Jiang relinquished his country and party leadership but not the Central Military Commission (“CMC”) chairmanship. As the selected fourth generation CCP leader by Deng Xiaoping, Hu has never been the desired successor of Jiang. Even though he received the top leadership positions for the country and party from Jiang, as Jiang refused to give up the CMC chairmanship, Hu has to remain satisfied as the vice chairman of CMC meanwhile. This ironical phenomenon is labeled by Joseph Fewsmith as “the succession that didn’t happen”. According to Jiang Xuan, the reason why Jiang did not relinquish his military role was because he was concerned that Hu had insufficient military experience then to be the chairman. This was of course viewed with cynicism as Jiang also had no prior military experience when Deng passed the baton to him in 1989.
At the same time, Hu was not endorsed by Jiang to become the official fourth generation core leader. In his book, Jiang emphasized that his position as the third generation core leader was not from himself but conferred upon by Deng. According to Deng:
Any collective leadership must have a core. Without a core, the leadership will not be reliable. The core of the first generation of leadership was Mao Zedong. Because Mao served as the core, the Communist Party did not collapse during the Cultural Revolution. The core of the second generation of leadership was myself. Due to this, the leadership of the party was not affected greatly by changes over party leadership two times (i.e. Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang). Instead, it was always stable. There also must be a core of the third generation of the leadership… Everyone has to defend this core, that is, comrade Jiang Zemin.
Jiang knew the importance of being appointed by the predecessor to have the credibility to be the core leader of the current generation. However, he did not confer the same status to Hu when he passed the party and country leadership to Hu. This is very significant for any feelings of animosity especially when Deng highlighted the importance of stability that comes with the core leadership. By refusing to confer the same to Hu, would there be any threats to the political stability of China, as according to Deng? Naturally, Jiang would not want such instability to take place. Another way to interpret his inaction is that without an official fourth generation core leader, then Jiang would still be the core leader for China especially since he still held on to military power. Or at least this will place him in a position similar to that of Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore as the Minister Mentor.
This inaction resulted in negative sentiments amongst the top leaders against Jiang. As a result, Hu had to utilize his political skills to establish himself as the core of the new leadership.
Power Dilemma during SARS
During spring in 2003, SARS erupted nationwide. In the process of fighting SARS, the split between the party and military became obvious. As the Beijing military hospital falls out of the scope of control of the government, both the Beijing government and even Hu (as the highest party leader in China) had no direct means to effect control over it. This was one of the main reasons that the conditions of SARS in Beijing was initially concealed and eventually erupted to an uncontrollable state.
The Health Minister (Brigadier General) Zhang Wen Kang, who is Jiang’s protégé, publicly declared that Beijing was safe from SARS. The general perception is that Jiang’s Shanghai Gang initially concealed the truth of the SARS condition in China, which resulted in the huge proliferation of the disease. As a result of the political struggle due to SARS, both Zhang and the Beijing City mayor Meng Xuenong were dismissed. It was indeed quite a surprise for Hu to adopt such drastic measures to remove two senior officials so suddenly and speedily as Hu was new and was always seen to be soft spoken.
Zhang is Jiang’s protégé, while Meng is Hu’s protégé. From the surface, it seems fair that both Hu and Jiang lost one important soldier. However, if we examine beyond the numbers, it could be analyzed that Hu benefited more from this firing activity. Jiang not only lost Zhang, he also lost much political mileage and support from the people and party in this SARS saga. This is also the first time in his political career that he failed to protect his own protégé. This not only affected the image of his political authority, but would have also caused alarm among his Shanghai Gang who would be thinking of the strength of Jiang as a political backing. On the other hand, Hu might have lost Meng, but in return he won support from the public and party and also much praises that he has the interest of the nation as the core of his objectives. It was also felt that Liu Qi, the party secretary for Beijing and also a politburo member, should be the one bearing responsibility, yet Meng became the scapegoat. This won for Hu more political mileage that he was willing to sacrifice his own soldier for the sake of the country. As such, while both Hu and Jiang lost one soldier each in the SARS saga, the truth is that Hu gained much political credentials as compared to Jiang’s decrease.
After more than two months of fighting against SARS, the situation in China was finally under control. Hu and Wen Jiabao’s cooperation with the international community and leadership in this case won international accreditation and raised their political status. In contrast, Jiang appears much more inferior as a leader of China. Hence, Jiang grabbed the opportunity during the visit of India’s Defense Minister to talk about, in his capacity as the chairman of CMC, how the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) contributed to the SARS fighting. While fighting the SARS was supported nationwide in China, Jiang’s highlighting of the PLA’s contribution was akin to highlighting his contribution to contain SARS, which will probably earn him more respect if left unsaid.
In May 2003, a navy submarine met with an accident in Dalian resulting in 70 deaths. Jiang capitalized on this opportunity to act as the leader in coordinating the investigation works, with Hu following behind. It’s crucial to note the following: (1) the position that one stands in public is always politically calculated and forms a very important informal politics; (2) both Jiang and Hu knew that the media will be covering this news, since all mainstream medias must be approved by the top leaders; (3) the fact that Jiang is taking the lead in front of the media and Hu following behind shows that Hu, as the President of China and Secretary General of CCP, is vulnerable to the power hunger of Jiang then due to the lack of military power. While Jiang appears to emerge triumph in this round of political propaganda, observers were in fact turned off by Jiang’s action of “Chui Qiang Ting Zheng”, and felt that this is an embarrassment to both China and the CCP in the international community.
However, Hu was no weakling. In contrast to Jiang’s sensational praising of the deceased soldiers as being brave for contributing to the country, Hu’s response was more in line with his scientific development spirit. “We need to turn this disaster into strength by actually modernizing the navy so this doesn’t ever happen again, so that we don’t create any more martyrs.”
As a follow up, before Hu made an overseas visit for the first time as the official President of China, Hu convened a politburo mgeting to express his views on defence and military. He wanted to modernize and develop China’s national defence and military, suggesting a desire to have a stand-alone image from Jiang, and to also pressure Jiang to abolish his power.
During the central committee politburo learning conference on 23 May 2003, Hu reiterated to a large number of political and military leaders his desire to enhance national defence and military power in a scientific manner. This received much media coverage and was commented by observers that Hu is trespassing into Jiang’s territory, and that Hu must have already raised his influence in the military to be able or daring to make such open challenges.
In actual fact, Hu was not entirely in an inferior position to pit himself against Jiang at this point. Firstly, Hu was the Secretary General of CCP. The official principle of party ruling rifle rather than rifle ruling party allows him the political legality that Jiang does not have. Secondly, Hu was also the vice chairman of the CMC. It would not be easy for Jiang to completely omit Hu from military affairs. This also means that Jiang could not ignore Hu’s presence in the military especially when Jiang did not have any official roles in the government then. As the first man in the party and country, coupled with the official status of second man in the military, Hu had all the legitimacy to look into affairs within the military. Thirdly, Hu handled the SARS issue successfully, raising his political status higher than that of Jiang. Such positive reputation will to a certain extent influence the various parties within the military to switch loyalty to Hu. Fourthly, senior cadres within and outside the CCP have been urging Jiang to relinquish his military role to end the embarrassing paradoxical situation of power and authority split within a nation.
During the celebration of the late Deng Xiaoping’s 100 years birthday, Hu leveraged on Deng’s ideology of leadership transition to show respect for Deng. “Deng had long favoured the abolition of the life-long tenure system for cadres, taking the lead in practice, playing a decisive role in the smooth transition from the second generation of the central collective leadership to the third.” These words were spoken at a time when Jiang was obviously still reluctant to enjoy a complete retirement. Hence, when Jiang finally resigned from CMC on 19th September 2004, observers generally believed it was a not a matter of choice but circumstance.
Just before he officially announced his resignation as chairman for CMC in autumn 2004, Jiang was still making several high level visits to leaders of countries including The Philippines, United States, Kazakhstan, North Korea etc. It was only when his protégé Cao Gangchuan and Go Boxiong turned against Jiang towards Hu that Jiang decided to tender his resignation, obviously reluctantly on 19th September 2004. Despite officially stepping down on 8th March 2005, Jiang still made regular appearance in the media, including visiting Yangzhou, Nanjing and even made official visits to schools like Nan Kai University in Tianjin and Shanghai Jiaotong University.
From the above illustrations, it clearly shows that Jiang wants to remain in the political limelight even after retiring. In fact, his high profile meeting with the Indian Defence Minister for the SARS saga and his leading role in the sinking of the submarine all demonstrates that he intentionally held on to the CMC chairmanship just so as not to completely disappear from the spotlight.
In August 2006, Jiang Xuan was officially launched after much fanfare led by Hu. Hu wanted everyone to seriously contemplate on the Three Representations by Jiang and gave Jiang much credit and glorification. However, on 25th September 2006, China’s official Xinhua News Agency announced that Shanghai Party Secretary (“PS”) Chen Liangyu has been dismissed from all official roles. This is the second politburo member arrested since 10 years ago when Beijing PS Chen Xitong was jailed for 16 years for corruption.
Chen Liangyu is an obvious protégé of Jiang. In 1987 when Jiang was the mayor in Shanghai, he selected Chen, then district head of Shanghai Huangpu district, to study overseas in England. Upon his return to Shanghai, Chen was promoted to mayor, PS, and even entered the politburo during the 16th CCP Congress to become the top 25 policy makers in China. With the backing from Jiang coupled with the Shanghai Gang members in the politburo, including Zeng Qinghong, Huang Ju, and Wu Bangguo, Chen was oblivious to the presence of Hu-Wen. Despite various measures implemented by Hu to cool down property market nationwide, especially Shanghai, Chen insisted that Shanghai’s property market is healthy and has no presence of any bubble.
In 2006, Zhu Junyi (祝均一) and China tycoon Zhang Rongkun (张荣坤) were arrested for the Shanghai Social Security Fund scandal. Thereafter, Qin Yu (秦裕) was arrested. The speculation then is that Qin must surely have political backing to be able to approve such huge funds being manipulated by Zhu and Zhang. As many had expected, Chen was the next to be arrested. While there were calls to go even further up to arrest Chen’s mastermind, widely believed to be Huang Ju, Hu did not push beyond Chen for various reasons that are not relevant to the research objective of this paper.
As a summary to the first part of this paper, the following points can be concluded. Hu was selected as China’s fourth generation leader not by Jiang, but by Deng. He became a politburo standing committee in 1992, and was promoted to the vice chairman of the PRC in 1998. He was elected as Secretary General for the CCP and the President of PRC in 2002. As Jiang wants to remain in the political limelight, as discussed above, Hu only took over the CMC chairmanship in 2004, which is the cause of the animosity between Hu and Jiang. This resulted in his later actions against corruption, many of which involved parties related in some ways to the Shanghai Gang.
With the above as a reference, let’s study the situation for Xi Jinping to analyze the situation with which he will take over the country’s leadership.
A Jiang-Hu Transition Model Applied to Hu-Xi
In American-style democratic institutions, the different institutions are designed to share the ruling power and to provide a system of check and balance so that no one player can exercise all the powers of a government. In contrast, the Chinese system constructs checks and balances of power through the containments by different factions of top political elite. This is especially important since the post-Deng era when Jiang, who lacked a strong power base when he was quickly promoted to the country leader. Since then, factional informal politics has been an important support for the leaders in making decisions. As Jiang is the leader for Shanghai Gang and Hu the leader for Tuanpai, we will examine how Xi will wade through this puddle of factionalism-water in his capacity as the incumbent leader of Taizidang (or Princeling).
Comparison
First, let us compare the experience between Xi, Hu and Jiang. The number of years of being a politburo standing committee before becoming the PRC’s vice chairman for Xi or directly chairman for the case of Hu and Jiang are 1, 10 and 4 respectively. This shows that Hu took the longest period as a standing committee to become the vice chairman and eventually President of PRC. Xi can be said to be propelled into his current position.
Of this three generation of leaders, only Hu has served as the vice chairman of CMC, and for a length of 6 years before he became the chairman of CMC. Jiang propelled straight into the chairmanship in 1989 with no prior military background. Xi, while not being elected as the vice chairman of CMC, could potentially still takeover from Hu directly as chairman because (1) he served as the secretary of Defence Minister Geng Biao at the start of his political career; (2) his wife Peng Liyuan is a military singer, which somewhat provides a link between him and the military. Also, that Jiang also had no military background could definitely serve as a justification for Xi in his assuming of the role.
Political strength of supporter
Hu was appointed by Deng as the successor of Jiang, while Xi was appointed by Zeng, and apparently Jiang in a bid to balance the power of Hu and his Tuanpai faction. By comparison of the political weight between Deng and Jiang, it is not difficult to come to the conclusion that Deng far surpasses Jiang in his credibility and power. As such, Hu’s succession and retention to the throne is relatively much more stable and acceptable than that of Xi.
At the same time, Hu has a growing number of supporters from the Tuanpai within the cabinet. Li Keqiang, Li Yuanchao and Wang Yang are well known members of the Tuanpai. Other Tuanpai members include Song Defu, Hu Chunhua, Zhou Qiang and Liu Yandong. Tuanpai now form 23 percent of the Central Committee and 32 percent of the Politburo. They also “served as local and provincial leaders, often in poor inland provinces, and many have expertise in propaganda and legal affairs”. As most of them worked under Hu in the Communist Youth League, the affinity and loyalty towards their former boss is naturally stronger even before Hu took over official leadership of China and CCP. As such, the moment he took over official leadership, he could command support and respect from a base of loyal protégé almost immediately.
In contrast, Xi may be the de-facto leader of Taizidang. However, the Taizidang is different from other informal political factions like Shanghai Gang, Qinghua Gang or Guangdong Gang. The Taizidang is just a term to loosely string up the people whose parents had political power during their times. Hence, other than their common identify of having political backgrounds, this group truly has no political affiliation. In fact, since many of them are elitists and are in businesses, it would not be surprising to identify feuds amongst the group due to business and interests conflicts. As such, Xi would generally command minimal informal factional support. On the other hand, being the son of Xi Zhongxun, coupled with the backing of Zeng and Jiang, who in turn still has the factional affiliation of the Shanghai Gang, Xi would not be entirely support-less in his bid for the top man’s position.
Potential animosity
As expressed above, due to the unhappiness accrued when Jiang delayed handing over the military power, Hu took calculated steps to reduce the influence of the Shanghai Gang at very strategic moments (in the case of Che Liangyu). In the same light, should Xi takeover the country leadership, and eventually the military leadership, would there be a possibility that a similar act be taken against Hu by Xi?
For Jiang, his protégés like Huang Ju and Chen have been furiously leveraging on their power and Jiang’s backing to indulge in corrupted activities while Jiang was in power. For Hu, his stand against corruption has been made clear all the while. Even though his son was involved in the investigation of an African corruption case, Hu has until now not been associated with any declared corruption cases while in power. As such, should Hu hang on to military power like Jiang and incur the wrath of Xi, Xi would find it tough to adopt a similar approach of clamping down Hu’s protégé to cause his embarrassment when he step down. More importantly, whether such enmity would even begin in the first place where Hu would stay on as the CMC chief will be discussed in the following passages.
Power Handover
Will Hu repeat the actions of Jiang to hang on to the power and deliberately delay the handing over process? Based on Jiang’s scenario, it is clear that his actions has resulted in the further dampening of his political legacy, even though he might have resulted in GDP and property values rising during his reign. In contrast, Hu has been relatively down to earth and not hungry for media exposure. Other than his seemingly calculated moves against the Shanghai Gang, which can be seen as a form of retaliation against Jiang’s refusal to hand over power, Hu has been described as “mild and calm” and hence less likely to adopt any extreme mentality of wanting to change the system of power succession. This is also evident from the fact that he has never approved any public one-on-one interviews.
At the same time, the CCP regulations on cadre retirement established in the early 1980s states that candidates for ministers, provincial Party secretaries and governors have to be below 65 years of age, and those for deputy ministers, deputy provincial Party secretaries and deputy governors below 60 years of age. A commonly known yet unpublicized practice is that Premiers and Vice Premier positions have to be below 70 years of age. As Hu is born in 1942, by 2012, Hu will be 70 years old. He will most likely go with the system. Also, assuming Hu wants to maintain military power like Jiang (which has no stated retirement age), as is the current speculation that he did not appoint Xi as the vice chairman of CMC, after the 18th Party Congress, his power position will become uncertain for the following reasons: (1) Xi is not Hu’s choice as heir; Xi was chosen by Zeng Qinghong (and Jiang). Hence, Hu’s personal connections with Xi are fundamentally weak in comparison to Deng with Hu Yaobang, Zhao Ziyang and Jiang; (2) Hu’s power base in China, particularly the military is rooted in his institutional position as leader for the party, country and military. He would not be able to continue to exert strong influence without official power, unlike Deng; (3) Hu would be in an awkward position to just hold on to military power without party and country power. Also, Xi would then have the discretion to seek advice from Zeng or Jiang, rather than from Hu. At the same time, the CMC today lacks legitimacy to participate in daily governance especially due to the absence of crisis of war. Hence, by merely holding on to the CMC title, it would only result in Hu becoming the same laughingstock that Jiang was, without the actual authority and support. This is coupled with the political stability consideration that the last time China had two different voices coming from the leadership, there was a near disaster 1989 demonstrations.
Therefore, unless there are truly overwhelming crisis that legitimizes his extension of reign, otherwise it is unlikely that Hu will delay handing over of his power to his successor.
Power succession in China has never been easy or insignificant. Leadership shifts, if not implemented in a seamless and careful manner, could potentially result in policy discontinuity or abrupt changes. This explains why the collective decision by senior cadres is important for Hu’s decision making. If not for so, Hu would have almost definitely chosen Li Keqiang as his successor, since Li is Hu’s protégé.
Conclusion
As the Chinese saying goes, Qiang Da Chu Tou Niao, heir apparent very often will be removed from their crown prince status if they are to be too outspoken and impatient for their ascension. Xi has been careful not to pop his head out too aggressively to be seen as an impatient crown prince. As such, Hu will not have much reason to attempt to remove the crown title at his will, unlike Mao to Liu Shaoqi and Lin Biao, or Deng to Zhao Ziyang and Hu Yaobang.
From the overview of the current political environment, it seems that Hu will stick to his “scientific development” and “harmonious society” approach to ensure that the country’s stability is the top priority in this power succession activity. This includes adhering scientifically to the party documents which states the imporatence of “a firm central leading body” in which individuals subordinate themselves to the whole to ensure that the Party maintains its authority over society. He will likely avoid the pitfall of hanging on to military power just so as to stay connected to the Zhongnanhai group of power holders, since that will potentially damage his political legacy which has been relatively positive as compared to Jiang hitherto. The type of exit from power with dignity that Qiao Shi did at the Fifteenth Party Congress is certainly something that will be most conducive to preserving his political legacy. Xi will likely not have to face the awkward situation that Hu faced when he first took over power in 2002.
Wong Teck Yenn
See “Changes in China’s Political Landscape: The 17th Party Congress and Beyond”, The Brookings Institution, 13 April 2007, pp 91.
Pan Xitang, “Hu Jintao Yin Ran Zhong Gong Gao Ceng Quan Dou” (“Hu igniting the high level power struggle in CCP”), National Policy Foundation, 6 June 2003 (viewed on 20 June 2010 http://old.npf.org.tw/PUBLICATION/NS/092/NS-C-092-174.htm)
