Abstract
The world’s most populous nation has a new leader, Hu Jintao. His election in November 2002 as Chinese Communist Party (CCP) general secretary and in March 2003 as Chinese president was the first smooth power transfer in the history of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) that was not prompted by natural death or political crisis. However, the reelection of former Party and state leader Jiang Zemin as Party Central Military Commission (CMC) chairman, and his continued influence in Chinese politics, has fomented outsiders’ speculation as to who is actually at the core, if any, of China’s new leadership. Many speculate that Jiang still utters a strong voice on critical policy issues through informal channels, following the codes of conduct established by China’s former leader Deng Xiaoping, who gradually transferred power to younger leaders over several years. It is safe to say that leadership transition in China is far from sharply defined—or complete—in the absence of free and competitive elections.
The author wishes to thank Lowell Dittmer, Xiaobo Hu, and the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions. Views expressed in this article are the author’s alone. @ 2004 by the Regents of the University of California. Reprinted from Asian Survey, vol. 44, no. 2, pp. 255–275 by permission of the Regents.
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Notes
Jiang Zemin, Report to the 16th National Party Congress (November 8, 2002) [in Chinese] (Beijing: Remin Chubanshe, 2002), p. 52.
Douglass C. North, Institutions, Institutional Change and, Economic Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
Robin Cowan and Philip Gunby, “Sprayed to Death: Path Dependency, Lock-in and Pest Control Strategies,” Economic Journal, vol. 106, no. 435 (May 1996), pp. 521–42.
The fourth plenary of the fourteenth Central Committee convened in September 1994 announced that leadership transition from the second generation (Deng) to the third (Jiang) had been completed. For a discussion of formal and informal power being brought back into close alignment by Jiang, see Lowell Dittmer, “Chinese Leadership Succession to the Fourth Generation,” in Gang Lin and Xiaobo Hu (eds.), China after Jiang, (Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Stanford University Press, 2003), p. 33.
Hu Wei, Zhengfu Guocheng [Process of Government] (Zhejiang: Zhejiang Renmin Chubanshe, 1998), p. 94.
Mao Zedong, Selected Works of Mao Zedong, vol. 2 (Beijing: Remin Chubanshe, 1986), pp. 820–21;
Deng Xiaoping, Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping, vol. 2 (Beijing: Remin Chubanshe, 1993), pp. 331, 341.
James Wang, Contemporary Chinese Politics: An Introduction (NJ: Prentice Hall, 1989), p. 81.
Minxin Pei, From Reform to Revolution: The Demise of Communism in China and the Soviet Union (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), p. 73.
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© 2005 Weixing Chen and Yang Zhong
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Lin, G. (2005). Leadership Transition, Intra-Party Democracy, and Institution Building in China. In: Leadership in a Changing China. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403980397_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403980397_3
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