AFTER A DRAMATIC recent purge of China’s generals, the country’s ruler, Xi Jinping, faces another stressful task. A five-yearly churn of leadership posts from bottom to top has begun: hundreds of thousands of jobs in the Communist Party and in the state’s apparatus will change hands. The gigantic reshuffle, which reaches its climax at the 21st party congress late next year, will fuel anxiety among China’s already twitchy military and political elites.
One man’s place, however, is safe. Mr
AFTER A DRAMATIC recent purge of China’s generals, the country’s ruler, Xi Jinping, faces another stressful task. A five-yearly churn of leadership posts from bottom to top has begun: hundreds of thousands of jobs in the Communist Party and in the state’s apparatus will change hands. The gigantic reshuffle, which reaches its climax at the 21st party congress late next year, will fuel anxiety among China’s already twitchy military and political elites.
One man’s place, however, is safe. Mr Xi’s positions as the party’s general secretary and commander-in-chief of the armed forces are all but certain to be renewed just after the congress. (Ditto, in March 2028, at the annual session of China’s rubber-stamp parliament, his least important job, as the country’s president.) But other questions will become more nagging. Mr Xi will be 79 when the party holds its 22nd congress in 2032. Will the 21st give any hint of arrangements for someone to succeed him? Or will it become clearer still that he intends to be ruler for life?
The turnover begins at the grassroots. Since late last year villages and urban neighbourhoods across China have been conducting one of the world’s biggest voting exercises: hundreds of millions of people are taking part in largely sham elections of the country’s lowest-level leaders (by design, the winners are almost always local party bosses).
Over the coming two years, higher-level party chiefs will be rejigged, along with their less powerful counterparts in the government: mayors, governors and ministers. The public won’t be involved: choices are made in secret by current leaders and rubber-stamped by party committees and party-controlled legislatures. Later this year, and early next, provincial party posts will be reallocated. Those given top jobs in important regions are likely candidates for spots in the Politburo, the body, currently 23-strong, through which Mr Xi rules China. In the year before a congress, at around this time, Mr Xi forms (in secret) a group of leaders who will review candidates for these and other top party positions that will be filled this year and next. Only diehard Xi loyalists will be in the frame.
But enthusiastic support for Mr Xi is no guarantee of job security. Purges of military and civilian leaders since the 20th congress in 2022 have been notable for targeting his protégés. According to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a think-tank in Washington, 37 of the 44 officers appointed to the 376-member Central Committee at that congress have been expelled, have gone missing or are under investigation. This makes it all the harder to decide which members of the top brass should get seats on the new committee to be formed at the 21st congress: there is not much untarnished metal to choose from.
Mr Xi is unlikely to worry much about grooming someone to take over his own positions. For evidence, look at the Central Military Commission (CMC), the top military decision-making body. Normally all its members except the commander-in-chief are in uniform. When a second civilian is appointed, that person is clearly being teed up as the future supreme leader: Mr Xi joined as vice-chairman in 2010, two years before he became China’s ruler and the CMC’s sole civilian. That Mr Xi remains the only non-uniformed member is a clear sign that he does not plan to step down at next year’s congress. Even if he decides to hand a title or two to someone else, few expect him to relinquish power in 2032 either.
He does not have to. Mr Xi ripped up the party’s unwritten rules on succession in 2018 when he abolished a two-term limit on the presidency. This allowed him to serve as general secretary for as long as he wants—the two jobs are normally held simultaneously. It’s all the more telling that he welcomes no young, potential successors in his coterie. Pre-Xi, someone being groomed as general secretary might have been expected to join the Politburo by their late 50s and assume the party chiefdom by the age of 62 (no woman has ever made it to the Politburo Standing Committee (PBSC), the apex of power). Currently, the youngest of the PBSC’s seven members is 63. The median age of the full Politburo is 66, the highest this century. If people in their early 50s are appointed to the Politburo at next year’s congress, one of them could become general secretary in 2032. But it would be a fast rise.
It is not just Mr Xi’s job that lacks young blood in the waiting, as Gavekal Dragonomics, a research group, notes. The leadership is turning more gerontocratic across the board. The Central Committee used to have many full members in their 40s and early 50s. Now the youngest is about 56 (Wei Tao, who joined in October). Provincial party committees are getting older, too, according to data compiled by Gavekal. Typically not many members are in their 30s: ages now cluster in the mid- to late-50s.
Mr Xi could inject younger blood into the Politburo. But it would mean surrounding himself less with his cronies and more with their protégés, with whom he is less familiar. It could also undermine his power if a younger person is identified as his replacement-to-be (tensions related to heirs-apparent have caused big trouble in the past: the pro-democracy upheaval of 1989 was one such episode). Better to stick with loyal old men, Mr Xi may reckon. (The Politburo formed after the 20th congress was the first in 25 years to have no women.)
But Chinese politics is occasionally stormy, even with a Politburo stuffed with yes-men. As many as one-fifth of full members of the Central Committee have been purged since the 20th congress. In most of the confirmed cases the ostensible reason has been corruption, but eliminating potential rivals has been a likely factor, too. In China Leadership Monitor, an online publication, Jonathan Czin, a former CIA analyst, argues that Mr Xi’s next five-year term is likely to involve “increasingly tumultuous internal politicking”. In its final stretch, this one is far from calm.
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