China assess next generation leaders for loyalty

Beijing, May 11: Candidates to rule China after Communist Party chief Hu Jintao's generation retires are being appraised for their loyalty to ensure they will not dig the party's grave after assuming power one day, sources said.

The party also is assessing fifth-generation leaders -- who will follow the fourth headed by Hu -- for their ability to manage crises and probing whether their families are involved in any wrongdoing, the sources with ties to the leadership said, requesting anonymity.

''Whoever becomes fifth-generation leader must adhere to the party leading the country,'' one source told Reuters.

For up-and-coming provincial leaders, green GDP, a measure of economic output that takes into account the environmental costs of growth, is another key lever of merit as national leaders have begun to focus on conserving energy and curbing pollution.

Whether Hu will be able to name a fifth-generation successor -- after Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin and Hu himself -- at the 17th Party Congress in the autumn will be a barometre of his grip on power, the sources said.

Hu, 64, succeeded Jiang, 80, as party chief in 2002 and state president the following year. Jiang handed Hu the top job in the military in 2004, completing the first bloodless leadership succession in Chinese Communist history.

Another indication of the degree of Hu's emergence from the shadow of his predecessor will be whether his heir apparent will make it to the top echelon of power, the party's nine-member Politburo Standing Committee, at the congress.

''When Jiang stepped down in 2002, he had been in power for 13 years and was more powerful than Hu today,'' another source said.

''If Jiang could not name a fifth-generation leader then, how can Hu, who has been in office only less than five years, pull it off?'' the source said.

Consolidation

Hu, still consolidating his power, will need to strike a deal with political rivals if he is to promote one top candidate, Li Keqiang, 51, a protege and provincial party boss of rustbelt Liaoning in northeast China, to the Standing Committee.

Analysts said Hu will have difficulty convincing current members of the wider Politburo to agree to allow Li to jump the queue and leapfrog into the standing committee. Li is currently one of 198 full members of the broader Central Committee.

At the least, Li and several other candidates to become fifth-generation leader will join the Politburo, ranked one notch below the Standing Committee and whose membership is expected to be expanded to 30 from 24 at the congress, the sources said.

''These potential successors will acquire more political capital, compete with one another, gain further endorsements from Hu and other top leaders, and become more familiar to the Chinese public over the next five years,'' Cheng Li, an expert on the Chinese leadership at Hamilton College in New York, wrote in an essay on Asia Times Online .

If passed over this year, the fifth-generation leader could still join the Standing Committee at a plenum in the run-up to the 18th Congress in 2012, the sources said.

At least five of the fifth-generation candidates are princelings, the children of incumbent, retired or late leaders.

They are Shanghai party boss Xi Jinping, 53, Commerce Minister Bo Xilai, 57, Beijing Mayor Wang Qishan, 58, state planner Ma Kai, 60, and Liu Yandong, 61, a senior party official responsible for winning over non-Communists.

''The children of cadres are dependable. They will not dig the party's grave,'' the first source said.

Non-princeling candidates include Li Yuanchao, 56, party boss of wealthy Jiangsu in the east coast who studied at Harvard, and Wang Yang, 52, party boss of Chongqing in southwest China.

Both men are close to Hu, who is expected to further consolidate power at the congress by retiring Jiang allies.

Reuters >