He asserts that for a time in 1992, Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平), then China's de facto leader, discussed toppling Jiang and Prime Minister Li Peng (李鵬) for their failure to press China's economic opening, which Deng saw as vital.
According to that account, Deng even briefly bruited the notion of restoring Zhao Ziyang (趙紫陽) to senior office. Zhao was deposed as party chief in 1989 because he showed too much sympathy for the democracy protests at Tiananmen Square.
The dismissals were sidetracked, the author says, by Jiang's masterly aide, Zeng Qinghong (曾慶紅), who helped Jiang jump belatedly onto the "reform" bandwagon and convinced Deng that a greater threat lay in the accumulating power of two related army generals, who were later purged. Zhao remains defiant and under house arrest today.
An English-language description of the "Zong" book and his version of political developments has been prepared by Nathan and by Bruce Gilley, a journalist and biographer of Jiang. Their version will be published this fall as China's New Rulers: The Inside Files, by The New York Review of Books Press. Excerpts are being published in forthcoming issues of The New York Review of Books.
In an interview, Nathan acknowledged that many assertions could not be independently verified. But he said that the anonymous writer's track record of informed articles and an earlier book, the rich and plausible detail of the new report and extensive discussions had convinced him and Gilley that the documents and the author's high-level access were genuine.
Nathan said he remained puzzled by the motives of the insiders who leaked the secret documents to the author. The materials -- describing the work records, climb to power and excerpts from internal speeches of Politburo candidates -- did not seem to convey any political agenda on the part of the leakers, who were taking a severe risk.
According to the author's account, the future membership of the Politburo standing committee was largely determined months ago or earlier. The standing committee, which runs the party and the country, now includes seven men, most of whom are to retire because they are older than 70.
Hu will rank first, followed by Li Ruihan (李瑞環), 68, who is also to become the head of parliament. Vice Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶), 60, will be named prime minister as well as a standing committee member. Others on the committee will include Vice Premier Wu Bangguo (吳邦國); Luo Gan (羅幹), the hard-line director of law and security, and Zeng, Jiang's protege.
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