Olympic athletes, TV actors and obscenely wealth businessmen were the media darlings darting around the heavily secured square in front of the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, where the National People’s Congress (NPC) kicked off on Friday. The NPC, an annually recurring political spectacle, is attended by everyone of note in China.
Like the 3,000-odd representatives, the real heavyweights will be listening respectfully to longwinded speeches by prime minister Wen Jiabao about the state of the Chinese nation. But ‘Grandpa Wen’, as he is commonly known, will not be addressing the delicate matter that is on the minds of NPC members, media, and online analysts alike: the great changes that are coming to China’s leadership in 2012.
Online betting over leadership
Both backstage and in the limelight of the NPC, the rearrangement of top positions has become the subject of conversation, gossip and even online betting. According to professor Cheng Li of the Brookings Institute’s China Centre, China may not have mid-term elections like the US does, but its political pulse beats according to a similar pace.
Two years before the great National Party Congress, candidates and the two main factions within the Chinese Communist Party – the Communist Youth League group and the so-called Shanghai Clique – have stepped up their lobbying efforts, Li said. The state media have followed suit.
“The NPC is a spectacle frequented by everyone who is anyone. It gives candidates an ideal opportunity to speak with everyone, take people out to dinner and establish a foundation for future collaboration. With only two years left before the 18th Party Congress in 2012, the battle has begun,” Cheng Li explained in a phone interview.
Top spots opening up
In 2012, 14 of the 25 Politburo’s members will retire, including president Hu Jintao and prime minister Wen Jiabao. Seven vacancies will be opening up in the even more exclusive Standing Committee. Vice-president Xi Jinping and vice-prime minister Li Keqiang will be the only members still seated as members of this elite group in charge of the world’s biggest ascending superpower. Xi, who like all of China’s important leaders has visited Europe and Asia, is a candidate for the presidency. Li, the main speaker at the World Economic Forum in Davos, is prospective prime minister.
But, professor Cheng Li was quick to add, “nothing has been decided yet, and nothing is for sure”.
The two informal factions dividing China’s communist party seem to have forged a compromise over the allocation of the two top spots. Xi, the son of one of China’s earliest revolutionaries and a member of the liberal, market oriented Shanghai Clique, is the prospective president. Li, who has expressed a strong interest in the climate debate, poverty reduction and affordable housing for the masses, is a member of the Communist Youth League group, which has yet to shed the last of its communist ideological feathers.
Rising stars
All the other vacancies still seem to be up for grabs. One of the main candidates for the membership of the core group of leaders is Bo Xilai, a party secretary in the western city of Chongqing. He is the son of one of the founders of the Chinese Communist Party and the undisputed political star of the NPC.
His battle against corrupt party officials, crooked police commissioners and organised crime has made him one of the most popular politicians in the country according to online polls. The People’s Daily honoured him as Man of the Year in 2009, a sign he has a future as a member of China’s political elite.
Another rising star is Wang Yang, who preceded Xilai as Chongqing’s party secretary, but currently fulfils the same position in Guangdong, the southern province home to the world’s largest manufacturing plants. Wang, a political economist, is a protégé of president Hu Jintao, the youth league group’s leader.
Wang seems less of an ideological hardliner than Hu is however. He is keen to discuss political reform and, according to professor Cheng Li, is looking to put an end to many ideological and political taboos. In interviews, he likes to quote Deng Xiaoping, the leader who opened up China’s doors to the world.
Sitting in the Great Hall of the People’s restaurant, Yang Fengchun, a professor at Beijing University and an advisor to the NPC, explained that ostentatious campaigning was ill advised amongst members of China’s political elite.
“Say little, do a lot. That is the best method,” the historian explained. He cautioned that liberalisation of the economy and reforms did not herald political system shift. “Western style reforms will not be adapted in the next 20 years. That is not the road China will go down,” he added.
