It is a certainty that the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, will be confirmed in office at the 20th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, currently being held in Beijing. At 69, Xi is also tipped to become the CCP chairman.
In China there is a very close relationship between party and state – the two are often wrongly considered to be essentially the same. This sometimes leads to confusion in western commentary about the powers of different offices and the titles that leaders hold. The current Chinese president is also the general secretary of the Communist Party but, in the past, the head of state was not always the most powerful CCP leader. For example, during the leadership of Mao Zedong, a rival figure, Liu Shaoqi, was president between 1959 and 1966.
Western commentary often sees leadership tension as a starting point for political analysis. In studies of the USSR, “Kremlinology” became a refined art over many decades but it told us little about the fault-lines of Soviet society. What looked like a powerful regime, sending astronauts into space and exploding nuclear bombs, suffered a prolonged crisis of legitimacy in many parts of the society. Keeping the focus on leadership politics will not help explain China.
