Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

Sometime in the coming month the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will hold its 18th party congress to chose China’s next leader.  It is assumed that that man will be Xi Jinping.  Subscribers might find the following note on Xi’s path to power interesting, but not (we fear) particularly helpful in predicting the future path of China under its new leader.

The background to Xi’s rise to the status of heir apparent has been the decade-long power struggle between the Communist Youth League (CYL) faction led by President Hu Jintao and the Shanghai Clique headed by former president Jiang Zemin.  Xi, as a protégé of Jiang, has traditionally been seen as part of the Shanghai Clique and as owing his rise to its factional power.  Xi saw off the CYL favourite Li Keqiang.

Xi’s adherence to the Shanghai Clique was made very public when in October 2009 he presented Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel with two books by Jiang (or at least written under his name).

However, Xi was not necessarily the first choice of the Shanghai Clique and many see him as a compromise candidate who was also acceptable to the CYL.  Xi’s connections with the CYL include the fact that his father Xi Zhongxun was close to Hu’s ultimate patron Hu Yaobang.  Xi Zhongxun publicly supported the liberal Hu Yaobang when he was purged by Deng Xiaoping, and he opposed the Tiananmen Square events of 1989.  The younger Xi is still publicly supportive of Hu Yaobang’s widow and son Hu Deping, which sends positive signals to the liberals in the CYL.

Another complicating factor is the relationship between Xi and the disgraced ‘princeling’ Bo Xilai, who would have been a powerful rival had it not been for his disgrace over the murder by his wife of British businessman Neil Heywood.  Xi had shown some support for the Chongqing party chief and his brand of Maoist nostalgia, but he has since firmly supported Hu Jintao’s decision to treat Bo harshly – something that the Shanghai Clique’s leaders were apparently opposed to.

The conclusion of close China watchers is that Xi is not solely the creature of one faction or the other, but someone who has been able to leverage his links to both.  Nevertheless, it does now appear that with Bo out of the way he is tacking more towards Hu Jintao and the CYL faction and away from the Shanghai Clique.

The obvious point, however, is that none of this gives anything but the slightest of clues as to the future direction of China under Xi – and his disappearance for two weeks shortly before the most important Party Congress of his political career, without explanation, just compounds the mystery.

With all this happening against a backdrop of increasing Chinese belligerence towards its neighbours, there can be no surprise that the US’s pivot towards Asia (and its unspoken ‘contain China’ policy) is receiving such a welcome in Asia.