Will China’s leadership succession after Xi Jinping skip a generation?
- The rise of those making up the ‘sixth generation’ of leaders who were expected to follow Xi appears to have lost momentum
- A younger generation is being tested in provincial positions, gaining the same kind of experience Xi acquired on his route to the top
China watchers searching for clues in identifying the next generation of top Chinese leaders have been focusing on the recent promotion of about a dozen vice-governors and vice-ministers born in the 1970s.
Many of these relatively young political stars, analysts believe, are being groomed for future leadership roles. And what is notable about them is that they had been destined to be China’s “seventh generation” of leaders, yet look increasingly likely to overtake their immediate seniors – once expected to be the sixth generation – to take over when President Xi Jinping eventually steps down as Communist Party boss.
President Jiang Zemin, who served as the party’s general secretary from 1989 to 2002, is described as the “core of the third generation” of top Chinese leaders, following Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. Jiang’s successor Hu Jintao represented the fourth generation, and Xi the fifth.
Jiang and Hu stepped down after two five-year terms each as general secretary, but at the five-yearly national congress in 2017, the absence of the supposed sixth generation among new members of the Politburo Standing Committee led many China watchers to guess Xi might stay on after 2022, when his second term ends.
When the National People’s Congress, the rubber-stamp legislature, passed the amendment to the constitution last March to lift the presidency’s term limit, it fuelled expectations that Xi would continue as the “core of the party”, potentially blocking the path of those born in the 1960s.
Normally, membership on the Politburo Standing Committee is considered a prerequisite for candidates for the top leadership. Both Xi and Hu were made members at least five years before they became the party boss, paving the way for their ascendancy to the apex of power.
