Xi Jinping has managed to maintain his grip on power in the People’s Republic of China for longer than a decade. What will unfold when the 71-year-old president eventually steps down?
“I think it’s almost certain that he will choose a weak … successor,” said Yuhua Wang, a professor of government and one of three experts to participate in a symposium this week hosted by the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies.
“The People’s Republic of China at 75” kicked off two months of lectures, discussions, and film screenings organized by the center to mark the anniversary of revolutionary leader Mao Zedong’s proclamation of a new Communist state. Moderator and Fairbank Center Faculty Director Mark Wu, the Henry L. Stimson Professor of Law, got the event started by inviting panelists to offer reflections bridging past, present, and future. The theme of leadership transition rose to the fore as Xi struggles with a wobbly post-COVID economy.
Wang, author of “The Rise and Fall of Imperial China” (2022), rang a note of optimism by first underscoring the PRC’s resilience by historic standards. Over 2,000 years, the average Chinese dynasty lasted 70 years by his calculations. “If you think about comparative communist regimes, the Soviet Union lasted for 69 years,” Wang added.
But he quickly pivoted to commonalities between Imperial China and the PRC. The quality of governance during the Imperial period depended solely on leadership — never on the health of China’s institutions, Wang emphasized. And the PRC, despite its collectivist ideologies, has failed to break that cycle.
The comparative political scientist went on to cite “the crown prince problem,” a concept that explains why strong emperors usually select heirs who threaten neither power nor life. It played out again and again in Imperial China. And it also happened following Chairman Mao’s death in 1976, Wang argued. “What I worry most in the next 25 years is exactly this succession,” he said.
The Kennedy School’s Anthony Saich, Daewoo Professor of International Affairs and director of its Rajawali Foundation Institute for Asia, highlighted a few of the Chinese Communist Party’s consistent threads from its founding in 1921 to today. “One inheritance has been the inability to deal with leadership succession,” offered Saich, whose “From Rebel to Ruler: 100 years of the Chinese Communist Party” was released last year.
Xi, who also serves as general secretary of the party and commander of the armed forces, ascended to the presidency in 2013. In 2018, just ahead of his second five-year term, he mobilized the National People’s Congress to abolish term limits enacted by former leader Deng Xiaoping amid an era of reform in the 1980s. In effect, Xi’s move returned China to the one-ruler cycle that prevailed under Mao and the centuries of emperors before him.
“Xi’s decision to extend his rule pushes succession into a very uncertain and unpredictable future,” Saich declared.
Boston University’s Joseph Fewsmith, a professor of international relations and political science, grappled in his remarks with the contested legacy of Mao himself. Fewsmith highlighted a resolution on China’s history, implemented by Deng in 1981, that was pretty tough on the PRC founder. “It made no doubt that the Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward were very serious mistakes,” said Fewsmith, co-author with Nancy Hearst of the 10-volume “Mao’s Road to Power.”
More than 15 years later came proposed revisions that put a more positive spin on the Maoist period. Moves to formally adopt this version of events were blocked in the late ’90s. But Xi formally accepted them in 2013, Fewsmith noted. “We have been living with this interpretation of the Maoist period ever since,” he said.
How did things go in the intervening years, as Xi consolidated power and ensured his own longevity? Fewsmith pointed to slowing economic growth, the devastation of COVID-19, and a rising tide of nationalism over Maoist political thought.
Later in the conversation he challenged characterizations of Xi as a strong leader, citing as just one bit of evidence delays to the recent Third Plenum meeting of top party officials amid urgent economic concerns.
“I think we have a very rough future in China,” Fewsmith concluded. “And I would highlight succession as probably the most critical.”
Next up in the PRC @ 75 Series is the Boston premiere of “Tiananmen” on Friday. The documentary series about life in Beijing in the 1980s was originally commissioned by the Chinese government to mark the PRC’s 40th anniversary. But the project was canceled, and never screened until this summer, after the bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protesters at Tiananmen Square in 1989. An Oct. 9 talk will featuring Bao Pu, founder of Hong Kong-based New Century Press and son of the late political reformer Bao Tong, the highest-ranking Communist Party official to be expelled and jailed following the massacre at Tiananmen Square. And on Oct. 30, New York Times correspondent Edward Wong will discuss his new book, “At The Edge of Empire,” which blends family history and his own reporting on military efforts to maintain control over China’s border regions. For a complete lineup, visit fairbank.fas.harvard.edu.
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