Comments on: CCP Factionalism? http://mattschiavenza.com/2009/10/14/ccp-factionalism/ From the Dragon to the Apple- A Sinophile in New York Tue, 22 May 2012 15:03:33 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 By: Matthew Stinson http://mattschiavenza.com/2009/10/14/ccp-factionalism/comment-page-1/#comment-81838 Matthew Stinson Wed, 14 Oct 2009 13:27:25 +0000 http://mattschiavenza.com/?p=668#comment-81838 This is one of the ways Chinese politics can factionalize but I would be careful about reading too much into this particular difference. After all, Chinese care greatly about the interests of their children, and what is the child of a careerist but a princeling? Hu's comrades might dislike those who inherited their rank but they wouldn't deny their own blood the keys to the kingdom out of principle. That said, we can glean a few things from these articles. The most obvious seems to be that in many ways Xi is a not ready for prime time player. Flirting with Jiang's clique when Hu can still hurt him is about as unwise as his undiplomatic foreign policy debut a few months back. He's still probably getting the top spot but I bet Hu will be able to hold on to some powers longer than Jiang did. This is one of the ways Chinese politics can factionalize but I would be careful about reading too much into this particular difference. After all, Chinese care greatly about the interests of their children, and what is the child of a careerist but a princeling? Hu’s comrades might dislike those who inherited their rank but they wouldn’t deny their own blood the keys to the kingdom out of principle.

That said, we can glean a few things from these articles. The most obvious seems to be that in many ways Xi is a not ready for prime time player. Flirting with Jiang’s clique when Hu can still hurt him is about as unwise as his undiplomatic foreign policy debut a few months back. He’s still probably getting the top spot but I bet Hu will be able to hold on to some powers longer than Jiang did.

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