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China’s next generation of
leaders
By John Lee 李約翰
Monday, Jan 11, 2010, Page 8
The appointment of five provincial Chinese Communist Party chiefs early last
month is a reminder that the ascension of China’s next generation of leaders,
who will take power in 2012, may be the most significant development in Chinese
politics since Deng Xiaoping’s (鄧小平) reign begin in 1978. The upcoming
generation of leaders will be the first with little or no personal memory of the
turmoil and hardship endured during the Mao Zedong (毛澤東) years. Forgetting that
history might doom China to repeat the mistakes of the past; but, for better or
worse, it might also ease constraints and set its leaders free.
All five appointees were born after the founding of the People’s Republic in
1949. Two of them, Hu Chunhua (胡春華) and Sun Zhengcai (孫政才), are only 46 years
old. This is in line with the party’s recently announced policy that the next
generation of leaders should have an average age of around 55 years, with up to
four top positions filled by leaders not yet in their 50s.
The party’s aim is to ensure that it remains energetic and dynamic as China
rises.
This seems a wise decision. Chinese leadership over the past decade and a half
has been about fine-tuning and maintaining the momentum of Deng’s state-led
development model, launched after the Tiananmen protests of 1989. In this
respect, China’s third and fourth generation of leaders, under the technocrats
Jiang Zemin (江澤民) and Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), have been competent but unimaginative.
But the viability of Deng’s model is nearing its end, and China is now addicted
to inefficient state-led fixed investment and unsustainable export-led growth,
rather than domestic consumption, to generate jobs and growth. Progress on
further structural reforms — such as currency and capital-account liberalization
and weaning state-controlled industries off state capital — has been slow, and
new initiatives have been piecemeal rather than comprehensive.
Likewise, since the mid-1990s, China’s foreign policy has been cautious rather
than bold.
Both Jiang and Hu have faithfully followed Deng’s dictum: “Hide capacity and
nourish obscurity.” Although increasingly assertive in Africa and Latin America,
China largely remains a free-rider under the US security umbrella.
The older generations see such caution as prudence, and that conservatism is
reflected in China’s current leaders. The lack of big-picture reform attests to
the older generations’ collective fear that fundamental structural changes will
bring disruption and chaos, threatening the party’s hold on power.
They still remember the suffering of the Mao years, when China headed in the
wrong direction — and tried to do too much too quickly — and they vividly recall
how the Tiananmen protests brought the regime to its knees, and how urban labor
unrest erupted when centrally managed state businesses were merged or closed
down in the 1990s.
Similarly, though China remains fundamentally dissatisfied with its southern
land borders and its sea borders to the east and southeast, its current leaders
fear that isolation would result from an assertive and aggressive foreign
policy.
All elites — young and old — see China as Asia’s natural leader and the US as a
recent interloper. But, for the third and fourth generation leaders, giving the
US and its allies and partners an excuse to “contain” China — and restrict its
economic development — remains the great nightmare.
Without personal experience of China’s recent traumatic history, the next
generation will be more confident and assertive. Schooled in economics, politics
and law, rather than engineering, they will seek to accelerate China’s rise and
transformation, viewing caution as paralysis. Even now, emerging leaders argue
that China is moving too slowly on economic reform and foreign-policy goals. For
better or worse, they will not be restrained by the same fear of unintended
consequences when it comes to change and experimentation.
Optimists hope that this might hasten economic liberalization, and perhaps even
lead to moderate political reform, especially greater accountability for distant
local officials. After all, it has been China’s young guns who consistently
raise the issue of local corruption at party summits.
But the foreign-policy consequences could be even greater. Having grown up in a
China that is now accepted as a legitimate great power, the new generation of
leaders will be more impatient about China resuming its place as the paramount
power in Asia. While older statesmen take pride in how far China has come,
younger party figures and elites — especially those who have returned from the
US and other Western graduate schools — are frustrated that China’s strategic
position in Asia and status within global and regional institutions remain
relatively weak, despite the country’s rising economic power.
For example, much of the talk of China taking the lead in regional institutions,
and of Chinese ships having a greater presence in vital sea lanes such as the
Strait of Malacca and even the Indian Ocean comes from the younger generation.
The younger party leaders are also more impatient when it comes to a time frame
for winning back Taiwan.
China is currently in a holding pattern. But that will end when the next
generation of leaders assumes power in 2012. When their time comes, the world
will be dealing with a much more unpredictable power than the one we know now.
John Lee is a foreign policy fellow at
the Center for Independent Studies in Sydney and a visiting fellow at the Hudson
Institute in Washington.
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