Xi Jinping’s Inner Circle – Part II
Following last week’s paper from Mr. Cheng Li, a director of the John L. Thornton China Center and a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings (he’s also a director of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations and focuses on the transformation of political leaders, generational change and technological development in China) comes this week’s follow up paper.
Last week’s paper looked at how a ‘Shaanxi Gang’ has clustered around President Xi JinPing but this week’s paper takes a look at his early years and identifies childhood and early-life friends that have become major players shaping all manner of policies in the new administration.
It also highlights how beholden the President is to Mr. Jiang Zemin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiang_Zemin) and how he will need to mold the leadership landscape ahead of the 19th Party Congress in 2017 when many of this faction’s players will be forced to retire. This relationship is a tricky balancing act with four of the highest profile characters indicted in the recent anti-corruption drive being from this camp (Mr. Bo Xilai, Mr. Liu Zhijun, Mr. Zhou Yongkang and Mr. Xu Caihou respectively).
There’s a summary table on page-six of how and when these players from President Xi’s past became friends and then a detailed briefing on three of the most important and coming men in the administration:
Mr. Liu He (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-28/china-naming-harvard-educated-liu-to-ndrc-may-hail-policy-shift.html) is now the President’s chief economic advisor. Western educated, English speaking and dubbed by some as ‘China’s Larry Summers’ he’s believed to have been the chief architect of China’s 2008 stimulus package (which worked, and some, BTW. More on that from another recent posting https://www.chinadream.asia/the-sunday-paper-withstanding-great-recession-like-china/). In addition he prepared the communique of the Third Plenum of the 18th Party Congress last November that placed a new and firmer emphasis on market based solutions within the Chinese economy.
Mr. Liu Yuan (http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/exclusive–china-s-xi-likely-to-promote-army-general-who-exposed-graft—sources/40533476), ‘A Conservative Military Hawk’ not to mention misogynist and fierce patriot. Unpopular among a large faction of the military for initiating high level anticorruption initiatives a number of the old guard also resent his ‘helicopter-rise’ courtesy of his schoolyard chum President Xi. The shakeup underway in the military presently is likely to create more gaps at the higher levels and, despite some grassroots opposition, it seem likely that Mr. Liu is destined for greater things.
Mr. Chen Xi, Tsinghua University roommate and fellow sports fan Mr. Chen is the most directly propelled upwards of President Xi’s old friends and now serves as executive deputy director of the CCP Organization department which makes him the President’s de facto Chief Personnel Officer. He will most likely be promoted minister for education in due course but is presently managing a complete overhaul of the administration of China’s universities.
Mr. Cheng Li has promised a third paper in this series foucssing on President Xi’s patron-client ties built up from his time as a local and provincial leader and I’ll be sure to highlight that in due course.
Happy Sunday