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Chinese leadership: The challenge in 2012

Author: Kerry Brown, Chatham House One side-effect of the Dengist economic reforms which started to penetrate deeply in the 1980s was the transition from a ruling Chinese Communist Party that was focused on class struggle and revolutionary aspiration under Mao, to one in which a new technocratic elite were in control. In the words of Wang Hui, one of contemporary China’s foremost public intellectuals, that meant that the party started fulfilling a more ‘evaluative’ function and became the sort of ‘bureaucratic machine’ that Mao had tried to prevent. While the economy grew and prospered , the party looked at its own internal governance , at how it promoted key officials, how it dealt with its own accountability, and disciplined those in its fold who had become corrupt. In short, it tried to professionalise itself. Central to this task was the need to have a mechanism (mostly peer pressure) by which the top elite controlled themselves. There was no question of some entity, like the legal system or civil society, standing above the party and placing obligations and regulations upon it. But there was a sense that the party needed to tidy up its act, and that another messy leadership transition of the kind that had occurred between Mao and Deng (which had taken almost two years to achieve) was a luxury the party could no longer afford. Party congresses which had occurred sporadically before 1982 started to happen every five years. Time limits were set on those holding high office. By stealth rather than by stated aim, retirement ages were brought in. By 2002, when there was a transition from the third to the fourth generation of leadership (from Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao), nervousness that this process would lead to infighting among factions in the party remained evident till some years into Hu’s era. Only in 2007 was Hu seen by commentators and experts of the party to become his own man with the party congress, meaning he could then elevate a number of people close to him, and gently ease out of positions of influence those seen as close to Jiang before. The imminent party congress in late 2012 is arousing all the speculation that the congress of 2002 did. There has been a decade more of the party being able to build its own internal governance, and trying to modernise its own structures. In the last few years it has practised what has been called ‘intra-party democracy’, attempting to make its processes more predictable and a little more transparent. In a strategy of careful management, the likeliest successor to Hu next year, Xi Jinping, looks like he is following exactly the same path to the crucial position of General Secretary of the CCP — elevation to the Standing Committee of the Politburo as Vice Premier (like Hu), and vice chairmanship of the Central Military Commission, in charge of army affairs (like Hu). A range of leaders around him are also being carefully groomed to slip into major leadership positions when the current incumbents on the all-important standing committee of nine see seven of their members retire. So far, so good. While the party has managed its affairs with great care and attention (Hu is known to almost religiously follow due process, and attempts to build broad consensus across all shades of party opinion for what he does), there is still a nagging sense that while this fourth generation leadership may well have got the internal issue of succession well sorted, it has done so by pushing aside the larger, and much more contentious and challenging issues of broader political reform that are now staring it in the face. Since its entry into the World Trade Organisation in 2001, China’s economy has rocketed ahead — as much to the surprise of its leaders as those outside. Good economic performance was predicted back in 2001, but not one in which, in less than ten years, China would become the world’s largest exporter, largest importer, largest holder of foreign reserves and second largest economy. Five years ahead of what had been expected, China is in a much more powerful position than it, or others, had believed possible. This has been a double-edged sword. While it has bought massive increases in GDP and prosperity, it has also created a society where there remain sharp divisions between the haves and the have-nots, and where social classes, from entrepreneurs, to the urban middle class , to the farmers — who, after all, still make up over half the population — are increasingly in conflict with each other over issues from property rights, the state of the environment, rights over pensions, and demands to have more of the wealth that the country has created. The increasing repression since June 2009 , where rights lawyers and activists have been victimised and frequently imprisoned, is symptomatic of a leadership that has been bold in its economic thinking but profoundly cautious in its political views. In the new leadership there are no signs, as yet, that anyone has a particularly strong idea about how, for instance, to deepen the rule of law in the country by allowing genuinely independent courts, or giving a proper legal status to civil society groups. In 2011 the fundamental contradiction of contemporary China is that it runs on a largely centralised system inherited from the Soviet Union in the mid 20 th century while its economy is one of the most modern in the world. As it becomes clearer who the fifth generation leaders will be, and how jobs will be allocated among them, scrutiny will be focussed on what clues they give about how they might approach this hugely challenging and sensitive issue of political reform. The 12 th Five Year Program which was passed in Beijing last March at the annual National People’s Congress, the Chinese parliament, gave some recognition to this in talking a little about the need to build social infrastructure and a more stable, equal society. For the next decade, therefore, the issue will not be about the first battle — to build GDP — but about the conflicts that have come after that, to deal with the issues China will face as it progresses towards a middle-income-status country (its stated aim by 2020). These are proving to be far trickier and more demanding than simply pumping out good growth rates, and it is on these, more and more, that the future leadership of China will need to show the same kind of strong vision that their predecessors did about the economy, back in the late 1970s. So far there is little sign that they have the vision, or the capacity, to do this. But like it or not, over the coming decade, this more than anything else will be their key task. Kerry Brown is head of the Asia Program at Chatham house, London, where he leads Europe-China Research. He is author of ‘Ballot Box China’ (Zed books, 2011) and a biography of Hu Jintao which will appear in early 2012. This article appeared in the most recent edition of the ‘East Asia Forum Quarterly’, ‘Governing China’ . Chinese dam diplomacy: Leadership and geopolitics in continental Asia The challenge of China and China’s challenge – Weekly editorial Chinese leadership and Tibet

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Author: Kerry Brown, Chatham House

One side-effect of the Dengist economic reforms which started to penetrate deeply in the 1980s was the transition from a ruling Chinese Communist Party that was focused on class struggle and revolutionary aspiration under Mao, to one in which a new technocratic elite were in control.

In the words of Wang Hui, one of contemporary China’s foremost public intellectuals, that meant that the party started fulfilling a more ‘evaluative’ function and became the sort of ‘bureaucratic machine’ that Mao had tried to prevent. While the economy grew and prospered, the party looked at its own internal governance, at how it promoted key officials, how it dealt with its own accountability, and disciplined those in its fold who had become corrupt. In short, it tried to professionalise itself.

Central to this task was the need to have a mechanism (mostly peer pressure) by which the top elite controlled themselves. There was no question of some entity, like the legal system or civil society, standing above the party and placing obligations and regulations upon it. But there was a sense that the party needed to tidy up its act, and that another messy leadership transition of the kind that had occurred between Mao and Deng (which had taken almost two years to achieve) was a luxury the party could no longer afford. Party congresses which had occurred sporadically before 1982 started to happen every five years. Time limits were set on those holding high office. By stealth rather than by stated aim, retirement ages were brought in. By 2002, when there was a transition from the third to the fourth generation of leadership (from Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao), nervousness that this process would lead to infighting among factions in the party remained evident till some years into Hu’s era. Only in 2007 was Hu seen by commentators and experts of the party to become his own man with the party congress, meaning he could then elevate a number of people close to him, and gently ease out of positions of influence those seen as close to Jiang before.

The imminent party congress in late 2012 is arousing all the speculation that the congress of 2002 did. There has been a decade more of the party being able to build its own internal governance, and trying to modernise its own structures. In the last few years it has practised what has been called ‘intra-party democracy’, attempting to make its processes more predictable and a little more transparent. In a strategy of careful management, the likeliest successor to Hu next year, Xi Jinping, looks like he is following exactly the same path to the crucial position of General Secretary of the CCP — elevation to the Standing Committee of the Politburo as Vice Premier (like Hu), and vice chairmanship of the Central Military Commission, in charge of army affairs (like Hu). A range of leaders around him are also being carefully groomed to slip into major leadership positions when the current incumbents on the all-important standing committee of nine see seven of their members retire. So far, so good.

While the party has managed its affairs with great care and attention (Hu is known to almost religiously follow due process, and attempts to build broad consensus across all shades of party opinion for what he does), there is still a nagging sense that while this fourth generation leadership may well have got the internal issue of succession well sorted, it has done so by pushing aside the larger, and much more contentious and challenging issues of broader political reform that are now staring it in the face. Since its entry into the World Trade Organisation in 2001, China’s economy has rocketed ahead — as much to the surprise of its leaders as those outside. Good economic performance was predicted back in 2001, but not one in which, in less than ten years, China would become the world’s largest exporter, largest importer, largest holder of foreign reserves and second largest economy. Five years ahead of what had been expected, China is in a much more powerful position than it, or others, had believed possible.

This has been a double-edged sword. While it has bought massive increases in GDP and prosperity, it has also created a society where there remain sharp divisions between the haves and the have-nots, and where social classes, from entrepreneurs, to the urban middle class, to the farmers — who, after all, still make up over half the population — are increasingly in conflict with each other over issues from property rights, the state of the environment, rights over pensions, and demands to have more of the wealth that the country has created.

The increasing repression since June 2009, where rights lawyers and activists have been victimised and frequently imprisoned, is symptomatic of a leadership that has been bold in its economic thinking but profoundly cautious in its political views. In the new leadership there are no signs, as yet, that anyone has a particularly strong idea about how, for instance, to deepen the rule of law in the country by allowing genuinely independent courts, or giving a proper legal status to civil society groups. In 2011 the fundamental contradiction of contemporary China is that it runs on a largely centralised system inherited from the Soviet Union in the mid 20th century while its economy is one of the most modern in the world.

As it becomes clearer who the fifth generation leaders will be, and how jobs will be allocated among them, scrutiny will be focussed on what clues they give about how they might approach this hugely challenging and sensitive issue of political reform. The 12th Five Year Program which was passed in Beijing last March at the annual National People’s Congress, the Chinese parliament, gave some recognition to this in talking a little about the need to build social infrastructure and a more stable, equal society. For the next decade, therefore, the issue will not be about the first battle — to build GDP — but about the conflicts that have come after that, to deal with the issues China will face as it progresses towards a middle-income-status country (its stated aim by 2020). These are proving to be far trickier and more demanding than simply pumping out good growth rates, and it is on these, more and more, that the future leadership of China will need to show the same kind of strong vision that their predecessors did about the economy, back in the late 1970s.

So far there is little sign that they have the vision, or the capacity, to do this. But like it or not, over the coming decade, this more than anything else will be their key task.

Kerry Brown is head of the Asia Program at Chatham house, London, where he leads Europe-China Research. He is author of ‘Ballot Box China’ (Zed books, 2011) and a biography of Hu Jintao which will appear in early 2012.

This article appeared in the most recent edition of the ‘East Asia Forum Quarterly’, ‘Governing China’.

  1. Chinese dam diplomacy: Leadership and geopolitics in continental Asia
  2. The challenge of China and China’s challenge – Weekly editorial
  3. Chinese leadership and Tibet

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Chinese leadership: The challenge in 2012

Business

Business Update: Southern Sun Reports Earnings Growth; China Stimulates Property Market – News24

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Southern Sun reports increased earnings, attributed to growth in the hospitality sector, while China’s property market receives a boost, reflecting economic recovery and renewed investor confidence.


Southern Sun Earnings Surge

Southern Sun has reported a significant increase in its earnings, showcasing solid financial performance amid evolving market conditions. This growth highlights the company’s resilience and adaptability to changing consumer demands, positioning it well for future opportunities in the hospitality industry.

China’s Property Market Recovery

In a bid to rejuvenate its economy, China has introduced measures to boost its property market. These initiatives aim to stabilize real estate prices and encourage investment, which is crucial for maintaining economic momentum. The government’s commitment to supporting the sector reflects its understanding of the industry’s importance in overall economic health.

Broader Economic Implications

The rise in Southern Sun’s earnings and China’s proactive approach to revitalizing its property market indicate broader economic trends. Investors and stakeholders are keenly observing these developments, as they may signal recovery and growth opportunities in both the hospitality and real estate sectors. The collaboration between local businesses and governmental actions will be pivotal in shaping future economic landscapes.

Source : Business brief | Southern Sun sees earnings rise; China boosts its property market – News24

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China

Vietnam’s Approach to China: A Balance of Cooperation and Struggle

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Vietnam’s diplomatic strategy seeks a balance of cooperation and struggle with China, focusing on strengthening ties while resisting encroachments in the South China Sea through military enhancements and regional partnerships.


Vietnam’s Diplomatic Strategy

Vietnam’s diplomatic approach seeks to maintain a delicate balance between cooperation and struggle with China. While concerned about China’s growing influence, particularly in the South China Sea, Hanoi focuses on strengthening its economic and political ties. This effort involves military enhancements, fostering relationships with regional powers, and engaging in frequent political dialogues. By skillfully navigating relations with major powers, Vietnam aims to protect its sovereignty and foster stability amidst evolving geopolitical dynamics.

Recent Developments and Implications

Hanoi’s diplomatic maneuvering has drawn attention, particularly regarding key visits like Vietnamese Communist Party General Secretary To Lam’s August 2024 trip to China. Although there are apprehensions about a potential shift in Vietnam’s alignment due to To Lam’s background in public security and his anti-corruption initiatives, it is premature to predict any significant changes in policy. Vietnam’s leaders must continuously seek a balance between peaceful coexistence with China and safeguarding national sovereignty.

Economic Interdependence and Military Modernization

Vietnam’s strategy involves fostering economic interdependence with China while simultaneously resisting encroachments. This paradigm of “cooperation and struggle” enables Hanoi to cultivate beneficial ties in economic, political, and security domains. By leveraging its geographical advantage and connections, Vietnam enhances its economic ties while countering threats through military modernization and cooperation with regional partners. This nuanced approach allows Vietnam to welcome trade, particularly amidst shifting dynamics from the US-China trade war, ensuring continued foreign direct investment and growth in key sectors.

Source : Cooperation and struggle define Vietnam’s approach to China

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China

2025 Schedule of Public Holidays in China

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China’s 2025 public holiday schedule increases holidays by two days, with an 8-day Spring Festival and a 5-day Labor Day. Adjustments address public frustration, though long work periods persist. Notably, weekends are often designated as workdays to balance extended breaks.


China has released its 2025 Public Holiday schedule. Compared to 2024, the number of public holidays for all citizens has increased by two days, specifically for Lunar New Year’s Eve and May 2nd.

The announcement also clarifies the adjusted holiday arrangements, stating that the continuous work period before and after statutory holidays generally should not exceed six days, except for certain special circumstances.

According to the notice, in 2025, the Spring Festival will have an 8-day holiday, the Labor Day holiday will last 5 days, and the National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival will jointly have 8 days off.

China has long been considered one of the least generous countries in terms of public holidays. Additionally, people have expressed frustration over the complicated adjustments to holiday and working days that are meant to create longer breaks. The newly introduced changes are expected to address these concerns to some extent.

Beyond the newly introduced changes, China’s 2025 public holiday schedule still features two major week-long holidays: Spring Festival (also known as Chinese New Year) and the National Day holiday (often called ‘Golden Week’).

In 2025, the Spring Festival falls between January 28 and February 4, and the National Day holiday, together with the Mid-Autumn Festival, fall between October 1 and 8.

Foreign human resource managers should note that Saturdays and Sundays are often marked as additional official workdays in China to compensate for long holiday breaks. For example, January 26 (Sunday) and February 8 (Saturday) are designated as workdays to partially offset the eight days off for the Spring Festival.


This article was first published by China Briefing , which is produced by Dezan Shira & Associates. The firm assists foreign investors throughout Asia from offices across the world, including in in ChinaHong KongVietnamSingapore, and India . Readers may write to info@dezshira.com for more support.

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