Skip to footer

China's leadership shakeup: Bo Xilai and 4 other names to watch

At its 18th  Party Congress next autumn, the ruling Chinese Communist Party will choose the nine men (and they will almost certainly all be men) who will lead the country for the next decade. Infighting among candidates is fierce, under the table, and the identities of the winners will be a closely guarded secret until the moment they walk onto a stage in the Great Hall of the People at the end of the Congress. 

In the meantime, here are five names to keep an eye on as China prepares for a once-in-a-decade leadership change.

REUTERS
Bo Xilai, Secretary of Chongqing Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), speaks to the media during a plenary session of the Chongqing delegation during the ongoing National People's Congress (NPC) at the Great Hall of People in Beijing March 9.

1. Xi Jinping - 'next leader'

  • By Peter Ford Staff writer

Currently the vice president, vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, and head of the party school,  Xi Jinping looks like a shoo-in to take over from President Hu Jintao as head of the party this autumn and as China’s president early next year.

An ebullient, affable man with a reputation for living modestly, Mr. Xi made his name running two of the economic powerhouse provinces on China’s prosperous east coast, suggesting he is sympathetic to more free market reform. 

The son of a former deputy premier, Xi is a “princeling” and a member of what is known as the elitist faction within the Communist party. But the six years he spent working in the countryside during the Cultural Revolution are said to have given him a better understanding of poor people’s concerns. 

He has made fewer enemies on his way up the ladder than many ambitious rivals, and is thus acceptable to a wider range of his peers and superiors. He will only be “first among equals” on the Standing Committee of the party’s Politburo, however, and is expected to spend his first few years in power consolidating his position before launching any new policy initiatives.

1 of 5
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.