The Makeup of the CCP Elite | Hacker News Reader

The Makeup of the CCP Elite

chinadatalab.ucsd.edu

96 pointsundefined182 comments

https://sci-hub.do/10.1017/S0305741000045495

> The Hakka are an impoverished and stigmatized subgroup of Han Chinese whose settlements are scattered from Jiangxi to Sichuan. Socialist revolution meshed well with the Hakka tradition of militant dissent, so that their 3 per cent of the mainland population has been three times more likely than other Han to hold high position. Six of the nine Soviet guerrilla bases were in Hakka territory, while the route of the Long March moved from Hakka village to Hakka village.(Compare Maps 1, 2, 3 and 4.)1 In 1984, half the Standing Committee of the Politburo were Hakka, and the People's Republic and Singapore both had Hakka leaders, Deng Xiaoping and Lee Kwan Yew, joined by Taiwan's President Lee Teng-Hui in 1988.

> Hakka political history remains almost entirely undiscussed, and Chinese sources virtually never use the word "Hakka," but a vital subset of political alliances appears as soon as Hakka networks are decoded. Hakka solidarity also illuminates how a small sub-ethnic group can gain significance when it meets an historic opportunity. In the early 20th century Hakka poverty made land reform worth fighting for at precisely the moment when socialist organizers desperately needed the traditional Hakka strengths: mobility, military prowess, strong women and a strategically-useful common language.

Anyone knows if Xi Jingping is hakka? Your article (1992) is from before his rise but the following link from later on, 1999-2002, when he was governor of Fujian province (where historically part/most of the hakka holdings were) seems to imply he is.

http://www.china.org.cn/english/4344.htm

No. Xi was born in Beijing, with his father and grandparents living in Fuping County, Shaanxi before joining CCP. And they are migrants from Henan.

> Among the 19th CC elite, there are only 19 Tsinghua undergraduates and 37 Peking University undergraduates out of 1021 elite. The other top grantors of undergraduate degrees to the Chinese elite include Renmin University, Nanjing University, the Central Party School, and the National Defense University. The majority of the CCP elite graduated from one of the over one hundred lesser known universities in China. Although in recent years, many have pursued graduate degrees, fewer than one hundred have obtained their master degrees from Peking U, Tsinghua, or Renmin, whereas 132 of the elite obtained master degrees from the Central Party School. Even among the elite born after 1962, only a small share obtained bachelors or masters from Peking, Tsinghua, or Renmin.

That's surprising, given the geographic concentration of the birth place of CCP elites outlined later in the article.

What does this tell us about upward mobility and meritocracy within the CCP?

Well, looking at it from a game-theory perspective:

It might just mean that you have to be #1 in your local communist party to move up to the regional one, and you have to be #1 in the regional one to move up to the national one. Your chances of qualifying for each round up are inversely proportional to the number of people you're competing against, and their abilities.

In such a system, you're better off going to (or staying in) a more remote city in a more remote province, as the competition will be weaker, and your absolute ability is irrelevant.

If this view is correct, you'd expect that the assembly would be representative of a broad spectrum of regions, but that the upper rungs of leadership would be occupied by individuals from the most populous and richest areas. This appears to be the case (from what I understand).

I am not exactly well-versed in Chinese culture but it seems like locals would have an advantage over carpet-baggers given my paltry understanding of guanxi.

It's worth considering the ancient history of viewing all central governments (including all the Emperors) as essentially being carpet baggers you can ignore if you're physically far enough away from them. So, this is the carpet-bagging elite.

Carpet baggers have their own virtue that is a lack of strong power base and personal attachment. So the expectation is that they are less corrupt or preferential.

Well this statistics on "elite university" is close to meaningless in analyzing the current iteration of CCP leaders.

The reason being that current iteration mostly are 50 years or older. Put them as born before 70s, at the time of their age of entering university, pretty much any one of them are elite in the absolute sense, when compared to US concept. Note that it was until late 90s that the higher education is considered accessible to more people.

This study is kind of too shallow in this sense. But that's expected, judging from how the US president's understanding of China...

I wonder what will happen to the politcal climate of China when the old guard age out.

The way I see it this form of government is no different than any other Chinese dynasty before it. Qi, Tang, Ming, Wing, you name it. They were always large, dynastic/monarchical, emphasis on military, kowtow, heavens mandate post confucianism, and unchanging until an internal coup or massive peasant revolt.

The CCP is no different. The only thing that would make me think they are is if they'd be willing to launch a nuke at their own people to prevent a revolution.

So basically what it says is Xi is a non-traditional leader who hands all the positions to his friends and would rather let the leadership grow old and senile than promote a competent person, because old friends are not a threat.

> would rather let the leadership grow old and senile than promote a competent person

Sounds a tad familiar? The US just elected the oldest President ever, who has spent decades in government.

Honestly confused by Americans pretending they have anything that different to what the Chinese do. Bushes, Clintons, it's like you've all harked back to royal lines while pretending it's something else.

It's truly terrifying that democracies are electing older and older people across the board, they simply aren't capable of doing the job, everyone I know over 60 has highly diminished mental capacities and if not retired they should be relegated to menial tasks.

I know it's a harsh thing to say and I'm truly sorry to people of said demographic reading this stuff but it's a cold hard fact easily backed up by decades of science.

Elderly people are the most dangerous politicians on the planet.

+1. Biden and Trump both sounded so much more intelligent in their younger days; I don't understand why we insist on only allowing people to lead our country when they're at their worst.

And despite billing himself as the alternate to the dynastical system, Trump quickly used the presidency as a vehicle for advancing his family's careers. Biden did the exact same thing as vice president - you can tell me what Hunter Biden did was "legal" till the cows come home, he obviously profited immensely from foreign business opportunities that existed solely because his dad was VP.

It's a problem that so-called liberal people love claiming that a scandal has been "debunked" because it was, in fact, legal to engage in extreme corruption. Do we really accept that this system is legitimate, much less superior to those horrible Russians and Chinese? As if they don't call their corruption legal, too?

I've heard the Biden stuff is all smoke [1]. What's the part of the story that I'm missing? What was the corruption?

1. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/here-s-what-h...

https://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3896812/posts

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2020/10/22/bobuli...

Search on DDG for other statements from Tony Bobulinksi. He was one of Hunter Biden's business partners, and a former Navy officer (unlike Hunter, he didn't get kicked out of the Navy for drug abuse). Bottom line: Hunter's income stems almost entirely from foreign powers buying access to his father. Most dangerously, the Chinese.

I'm more interested in the evidence he says he has than his statement.

> I have extensive relevant records and communications and I intend to produce those items to both Committees in the immediate future.

Where is this?

Here's some of it: https://apelbaum.wordpress.com/2020/11/02/the-biden-rat-year...

Strange that the Cathay Bank wire transfer document has the amount redacted, of all things.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/11/breaking-evidence-b...

I feel kinda dumb right now because I don't really see a smoking gun here or I just don't understand what I'm looking at.

> I don't understand why we insist on only allowing people to lead our country when they're at their worst.

Even if being, as the GP suggests, over 60 was "at their worst", we don't. Sure, Trump and Biden are unusually old for Presidents. The remainder of the most recent five elected Presidents, Clinton, Bush the Younger, and Obama, were all unusually young for Presidents -- Clinton (3rd youngest at inauguration) and Obama (5th youngest at inauguration) were both under 50 when they took office, W was under 55.

Biden himself is very old, but from what I've seen he's going to focus on installing competent people, many of them younger, instead of picking "old friends". Whereas Trump has spent his entire presidency ejecting competent people (usually because they "disagreed with him") and replacing them with his mostly-elderly buddies, many of whom aren't remotely qualified for the positions they've been handed. Rick Perry was the Secretary of Energy for goodnessake.

> It's truly terrifying that democracies are electing older and older people across the board

Why? Despite short-term trends mostly connected to the opioid crisis, over the long term people are living longer and being mentally and physically functional longer, especially at the high tail of the distribution (and when you are talking about elected leaders, its a small group, not the bulk of the population.)

> they simply aren't capable of doing the job, everyone I know over 60 has highly diminished mental capacities

There is a very slight on-average decline of executive function with age past, IIRC, the early 30s. Healthy 60 year olds don't have "highly diminished mental capacities" as a rule, so if everyone you know over that age does, that tells more about who you know than it does about over 60 year olds.

> I know it's a harsh thing to say and I'm truly sorry to people of said demographic reading this stuff but it's a cold hard fact easily backed up by decades of science.

No, its not.

> hands all the positions to his friends and would rather let the leadership grow old and senile than promote a competent person, because old friends are not a threat

not trying to be faceitious, but sounds like just about every office ive ever worked at....

> Among this powerful elite which include all Central Committee members and provincial standing committee members, the share of women has gone up from a dismal 7.6% to a still-dismal 8.4% from the 18th CC to the 19th CC. Among the post-62 cohort active in the 19th CC, only 11% of the elite are women. To be sure, as more cadres in the post-62 cohort enter the vice-provincial elite, the share of women may rise, but it would be surprising if this cohort had more than 15% of women in the end, which, again, is still dismal. The small share of women among the more promising members of the post-62 cohort suggests that the gender pattern in the CCP elite will continue with the dismal status quo of one female Politburo member at each congress, along with two to four full Central Committee members and a handful of alternate members. This status quo may well persist until the 22th Party Congress in 2032, based on current trajectories.

I count four "dismals" :-)

Worth noting is our own rather poor showing in elite politics in the US. Around 25% women in congress. And if you look at only Republicans it's under 9%. Yes, you read that correctly.

Something I’ve noticed about UK conservatism — and maybe it’s true for the US too — is that women and minorities are much better represented at the very top than at the MP/Congress level. The Tories have 25% female MPs, but are also responsible for both female PMs. Half of the Great Offices of State in the UK are currently occupied by minorities. And if you look at the historic willingness of the Tories to run ethnic and female candidates for very important roles, it’s considerably better than Labour: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Offices_of_State

I guess all I’m saying is that it’s worth factoring in proximity to power rather than just raw numbers

There's a simple logic to this. The center is left of the conservatives, so a woman or minority candidate allows them to capture swing voters. Racists and sexists will probably vote for them anyway.

It's why Angela Merkel is such an effective politician. She essentially monopolizes the right, while being able to take positions that the right wing hate (e.g. on the refugee crisis), knowing they won't stop voting for her.

> so a woman or minority candidate allows them to capture swing voters

I don't think this is true. Thatcher, May, Priti Patel, Palin, and Andrea Leadsom are all hard-right enough that I don't believe any of them are more appealing to people in the center than white, male moderates like Cameron.

Running a minority candidate who shares your politics is a good way of deflecting (or even co-opting) a lot of 'woke' criticism. As true in Thatcher's day as it is with the supreme court today.

I wonder if Biden isn't the same thing in reverse (an attempt to appeal to the curmudgeonly older white voters who are attracted to Trump with somebody who looks like them).

I don't think you should necessarily be depressed by this.

The average age of a congressperson is ~60 years old. So the average congress person was born in 1960. Our current crop of congress people were raised in the 60s, by WWII veterans. Even if you think society underwent changes and is far more gender equitable now than it was in 1960, you wouldn't expect to see that start to take effect in top level leadership until much later. It's the same reason why you wouldn't expect to see a woman or a black person on the supreme court 15 years after women or blacks were allowed to become lawyers.

This reads like a Babylon Bee satire of a useful idiot millennial journalist [1].

“We need more female genocidal tyrants!”

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot

It sounds like whatever white person wrote this will not be satisfied about anything done in China. Typical. They’re just grandstanding and projecting.

Meanwhile, the Republicans have mediocre percentages of women in their leadership group. And even worse, they have an even worse number of minorities in their entire group.

They claim to be the land of equality and freedom, but suspiciously, they don’t put minority people and women into leadership positions.

They don’t even try to be about equality and opportunity themselves, but yet, here they are trying to find fault with another country. Hypocrites.

Interesting that their map seems to include Taiwan, although it is marked "NA", and no representatives come from there

The US tells the world that it subscribes to a 1-China policy (taiwan and others are recognized as part of China in theory) but militarily defends it as an ally against China. Taiwan does not participate in the CCP directly.

The US only ambiguously "acknowledges" the One China Policy.

That's strange actually. They do have 13 representatives from Taiwan. And many times people (mostly public figures, such as actor Jacky Chong) from Macau and Hong Kong register as representatives in their origin (where their parents or grand parents from) rather than representatives from Hong Kong or Macau.

Edit: I was talking about people's representatives, not CCP representatives. If it is about CCP representatives, communist party is illegal in Taiwan.

Where does this dataset come from?

> Shih, Victor, Jonghyuk Lee, and David Meyer. 2015. “The Database of CCP Elite.” San Diego: Institute of Global Conflict and Cooperation

The CCP is terrible but there’s no question intellectually they outclass the United States’ geriatric leadership. Much more STEM too. We love our lawyers and business folk, don’t we?

Shou'en Li's answer to this Quora query[1] is insightful.

> In China, if you want to be a leader, you have to start from the grassroots level to accumulate rich government work experiences after ascending nine levels of posts (section chief, deputy division chief, division chief, deputy director of general office, director of general office, vice-minister, minister, deputy-state leader, state leader). With such experiences, you may have the opportunity to become one of the candidates for leadership.

[1] https://www.quora.com/How-does-the-Communist-Party-of-China-...

That sounds like the system's ideal - but is that how most people become, say, deputy state leaders? Or can you pay your way in, advance through nepotism, or blackmailing, or mutual corruption, etc?

One reason why Chinese bureaucrats are constantly rotated and not allowed to serve in their homeland is to prevent those.

How is it a good thing to have more efficient dictators?

The best system of government is a benevolent dictatorship. If you can’t make it less dictatorial, at least make it more benevolent.

Power corrupts. The only way to make a government more benevolent is to make it weaker.

The governments of the feudal era, let alone the night watch states of the 1800, were certainly more corrupt than the more centralized nations of China and the US. Disproving this hypothesis that I hear too much.

Were they? Did the feudal era monarchies exert control over foreign governments in far away continents? The feudal era was marked by constant churn and shifting allegiances and there was always somewhere to escape to. Many escaped to the Americas, coincidentally, where they did eventually launch revolutions against the English and Spanish monarchy, which grew quite powerful and corrupt during the Imperial era. At any rate, the entire design of the U.S. is to prevent corruption through decentralization of power. That includes division of power among the Federal and State governments as well as the several branches of government. To the extent that experiment has worked, it has done so through the successful application of those principles. To the extent that it hasn't, it has been when too much power has rested in too few hands for too long.

Yes they objectively were and yes late feudal lords did exert control over far away lands (early ones as well like Charlemagne and even Charles Martel to a lesser extent.) Also the design of the US is to find a balance between a strong federal government and state governments. That is why the issue has dominated our politics, in one form the other, and we’ve had a two party system based around it, ever since.

I don't think you understand the meaning of the word "objective". By what objective measure were they more corrupt than the CCP or the U.S.?

Charlemagne exhibited control and influence over a smaller chunk of Europe than the current E.U. The U.S. can almost bankrupt any country at will by freezing it out of the banking system and imposing sanctions.

I do. The local feudal lords were able to treat anyone below them however they wanted and could take bribes without any threat from above so long as they provided the number of soldiers and gold asked.

At the risk of being pedantic, I think it is you who doesn’t understand the word corrupt. The US bankrupting nations it doesn’t disagree with is within the system of rules at play and isn’t corrupt even if it is morally wrong.

The problem is a benevolent dictator only lasts part of one lifetime. Then you have to deal with the problem of succession, which in a dictatorship likely means unpredictable chaos

In plato's republic the benevolent dictators choose their successors to also be benevolent dictators, do not know if that could work in real life but the CCP do chose their successors, and not based on blood lines

And Xi has consolidated power and purged all competent up-and-coming potential successors that threaten this power. He shepherded through a modification in Chinese law to allow him to serve for life. Previously, the vaunted governing expertise inside the CCP had an age cap for its leaders. Not inspiring much confidence in their system.

https://in.news.yahoo.com/xi-jinping-undertakes-fresh-round-...

Another thing that doesn't inspire much confidence is looking at Hong Kong. The people there have unambiguously and collectively spoken about their desire to live under this system, often at grave personal risk.

Xi has only served for around 7 years, not even as long as some presidents. Merkel has served for somewhere around 15 years and many senators and congressmen have served for multiple decades.

AFAIK during Plato's life no more than about 40 thousands citizen lived in Athens (along with up to ~3 times more non-citizens). Plato's Republic was about politics in such a city-state, never about a bigger human group (for example one of our current huge nations).

AFAIK during the height of Athenian democracy there were no more than 50k ish male citizens that lived in Athens, and all of the same ethnic group. Democracy only works for politics in such a city-state, never about about a bigger and more diverse non male group (for example one of our current huge nations)

Considering how corrupting power is even in more democratic / power-sharing systems, IMHO I'd amend your statement to read something like "in an ideal world ..."

Of course in an ideal world we wouldn't need a benevolent dictator at all, so, maybe a benevolent dictatorship is never the "best", but, at best, sometimes better than the worst.

A benevolent dictatorship is great for a creative project. As a government it is a dead end and never remains "benevolent" for long.

The comment says nothing about it being "good."

Where's the mention of more STEM? (I was hoping it might have some details, but can't see it)

Let's not forget that Wilson was a Princeton Professor and Hoover was an engineer. (Wilson appointed KKK members to his cabinet, screened a white supremacist film in the white house, invaded and occupied the soviet union for two years; hoover treated society as a machine that he would "tweak the knobs to try to optimize" - we all know how that turned out) And Coolidge, a lawyer, was arguably the "least bad" president of the 20th c (didn't invade any countries, re-desegreated the federal workforce).

Just to clarify for those reading this, Wilson studied political science and history, and went to law school. He wasn't a "STEM" professor.

Parent comment had three parts. First part was about intelligence in general, second part drew attention to stem in particular, third part was about lawyers and businessmen. I structured my response with deliberate parallelism.

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