Oh, Shanghai There

Source: chovanec.wordpress.com

” A Primer on China’s Leadership Transition”

Not a Shanghai-specific post, and not written by me – but if you’re at all interested in how the communist system in China works, this makes for a great read.

Written by Patrick Chovanec, an American professor of Economics and Management at Tsinghau University in Beijing, this primer gives a very approachable and pretty comprehensive overview of the Chinese political system, as well as the shuffle in leadership that is due to happen in autumn 2012.

I’m certainly not politically savvy (and know only the very basics about communism), but I learned a lot reading this.

It’s very interesting how the political power in China is divided – or rather, how it isn’t. The Party rules over both the military and the government. There are 300 in the Party’s Central Committee, who are the ‘movers and shakers’ who wield the real power, but within those 300 there is the 24-man Politburo, and within that, the 5 to 9 man Politburo Standing Committee, who are the true badasses.

David Cameron is the new Prime Minister, and Obama is President of the USA – but have things really changed much since their predecessors stepped down? Not really. But the reshuffle that is happening next year in China (due to the fact that many of the major players have either served their full terms or are due to retire) will likely alter China’s future in truly dramatic ways. This isn’t just a change of personality in the management, it could well be a shift towards entirely different, Western-influenced ideologies. To quote Professor Chovanec’s final two paragraphs:

The 2012-13 transition represents a handoff from the so-called “4th generation” to the “5th”. The first two generations, led by Mao and Deng, were dominated by the generals and cadres who fought in the Communist revolution. The next two, led by Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, were dominated by engineers, who rose to power under Soviet-style central planning but adapted, more or less readily, to market reform as a path to “modernize” China. Out of the current 9-man Standing Committee, seven are engineers, one (Wen) is a geologist, and only one (Li) is a lawyer/economist. While the next President, Xi Jinping, is an engineer, most of the 5th generation expected to serve immediately under him studied law, economics, or history — disciplines that may offer a different perspective on the challenges China faces.

Virtually all of the new generation of leaders, however, completed their studies in China, unlike their children (typified by Xi’s daughter at Harvard, or Bo Xilai’s son at Oxford) who in many cases have studied and even worked or taught abroad. I’ve been told, by several of my Tsinghua students, that studying abroad — while highly desirable from a money-making perspective — is still regarded as a career-killer for anyone hoping to rise within the Party. It will be interesting to see, after a new generation of “princelings” returns to China with Western diplomas in hand, whether this will continue to hold true, and what new perspectives these returnees will bring to Chinese politics.

Here’s another link to the full article if you feel like checking it out.

Sorry, I know this blog is supposed to be a whacky and entertaining log of a foreigner completely out of their depth in Shanghai, but hey.