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Comment by Bojui | Hacker News Reader

What happens if Xi kicks the can tomorrow? How smooth is the transition going to be? China is so massive I cant understand how they dont have multiple power centers bumping into each other all the time.

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Well last time there was a "successor problem" China went through a decade-long political and economic turmoil that was the Cultural Revolution.

Having experienced that first hand, Deng implemented the term limit, so that there won't be a position of absolute power for the rest of one's life (it's just too much a temptation and thus recipe for chaos every 20-30 years or so).

Now that the term limit is gone, I don't think the transition would be as smooth as the past two decades.

> Having experienced that first hand, Deng implemented the term limit

No... the man had zero sympathies for the civil state.

He just planned to stay in power way longer, and organised it so that all senior party men coming after him will be in compromised positions.

Similarly, Jiang never left the power on good terms, but with a hefty pack of compromising info on party elites, and arranging for new coming leadership being very weak.

Only Hu possibly left the power unconditionally, and without any power left, but only because he was weak.

This overlooks many changes that have occurred in the recent decades, such as the restructuring of the PLA (including their decoupling from state business), the development of the socialist market economy, and the further development of the rank and file organization of the party. All of these give structure and order where they didn't exist before. The leadership roles in the party have never been less significant within Chinese internal politics, as the collective leadership has been strengthening for the last three decades.

I really don't know where to start with this. The short answer is no.

The long answer is Stalin's supporters said the exact same things. And it's not a surprise -- Xi is borrowing a lot from Stalin's centralization playbook, including "restructuring" the PLA (i.e., purging generals who weren't loyal to him personally and ensuring he has a Party loyalist on every ship) and developing the rank and file (to replace the Party leaders he purged in "corruption scandals"). However, this time around, those of us outside the system smells the b.s. a mile away.

China would be wise to remember that Stalin came thisclose to losing WWII because of these changes. Purging military leaders may make them loyal to you, but it doesn't make them good at their actual jobs.

I think we must have different understandings of what causes power struggles within leadership. The comparison to the 1953-1956 period in the USSR also feels a bit misplaced to me, as although there was a minor power struggle during that period, it didn’t have broad implications the way the death of Mao did. (I also don’t agree that the structure of the CPC is all that similar to the structure of the CPSU during Stalin’s leadership, but that’s not of much relevance in my mind.)

RE: the PLA and the party membership, I was referring to changes that mostly took place during the 1990s, which had much broader implications on the locations of structural power within the PRC than anything that’s been done in the last decade.

Calling what led to tens of executions, had an amnestia releasing 1.2 million criminals amongst the public and had top brass spending days in meetings with emergency support being flown in, minor is an understatement

I’m not saying it’s minor apropos of nothing, I’m talking about it in relative terms to the consequences of the Gang of Four’s downfall.

Talking with a Chinese friend of mine, his take was that Jack Ma's imprisonment/disappearance is less about his comments in the October speech and more about an ongoing power struggle in the CCP between supporters of the former General Secretary Jiang Zemin, who is an ally of Jack Ma, and the Xi Jinping faction. The October speech may have just been the catalyst and pretense. As for how smooth the transition would be, Chinese politics are pretty opaque and I'm far from an expert, but from the outside it appears the Xi faction is fairly strong and only growing in power, so I would guess the transition wouldn't be too turbulent.

I definitely think politics are less unified in China that it may appear, and the whole situation with Jack Ma is an example of "multiple power centers bumping into each other".

Yes, I've heard the same thing. Jiang Zemin, Jack Ma, and others like Deng Xiaoping are/were more interested in making money. Xi Jinping is more ideologically motivated, and wishes he could be Mao Zedong.

The centralized, unitary structure of the Chinese government and the CPC make it unlikely that there will be a power struggle — there aren't many levers that would-be power players have to pull to achieve their goals (unlike after the Death of Mao, by contrast). Xi holds three positions of authority in China, and it's unlikely that anyone would immediately replace him in all three, as it's only happened in his case because of the confidence that the membership of the CPC has in his faction.

The next General Secretary of the party and Chairman of the CMC would both be elected by the party's Central Committee. Whoever is selected as General Secretary will most likely also be chosen as President, since this is mostly a ceremonial role. The majority of the Central Committee are in the same faction as Xi is currently, so it seems more likely than not that they'll find people from within their ranks to fill these positions and attempt to strengthen the collective leadership.

Xi has been in power for under a decade, and there likely are many competing power struggles that take place under him.

They do, if you remember a while back the head of Shanghai area was prosecuted and brought down on corruption charges, that consolidated power in current leadership because he was an alternate center.

Xi wants no waves for the CCP 100th Anniversary celebrations and a few other key milestones this year. That’s why even the wolf warriors are being muzzled at the moment.

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