Two US-based scholars plan to publish what they say are secret Communist Party documents showing intensive intra-party political jostling over succession ahead of November's 16th Communist Party Congress.
Despite rampant rumours President Jiang Zemin will cling to power, the documents allegedly say he will give up his three top offices by stepping down as Communist Party chief in November and as head of the Central Military Commission and president next March after the National People's Congress meetings, handing power to designated heir Hu Jintao, 59.
The documents, claiming to draw on high-level insider material and discussions from the party's organisation department being smuggled out of China, allegedly say Mr Jiang's attempts to hold on to one or two top positions failed to win the support of other senior leaders.
This new account of China's secretive power politics and internal debates on the leadership succession were compiled into a book by an anonymous Chinese author under the pseudonym of Zong Hairen, meaning people from the Zhongnanhai leaders' compound in Beijing. Its English version, China's New Rulers: The Inside Files, will be published by the New York Review of Books Press in the autumn and its Chinese version, Disidai (which translates as The Fourth Generation), will be published by the New York-based Mirror Books after November's party congress.
Despite the new account, the publisher of the Chinese version of the book said there might still be factors changing the outcome of the succession game.
'It is still highly possible that Jiang would stay on at least as head of the Central Military Commission or even the party chief position,' said He Pin of Mirror Books, also a veteran China observer.
