The Battle for China's Top Nine Leadership Posts

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. For example, Alice Miller, “The Politburo Standing Committee under Hu Jintao,” China Leadership Monitor, no. 35, September 21, 2011, p. 5, http://media.hoover.org/sites/default/files/documents/CLM35AM.pdf. 2. Li Bin, Wu Jing, and Tan Jingjing, “Nine Members of the Politburo Standing Committee attended the National Day Celebration,” YNET.com, September 30, 2011, http://bjyouth.ynet.com/3.1/1110/01/6309804.html; also see Wang Jianmin, “Nine Members of the Politburo Standing Committee Watched the Launch of China's Space Station,” china.com, September 30, 2011, http://news.china.com/focus/tgyh/11106738/20110930/16794768.html. 3. Xinhua News Net, October 15, 2011, http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2007‐10‐15/113314089759.shtml. 4. These nine members of the Politburo Standing Committee often concurrently occupy the most important government positions such as president of the PRC, chairman of the National People's Congress (NPC), and premier of the State Council. 5. For more discussion of Bo's distinct political drive, see Cheng Li, “China's Midterm Jockeying: Gearing Up for 2012 (Part 1: Provincial Chiefs),” China Leadership Monitor, no. 31, February 15, 2010, p. 22, http://media.hoover.org/sites/default/files/documents/CLM31CL.pdf; and Dexter Roberts, “China's Sentimental Journey Back to Mao,” Bloomberg Businessweek, January 13, 2011, http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_04/b4212012787534.htm. 6. “Not Fade Away: A Growing Number of Former Leaders are Speaking Out,” The Economist, September 17, 2011, http://www.economist.com/node/21529108; and Kent Ewing, “False nostalgia for Zhu Rongji,” Asia Times Online, September 20, 2011, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/MI20Df01.html. 7. For the straw poll, see Alice Miller, “The Case of Xi Jinping and the Mysterious Succession,” China Leadership Monitor, no. 30, November 19, 2009, pp. 8–9, http://media.hoover.org/sites/default/files/documents/CLM30AM.pdf. 8. For further discussion of the origin of this practice, see Cheng Li, “The New Bipartisanship within the Chinese Communist Party,” Orbis 49, no. 3 (Summer 2005): pp. 387–400. 9. Cheng Li, “China's Communist Party‐State: The Structure and Dynamics of Power,” in Politics in China, ed. William A. Joseph (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 165–191. 10. Robert Lawrence Kuhn, How China's Leaders Think (Singapore: John Wiley & Sons (Asia) Pte. Ltd., 2010), p. 230. 11. For example, Li Jingrui, “China's Prominent Provincial Leaders Outline their Blueprints for Governance,” Zhongguo xinwen zhoukan (China Newsweek), July 26, 2011, http://www.chinanews.com/gn/2011/07‐26/3210364.shtml. Additional informationNotes on contributorsCheng LiCheng Li is director of research and senior fellow of the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution. The author is grateful to Eve Cary, Paul Cavey, and Jordan Lee for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this article