China’s problems are not entirely external and are not limited to the new Trump administration. China is now embroiled in an internal political struggle around the efforts of President Xi to make himself the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong.
In reaction to the excesses of the Mao era – including the disastrous Great Leap Forward, which caused famine in the 1950s, and the destructive Cultural Revolution of 1966 – 76 – China developed a new model of collective leadership under Deng Xiaoping beginning in the 1980s.
Deng himself was never president; he held a series of lesser posts. However, he was the architect of the current presidential system and was regarded as China’s ‘paramount leader’ from 1978 to 1987. Deng held what the Chinese call the ‘Mandate of Heaven,’ a quasi-religious concept that has bestowed legitimacy on Chinese emperors for over 3,000 years.
The new model still had a single leader, but the leader was chosen by consensus among the Central Committee members of the Communist Party. Each leader was elected to a five-year term (in rigged elections), and was permitted to serve a second five-year term (some did so, some did not).
Importantly, at the beginning of a leader’s second five-year term, he would designate one or two likely successors. Those designated successors would then jockey for position among the Central Committee members. Slowly a consensus would emerge around one figure. That individual would then be selected as president at the end of the current president’s second term.
This post was published at Daily Reckoning
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