How does China pick top officials? Beijing mouthpiece sheds new light on secretive standards

Criteria include being 68 or younger and spending more than five years in ministerial or provincial leadership roles, according to Xinhua
However, the rules allow for flexibility, and recent promotion of Foreign Minister Qin Gang is among the exceptions

Two Sessions 2023 (Lianghui)

Vanessa Caiin Shanghai

Published: 6:00am, 15 Mar 2023

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A lengthy article published on Monday by state news agency Xinhua has shed new light on the criteria Beijing uses to select its top government officials, with political loyalty as the most important trait.

It was a rare disclosure about the standards, including age and rank, for nominating and elevating top officials for the State Council, the National People’s Congress, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and the Central Military Commission.

The article said new nominees should be born after January 1955 in a bid to “actively and steadily construct the leadership team”. This age limit requires officials to be 68 or younger, though the criteria could be relaxed for some officials, including those from Hong Kong and Macau and ethnic minority groups, according to Xinhua.

It said promotions would be given to those who have served in leading positions at the provincial or ministerial level for more than five years, with flexibility granted to those who would be able to serve two consecutive terms.

The article came after the closing ceremony of the National People’s Congress on Monday. Over the past week, the national legislature endorsed appointments for top government jobs, including the premier and a handful of key ministers, in a major personnel reshuffle that completed a twice-a-decade leadership transition.

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Xinhua said the newly nominated were key officials from various sectors who had a good record of clean politics, including women, officials from ethnic minority groups and officials who were not members of the Communist Party.

The article said President Xi Jinping was personally involved in consultations with certain senior officials about selecting state officials.

Between April and June of last year, the top leader and other officials from the central government gathered opinions and suggestions from more than 300 people, according to the article. It did not say who those 300 people were or how they were chosen.

The report did not mention any of the exceptions made in the recent personnel reshuffle, such as the promotion of Foreign Minister Qin Gang to state councillor last week. It has only been about two months since Qin, 56, was named foreign minister, his first ministerial-level job.

The national legislature also approved the nomination of 72-year-old Zhang Youxia, born more than four years before the official 1955 cut-off, as vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission.

China promotes Foreign Minister Qin Gang to state councillor

Xinhua noted that some senior officials had taken the initiative to step down from their positions to leave the roles to younger cadres.

The report said they had stepped down “with the interests of the party and the people in mind, and a spirit of high responsibility for the development of the country and the rejuvenation of the nation”.

Their decision to leave the positions open for younger officials “demonstrates broad-mindedness and high moral integrity”, the report said.

The article did not name which officials had volunteered to step down, but former premier Li Keqiang and former CPPCC chair Wang Yang, both born in 1955, retired this month.

According to Xinhua, candidates for leading roles at state institutions and the country’s top political advisory body should “profoundly understand” the significance of the “Two Establishes” – a catchphrase referring to Xi’s role as the core leader and his ideas as the bedrock of the party’s guiding principles.

The article also said the selection process had been kept confidential with no information leaks, showing the “remarkable results of strict party governance, and a clean and upright political ecology”.

Last October, a similar Xinhua article said Xi was directly involved in the selection of the Central Committee, the party’s top policymaking body. The report made clear that among the criteria, loyalty to Xi ranked first.