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- [00:00]
Dan Kurtz Phelan
Dan I'm Dan Kurtz Phelan and this is the Foreign affairs interview.
- [00:06]
Dan Mattingly
It's not super clear like who Xi Jinping is cultivating, who could potentially take over. Like there's not somebody who is obviously sort of young enough and has the right portfolio to take over in the next party Congress in 2027. And even if you look ahead to 2032, it's still not clear who's out there, who has the right mix of experience and, and youth to kind of take over, which is a real change from the PRC of the past.
- [00:37]
Tyler Jost
It's not obvious, I think, that whoever replaces Xi Jinping will have that same vision that a more politically conservative China is the right way forward. We could potentially see something that changes quite drastically, at least domestically.
- [00:51]
Dan Kurtz Phelan
When Xi Jinping took over the Chinese Communist Party in 2012, he began a new chapter in China's history, one that would come to be defined above all by his grip on power. Xi overhauled not only the ccp, but also China's economy, military and role in the world. Yet no matter how secure his power may be, and no matter his recent hot mic musings about living to 150, what comes after Xi and how it comes is an increasingly central question in Chinese politics. As the political scientists Tyler Jost and Daniel Mattingly wrote recently in Foreign affairs, for any authoritarian regime, political succession is a moment of peril in and for all its strengths, the CCP is no exception. And that's not just a risk for the future. The uncertainty and the jockeying that the succession question spurs is already starting to shape China's present. To Justin Mattingly, there's more at stake than just the matter of who will follow Xi. They note that the drama created by a struggle over the succession is unlikely to stay inside China's borders. They joined Deputy editor Chloe Fox to discuss the nature of Xi's rule, his attempt to define his legacy, and what that will mean for China in the coming months, years and decades.
- [01:57]
Chloe Fox
Foreign thank you, Tyler and Dan for joining us. I'm so excited about this conversation and thanks again for your piece in the September October issue of Foreign Affairs. It's titled After Xi, and in it you write that although the past decade has been characterized by Xi Jinping's grip on power in China, soon everything will start to change. You write, and I quote you here, as the CCP elite begins the search for a leader to replace the 72 year old Xi, China is transitioning from a phase defined by power consolidation to one defined by the question of succession. You also issue a kind of warning that, quote, succession shapes political choices well before leaders finally relinquish control, and that the prelude, execution, and aftermath of transitioning power will shape China's foreign and domestic politics in the coming years. So I wanted to start with some basic scene setting. Can you walk us through why succession is so difficult for China? What is it about the CCP that makes periods of succession such tumultuous times?
- [03:05]
Dan Mattingly
Yeah. Well, thanks, Chloe, for having us on. I'm really excited to be on the program. And I think the problem that you're talking about is a sort of general problem for authoritarian regimes. Succession is, in general, sort of the Achilles heel for authoritarian regimes. It's this sort of, you know, critical moments where other elites can coordinate to try to oust each other and kind of change the course of the regime. So it's a problem generally, and it's. The CCP is basically not immune from this problem that authoritarian regimes in general have, that elite fights tend to happen around these succession battles. And it tends to be especially acute when you have the fall of somebody like Xi Jinping, once he retires, passes from the scene one way or another as somebody who's consolidated a lot of power. It's kind of sort of raised the stakes. So if you look back in Chinese history, you know, leaders in general have had trouble handing off power to successors, and there have been very few, if any, sort of untroubled successions in the history of the prc. So if you think about Mao, for example, right. Like Mao first designated Liu Xiaoqi as his successor and then ended up ousting Liu xiaqi in the 60s, in the course of the Cultural Revolution, he died. Then Lin Biao effectively becomes his successor. Lin Biao also perishes in this kind of mysterious plane crash as he's attempting to flee China after, in this case, probably it's his son is trying to organize a coup. It's this very Byzantine, complicated process, but. And then Mao finally designates a successor, Hua Guofeng, who's only able to hold on to power for a couple of years. He's then kind of pushed aside by Deng Xiaoping, who then Deng Xiaoping cycles through a bunch of successors. So you can sort of go on and on through the set of Chinese leaders, you know, as we do in the beginning of the piece. And it's a problem for all of these leaders, like, settling on a successor and having that successor actually take power is quite tricky. Yeah.
- [04:48]
Chloe Fox
You mentioned in the piece that Hu Jintao is the only leader of the People's Republic of China, to have voluntarily relinquished power, and that was to Xi Jinping. I feel like it's easy to lose track of how recent a problem this has been for China and that they are still struggling to figure out how this goes. Tyler, do you feel like there's any sense that Xi Jinping has learned and is going to do this more gracefully, or do you think that we're in for more rocky road down the line here?
- [05:18]
Tyler Jost
Well, first, let me just echo Dan in thanking you for hosting us. It's a pleasure to be here. I would say that Xi Jinping, not because he has learned or not learned, actually faces a more acute set of challenges and handing over power because of the extent to which he has successfully consolidated power since taking over from Hu Jintao. And essentially the reason behind that claim is that there was a period of what you might refer to as, like, collective leadership, in which the balance of power amongst elites within the CCP was much more even than it was certainly under Mao Zedong and even Deng Xiaoping, which in some ways makes the process of transitioning power between individuals more smooth. You could debate that point, but I think that's probably true. But Xi's consolidation of power essentially means that only he is going to be making most of these critical choices. And that, on the one hand, allows him to set the scene, set the table, so to speak, for the succession to go exactly as he wants it to, picking a successor that will share his vision for what China is, both domestically and internationally. But then he'll also have tremendous power at his disposal to adjust things as he goes along. So, in other words, if that successor is gaining too much power or deviating from the path that Xi would like while he's still alive, it'll be relatively easy, we think, for Xi to alter course in the way that all the leaders that Dan just referenced, Mao and Deng in particular, did before Xi.
- [07:03]
Chloe Fox
So, as we consider the succession question, who are the frontrunners these days? Which members of Xi's circle are emerging as genuine contenders? And who should we, in the United States and elsewhere, who should we be keeping an eye on?
- [07:17]
Dan Mattingly
Yeah, I think there's a question of, you know, if Xi Jinping had some health issue or something and had to step down suddenly, like, what would happen immediately? If you look at the Standing Committee, I think there are really a couple of potential people to look at. Neither of them, by the way, especially young. Either. One is the sitting premier, the number two, Li Qiang, who would presumably take over for Xi Jinping. If you just kind of like look down at, like, who in the official party roster is number two. There's a lot of people who think, though, that Tai Chi, who's another Standing Committee member who is arguably closer to Xi Jinping, head of the Secretariat, is actually somebody who maybe wields more power behind the scenes and could take over for Xi Jinping. But, you know, neither of these men is young enough to kind of take over for Xi Jinping. In a typical succession scenario for the party, which, you know, for the last couple of leaders has involved designating a leader who is in his early 60s by the time that he takes over, both of these men are kind of tooled to take on that role. So as a potential successor in the broader Politburo is Chan Jinying. Chan Jinying is the party secretary of Shanghai, which, by the way, is the role that Xi Jinping had when he joined the Politburo was also the role that Jiang Zemin had when he joined the politics. There's a history of party leaders from Shanghai going on to become the top leader. And you know, Chen Jinyi, who is currently 61, is young enough to potentially take over if Xi Jinping handed power or if Xi Jinping was willing to sort of go against the recent norms that the leaders start a position in his early 60s. You could even imagine Chen Jining taking over potentially in 2032.
- [09:08]
Chloe Fox
That brings me to what I have been wanting to ask you guys. We have to talk about the hot mic moment. This is when Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin were walking together in Tiananmen Square talking about organ transplants and the possibility of living to 150 years old. And they seemed practically gleeful in their discussion, which makes me curious. Do you think that Xi Jinping is actively thinking about succession, or do you think that even if he hands over control nominally at some point, he plans on living to 150 and controlling things behind the scenes?
- [09:45]
Dan Mattingly
I think, yeah. I mean, first I feel bad for whatever Xinhua producer let that conversation slip through. They're probably in real hot water. It was this amazing moment of these two authoritarian leaders, these two autocrats, talking about their desire to basically live forever. I would guess they probably share something in common, which is they both probably feel like they're the best person and maybe the only person to lead their countries forward, you know, in Xi Jinping's case, to, you know, finish the process of China's national rejuvenation. And I think they were probably joking around a little bit with that conversation. If you're somebody like Xi Jinping, If I was going to get inside his head, I would imagine he probably thinks that he's the best person to lead for the country. And so he wants to probably hold off on naming a successor as long as he can. And I think if you look at the kind of roster that he's built below himself, and this is really like Xi Jinping's leadership right now, it's clear that he hasn't yet taken steps to cultivate a clear successor. Unlike Mao, unlike Deng, who both were the previous two sort of strong men in the history of the prc, both of them had kind of clear potential successors. You know, men who were, you know, their number twos, who were younger than them, who could potentially succeed them. If you look at the kind of lineup of the Politburo Standing Committee, which is a group of seven men at the top, if you look at the lineup of the larger Politburo, which is a group of 24 men, and even if you look at the broader Central Committee, it's not super clear like who Xi Jinping is cultivating, who could potentially take over. There's not somebody who is obviously sort of young enough and has the right portfolio to take over in the next party Congress in 2027. And even if you look ahead to 2032, it's still not clear who's out there, who has the right mix of experience and youth to kind of take over, which is a real change from the PRC of the past.
- [11:43]
Tyler Jost
To that, I would just add, and this is a bit tongue in cheek, but if Xi Jinping actually lived well into his hundreds and did not transfer power to another younger cadre within the party, that in and of itself would pose tremendous challenges for governance in China, unless medicine were too advanced such that you could really have effective leadership into one. You see this in Mao's last years, right? It was for even senior members of the party, difficult to pin down what Mao wanted. Access to the senior leader in his last couple of years was restricted to individuals that Mao had personal ties and trusted deeply. And to a certain extent, that shapes your ability to be able to not only govern domestically, but to be able to do the types of things internationally, like foreign visits and receiving foreign leaders, that are kind of the bedrock of contemporary international diplomacy.
- [12:45]
Dan Mattingly
Adding to that point about Mao and thinking about Xi as a kind of potential parallel, Mao in his later years in very bad health, it was hard to understand what he was saying in his final months in office. So the man who ended up succeeding him, at least for A couple of years was Hua Guofeng. One of the key things he had was Mao's imprimatur as his successor. But it was basically because Mao scribbled on a piece of paper. Ni Bansher Huangxin was like, basically, with you in charge, I'm at ease. It actually wasn't entirely clear if he meant that with Hua Guofeng as his successor in charge of the country, he was at ease. But it did create some problems. And I think a second dynamic building on what Tyler was saying for the party is like, if you imagine, you know, this sort of like bionic Xi that lives to 150 years old, an additional problem that's creating is you have this whole group of people who are rising up in the party who are basically being passed over for the chance at running the country. And that kind of can create some potentially bad dynamics for the party.
- [13:36]
Chloe Fox
Yeah, you have a line in your piece about the kind of thwarted ambitions of a whole generation of potential leaders. And that is a. You know, when you start to think about the psychology at play and the egos at play here, you can imagine how that could be risky. Building on your bionic sheep point, I have heard people joke about how some of these issues, as he ages, won't be what they were in the past because they could just upload Xi Jinping thought into a large language model and we could have ChatGPT. So potentially that could solve some of the problems.
- [14:08]
Tyler Jost
A truly terrifying world if someone were serious about that claim, I think.
- [14:14]
Chloe Fox
But I want to. I want to go on something, Dan, that you mentioned here about Xi Jinping and his mission of this national rejuvenation, because one of the things that comes up a lot when we talk about succession and what Xi Jinping feels like he needs to accomplish or not is Taiwan. And you guys have alluded to some of the historical disasters or things that happened in succession crises in the past in China. So I want you to just walk through some of the foreign policy choices that were made in the past during succession chaos, and if and how you see them playing out with relation to Taiwan in the next few years.
- [14:56]
Tyler Jost
I think helpful to zoom out and think about two sets of challenges in the foreign policy domain that are features of the foreign policy decision making system within China at any point in time, but they just become more acute during periods of succession. And so the first is essentially the problem of getting good information about what's going on both within your own organization. So, like, how strong is the PLA relative to, depending on the scenario, some aggregation of Taiwan military forces, US Military forces, so on and so forth. And then thinking very carefully about, well, if the PRC were to try to attempt military action, you raise the issue of Taiwan. It could be other things, but most likely Taiwan, like, what would that scenario look like? How would it play out? That is a strategic assessment problem that demands a lot of intelligence collection, a lot of information collection from the foreign policy bureaucracy. And it's not just the military. Right. You need information from, from abroad in your embassies, from diplomats, people to assist the leader in thinking through what you're trying to accomplish and whether or not you possess the capabilities to actually see that through. So that's problem number one. Problem number two, this is more unique to the prc, is that the use of military force has a kind of positive externality when you're in the midst of some sort of leadership challenge or when you're trying to demonstrate to others within the party that you are the head honcho. And the reason behind that is that military operations kind of allow for a leader to demonstrate that the military is following their orders. And so from that perspective, a military operation that might be unsuccessful on the battlefield could still theoretically be politically efficient for a leader because, again, it allows you to flex your muscles and show that the military follows your orders. So coming back to the problem of succession, like, both of those things can be true generally, but succession essentially puts added pressure on that. One of the key challenges in handing off power is that whoever you are trying to put in place to succeed you is going to be vulnerable both in the time that you're still around and then certainly once the leader passes away. And as such, leaders have an incentive to try to protect or kind of ensure that the individuals who are passed over, over, right. Those individuals don't rally to try to push that leader aside. What that means is, and this is particularly true in the context of the military, you get a lot of shuffling of appointments, a lot of reaching down and removing individuals with the aim of securing not only your own power, but making space for the power of the person that is going to succeed you. And, and what we see in the past is that when supreme leaders in China have reached into the PLA and reorganized things, it puts everyone on edge, as one would imagine it would. And so speaking truth to power in those informational tasks that leaders assign to the national security bureaucracy under those circumstances become particularly difficult, particularly if you have bad news to relay. If the PLA's capabilities actually do exceed some of Taiwan and the United States, such that everyone, truthfully in their heart of hearts, feels good about a military operation as the mechanism to resolve the dispute. Then there's not the informational problem that I'm drawing attention to, because essentially everyone that subordinates know that's what she wants to hear, that the PLA is ready. And PLA leaders genuinely think that the far more dangerous situation is a situation in which PLA capabilities haven't actually advanced as much as Xi has hoped. And this has been the case historically. And as such, generals feel reticent to greenlight a military operation or just see the cost as being quite high and the probability of success as relatively low. But they're afraid to speak, relay that bad information up the chain, which could lead to a situation in which Xi is making choices about foreign policy generally, but Taiwan specifically, based upon these overly optimistic views of what's going to happen. So that's that application of succession to the first set of problems, the informational ones, and then thinking about the problem of demonstration. Right. So from a certain point of view, it always pays to be able to show that you're in charge of the military. In the Chinese system, given the importance of the military in the period of succession, it becomes really very acute incentives for the supreme leader to be able to show that they control the military. This could even be more the case after whoever succeeds Xi comes into power. So if they're thinking about a potential Taiwan scenario and they're sort of on the fence, let's say the information and the intelligence comes back and it's like 60, 40, about whether it will succeed at some level of cost, and whoever takes over is. That's not quite what they would like to hear before green lighting something. The cost, geopolitically, internationally, that China would pay for such an operations could be outweighed, at least in part at the margins, by the positive political externality of showing who's boss within the domestic political scene. So that's how I would think about it.
- [20:34]
Chloe Fox
Dan, can you pick up on that last point that Tyler made? Because that's more or less what happened in 1979 when China invaded Vietnam, isn't it? And the Sino Vietnamese War was, correct me if I'm wrong, it was the last hot conflict that China was involved in. And it happened in the midst of the long succession struggle that followed Mao's death. Right?
- [20:55]
Dan Mattingly
Yeah. That was China's last kind of major military operation. So there's one interpretation of the reasons why Deng Xiaoping entered this conflict in Vietnam was that it had at least was partly to do with domestic Politics and elite politics. So like the conflicts that China fought in Vietnam, the lead up to that was at the end of 1978. And the end of 1978 is also the period in which Deng Xiaoping is trying to push aside Hua Guofeng. Sorry, Hua Guofeng, again, is. Is, you know, Mao's successor, this kind of relatively weak leader who comes in after Mao. Hua Feng, at least initially has the backing of the pla, who help Hua Guofeng oust the Gang of Four in essentially like an internal kind of palace coup. They arrest the members of the Gang of Four, then Hua Guofeng gets to take over as party chairman. Huo Guofeng is there for a couple years, but Deng Xiaoping, who has much more prestige and influence in the pla, starts to sort of, you know, gradually accumulate more power. Mao called Deng Xiaoping like a needle wrapped in cotton because he was such a kind of, like, powerhouse of a man. I mean, even though he was actually quite, like, short in stature, he was large in prestige and influence. And he was like this hero of the revolution, the political commissar of the 2nd Field Army. So he's starting to sort of, like, pry power away from Hua Guofeng. At the end of 1978, this kind of, like, critical moment during a party plenum where Deng basically starts to take over as the de facto leader of the party. As a side note, I'll just say, like, Deng never becomes the party chairman. He never becomes the party general secretary. He never is the premier president of China. He holds but one key post, and that is chairman of the Central Military Commission, which should tell you something about, like, where power resides in the Chinese system. And that is the post through which he exercises the role of paramount leader in the 1980s. And so in this period of 1970, in the lead up, like, there's one interpretation, like, I mean, there's some national security reasons why China might want to go into Vietnam, but there's also a set of political reasons for Deng to want to go into Vietnam. Deng wants to push the side of Hua Guofeng and show that actually he, Deng Xiaoping, has control of the military and can make the military dance when he tells them to dance. The actual conflict happens at the beginning of 1979, but in the lead up to it is when Deng is starting to consolidate power or really push aside Hua Guo Fang. And he enters this conflict in Vietnam, you know, partly against the objection of, you know, some of the PLA and the civilian leadership who see this as, you know, a kind of, like, risky gambit. That is not worth it. In, in some ways it's proven to be true. Like it's not a huge battlefield success. You know, China sort of declares it successful, but really I think, you know, most people would say, and Tyler, you can jump in here, that this was not a huge success for the pla. It was effectively something close to a loss. But one of the reasons the party entered arguably is that it benefited Deng in this period of leadership transition to show that, hey, the PLA is going to follow my orders over the ejections of others. Could you imagine a similar dynamic at work in other potential future conflict scenarios? Whether that's in the South China Sea or across the Taiwan Strait is a question that we're trying to raise in this, in this piece.
- [24:09]
Chloe Fox
I think one of the things that is alarming is when you think about the succession politics starting to ramp up. As you guys noted, in addition to Xi Jinping's order that the PLA be ready for a Taiwan contingency by 2027, plus the recent purges that Xi Jinping has carried out against the pla, which seem to suggest that he's. We can talk more about this too, but perhaps that he's not happy with his military right now, that he is exerting more control over the military or reshaping the PLA in. If you take all these three things together, how, how concerned should we be?
- [24:49]
Tyler Jost
It's not great, I would say. I mean, on the positive side of the ledger, it's perhaps helpful to raise the fact that China hasn't green lighted anything yet. But if one were looking out and thinking about whether or not those meetings, formal or informal, between Xi and his advisors are going to be fruitful discussions about whether they can actually do a military operation. I mean, I wouldn't want to be the military leader that told him that they weren't ready, right? That the 2027 deadline was not met or it was met, but you know, there's still going to be huge costs, so on and so forth. I guess the other thing to add here is that there's just so much uncertainty about the present decision making system. One of the benefits of looking historically to events like the 79 Sino Vietnamese War or things that happened during other succession periods like the sign up, so the border conflict, so on and so forth, is that we can really see much more clearly into the chain of events that led up to things, the information flows who might have in the past provided half hearted assessments or withheld what they were truly thinking at a.
- [26:01]
Dan Mattingly
Given moment in Time just building off of that, I'll say that, Chloe, you raised the recent purges, which are, I mean, you think, remarkable and worth talking about just in general, but also in connection with their piece. Right. I mean, you have Hoedong the Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission, Miao Hua, a member of the Central Military Commission. You know, you have two ministers of defense who've been taken down in these purges. And I mean, it's pretty remarkable to see this happen. It is something we really haven't seen maybe since the Deng era, or you could even reach back to the malware. Amazing. Maybe depending on how you define how wide ranging this is. And so I think there are a couple things here that I think might make me, I suppose, less pessimistic in the short run about any kind of like, Taiwan contingency and make me think that maybe there are reasons that Xi Jinping wouldn't, in the short run, trust his military. You know, the first is like, if you think about these purges, I mean, I think there's probably two dynamics at work. Like, I think one is probably ongoing corruption. Like, if you think about there was a set of purges in the rocket force that happened, there might have been a number of things here, but I think probably one of the more plausible explanations for this is corruption in procurement and the lack of readiness and the rocket force maybe also, again, as a result of like, of corruption or incompetence that made Xi Jinping dissatisfied with the rocket force. When it comes to some of these other purges, particularly, I mean, I think the most kind of intriguing ones are Miaohua and Huedong being taken off the Central Military Commission. These are people who are tied to Xi Jinping. They both knew Xi Jinping almost certainly in Fujian and Zhejiang when Xi Jinping was a local leader. They were group army leaders at the time. And so I think there are a couple of things at work. I mean, both of them really are kind of like related to elite politics and succession. We don't know what happened with them. But I think there's kind of two explanations that I think are the most plausible. The first is that I think there's some evidence that Miaohua was trying to empire build within the PLA and kind of create like a Yahuwah faction. And maybe he thought this was some. Okay, because maybe he thought like, a Yahuwah faction is also a Xi Jinping faction. But it does seem to be the case that people who served under Miahua were being promoted at higher rates than Other people. I think that's suggestive that he was kind of like, trying to empire build in a way that might. That Xi Jinping might not have liked. One, because it probably degrades military readiness, you know, two, because factionalism and the PLA is maybe also bad for elite politics. But if you're Xi Jinping looking at somebody like Miaohua who maybe was engaging in this sort of behavior, you have to kind of maybe doubt some of the competence of the people that he's promoted as a member of the Central Military Commission. There's a second dynamic, I think, that might be at work here. Again, we don't know, but I think it's pretty plausible that the top PLA general has been Zhang Youxia, who, again, is somebody who's known Xi Jinping probably since they were children. Zhang Yosha's father was also a leader like Xi Jinping's father. And, you know, Zhang Yosha is, you know, he's in his mid-70s. I guess maybe he'll also live to 150 if this all comes to pass. But presuming he doesn't, someone will also need to succeed Zhang Youxia. And so if you think about, like, what Miaohua and Hu Weidong might have been doing, I think that there's an element here that might have been kind of like jockeying to succeed Jiangyusha, but an element of cost to all this, that this is all essentially, you know, like, speculation about what's happening. But, you know, even taking this with a grain of salt, it does suggest that maybe Xi Jinping should, on the margins, probably be a little bit concerned about PLA military readiness. That doesn't mean that he's not going to act like. I think that this is probably second order to whatever his reading of the kind of larger national security situation is. But I do think that, you know, these are at least suggestive that in the short run, Xi Jinping was probably worried about military readiness and, you know, worried about the. How competent the officer corps is at the top.
- [29:41]
Chloe Fox
I think one of the interesting things that comes up as I'm hearing you guys talk, but also in your piece is you identify certain tensions that exist for Xi Jinping as he thinks about a successor. One is to find a strong and competent heir, he has to select somebody who has strong connections to the pla, because having military connections is so important to the center of power. But, Dan, as you mentioned, if somebody starts to have too much power themselves and there's factional politics involved, if he chooses somebody or identifies Somebody too early, it becomes a threat to himself. So there's that tension of picking somebody strong and competent versus somebody who is not going to threaten him. There's a second tension going on which is getting an older and more experienced heir or a young dark horse. And you guys also in your piece, talk a little bit about the age factor here and how there's really nobody currently around who fits the bill in terms of experience but age as well. They all seem to be about Xi Jinping's age or close to it. Is that right?
- [30:50]
Dan Mattingly
The Standing Committee stocked with people who are kind of close to Xi Jinping's age, right in their late 60s, in some cases into their 70s. But the and the larger Politburo has some people who are a bit younger who Chun Jining is the Party Secretary of Shanghai who is sometimes sort of people suggest like he could be a potential successor. But he's also as one of the younger people on the Standing Committee, he is himself also not that young. He's 61. So if you imagine that Xi Jinping is going to hand over power in 2027 to somebody like Chen Jinying, like, okay, maybe by the time you get to 2032, you know he's going to be certainly older than has been the kind of norm in party succession. It's this sort of funny dynamic where there's nobody who's the clear person in waiting in the wings if you think it's going to be 2032 and if you think it's going to be 2027. Xi Jinping hasn't taken any of the steps to like identify and cultivate a successor. He hasn't elevated someone like Chen Jining to the Standing Committee or given him a post like head of the Party Secretariat, which is kind of what Xi Jinping did as an apprentice leader, which kind of helps him understand the internal workings of the Party. He hasn't elevated anybody to be Vice chairman of the Central Military Commission. Like all these things that might indicate that someone like this is a potential successor. So it's a real puzzle what the plan is and if there's any plan.
- [32:14]
Chloe Fox
We'll be back after a short break.
- [32:19]
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- [33:57]
Chloe Fox
And now back to our conversation with Tyler Jost and Dan Mattingly. I was reading your piece around the same time as I was reading Joseph Turigian's new biography of Xi Jinping's father. And in that Xi Jinping's father was a senior CCP leader himself and he served with Mao during the Chinese Civil War. And one of the things that really comes through is just how deeply impacted both the father and the son were by the Revolution, by the Cultural Revolution, and the modern Chinese history of struggle. And both men emerged from these challenges more loyal to the Party as a result, it seems. So I wanted to talk about this age issue because it seems to me, and correct me if I'm wrong, but is it right to think of Xi Jinping as like kind of the end of this generational tie to the Revolution, to this kind of critical period in Chinese history? If he does hand over the reins to somebody younger, if we actually find somebody who is maybe born in the 1960s, who he passes the reins to, does that represent a generational shift? Is the era of the princelings coming to an end?
- [35:09]
Tyler Jost
Well, I mean, in some ways we're already at a point where the senior leadership of the party is not, you know, the founding generation of revolutionaries who fought against Japan and fought against the KMT to establish the prc. You bring up the Cultural Revolution. It is a mark, I think, to note that the next generation of leaders probably will not have lived through that. But from a certain perspective, the interesting thing here is that Xi Jinping has tried to bring revolution or the revolutionary tradition back to Chinese politics in a kind of artificial way. Of course, he can't manufacture a long march for all within the party. But he has made it more important in ideological terms, that revolutionary roots of the party. So it'll be interesting to see whether or not he will be successful in, from this perspective, picking an heir or picking a successor that shares that same vision going forward. Because it's not obvious. Like, if you look at Xi Jinping's childhood and his experience with the Cultural Revolution, like, you bring up the fact that Joseph Turigian argues that he becomes more loyal to the party, it's, like, not totally obvious that that would always be the case. Like, plenty of people come out of the Cultural Revolution deeply scarred and have visions that are much more liberal as a result of that, as opposed to politically conservative. And so it's not obvious, I think, that whoever replaces Xi Jinping will have that same vision that a more politically conservative China is the right way forward. We could potentially see something that changes quite drastically, at least domestically.
- [36:48]
Dan Mattingly
I want to pick up on that last thread of thinking about the potential ideology of Xi Jinping's successor. I mean, so there's a question of, like, who is Xi Jinping and what his ideology? I mean, I think if you spend a lot of time reading some of the Xi Jinping ideology books, it's not a fun time reading those books. But I do think that there is a consistent vision. Like, yes, it's kind of turgid. No, Xi Jinping is not as creative a political theorist as Mao was. For all of Mao's terrible flaws, he's not the poet that Mao was, but he does, I think, have a vision for China. And it's a more, in the Chinese sense, leftist vision for what China should be. It's a country that is more socially conservative, but crucially, it's also a country where the state has a larger role in the economy and the market has a somewhat smaller role in the economy than predecessors. I mean, he's not talking about taking China all the way back to the mid-1960s, but it is definitely a change in direction from the reform era. And he's also, of course, advocating for this process of, you know, the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. So I do think that there is a kind of ideology there. I do think it's a to the left ideology that borrows from, among other things, like the new left in China. I think Xi Jinping is also taking a page from his former, now incarcerated political rival, Bo Xilai, who was kind of part of the succession mess of 2012 when Xi Jinping took power. I do think that Xi Jinping picks a successor. If the pass is any guide, I would think that he's going to want to pick a successor whose political vision is closer to his own. And the trick with that is that it's hard to know once you have relinquished power or once you go to meet Marx, as they say, will the successor actually follow through on this? And this partly explains a lot of the dynamics of cycling through successors of Mao. And also arguably Deng Xiaoping is Mao was never satisfied with Liu Xiaoji and he just thought like Jiu Shiji was too conservative and not radical enough. Deng cycled through two successors, both of whom he felt like were not basically hard line off on politics. He felt like they were too liberal to accommodating to student protesters. So he pushed aside two successors for that reason. Xi Jinping hasn't done that because he hasn't identified nor cultivated potential successors. But I wouldn't be surprised if he wants to try to pick somebody who's close to him ideologically. And you're right though that like anybody he picks just biographically, right? This generation that are the sons and daughters of this founding generation, that generation now is, is starting to retire. So. But I don't think that that means that the princelings are gone. I think we're just talking now about the grandchildren. I don't think this will necessarily disappear in Chinese politics. I just think as with all things, it will take on a new form.
- [39:36]
Chloe Fox
You reference 1989 in Tiananmen multiple times in your piece and Foreign affairs and I hadn't fully appreciated the sudden death of the Hu Yaobang who might have succeeded. Deng Xiaoping galvanized protesters, you're right, because with his death, protesters saw a more liberal future for China slipping from their grasp. Do you see any potential for unrest like that with the Xi Jinping succession question? Do you think Chinese citizens will be hoping or watching for signs that Xi's successor might mark a change in methods or ideology?
- [40:13]
Tyler Jost
I think it's tricky to draw a neat parallel there. I mean, one might have expected the death of Jiang Zemin to have a similar rallying cry amongst more liberal minded individuals within China. The perhaps sad fact of the matter is that the political climate in China today is not what it was in the late 1980s. So the kind of opportunity for such a movement to occur I think is just different. And then the second is just the kind of decisions that the party has made regarding surveillance of society has made it such that I think it would be incredibly difficult to organize even around some sort of political event that might genuinely stir up emotions or galvanize people to. To think about, well, something's slipping away from us. But on the other hand, like, Chinese history is infinitely unpredictable. So things happen that are surprise everyone. And so, of course, you can't rule it out. It's just, I think, difficult to draw a clean parallel to the events of 1989.
- [41:12]
Dan Mattingly
Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think we shouldn't be naive about the strength of the Chinese Communist Party, the strength of the surveillance apparatus, the strength of the security state in China. I do think that with Jiang Zemin's passing, right, Xi Jinping, of course, is still alive and still in control of the system. I do think there will be a moment of peril for the party after he. He retires or passes away, really, because I think as long as Xi Jinping is alive, he's going to continue to be probably the most powerful person. I mean, it's hard to say, but like, even if he retires, it's going to be hard for him to fully relinquish power. But after he's gone, in a similar way to after Mao's gone, like, it's not that hard to imagine there being discussion and conflicts at the top over the future direction of the country in ways that can then spill out potentially in public. And those are the real dangerous moments for authoritarian regimes is when you have, you know, elite disagreement over the future of the country, elite disagreement over who's going to be in power, and that then spills over into public. And so I think, like, one way to think about 1989 and some of these other movements across other authoritarian regimes is they're, you know, partially about elite politics spilling into public in ways that then become difficult to manage. Because if you imagine a scenario where you have, you know, a leader, but who's pretty weak, and a rival who's stronger, who then has maybe incentives to allow or encourage there to be some kind of political opening or protest to happen, or in a way that just kind of like, makes it hard for the security services to know what to do. Like, you can imagine elite spill like that potentially over the policy to direction of the country, leading to some kind of moment. But as Tyler says, like, it's. These things are quite difficult to predict. You know, it's not necessarily the case that, you know, the person who succeeds Xi Jinping is more likely to be kind of ideologically close to Xi Jinping. And I do think it's also probably true that the party has such a strong tendency towards not opening up politically, having learned the lesson of the Soviet Union with glasnost and perestroika.
- [43:07]
Chloe Fox
Your piece also contains a bit of a warning for the United States to not meddle. You say Washington might be tempted to intervene or exploit the chaos around Xi Jinping's succession, but you advise against it because it would probably backfire. Why is that? What's the worst that can happen?
- [43:28]
Tyler Jost
Well, I think there's two points. One, it could backfire, but two, it's just unlikely to succeed. And there's probably a third point, too, which is that US Insight into the contemporary factional battles within the Politburo, the US Just has limited insight into how they would try to manipulate this. The way it would backfire, of course, is that there is a long historical tradition within the PRC that sees countries like the United States as intervening in domestic political affairs, hustle, foreign influence, so on and so forth, or hustle forces. Pardon me, but part of that is manufactured for domestic political purposes. But I think that part of that is genuinely felt amongst the leadership. And so, as the United States and China are trying to navigate this very well, increasingly tense geopolitical relationship, one of the things that can undermine a stable relationship or potentially even a more productive relationship on certain issues is this sense that the United States is trying to interfere with what China perceives to be its domestic internal affairs. And so the catch for decision makers in Washington, of course, is that the moments that lie ahead will make it seem like the costs of intervening to get whatever the United States would prefer the outcome of the elite power struggle to be. Those costs will be perceived as decreasing. Right, because it will look like there is potentially tension within the party. If it does spill over into a public setting, it's much easier to get to protesters as opposed to individuals high up within the party. So from a certain point of view, it could be easy to conclude that now is the moment that the United States should try to intervene to push China in a direction that would be more in accordance with either U.S. preferences or U.S. values. Our sense is that it's really easy to underestimate just how difficult that will be. And it's easy to underestimate the cost that that will have to maintaining good geopolitical relations at a bilateral level. Right. If the United States and China want to maintain a steady course, that has more or less been the case since around 2023. Halfway through 2023, intervening in China's domestic political affairs, particularly perhaps the thorniest political question, the question of succession, would have real colosse in international terms.
- [45:59]
Chloe Fox
Dan Anything.
- [46:00]
Dan Mattingly
TED yeah, I agree. I mean, it would be folly to try to intervene. Like, I don't think that the US could do anything. And I think that if the US did try to do anything, you know, as Tao said, it would just feed into, I think, a perception in the Chinese leadership that the US Is constantly trying to, you know, meddle in Chinese politics in ways that violate Chinese sovereignty but are just ineffective. So I don't see any king for the US Attempting to do anything like that. And just to kind of close off an earlier line of conversation, too, like, every time this has happened, there has, I mean, each of the succession kind of battles have been involved, some drama. Like the Last one in 2012 was in some ways the smoothest succession. The Deng succession was frustrated by, you know, 1989, he gradually hands off power. Jiang Zemin handing off power to Hu Jintao. Jiang kind of under kneecaps. Hu Jintao by not giving him the post of military leader, only kind of gradually relinquishing that role. But then last time was the Bo Xilai incident, which, as listeners will probably remember, was this extremely lurid tale of a polypro member's wife committing, you know, Bourdai then tries to kind of like, cover it up. The police chief of the jurisdiction that Bourgio Lai is governing flees to the American consulate, and kind of like everything unravels. So it's definitely, you know, past successions have been high drama.
- [47:20]
Tyler Jost
I do think, just to add to Dan's point, which I think is generally right, is from Washington's perspective, I do think that while we wouldn't encourage decision makers to intervene in any way, I mean, I do think it's helpful to think about the problem of succession when you're trying to anticipate what Chinese foreign policy will be in the coming decades, right? So these are a set of considerations that we should be paying very close attention to. They're likely to change over time. The dynamics of the recent purges, both within the Foreign Ministry and within the pla, are important, but as Dan mentioned, they're relatively new, right. They're not even really characteristic of the purges that Xi had against the military in the first and second term. Like, this is a very new thing. And so it's likely, if one thinks about Xi's fourth or even fifth term, that the salience of those dynamics will rise and fall. And so, as decision makers in Washington are contemplating what US Foreign policy should be and what they anticipate, China's actions, not just towards Taiwan, but the world generally will be it's a helpful reference point or helpful framework for thinking about one of the big political problems that China she will be thinking about over the coming decade or so.
- [48:30]
Chloe Fox
Dan and Tyler, thank you guys so much. Really appreciated this talk and loved your piece after XI in the September October issue of Foreign Affairs.
- [48:39]
Tyler Jost
Thanks so much for having us. Chloe it was really a pleasure.
- [48:41]
Dan Mattingly
Thanks for having us.
- [48:48]
Dan Kurtz Phelan
Thank you for listening. You can find the articles that we discussed on today's show@foreign affairs.com this episode of the Foreign affairs interview was produced by Ben Metzner, Ashley Wood, Rose Kohler and Kanish Tharoor. Our audio engineer is Todd Yeager. Original music is by Robin Hilton. Special thanks as well to Arina Hogan. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts and if you like what you heard, please take a minute to rate and review it. We release a new show every Thursday. Thanks again for tuning in.
- [49:19]
Dan Mattingly
It.