Passing the baton
The biggest news out of the Communist Party's 17th National Congress was its hint about the new leadership lineup for 2012. Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang - party bosses in Shanghai and Liaoning , respectively - emerged as the nation's likely future president and premier. But that news was rather trivial compared to the underlying message.
The congress cements a new era when leadership successions no longer breed huge crises. That period of chaotic uncertainty ended with the departure of the previous administration.
Think about it. Mao Zedong purged his would-be successor, Liu Shaoqi , who eventually died in detention. Mao then picked Lin Biao to succeed him, but Lin died in a plane crash while reportedly trying to flee the country. Mao's eventual successor, Hua Guofeng , served less than a full term in office before being ousted by Deng Xiaoping .
China's history is full of abrupt leadership changes resulting from factional infighting within the party. Leadership successions caused a lot of crises for the Communist Party and the entire nation, since the party dominated the country's political life.
The 1982 constitution set formal term limits for national leaders - a maximum of two terms for the national president and premier. But a mechanism for succession in the party was nowhere in sight.
That was a big problem, since party leaders were the natural occupants of key positions in the national government. Without term limits for them in the party's charter, the constitution could hardly ensure smooth transfers of power.
And they remained far from smooth. Because of the political swings preceding and following the Tiananmen student movement in 1989, two reform-minded party leaders, Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang , failed to finish their full terms.
As for government posts, Li Xiannian and his successor Yang Shangkun served only one term each as state president in the 1980s and early 1990s. Succession and political tenures were still fraught with uncertainties.
It was not until 1997 that the Politburo established an informal rule requiring party leaders to retire by the age of 70. That consensus, combined with the constitutional term limit for the presidency, effectively ended Jiang Zemin's power in 2002. That explains the immense attention paid to the previous national party congress, held in that year, by Sinologists around the world.
Mr Jiang became the first party chief in the history of the People's Republic of China who was compelled to conform to both the constitutional rule on term limits and the party's norm on age limits. An institutionalised process for a peaceful and orderly power transfer - as Columbia University political scientist Andrew Nathan put it - thus began.
Party factionalism still wielded considerable influence on the selection of leaders. But the factionalism was now confined within the scope allowed by constitutional rules and party norms. This, as Professor Nathan notes, is a key achievement contributing to the regime's resilience.
Those looking for the democratic principle in China may have found the 17th congress unsatisfying. But, from a historical perspective, a peaceful and increasingly predictable succession mechanism is a step forward. Even so, observers are quick to point out that Mr Jiang let go of power in a time of peace, and that the succession after the current administration will also, presumably, occur in a period of relative political tranquility.
The remaining question is what will happen if a state emergency - like the internal unrest of 1989 or a war across the strait - erupts between now and 2012? Would the transfer of power remain as peaceful and orderly as planned? It is here that the party's achievements remain to be tested, and this is still a subject that draws all sorts of suspicions.
Kitty Poon, an assistant professor at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, is a part-time member of the government's Central Policy Unit
