Names to watch as Xi prepares for leadership change

BEIJING — China is poised to regroup high-ranking officials surrounding President Xi Jinping at this month’s highly anticipated meeting.

The ruling Chinese Communist Party is scheduled to open its 20th National Congress, held once every five years, on October 16.

The name of the new team will be announced in about a week.

The composition of the team reflects the political clout Xi and his allies have and how much support the president wields for ideas such as a preference for greater state control in the economy. .

Xi, 69, is widely expected to further consolidate his power after ten years as party leader. Congress this month is expected to pave the way for him to stay in office for an unprecedented third time in his five-year term.

But predictions about which officials will resign or take new positions remain speculation.

“China’s politics have always been opaque, but there seems to be no light escaping this black box,” said the senior adviser and board of trustees of China Business and Economics at the US-based Institute for Strategic and International Studies. Scott Kennedy said. .

“So you hear a lot less speculation now compared to previous leadership transitions,” he said.

“The irony of this mystery is that Chinese officials regularly tell foreigners how they don’t understand China,” Kennedy said. “Part of the problem is how little information is actually available to us.”

Below are some of the names that are publicly known and that analysts are eyeing for the upcoming mods.

Congress this month will decide which official will become the leader of the ruling Chinese Communist Party.

About 2,300 party delegates will meet in Beijing to elect a new Central Committee of about 200 full members.

That committee determines the central leadership – the Politburo and its standing committees.

The current Politburo, or Politburo, has 25 members, including Liu He. Liu said he will be at the forefront of trade talks with the United States in 2020 and he will in 2021. In China, he heads the central government’s Financial Stability Commission.

However, Mr. Liu is not a member of the Politburo Standing Committee, the highest authority. Currently, there are seven members of him, including Mr. Xi and Premier Li Keqiang.

President Xi has held three key posts: General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, Chairman of the Central Military Commission, and President of China.

He is expected to retain the first two titles at this year’s party convention. State titles such as president and prime minister are not confirmed until the next annual meeting of the Chinese government, which usually takes place in March.

One of the most notable changes in the regime change is the future of Premier Li Keqiang, who turned 67 this year.

While China’s top-level economic policy is largely set by members of the Politburo, Li is the official face in his role as prime minister and head of China’s highest administrative body, the State Council. , was the leader of the implementation.

In March, Lee said this year would be his last as prime minister, a position he has held since 2013. However, analysts at JP Morgan said he could remain a member of the Standing Committee, citing a precedent at the 15th party convention.

Over the past decade, Mr. Li has held regular meetings with foreign companies to promote investment in China. Since the pandemic began, he has advocated cutting corporate taxes and fees in exchange for offering consumption vouchers.

All of China’s current prime ministers, with the exception of the first prime minister, have previously served as deputy prime ministers, according to JPMorgan analysts.

The current Vice Premiers are Han Zheng, Hu Chunhua, Liu He, and Sun Chunlan, the only women in the Politburo.

“Whoever becomes prime minister is, in fact, signaling a major need for Xi Jinping, or about his political and policy considerations,” Brookings Senior Fellow Cheng Li told the think tank on Tuesday. said in a lecture hosted by

He has named four members of the Politburo who may join or remain on the Standing Committee and succeed Li Keqiang as prime minister.

• Han Zheng — Han is a member of Standing Committee. Brookings’ Lee said becoming prime minister would reflect “policy continuity”.
• Hu Chunhua — Hu has close ties to Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao. Promoting him would demonstrate Xi’s “leadership unity” by appointing people from outside his faction.
• Liu He — Liu attended the Harvard Kennedy School in the 1990s. Most recently, he led a Chinese delegation to trade talks with the United States and met with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen several times. According to Lee, if Liu becomes prime minister, it will be because of his “international popularity.”
• Wang Yang — Wang is a member of the Standing Committee and served as Deputy Prime Minister from 2013 to 2018. He is known to be market-oriented and electing him as prime minister would reflect a “radical policy change,” Li said.

Analysts at the Asia Institute for Social Policy’s China Analysis Center put forward another scenario in which Li Qiang, Xi’s protégé, Shanghai Party secretary and member of the Politburo, could become prime minister.

Other loyal Xi Jinping allies named by analysts include:

• Ding Xuexiang — Politburo member and “essentially Xi Jinping’s chief of staff and in charge of his personal security, he is one of Xi Jinping’s most trusted circles,” he said. The Asian Association report states:
• Chen Min’er — a member of the Politburo and party secretary of Chongqing, a job he won after President Xi Jinping “suddenly ousted” the former secretary, the Asia Society noted.
• Huang Kunming — A member of the Politburo who worked closely with President Xi Jinping in Fujian and Zhejiang provinces and head of China’s propaganda department, the report says.

Liu Jiyi “is the most likely successor to Yang,” said Neil Thomas, senior analyst for China and Northeast Asia at Eurasia Group, in a note.

Liu is the director general of the State Council Taiwan Secretariat and previously represented China at the United Nations. Such experiences “suggest that Beijing step up its diplomatic focus on global governance reforms and deterring ‘Taiwan independence,'” Thomas said.

The Eurasia Group said in a report that Mr. Liu, 64, is “the most senior diplomat with no plans to retire” and that “rumors” suggest that Foreign Minister Wang Yi could replace Mr. Yang instead. are mentioning.

Wang is a member of the party’s 200-member Central Committee and previously headed the State Council’s Taiwan Secretariat. In his October he will be 69 years old.

In China, civil servants have a lenient retirement age of 68.

Harvard Kennedy School of Government professor Tony Syke said in a September paper, “If Wang Yi replaces Yang Jiechi in the Politburo as the top official overseeing foreign policy, a tougher foreign policy is expected to follow.” ‘, he said.

The Public Relations Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent by CNBC on December 12, 2018. a A week of Chinese holidays.

The more important question for many China watchers is not how the 69-year-old President Xi will consolidate power, but who will be his successor and how will he prepare for the next few years.

Yuen Yuen An, an associate professor of political science at the University of Michigan, wrote in the Journal of Democracy in July that the Chinese bureaucracy had lost autonomy under Mr. pointed out that it is getting stronger.

The threat to the Chinese Communist Party’s hold on power, she said, “will be a succession race under President Xi’s individualistic rule.”

Under a “best case scenario,” China could remain stable under Mr. Xi’s rule until 2035, she said.

In a “worst-case scenario,” Ahn said, “a sudden vacuum could lead to a violent seizure of power.”