In a matter of weeks, China's new party leadership will formally take over the reins of power and attempt to keep the world's most populous country on a course of continued economic growth, stability and accumulation of prestige in international affairs. It should be a matter of global concern then that we know so little about the nine men who've been assigned this monumental task. Who are these men? What are their backgrounds? What are their attitudes toward national security? Are they near-psychopathic demagogues of the Mao type? Or rather pragmatists in the style of Deng Xiaoping?
Andrew Nathan and Bruce Gilley's new book China's New Rulers: The Secret Files is perhaps the only widely available resource to fill the knowledge gap about China's incoming leadership. But casual readers should be cautioned that this is a reference book on contemporary Chinese politics that is at points impossibly dense and is throughout quite boring. What doesn't help this book is that its subjects -- China's nine top-dog technocrats -- can't hold a candle to Mao, Deng or even Jiang Zemin in terms of struggling tooth and nail to reach the pinnacle of power. They were all groomed over the past two decades, having been placed on the high-speed track to success within the Communist Party by powerful, elder patrons in need of loyal and capable underlings. That is how, without having accomplished anything of note except for remaining uncontroversial, Hu Jintao (
China's New Rulers is a translation complemented by the two co-authors' extensive additions and comments of a Chinese book titled "Disidai" (
But reading this book now, one should keep in mind that it was written before the 16th Party Congress in November when the final decisions on the new regime were finalized and the book's confident predictions -- written in a tone of predestination -- were in some cases incorrect. The book, for example, assumes there would be seven members on the Standing Committee, which is the highest communist party body, whereas the actual number revealed at the party congress was nine. There is also a fair amount of blatant cheerleading for Li Ruihuan (
These glaring blunders are understandable, even forgivable, considering the secretive nature of transfers of power in China, but they should nonetheless serve to caution against predicting the future in a country with a closed political system such as China's.
Its mistakes aside, China's New Rulers contains a wealth of interesting material that provides a blueprint, though somewhat vague, of China's political future.
Along with lengthy bios of the leaders, there are sections detailing their personal statements on political reform, democracy, free press, and domestic as well as international affairs. These comments are especially revealing and, unfortunately, they show that Taiwan shouldn't pin its hopes on the new leadership to extend any olive branches its way.
For all their expertise in managing the country's affairs, when it comes to relations with Taiwan and the US, the Fourth Generation is likely to be as difficult as the last. Consider Zeng Qinghong's (
The Fourth Generation holds similarly warped views of the Sino-US relationship, which they discuss almost in the manner of conspiracy theorists convinced of a devious Pentagon plot to contain and destroy China.
Students of Chinese politics will find this book of enormous value for the light it sheds on the internal struggles during the Jiang years, the divergent views exposed within the Communist Party on the future of China and the comprehensive run-down on what was the most harmonious and meritocratic transfer of power in the country's history.
By bringing the new rulers' private comments and confidential materials out into the open, China's New Rulers may actually do the leadership a favor by briefing the world about whom they will be dealing with for at least the next five years and probably the next 10 years. But for the book to have that use, people will have to finish reading it first and for nine out of 10 readers that's an unlikely possibility.
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