Xi Jinping’s inner circle is getting ‘even tighter’ with powerful new chief of staff
- Cai Qi is the most senior official in the job since the time of Mao Zedong, and the office he heads wields a great deal of influence
- His ties to Xi go back to the early 1990s, and the promotion reflects the Chinese leader’s views on centralisation of power, observer says
Cai Qi, director of what is officially known as the General Office of the Communist Party Central Committee – one of the most powerful offices in China – is the highest-ranked official to head the office since the time of Mao Zedong.
The office wields a great deal of influence because it is responsible for arranging the paperwork, meetings and personal security of the country’s top leaders. But, located far from the public eye inside the Zhongnanhai leadership compound, it is also one of the party’s most secretive organs.
One of the rare moments it emerges from the shadows is during domestic and international trips by the general secretary, when its director watches the leader’s back.
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Three decades ago, Xi hailed the office as the “brains trust” of the senior leadership, and Cai’s appointment has given it its highest-ranking head in more than 40 years because he is also the party’s fifth-ranked official and its ideology chief.
Cai’s ties to Xi date back to the early 1990s, and pundits said his appointment suggested Xi planned to continue cementing his own power over the party.
“Cai’s promotion reflects Xi’s belief in the need to continue centralising power to better control the party and to better mobilise its cadres to advance his policy agenda,” said Neil Thomas, a fellow in Chinese politics at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Centre for China Analysis
He said Xi’s inner circle was becoming “even tighter”.
Cai’s background also suggested he could bring Taiwan and national security expertise to the office, said Cheng Li, director of the John L. Thornton China Centre at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank.
“This move is definitely further empowering the office, and Cai’s background may mean the move will further strengthen Beijing’s focus on national security, Taiwan and financial work,” he said.
Raised in Fujian, the mainland Chinese province closest to Taiwan, Cai worked in government and party positions there early in his career. From 2014 to 2016, Cai was deputy director of the general office of the National Security Commission, a party organ founded and chaired by Xi.
He said that Xi, drawing a lesson from the collapse of the Soviet Union, was convinced that the party must be supreme and could not risk being marginalised.
“To him, safeguarding the party’s role and his personal status is interlinked,” Li said.
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The chief of staff’s office had always been a key party organ that wielded enormous power and had great proximity to power in Chinese politics, observers said, but both those attributes had been strengthened under Xi.
After assuming power in 2012, Xi picked Li Zhanshu as his chief of staff, making him the first director of the office in more than 30 years to be a member of the Politburo and significantly elevating the office’s status in the party.
Former Ling deputies who remained in the office were reassigned to less important jobs.
A Beijing-based political scientist who requested anonymity said the core of the office’s power lay in its control of the information presented to the party’s top leadership.
“I think its largest power lies in information – it has a large say over what reports are submitted for the top leader to read,” he said. “During an international trip, the office handles everything from what items are put in a state leader’s room, to the security of the top leaders.”
The chief of staff became more powerful after a major overhaul of central government bodies and top party organs in 2018, the political scientist said.
That overhaul, as Xi began his second presidential term, saw the portfolios of a range of top party organs grow as they took on some work that previously belonged to government bodies.
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One of the changes saw a renamed body in charge of senior officials’ ideological correctness, training and logistics, the Work Committee for Departments Directly Under the Communist Party Central Committee, absorb its State Council counterpart. The committee was placed under Ding Xuexiang, Xi’s second chief of staff as party general secretary.
“The overhaul saw the office take over some responsibilities that were previously under the State Council, and it now is responsible for supporting about 200,000 people at the top,” the political scientist said.
The office’s role is similar to that of the US presidential chief of staff office in its control of information around the top leader, but the Chinese office is believed to have a wider range of functions, said Li Ling, who teaches Chinese politics at the University of Vienna.
“It is responsible for issuing party documents on behalf of the Politburo and its Standing Committee, which have binding force for party organisations nationwide,” she said.
Thomas from the Asia Society said the further concentration of power in the party had added to the clout wielded by the general secretary’s chief of staff.
“It is similar to the US president’s chief of staff in that they are often the official who spends the most time with the top leader and serves as their political gatekeeper, which is arguably a more powerful role in China as a centralised autocracy than in the United States as a federal democracy,” he said.
From very early on in his career, Xi showed great interest in the work of general offices at various levels and the chiefs of staff of senior officials.
He stressed the important role that aides working in general offices played as policy advisers, on top of the heavy workload they shouldered in maintaining the logistics that supported regional chiefs.
“If our general offices can analyse information from all sides, and, much like the brains trusts abroad, can provide key policy suggestions on a regular basis, it will facilitate the speedy decision-making process by our leaders,” he said in an interview with a mainland magazine in 1990, when he was party secretary of Ningde, Fujian.
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That became a goal aspired to by officials who later entered Xi’s inner circle, including Ding, who was Xi’s chief of staff from 2017 to March this year and is now China’s first-ranked vice-premier and sixth-ranked party official.
In an article published in 2008 in a mainland magazine devoted to matters related to official secretaries, Ding, then chief of staff to Shanghai party secretary Yu Zhengsheng, said his most important job was offering policy suggestions. Ding was also Xi’s chief of staff during the roughly half a year he spent as Shanghai party secretary in 2007.
Ding added that it was important for chiefs of staff to resonate with their top official’s thoughts, and it was beneficial to learn from the top official’s way of thinking and “art of working”.
In the 1990 interview, Xi said aides in general offices also needed to know when to keep their mouths shut, and that any information leaks could complicate things and damage the solidarity of the party’s leadership.
It’s possible that Cai’s promotion indicates Xi’s relative lack of trust in his lower-level loyalists
“There are a great many secrets involved in the work of general offices, and there are clear regulations about the scope of briefing for each file,” he said.
“Especially for things related to political and economic intelligence, one must be highly responsible and better get used to keeping silent when outside.”
The party sees maintaining the secrecy of its inner working as a key indicator of political discipline and loyalty.
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Close to the end of the 1990 interview, Xi called for more officials from general offices to be promoted – something he followed after becoming general secretary in 2012.
Four of his six colleagues on the current Politburo Standing Committee, the pinnacle of the party’s massive power structure, have worked in the general offices of a provincial party committee or government.
Li Zhanshu retired in March as head of the National People’s Congress, China’s legislature.
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The choice of Cai as chief of staff and the elevation of the office could be to do with the needs of a growing number of top-level party committees, according to Li Ling, from the University of Vienna.
She said it was possible the office needed to be at an appropriate rank so that it could regulate the flow of information between these top-ranking bodies.
Thomas said the selection of Cai, 67, might also suggest Xi lacked complete trust in the younger generation.
“It’s possible that Cai’s promotion indicates Xi’s relative lack of trust in his lower-level loyalists on the Politburo, as many political allies that Xi worked closely with earlier in his career have retired or are nearing retirement age,” he said.
“Xi may be reluctant to appoint a younger official who he does not know well personally to serve in such a sensitive role.”
Additional reporting by Guo Rui
