Does China’s Communist Party follow any succession rules at all?
Senior party official’s dismissal of unwritten rules as ‘folklore’ muddies waters ahead of top-level reshuffle late this year
Once every four years, as Americans stare anxiously at live updates of presidential election vote counts, Chinese internet users unable to cast such votes tell the same joke: “We always know who our next leader will be.”
The joke is accurate given the lack of open competition in Chinese politics, but a tweak at the end might make it even better: “But we never know when they will step down, or how.”
Though the Communist Party has long prided itself on ending life tenure after Mao Zedong’s death in the 1976, its power transitions are bound by nothing but a set of informal rules and conventions surrounding retirement and succession.
The picture was muddied further in October, around a year ahead of the next scheduled top-level power reshuffle, when a senior party official dismissed its informal retirement rules as “folklore”.
“People say ‘67 in and 68 out’ and some [Politburo] Standing Committee members retire before reaching 68,” Deng Maosheng, who helped draft the communique for the sixth plenum of the party’s 18th Central Committee, told Hong Kong journalists. “The party makes adjustments according to the circumstances. There is no specific standard age [for Politburo Standing Committee members to retire].”
