Leadership Transition in China

Leadership transition this year probably will be the most immediate and obvious political change in China. This leadership transition will bring trivial, if any, but the most immediate impacts to Chinese-American relations. The Chinese Communist Party will form the fifth generation of leaders in 2012 centered on Xi Jinping if everything goes as expected.

In China’s next leadership transition, which has taken place mainly at the 18th Party Congress in 2012, it seems highly certain that Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang will take the leading positions. Xi will be appointed General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, and Li will be the Premier (at the National People’s Congress of March 2013).

Xi Jinping (Left) and Li Keqiang

Xi is a very market-friendly person and he worked as a provincial chief or municipal boss in three places in China, namely, Fujian, Zhejiang, and Shanghai, all the economic-rich and the market well-developed areas. During his tenure in these three provinces, he always worked very well with private sectors, with entrepreneurs, whether foreign companies or joint ventures. Li was accepted into the newly reopened law department of the elite Peking University in 1978, after its closure in the Cultural Revolution. During his time there he was heavily influenced by liberal professors who advocated democracy and constitutionalism. Li also joined a team that translated Lord Denning’s Due Process of Law.He is regarded as something of a liberal although, if he has a personal vision beyond current policies, he keeps it carefully hidden from the public. Among the engineer-heavy leadership, Li stands out with a doctorate of economics from Peking University.



Although it is not clear who are going to fill the other seven spots in the Politburo Standing Committee of the CPC Central Committee, which is the actual power organ of China, one thing seems pretty clear: the fifth generation of leaders in China are economy-oriented, which means the increasingly intertwined Sino-American economic relations will be likely to continue to deepen. It then determines the Sino-American status quo in terms of China’s domestic politics and human rights will not be challenged a lot despite the leadership transition, especially given the fact that the Sino-American relations have become increasingly institutionalized.



Regardless of whether Obama is re-elected president in 2012 for another four years or a Republican candidate comes to power, the core elements of U.S. policy toward China is likely to remain the same because prioritizing economic and security cooperation continues to serve U.S. interests.