Tougher job
The first tangible signs in the past few days that Kim Jong Il's third son, Kim Jong-un, is being groomed as his successor comes after many months of speculation both about the Dear Leader's health, and what will finally happen when he dies. With a position both in the military and the party, the younger Kim is now in pole position to replace his father when he retires, or dies.
The fact that so little is known about just how this succession process in the world's last truly Stalinist state might proceed, and what its chances of success are, is one of its more striking features. But whatever the particularities of the situation in North Korea, there are some surprising parallels with what is happening elsewhere in Asia.
Whatever might happen in the next months and years in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the young Kim will not be able to exercise power the same way his father has. It is already clear that he will have to work in a nexus of vested interests, other elites and power blocs, somehow balancing interests so that a coalition of sorts is maintained to keep the regime alive. His political capital, even if his father lives another decade or so, will be different from the leadership generations before him. It will be weaker, and he will need to work much harder to be legitimised. It is far from certain that he will succeed.
Just over the border, in the People's Republic of China, there is another leadership transition. And while the situation of the two countries is a million miles apart (one with a booming economy with rising military and political might, the other one of the poorest countries on the planet, with a broken economy), in terms of leadership, the air of uncertainty and possible future weakness and need for change is strikingly similar.
The elite leaders of the Chinese Communist Party lack a political godfather who has the power to legitimise new appointments at the highest level. A world of interests and different groups need to be satisfied in order to ensure that the new generation of leaders who will be in place after 2012 and the party congress to be held that year will be able to come in, and then start work, uncontested.
Just like the young Kim, this new, fifth generation of leaders (Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao constituted the fourth) will need to exercise power in a way very different from even their most recent predecessors. The country, and the party, over which they preside, has become much more complex than even two decades ago. They will not be able to issue diktats from on high, controlling and centralising everything. They will need to deliver consensus, and build agreement on key issues across the whole of society.
And just as North Korea faces shattering challenges of modernisation to survive in the coming years, at a far more sophisticated level, to ensure its long-term stability and prosperity, the new, different and weaker Beijing leadership is going to have to start wrestling with massive issues of political and social reform put on hold by their predecessors while they built up the economy. China's per capita GDP is slowly getting closer to that of a middle-income country. In some of the main provinces and cities, it is looking increasingly like a transitional society, not a poor, developing one.
A middle class is starting to expect more and more from government in terms of legal protections, sorting out conflicts in society, and creating space for civil society to operate. The economic work was the easy part. Now the new generation of leaders in place from 2012 will need to wrestle with the fundamental issues of how to encourage participation in society by citizens, and how to enfranchise the diverse groups that make up modern Chinese society so that huge conflict won't break out.
It seems where we are entering an era in which the dynamics of leadership in northeast Asia, no matter what the system, are fundamentally changing. The all-powerful, patriarchal models used in some Asian states is declining. North Korea and China are looking to have leaders who will need to be much more accountable to their elites and other constituencies.
The time for strong-man politics is coming to an end, meaning there will be uncertainty as a new generation settles in. But the fact that they will need to work far harder for approval and support is surely for the good.
The impact of these leadership changes on the creaking system in North Korea, and on the more dynamic one in China, should not be underestimated. Nor should the risks for the rest of the world if either goes wrong.
From their very different worlds, the leaders of the Korean Workers' Party and the Communist Party of China have more in common than they may well think.
Kerry Brown is senior fellow at Chatham House on the Asia Programme
