Leadership Change in China

In China, a once in a decade change of leadership is taking place. Today the Chinese Communist Party selected a new Central Committee; tomorrow it will reveal who will lead China for the next decade. The Chinese economy has expanded rapidly over the past ten years, its economy has increased over fivefold from $1.5 trillion in 2002 to $8.3 trillion this year! It has overtaken France, the UK, Germany and Japan to become the world’s second largest economy. Despite all this success, the future is far from certain. China has a terrible track record on human rights and democracy and the growing middle class there is getting increasingly upset at the lack of control over their government. The new Chinese leadership will have two options, introduce some reforms to appease the middle class or crush dissent lack they did in Tiananmen Square in 1989. The problem with the latter is that crushing dissent is harder to do in the internet era and could slow China’s rapid growth.

One of China’s major problems is the high level of corruption in government; the fact that the leaders’ families have become extremely wealthy does not sit well with the poor and middle class. In his address to the Communist Party last week, the outgoing leader, Hu Jintao, brought up the problem of corruption and said that the new Chinese leadership would need to tackle it. The issue of corruption was flung into the centre of Chinese politics earlier this year when Bo Xilai was accused of rampant corruption and his wife, Gu Kailai was convicted of murdering British businessman Neil Heywood.

Hu Jintao speaking to the Communist Party

Nobody really knows what the next decade holds for China, ask ten different ‘experts’ and you would end up with ten different answers. Some are predicting that growth will remain at its current stratospheric levels; some predict that it will begin to slow due to problems in its two main export markets, Europe and the USA. Others predict total economic and/or political collapse. One thing everyone agrees on: The next decade will be extremely important China.