Xi Jinping’s Inner Circle – Part I
With the kind permission of Mr. Cheng Li, director of the John L. Thornton China Center and a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings; also a director of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations (Mr. Li focuses on the transformation of political leaders, generational change and technological development in China) comes this week’s paper.
Understanding geography has alway been important in understanding the modern leadership in China, For the Nationalists it was Guangdong and specifically the Whampoa Military Academy. For Mao, Hunan and Hubei were where many key players hailed from. For Deng it was Sichuan and for Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao Jiangsu and Shandong were key recruiting areas for many of their closest advisors and associates.
In this paper Mr. Li claims no inside track into the Xi administration but through a forensic examination of his past and a look at at a who’s who of some of the most important players in China today reverse-engineers a picture of why the current administration looks like it looks and where the real power behind the throne lies.
Page eight will introduce you to the Shaanxi Gang in full but it’s worth reading on for one of the clearest descriptions I’ve seen to date of how China is run not only today but is also likely to be run, and why, for the next ten years.
I’ll follow up with Part II ‘Friends from Xi’s Formative Years’, again from Mr. Li next week.
Happy Sunday