China’s Communist Party is looking for a new generation of leaders. They’ll have to pass ‘the loyalty test’

Ahead of next year’s leadership reshuffle, personnel chief Chen Xi says ‘political quality’ is crucial for promotion
He says having the best and most loyal talent at the top will be critical to realising the goal of national rejuvenation

Communist Party politics

William Zheng

Published: 7:00am, 3 Dec 2021

Why you can trust SCMP

Loyalty, competence and integrity are some of the key qualities the Communist Party is looking for to select a new generation of leaders, according to its personnel chief.

Chen Xi, head of the Organisation Department, made the remarks in an article on “grooming qualified successors” in party mouthpiece People’s Daily on Wednesday. He said having the best and most loyal talent at the top was critical for the party to realise its goal of a great national rejuvenation.

He also emphasised that loyalty was the most important thing and said while the party should open the door to more young talent, they would have to prove themselves to secure a leadership role.

“[We should] not select them just because of their [young] age. The selection is not about the younger the better,” wrote Chen, who is also a member of the policymaking Politburo.

Instead, he said “political quality” was crucial and only cadres who had a clean track record should be promoted.

“Loyalty is the soul of politics and the most important political quality,” Chen said. “The first criterion for selecting cadres is whether they are loyal to the party – if they fail to pass the loyalty test, then they fail the selection process and will not be chosen no matter how capable they are.”

The article came weeks after the party’s top leaders held a key meeting in Beijing – the sixth plenum – and adopted a “historical resolution” that cemented the leadership of President Xi Jinping, who is also the party’s general secretary.

It also follows the release of a directive by Chen’s department two weeks ago, telling members to prepare for the election of delegates to next year’s national congress. Those delegates will elect a new decision-making Central Committee at the twice-a-decade event that is expected to bring major leadership changes.

Xie Maosong, a senior researcher with the National Strategy Institute at Tsinghua University in Beijing, said that with the sixth plenum now over, party officials in charge of personnel decisions were working on forming the new leadership team that will be tasked with delivering on Xi’s ideas and goals.

“Now that the party’s guiding principle is established, the next step is to choose a team to implement Xi’s thoughts into his second centenary goal for 2049,” Xie said, referring to the president’s target of creating a prosperous and modern socialist China.

“The party is in the midst of building a team of people of different ages, with different strengths and capabilities to ensure succession,” he said.

“While we are seeing the older party chiefs like Chen Quanguo in Xinjiang and Shi Taifeng in Inner Mongolia staying on – even though they have passed the retirement age – we’re also seeing the promotion of many younger cadres, who were born since the 1970s, to the rank of provincial leaders,” he added.

One of those younger cadres is 51-year-old Liu Jie, whose appointment as the new party chief of the eastern city of Hangzhou was announced on Thursday.

Alfred Wu, an associate professor with the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, said the emphasis on “political quality” and competence had its roots in the Mao Zedong era.

“This requirement was summarised as ‘you hong you zhuan’ in the Mao era – meaning that cadres needed to be both communist-minded and professionally competent,” Wu said.