Xi Jinping’s successor |

By Bill Lee

Approaching the end of his first five-year term, Xi Jinping faces the dilemma of all entrenched leaders who want to stay in power: how to do it with reasonable legality. Could Xi emulate Vladimir Putin and take the relatively weak role of prime minister, installing Li Keqiang as president, as Putin did with Dmitry Medvedev, and then come back as president? That is unlikely since Xi would have difficulty rewriting the CPC rules, as Putin did with the Russian constitution.

The Mainichi Shimbun has recently reported that Xi has found the answer. According to the Mainichi, which quotes Chinese “sources,” Xi confidant Chen Min’er will rocket up the Party hierarchy and be appointed to the Politburo Standing Committee at the upcoming Party Congress in the fall, and then be named as the successor to Xi Jinping as Party leader. Chen previously served as the head of the Party propaganda department in Zhejiang Province, when Xi Jinping was the Party secretary there. Chen purportedly gained Xi’s favor when he edited Xi’s articles about his political ideas that were run in the local Party newspaper. Chen was subsequently appointed to the important post of Party secretary of Chongqing municipality, which put him on the path to the Politburo Standing Committee.

If Chen does become Xi’s successor, he will certainly just be a flunky for Xi, who will become like a retired “cloistered Emperor” of Japan. Xi will then be able to wield unlimited power behind the scenes.

The Mainichi report makes sense, but we will of course have to see if it really becomes reality. In any event, Xi Jinping is surely too powerful to exit the scene tamely in five years.

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