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What Matters Most in Selecting top Chinese Leaders? A Qualitative Comparative Analysis

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Abstract

This article analyses the selection criterion of China’s most powerful leading body—the Politburo Standing Committee—by using Qualitative Comparative Analysis and the latest data of the 18th Party Congress in 2012. It finds that age, combined with institutional rules, is one of the dominant factors in deciding the appointment of leaders in 2012, suggesting the significance of institutional rules in today’s elite politics in China. It also finds that candidates’ patron-client ties with senior leaders did play a role but they are not always positive in terms of the career advancement of candidates. Moreover, and perhaps surprisingly, this study finds that powerful family backgrounds do not have positive impacts on promotion at the highest level.

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Notes

  1. The other predictions of the 18th PSC line-up include American Voice [12], Sing Tao Daily[16], South China Morning Post [65], Boxun News [8, 9], Duowei News [19], Fanhua News [24], The Epoch Times[32], Chosun Daily [15], Mirror Books [30].

  2. For empirical studies, please see [5–7, 13, 14, 33, 47, 50, 61, 66]. For qualitative analysis, see [3, 41, 42, 58, 59, 77].

  3. In this study, princeling refers to state/party/military leaders who come from families of senior party leaders (vice minister or vice governor level or above) or military generals (deputy military region level or above).

  4. This article will not go into details of regarding the accuracy of and differences between each translation because of the topic.

  5. Eight-legged essay is a special writing style for the imperial examination system.

  6. An important dimension of the examination system which is not pointed out in the debate is whether those who succeed in this examination because of their better literary skills are capable of managing the nation. Excellent writing skills do not necessarily mean management expertise. The old method of writing eight-legged essays, in particular, is very pedantic. Similarly, a PhD degree indicates expertise in specific areas rather than general administration or management skills. Despite the many problems of the imperial examination system, it is better considered as a critical way to co-opt educated elites and build an image—if not a channel—of social mobility, rather than a search for governing talents.

  7. I owe this idea to Professor Shaun Breslin.

  8. For studies on provincial leadership, please see [6, 37, 39].

  9. Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang are not included as they would certainly maintain their PSC seats: they did not need to compete for the PSC seats. As their heir apparent status is dominating, other variables have almost no effect.

  10. Retrieved from http://news.xinhuanet.com/ziliao/2004-07/14/content_1600008.htm on 20 December, 2012.

  11. For more information about QCA, see http://www.u.arizona.edu/~cragin/fsQCA/.

  12. For more literature that applies QCA, see http://www.compasss.org/index.htm;

  13. My thanks to the anonymous reviewer for this information. For political science studies that have been conducted with QCA, please see Chan, S. [11]. Explaining war termination: A Boolean analysis of Causes. Journal of Peace Research 40(1), pp. 49–66. Osa, M. and Corduneanu-Huci, C. [56]. Running uphill: political opportunity in non-democracies. Comparative Sociology 2(4), pp. 605–629.

  14. For fs/QCA, see http://www.u.arizona.edu/~cragin/fsQCA/links.shtml; for Tosmana, see http://www.tosmana.net/.

  15. Of course, this is not to say that patron-client ties are not important.

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Acknowledgments

I am very grateful to Dr. Clive Gray for helping me with QCA. I also would like to thank Professor Shaun Breslin, Professor Sujian Guo, and two anonymous referees for their valuable comments. My special thanks go to Dr. Renske Doorenspleet for suggesting that I apply QCA. Of course, all mistakes are my own. Replication data are available at https://sites.google.com/site/zengjinghan/data.

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  1. Department of Politics and International Studies, Social Sciences Building, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, UK

    Jinghan Zeng

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Appendix

Appendix

Fig. 1
figure 1

Output of fs/QCA

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Fig. 2
figure 2

Output 1 of Tosmana. Note: If a condition is present (1) for the outcome, it is indicated by UPPER-CASE notations. If it is absent (0) for the outcome, it is indicated by lower-case.

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Zeng, J. What Matters Most in Selecting top Chinese Leaders? A Qualitative Comparative Analysis. J OF CHIN POLIT SCI 18, 223–239 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11366-013-9247-1

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