Chinese Provincial Leaders

Based on biographical data on more than 2,500 individuals in China's thirty provincial units from the beginning of the People's Republic in 1949, this is the most comprehensive and systematic treatment of China's provincial leaders ever published. The study presents detailed accounts of four categories of provincial leaders - party secretaries, deputy party secretaries, governors, and vice governors - including age, gender, nationality, hometown, education, party membership, and length of membership. It also traces the careers of these leaders in terms of promotion, demotion, transfer, and retirement. And using sophisticated statistical analysis, it links the political mobility of these leaders to the economic performance of their provincial units.

Focusing on the role of provincial leadership in the initiation and implementation of economic reform, this text studies economic decentralization in eight Chinese provinces. In each area, resource allocation and acquisition of foreign capital and investment are investigated.

A monarch is usually born, a member of parliament or a president is usually elected, but a regional leader in China is usually orchestrated to replace his or her predecessor through an opaque process and for reasons not normally made public. The professional trajectories of Chinese regional leaders are mysterious in many ways. Their promotions and demotions can be "predictable" in terms of their age, gender, nationality, education, factions, and previous engagements in the political system. Yet, speaking of their capability, performance, opportunities and arrangements, their future can also be "unexpected". Such arrangements are always originated from the Organization (zuzhi) which represents the Chinese Communist Party. What are the factors the organization considers in order to make its final decisions on nominating and appointing a regional leader? Today’s regional leaders of China will very likely become the central leaders of China in the future. By making an empirical analysis of Chinese regional leaders’ political mobility, Qiao establishes a descriptive political mobility model that reveals leadership trajectories in Chinese politics.

Between Fall 2002 and Spring 2003, most of the national leadership of China's party, state, and military organs will be replaced by a new generation of officials. The accession to power of this "Fourth Generation" leadership, and the "Fifth Generation" officials who will rise to positions of influence on their coattails, will have profound implications for China, for nations in the region, and potentially for the national interests of the United States. This timely work introduces the new leaders of China and describes the political backdrop for their succession. A distinguished international group of scholars look at the process of leadership transition; the prospects and challenges facing the new leaders; questions of legitimacy and influence; flow of information on the transition within China; and security policies in the provinces and the Asia-Pacific region. They provide important insights on the leadership at "the center," in the provinces, and in the military.

Between Fall 2002 and Spring 2003, most of the national leadership of China's party, state and military will be replaced by a new generation of officials. The accession to power of this "Fourth Generation" leadership will have profound implications. This is an introduction to the new leaders.

This text analyzes the dramatic shifts in Chinese Communist Party economic policy during the mid to late 1950s which eventually resulted in 30 to 45 million deaths through starvation as a result of the failed policies of the Great Leap Forward. Teiwes examines both the substance and the process of economic policy-making in that period, explaining how the rational policies of opposing rash advance in 1956-57 gave way to the fanciful policies of the Great Leap, and assessing responsibility for the failure to adjust adequately those policies even as signs of disaster began to reach higher level decision makers. In telling this story, Teiwes focuses on key participants in the process throughout both "rational" and "utopian" phases - Mao, other top leaders, central economic bureaucracies and local party leaders. The analysis rejects both of the existing influential explanations in the field, the long dominant power politics approach focusing on alleged clashes within the top leadership, and David Bachman's recent institutional interpretation of the origins of the Great Leap. Instead, this study presents a detailed picture of an exceptionally Mao-dominated process, where no other actor challenged his position, where the boldest step any actor took was to try and influence his preferences, and where the system in effect became paralyzed while Mao kept changing signals as disaster unfolded.