Political Generations in China

Abstract

The rapid changes in China of the past few years have quite properly focused much attention on the problems of political succession at the top levels of Chinese politics. In part this is recognized as a generational issue because of the advanced age of the first set of leaders of the People's Republic. Indeed, this is still a question of contemporary significance. Teng Hsiao-p'ing, for example, is alleged to have said that he turned down the premiership in favour of Hua Kuo-feng because he was in his 70s whereas Hua was in his 50s. Therefore, unlike Teng, the latter could expect to guide the modernization programme through to the year 2000. One of the major problems overshadowing the current Chinese leadership (both at the levels of the Political Bureau and even the Central Committee) is that soon a new generation of leaders will replace the old. It is perhaps because of this that the current leadership has been so concerned to consolidate the new order and to set the new modernization programme upon what is hoped will be an irreversible course. At the same time one of the reasons for the reluctance of many officials at all levels of China's bureaucracies to implement the new policies with the enthusiasm and initiative expected in Peking is precisely the fear that the new policies may be reversed by a new set of leaders whose succession in the nature of things cannot be long delayed.