CHINA’S CORE LEADERSHIP

CHINA COMMUNIST LEADERS JOCKEY FOR POWER

Bloomberg News, October 14, 2011

China’s ruling Communist Party begins an annual conclave in Beijing tomorrow, with top officials seeking to shape the core leadership that will run what may become the world’s biggest economy in the next decade.

The party’s leaders are jockeying to mold the membership of the nine-person Politburo Standing Committee that will rule collectively under the leadership of Vice President Xi Jinping, who is expected to be named party head late next year, said Huang Jing, a professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore.

“This is a time when the next generation of China’s leaders needs to be exposed,” Huang said. “Who will get more pictures, more photo opportunities, whose talk or speech will be reported -- all this can be read as confirmation.”

Potential candidates range from an English-speaking former Harvard University scholar to a North Korean-trained economist. Their outlook will have increasing importance as China’s economy, the biggest contributor to global growth, is buffeted by Europe’s deepening debt crisis. While the International Monetary Fund and Standard Chartered Plc. estimate China’s economy may surpass the U.S. in size during their tenure, there are rising concerns growth will slow.

President Hu Jintao is due to step down from his role as General Secretary of the 80-million member Communist Party at a congress late next year and retire from the presidency in March 2013 after a decade in power. Growth has averaged 10.9 percent a year since Hu took office in 2003 and China has overtaken Japan to become the world’s second-biggest economy.

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