I can recall years ago, interviewing MBA students in Shanghai, most of whom planned to join foreign businesses operating in China. There was one exception, an ambitious, impatient, important looking fellow who aimed for a business career with the party.

“He wants to be a big potato,” one of his fellow students explained, as the others nodded.

This is not to say he had joined the Communist Party to throw lavish banquets or get rich selling land or sinecures under the table.

But human nature being what it is, those in leadership positions tend to desire some of the perks of power – the car and driver, the latitude to impress guests with a good wine at lunch, the bowing and scraping of underlings.

These days, cadres can only hope for an occasional bow at best. Indeed, many government officials are so keen to be spotted taking public transportation, rather than a chauffeur-driven car, that one party organ called them out for staging such moments.

No doubt it is suspicious when a television film crew happens to be on hand as your mayor squeezes into a crowded subway car on his way to work. In trying to effect an about-turn from ostentation to asceticism, some officials veered into ostentatious asceticism.

This just shows how hard it is to be a party member with Xi at the helm. Sure, one can assume that this period of austerity will pass, that the private cars and banquets and trips to Macau will resume.

But even so, in Xi’s China the growth, and the glory, is in the private sector.

China’s state-owned sector has been directed to divest trillions of renminbi in non-core assets. And even strategic enterprises are expected to dilute ownership of key assets, by selling chunky minority stakes to private investors.

In past spurts of heavy privatisation activity, the assets on the block were often sold to the party officials running the company, who were inevitably able to arrange Russian-like discounts.

Under Xi’s guidance, that is yet another door to enrichment which is now being closed to the cadres. As state-owned enterprises (SOEs) sell off non-core assets or strategic stakes, they will be seeking to arrange purchases by professional private investors, preferably Chinese ones.

Sinopec, for example, has on the market a 30 per cent stake of its national petrol station network, in a deal that could be worth US$20 billion. Those shopping the deal (including two Chinese brokers), and the eventual purchasers – perhaps a private equity player - have the potential to make big fees and big returns.

Sinopec bosses, however, will get no extra bonus or perk for effecting this deal; in fact, they are likely facing a big pay cut this year.

The party is proposing capping SOE chief salaries at a modest multiple of the average worker’s pay. It would be a neat trick if some boss responded by quadrupling his staff’s wages, but the end result is more likely to be immediate pay cuts for SOEs bosses.

To deal with the risk that these salary caps will drive out talent, some policy advisers have suggested that the party allow the major SOEs to import managerial talent from the private sector. Such individuals would not be held to such salary caps; only the party members would.

Now imagine you are young and ambitious, like our business-school friend mentioned above. Do you go in for being a “big potato” in the party , where the risks of exploiting your position for windfall gains are now extremely high?

Or do you consider a career in, say, private equity – a sector likely to boom on the back of Xi’s SOE reform plan?

Perhaps this is precisely Xi’s motive. Steer the country’s ambitious and talented towards the capitalist zone of the economy, where greed can be an asset. Leave the cautious and bureaucratic types to run the government.