China Braces for New Leadership

The Chinese People’s Congress meets this week to select a new set of leaders for the country.

The decisions will all be made behind closed doors.

The regime is extremely concerned about any disruption.

“They’re very insecure,” says The World’s Beijing correspondent, Mary Kay Magistad.

For example, “taxi-cabs must keep their windows closed to prevent passengers scattering leaflets.”

Magistad says it couldn’t be more different from what’s happening in the US.

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Aaron Schachter: It’s decision time in China. The same week when we Americans are selecting the occupant of the White House for the next four years, China’s communist party is holding its Congress to select the leaders who will likely be in power for the next decade. The congress opens Thursday in Beijing’s great hall of the people on Tienanmen Square. The decisions will be made behind closed doors. But The World’s Beijing correspondent, Mary Kay Magistad says it’s not all a done deal.

Mary Kay Magistad: We don’t know everyone who is coming in. We do know that in all likelihood the next head of the party will be Xi Jinping who has been the Vice President over the last four years but at this point we don’t know how many people will be in the top committee, the Politburo Standing Committee. It might be seven people. It might be nine. We don’t know who the makeup of that committee will be. It’s been a very opaque process. We don’t even know when the party congress is going to end. We know that it starts on Thursday. It might be a week. It might be longer. They’re making decisions behind closed doors and very few people in China really know what’s going to happen.

Schachter: No, the congress we’re talking about is taking place near Tienanmen Square. I imagine there’s pretty tight security there.

Magistad: Well, and not just there. There have actually been some very interesting security precautions taken in recent days. There are lots of police all over Tienanmen Square and around the surrounding area, both plain clothed and uniformed. But also taxi drivers have been told that they need to make sure that passengers don’t roll down their windows when they’re driving past Tienanmen Square because there’s a concern that they might throw out leaflets that are anti-party. There have been restrictions in department stores for parents buying toys for their kids, like little helicopters that are remote controlled. You have to show an ID to buy them because there’s a concern that these could be used also to drop leaflets or something else. There’s been a real squeeze on internet connections. It’s very hard to get through to sites that were easy to reach even two or three days ago.

Schachter: Now, why are authorities so anxious about this possibility of protest? Does it not make them look really insecure?

Magistad: It does but they are basically.

Schachter: It just is – that’s the answer.

Magistad: Yeah, I mean they want this to go smoothly and the way they know to proceed when they want something to go smoothly is make everyone shut up. Make everyone stay in line and do what the party wants them to do and in fact they often take dissidents or people who have been known to be outspoken and critical, not even dissidents, and move them outside of town, physically outside of town and under some sort of enforced rest until the whole thing is over. It’s just, you know, the party has its script. It wants to be able to follow the script without any interruptions, without any diversions. It really wants to control the next week.

Schachter: Now obviously the whole point of the Party Congress is to reshuffle the leadership. What happens to the guys who go out? Do they just disappear from public life? Do they hit the lecture circuit like Bill Clinton? What do they do?

Magistad: That’s such a good question and it’s especially a good question in these recent days when some of the party elders, people like Jiang Zemin who was the head of the party in the 1990s and is now in his mid-80s have been reappearing in public and sort of making it clear that they’re still around and they still have a say. In fact, decision making about who would be the top seven or top nine people in the party for these next ten years or at least the next five, those decisions were made in part by the party elders who have no official titles but nonetheless have clout and they have people who they put in power when they were still in office and those people are still listening to them.

Schachter: Now, quickly back to the election here for a moment, what’s at stake for China in the U.S. election? Does Beijing endorse one candidate or the other? Do they really care?

Magistad: They care that they want to have a counterpart in the United States who is level headed and predictable and who they can deal with. What they’ve seen over time is that U.S. Presidential candidates will make a lot of rash statements when they’re campaigning and they almost always have to walk it back once they’re president.

Schachter: Mary Kay Magistad in Beijing, thank you.

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