CIAO DATE: 07/03

China's New Leadership: Paradoxes, Characteristics and Implications

Introduction

In his seven-decade-long academic career, the great British historian, Joseph Needham, tried to explain what Sinologists later called "the Needham Paradox." It was a paradox that, while traditional China had many talented people and was advanced in science, the country declined during the middle part of the last millennium. According to Needham, a primary reason for the decline of China was that the country "lost its edge" by suppressing technicians and merchants "whose power posed a threat to the Emperor."

The conditions in China that Needham described have changed profoundly since the mid-1990s. This is particularly evident in the recently held 16th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The nine members of the new Politburo Standing Committee, the highest decision-making body in the country, are all engineers by training. Furthermore, the Party Congress has codified in the CCP constitution what is already true in practice—enthusiastically recruiting merchants, known as "entrepreneurs" by the Chinese, or "capitalists" to western reporters.

Do the new leadership and the new constitution that was amended in the 16th Party Congress mean the end of the "Needham Paradox?" Will Chinese economic and political development, as a result of this historical change, be particularly dynamic in the future? To a certain extent, China has already reemerged as an economic powerhouse in today's world. On the political front, this Party Congress marked a shift of power to the socalled "fourth generation" of Chinese leaders (the first three generations were represented by Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, and Jiang Zemin, respectively). The fourth generation of leaders led by Hu Jintao has not only held almost all top ministerial and provincial leadership posts, but has also occupied over 80 percent of the seats on the 16th Central Committee. It was the first time in the history of the People's Republic of China (PRC) that a power transition took place in an orderly, peaceful and institutionalized way.

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