Xi Jinping's Successor and the Future of China

24:09Daniel Mattingly:I think one of the things that is alarming is when you think about the succession politics starting to ramp up, as you guys noted, in addition to Xi Jinping's order that the PLA be ready for Taiwan contingency by 2027, plus the recent purges that Xi Jinping has carried out against the PLA, which seemed to suggest that he's, we can talk more about this too, but perhaps that he's not happy with his military right now, that he is exerting more control over the military or reshaping the PLA. If you take all these three things together, how concerned should we be? It's not great, I would say. I mean, on the positive side of the ledger, it's perhaps helpful to raise the fact that China hasn't greenlighted anything yet.

24:58Daniel Mattingly:But if one were looking out and thinking about whether or not those meetings, formal or informal between Xi and his advisors are going to be fruitful discussions about whether they can actually do a military operation. I mean, I wouldn't want to be the military leader that told him that they weren't ready, right? That the 2027 deadline was not met or it was met, but there's still going to be huge costs, so on and so forth. I guess the other thing to add here is that there's just so much uncertainty about the present decision-making system. One of the benefits of looking historically to events like the 79-Sino-Vietnamese War or things that happened during other succession periods like the Sino-Sahabie border conflict, so on and so forth, is that we can really see much more clearly into the chain of events that led up to things, the information flows, who might have in the past provided half-hearted assessments or withheld what they were truly thinking at a given moment in time.

26:01Tyler Jost:Just building off of that, I'll say that Chloe raised the recent purges, which are, I mean, I think remarkable and worth talking about just in general, but also in connection with their piece. I mean, you have Hoi-Dung, the vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, Miao Hua, a member of the Central Military Commission. You have a few ministers of defense who've been taken down in these purges. And I mean, it's pretty remarkable to see this happen. And it is something we really haven't seen maybe since the Deng era, or you could even reach back to the malware maybe, depending on how you define how wide ranging this is.

26:36Tyler Jost:And so I think there are a couple of things here that I think might make me, I suppose, less pessimistic in the short run about any kind of like time-long contingency and make me think that maybe there are reasons that Xi Jinping wouldn't in the short run trust his military. You know, the first is like, if you think about these purges, I mean, I think there's probably two dynamics at work. I think one is probably ongoing corruption. Like if you think about there was a set of purges in the rocket force that happened. There might have been a number of things here, but I think probably one of the more plausible explanations for this is corruption and procurement and the lack of readiness in the rocket force, maybe also, again, as a result of corruption or incompetence that made Xi Jinping dissatisfied with the rocket force.

27:22Tyler Jost:When it comes to some of these other purges, particularly, I mean, I think the most kind of intriguing ones are Miaohua and Heu Weidong being taken off the Central Military Commission. These are people who are tied to Xi Jinping. They both knew Xi Jinping almost certainly in Fujian and Zhejiang when Xi Jinping was a local leader. They were group army leaders at the time. And so I think there are a couple of things at work. I mean, both of them really are kind of like related to elite politics and succession. We don't know what happened with them, but I think there's kind of two explanations that I think are the most plausible.

27:50Tyler Jost:The first is that I think there's some evidence that Miaohua was trying to empire build within the PLA and kind of create like a Miaohua faction. And maybe he thought this was okay because maybe he thought like a Miaohua faction is also a Xi Jinping faction. But it does seem to be the case that people who served under Miaohua were being promoted at higher rates than other people. I think that's suggestive that he was kind of like trying to empire build in a way that Xi Jinping might not have liked. One, because it probably degrades military readiness. You know, two, because factionalism and the POA is maybe also bad for elite politics.

28:22Tyler Jost:But if you're Xi Jinping looking at somebody like Miaogha, who maybe was engaging in this sort of behavior, you have to kind of maybe doubt some of the competence of the people that he's promoted as a member of the Central Military Commission. There's a second dynamic, I think, that might be at work here. Again, we don't know, but I think it's pretty plausible that the top PLA general has been Zhang Yuxia, who, again, is somebody who's known Xi Jinping probably since they were children. Zhang Yuxia's father was also a leader like Xi Jinping's father. And, you know, Zhang Yuxia is, you know, he's in his mid-70s.

28:51Tyler Jost:I guess maybe he'll also live to 150 if this all comes to pass. But presuming he doesn't, someone will also need to succeed Zhang Yuxia. And so if you think about like what Miaohua and Ho Weidong might have been doing, I think there's an element here that might have been kind of like jockeying to succeed Zhao Yushao. But an element of caution to all this, this is all essentially, you know, like speculation about what's happening. But, you know, even taking this with a grain of salt, it does suggest that maybe Xi Jinping should on the margins probably be a little bit concerned about PLA military readiness.

29:19Tyler Jost:That doesn't mean that he's not going to act. Like, I think that this is probably second order to whatever his reading of the kind of larger national security situation is. But I do think that, you know, these are at least suggestive that in the short run, Xi Jinping was probably worried about military readiness and, you know, worried about how competent the officer corps is at the top.

29:40Daniel Mattingly:I think one of the interesting things that comes up as I'm hearing you guys talk, but also in your piece, is you identify certain tensions that exist for Xi Jinping as he thinks about a successor. One is to find a strong and competent heir. He has to select somebody who has strong connections to the PLA because having military connections is so important to the center of power. But, Dan, as you mentioned, if somebody starts to have too much power themselves and there's factional politics involved, if he chooses somebody or identifies somebody too early, it becomes a threat to himself. So there's that tension of picking somebody strong and competent versus somebody who's not going to threaten him.

30:21Daniel Mattingly:There's a second tension going on, which is getting an older and more experienced heir or a young dark horse. And you guys also in your piece talk a little bit about the age factor here and how there's really nobody currently around who fits the bill in terms of experience, but age as well. They all seem to be about Xi Jinping's age or close to it. Is that right?

30:49Tyler Jost:The standing committee is stocked with people who are kind of close to Xi Jinping's age, right? In their late 60s, in some cases into their 70s. And the larger politburo has some people who are a bit younger. who, you know, Chen Jinyang is the party secretary of Shanghai, who is sometimes sort of people suggest like he could be a potential successor. But he's also, as one of the younger people on the standing committee, he is himself also not that young. He's like 61. So if you imagine that Xi Jinping is going to hand over power in 2027 to somebody like Chen Jinyang, like, okay, maybe by the time you get to 2032, you know, he's going to be certainly older than has been the kind of norm in party succession.

31:35Tyler Jost:But it's this sort of funny dynamic where there's nobody who's the clear person in waiting in the wings. If you think it's going to be 2032, and if you think it's going to be 2027, Xi Jinping hasn't taken any of the steps to like identify and cultivate a successor. He hasn't elevated someone like Chen Jining to the standing committee or given him a post like head of the party secretariat, which is kind of what Xi Jinping did as an apprentice leader, which kind of helps him understand the internal workings of the party. He hasn't elevated anybody to be vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, like all these things that might indicate that someone like this is a potential successor.

32:10Tyler Jost:So it's a real puzzle, what the plan is and if there's any plan.

32:14Daniel Mattingly:We'll be back after a short break.

32:18Tyler Jost:What if you could explore places in the news like a reporter does? I'm Nicholas Wood, a former journalist with the New York Times and BBC. And 16 years ago, I created the travel company Political Tours. Our small groups are led by top correspondents around the world. In the next few months, we're off to Mexico, followed by South Africa, Japan, and the French presidential elections. Come and join us. Go to politicaltours.com. That's politicaltours.com.

32:48Daniel Mattingly:This September, Independent 20th Century presents more than 130 artists at the legendary Broyu building at 945 Madison Avenue. The show will fill four floors of the modernist landmark on Museum Mile. See why Art News Magazine calls independent 20th century a staple of the season and experience historic modern art from around the world and one of New York's most iconic spaces, September 24th to 27th. To learn more, visit independenthq.com. This July, save$10 on an all-access subscription to Foreign Affairs. Get exclusive access to thought-provoking analysis by the world's leading policymakers, scholars, and thinkers.

33:28Daniel Mattingly:Join the global conversation on the issues that matter most. Visit foreignaffairs.com slash July to subscribe. That's foreignaffairs.com slash J-U-L-Y.

33:44Daniel Mattingly:And now, back to our conversation with Tyler Jost and Dan Mattingly. I was reading your piece around the same time as I was reading Joseph Trigian's new biography of Xi Jinping's father. And, you know, in that, Xi Jinping's father was a senior CCP leader himself, and he served with Mao during the Chinese Civil War. And one of the things that really comes through is just how deeply impacted both the father and the son were by the revolution, by the cultural revolution and the modern Chinese history of struggle. And both men emerged from these challenges more loyal to the party as a result, it seems.

34:23Daniel Mattingly:So I wanted to talk about this age issue because it seems to me, and correct me if I'm wrong, but is it right to think of Xi Jinping as kind of the end of this generational tie to the revolution, to this kind of critical period in Chinese history? If he does hand over the reins to somebody younger, if we actually find somebody who was maybe born in the 1960s who he passes the reins to, does that represent a generational shift? Is the era of the princelings coming to an end? Well, I mean, in some ways, we're already at a point where the senior leadership of the party is not the founding generation of revolutionaries who fought against Japan and fought against the KNT to establish the PRC.

35:10Daniel Mattingly:you bring up the Cultural Revolution. It is a mark, I think, to note that the next generation of leaders probably will not have lived through that. But from a certain perspective, the interesting thing here is that Xi Jinping has tried to bring revolution or the revolutionary tradition back to Chinese politics in a kind of artificial way. Of course, he can't manufacture a long march for all within the party. But he has made it more important in ideological terms, that revolutionary roots of the party. So it'll be interesting to see whether or not he will be successful in, from this perspective, picking an heir or picking a successor that shares that same vision going forward.

35:59Daniel Mattingly:Because it's not obvious. Like if you look at Xi Jinping's childhood and his experience with the Cultural Revolution, like you bring up the fact that Joseph Turijian argues that he becomes more loyal to the party, it's like not totally obvious that that would always be the case. Like plenty of people come out of the Cultural Revolution deeply scarred and have visions that are much more liberal as a result of that as opposed to politically conservative. And so it's not obvious, I think, that whoever replaces Xi Jinping will have that same vision that a more politically conservative China is the right way forward.

36:32Daniel Mattingly:we could potentially see something that changes quite drastically, at least domestically.

36:36Tyler Jost:I want to pick up on that last thread of thinking about the potential ideology of Xi Jinping's successor. I mean, so there's a question of like, who is Xi Jinping and what his ideology? I mean, I think if you spend a lot of time reading some of the Xi Jinping ideology books, it's not a fun time reading those books. But I do think that there is a consistent vision. Like, yes, it's kind of turgid. No, Xi Jinping is not as creative a political theorist as Mao was for all of Mao's terrible flaws. He's not the poet that Mao was. But he does, I think, have a vision for China. And it's a more, in the Chinese sense, leftist vision for what China should be.

37:16Tyler Jost:It's a country that is more socially conservative, but crucially, it's also a country where the state has a larger role in the economy and the market has a somewhat smaller role in the economy than predecessors. I mean, he's not talking about taking China all the way back to the mid-1960s, but it is definitely a change in direction from the reform era. And he's also, of course, advocating for this process of, you know, the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. So I do think that there is a kind of ideology there. I do think it's a to the left ideology that borrows from, among other things, like the new left in China.

37:53Tyler Jost:I think Xi Jinping is also taking a page from his former now incarcerated political rival, Bo Xilai, who was kind of part of the succession mess of 2012 when Xi Jinping took power. I do think that like, it's Xi Jinping picks up his successor. If the pass is any guide, I would think that he's going to want to pick a successor whose political vision is closer to his own. And the trick with that is that it's hard to know. Like once you have relinquished power or once you go to meet Marx, as they say, will the successor actually follow through on this? And this partly explains a lot of the dynamics of like cycling through successors of Mao and also arguably Deng Xiaoping.

38:32Tyler Jost:is like Mao was like never satisfied with Liar Shih-ji. And like, he just thought like Liar Shih-ji was like too conservative and not radical enough. Deng cycled through two successors, both of whom he felt like were not basically hard line off on politics. He felt like they were too liberal to accommodating to student protesters. So he pushed aside two successors for that reason. Xi Jinping hasn't done that because he hasn't identified or cultivated potential successors. But I wouldn't be surprised if he wants to try to pick somebody who's close to him ideologically. And you're right though, that like anybody he picks just biographically, right, this generation that are the sons and daughters of this founding generation, that generation now is starting to retire.

39:12Tyler Jost:So, but I don't think that that means that the princelings are gone. I think we're just talking now about the grandchildren. I don't think this will necessarily disappear in Chinese politics. I just think as with all things, it will take on a new form.

39:23Daniel Mattingly:You reference 1989 in Tiananmen multiple times in your piece in Foreign Affairs. And And I hadn't fully appreciated the sudden death of the liberal leader, Hu Yaobang, who might have succeeded Deng Xiaoping, galvanized protesters, you're right, because with his death, the protesters saw a more liberal future for China slipping from their grasp. Do you see any potential for unrest like that with the Xi Jinping succession? Question, do you think Chinese citizens will be hoping or watching for signs that Xi's successor might mark a change in methods or ideology? I think it's tricky to draw a neat parallel there.

40:03Daniel Mattingly:I mean, one might have expected the death of Jiang Zemin to have a similar rallying cry amongst more liberal-minded individuals within China. The perhaps sad fact of the matter is that the political climate in China today is not what it was in the late 1980s. So the kind of opportunity for such a movement to occur, I think, is just different. And then the second is just the kind of decisions that the party has made regarding surveillance of society has made it such that I think it would be incredibly difficult to organize even around some sort of political event. that might genuinely stir up emotions or galvanize people to think about, well, something's slipping away from us.

40:44Daniel Mattingly:But on the other hand, Chinese history is infinitely unpredictable. So things happen that surprise everyone. And so, of course, you can't rule it out. It's just, I think, difficult to draw in parallel to the events of 1989.

40:59Tyler Jost:Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think we shouldn't be naive about the strength of the Chinese Communist Party, the strength of the surveillance separatists, the strength of the security state in China. I do think that with Jiang Zemin's passing, Xi Jinping, of course, is still alive and still in control of the system. I do think there will be a moment of peril for the party after he retires or passes away, really, because I think as long as Xi Jinping is alive, he's going to continue to be probably the most powerful person in China. It's hard to say, but even if he retires, it's going to be hard for him to fully relinquish power.

41:29Tyler Jost:But after he's gone, in a similar way to after Mao's gone, like it's not that hard to imagine there being discussion and conflicts at the top over the future direction of the country in ways that can then spill out potentially in public. And those are the real dangerous moments for authoritarian regimes is when you have an elite disagreement over the future of the country, elite disagreement over who's going to be in power, and that then spills over into public. And so I think like one way to think about 1989 and some of these other movements across other authoritarian regimes is they're partially about elite politics spilling into public in ways that then become difficult to manage.

42:04Tyler Jost:Because if you imagine a scenario where you have a leader who's pretty weak and a rival who's stronger, who then has maybe incentives to allow or encourage there to be some kind of political opening or protest to happen or in a way that just kind of like makes it hard for the security services to know what to do. Like you can imagine an elite spill like that potentially over the policy direction of the country leading to some kind of moment. But as Tyler says, these things are quite difficult to predict. It's not necessarily the case that the person who succeeds Xi Jinping is more likely to be kind of ideologically close to Xi Jinping.

42:43Tyler Jost:And I do think it's also probably true that the party has such a strong tendency towards not opening up politically, having learned the lesson of the Soviet Union with Klasnowsk and Perestroika.

42:55Daniel Mattingly:Your piece also contains a bit of a warning for the United States to not meddle. You say Washington might be tempted to intervene or exploit the chaos around Xi Jinping's succession, but you advise against it because it would probably backfire. Why is that? What's the worst that can happen? Well, I think there's two points. One, it could backfire, but two, is just unlikely to succeed. And there's probably a third point too, which is that U.S. insight into the contemporary factional battles within the Politburo, like the U.S. just has limited insight into who they would or how they would try to manipulate this.

43:38Daniel Mattingly:The way it would backfire, of course, is that there is a long historical tradition within the PRC that sees countries like the United States as intervening in domestic political affairs, hostile foreign influence, so on and so forth, or hostile forces, pardon me. But part of that is manufactured for domestic political purposes, but I think that part of that is genuinely felt amongst the leadership. And so as the United States and China are trying to navigate this very, well increasingly tense geopolitical relationship, one of the things that can undermine a stable relationship or potentially even a more productive relationship on certain issues is this sense that the United States is trying to interfere with what China perceives to be its domestic internal affairs.

44:28Daniel Mattingly:And so the catch for decision makers in Washington, of course, is that the movements that lie ahead will make it seem like the costs of intervening to get whatever the United States would prefer the outcome of the elite power struggle to be, those costs will be perceived as decreasing, right? Because it will look like there is potentially tension within the party. If it does spill over into a public setting, it's much easier to get to protesters as opposed to individuals high up within the party. So from a certain point of view, it could be easy to conclude that now is the moment that the United States should try to intervene to push China in a direction that would be more in accordance with either US preferences or US values.

45:15Daniel Mattingly:Our sense is that it's really easy to underestimate just how difficult that will be. And it's easy to underestimate the cost that that will have to maintaining good geopolitical relations at a bilateral level, right? If the United States and China want to maintain a steady course that has more or less been the case since around 2023, halfway through 2023, intervening in China's domestic political affairs, particularly perhaps the thorniest political question, the question of succession, would have real costs in international terms. Dan, anything to add?

45:48Tyler Jost:Yeah, I agree. I mean, it would be folly to try to intervene. Like, I don't think that the U.S. could do anything. And I think if the U.S. did try to do anything, you know, as Tyler said, It would just feed into, I think, a perception in the Chinese leadership that the U.S. is constantly trying to meddle in Chinese politics in ways that violate Chinese sovereignty, but are just ineffective. So I don't see any cane for the U.S. attempting to do anything like that. And just to kind of close off an earlier line of conversation, too, like every time this has happened, there has, I mean, each of the succession kind of battles have been involved some drama.

46:25Tyler Jost:Like the last one in 2012 was in some ways the smoothest succession. The Deng succession was frustrated by, you know, in 1989, he gradually hands off power. Jiang Zemin handing off power to Hu Jintao. Jiang kind of kneecaps Hu Jintao by not giving him the post of military leader, only kind of gradually relinquishing that role. But then last time was the Bo Xilai incident, which his listeners will probably remember, was this extremely lurid tale of a polypropor member's wife committing murder. you know, Borussia Lai then tries to kind of like cover it up. The police chief of the jurisdiction that Borussia Lai is governing flees to the American consulate and kind of like everything unravels.

47:03Tyler Jost:So it's definitely, you know, past successions have been high drama.

47:07Daniel Mattingly:I do think, just to add to Dan's point, which I think is generally right, is from Washington's perspective, I do think that while we wouldn't encourage decision makers to intervene in any way. I mean, I do think it's helpful to think about the problem of succession when you're trying to anticipate what Chinese foreign policy will be in the coming decades, right? So these are a set of considerations that we should be paying very close attention to. They're likely to change over time. The dynamics of the recent purges, both within the foreign ministry and within the PLA, are important. But as Dan mentioned, they're relatively new, right?

47:42Daniel Mattingly:They're not even really characteristic of the purges that Xi had against the military in the first and second term. This is a very new thing. And so it's likely if one thinks about Xi's fourth or even fifth term, that the salience of those dynamics will rise and fall. And so as decision makers in Washington are contemplating what US foreign policy should be and what they anticipate China's actions, not just towards Taiwan, but the world generally will be, it's a helpful reference point or helpful framework for thinking about one of the big political problems that Xi will be thinking about over the coming decade or so.

48:18Daniel Mattingly:Dan and Tyler, thank you guys so much. Really appreciated this talk and loved your piece after she in the September-October issue of Foreign Affairs. Thanks so much for having us, Chloe. It was really a pleasure. Thanks for having us.

48:36Tyler Jost:Thank you for listening. You can find the articles that we discussed on today's show at foreignaffairs.com. This episode of the Foreign Affairs Interview was produced by Ben Metzner, Ashley Wood, Rose Kohler, and Connish Carreur. Our audio engineer is Todd Yeager. Original music is by Robin Hilton. Special thanks as well to Irina Hogan. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you like what you heard, please take a minute to rate and review it. We release a new show every Thursday. Thanks again for tuning in.

49:23Daniel Mattingly:We hope you enjoyed this episode of the Foreign Affairs interview. Don't forget to visit foreignaffairs.com slash spotlight to sign up for Dan Kurtz-Valen's free weekly newsletter featuring more of the clear-headed analysis that you enjoy here on the podcast. Sign up today at foreignaffairs.com slash spotlight. Thank you.