What's next for China after Xi Jinping?

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But the truth might actually be a lot scarier. For our take, join me, just Maddox. And me, Thomas Germain, for the interface. Listen on BBC.com, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, I'm Celia Hatten, and welcome to a special edition of the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. The top members of China's Communist Party are meeting behind closed doors. They're expected to make decisions that will shape the superpower for a long time to come, namely, who's going to run the country next? Well, China's powerful leader, Xi Jinping, has bucked tradition by staying in power longer than any modern leaders before him. And he hasn't yet named the next generation of young officials who will run China. That could change in the next few days and weeks after that big meeting. Xi is staying in office, but who's coming after him? So, in this special edition of the Global News Podcast, we're asking what's next for China after Xi? Joining me to answer that question and some questions that our Global News Podcast audience have sent in. We're joined by Stephen McDonald, he's our Beijing correspondent. And also, we're joined by Shan Yuan from our Global China Unit. Let's start off with all of the drama that's been happening within the Chinese Communist Party at some of the top levels, but also at the top levels of the Chinese military. Xi Jinping has expelled more top Communist Party officials and high-ranking generals than anyone since Mao Zedong, that's China's revolutionary leader. Stephen, can you take us through all of this? What's been happening? So, the anti-corruption crackdown, it goes right back to when Xi Jinping first came to power. We don't know how many people have been caught up in this, but it seems like it's millions. Now, it could be from a slap on the wrist to you end up in prison, so a variety of punishments, and because this is also opaque, we also really don't know what anyone specifically has been accused of. And what I should also stress is that this isn't going through the courts, at least not initially, this is a party discipline procedure, which gives the inspectors incredible power that has grabbed someone off the street, take him to a secret location, and they could interrogate them for months on end. I don't even have to tell their families, and then we'll just get an announcement. This person has been taken down in the anti-corruption crackdown with just the broadest brush explanation of what they said to have done, and they're never to be seen of again. Really, the question is not so much how corrupt certain people are, but why certain people are being taken out. And this is what's led to all this discussion about, well, potentially, does Xi Jinping see certain people as a threat, or why this person or not that person? And at the moment, the emphasis is all on the military. You mentioned the huge number of people who've been taken down in the people's liberation army. Most significantly, the body, which is probably the most powerful in the country, which is the central military commission, Xi Jinping is the chair of that body. It's supposed to be the seven person body that runs the military. Well, five of those have gone down. So now the central military commission is a committee of two people right now. Xi Jinping and one other general, and we're just waiting for new people, I guess, to be appointed to that body. Sean, let's turn to you. I mean, Stephen mentioned anti-corruption, but on a political side, what do you think is going on? Is Xi Jinping clearing house some might say? I think it's important to also bring the audience back to the days when 2012, 2013, 2014. A lot of doctors, professors, those kind of people were being kind of taken into the anti-corruption campaign. Even when we're back home a few years ago, for example, I was talking to my relatives, almost every single one in my family knew about people have been snatched away by the communist party. And some of the new exactly the reason why corruption, and that's the reason why a lot of people are quite supportive of the campaign at the beginning. But now as the campaign dragged on, it became much, much more political. As Stephen was saying, now we have a lot of military leaders being purged. And that goes back to whether Xi Jinping is doing some sort of a political purge. Analysts are starting to suggest whether there's some sort of clearing house. A lot of people are also considering, oh, maybe this is Xi Jinping's tool to sort of root out voices that are not in agreement with his. It's also all of this comes at a really interesting time in China, just ahead of a really important series of communist party meetings, closed door meetings. But then leading into next year, we're expecting Xi Jinping to enter his fourth term as the leader of the country in an unprecedented fourth term. This is something that I talked about more with Damian Ma. He's from the US think tank Carnegie China, which is based in Singapore. Let's hear what he had to say. The way I think about Chinese politics always is that the absence of evidence doesn't necessarily mean evidence of absence, meaning that doesn't mean that there is nothing going on. There's usually something going on, the horse trading and the jostling. I think the big question, of course, is the new generation of leaders, how are they going to fare in the upcoming political transition, which will be October of next year, typically. And so looking at the prospects of who's moving up, who's going down. This is really the time for it. It's the unofficial star of the Chinese campaign season to the extent there is a campaign season in China. It's not really an election, obviously. It's more like a selection, but it is still quite intense leading up to it. And I think we're going to start to see it getting more intensified, you know, after the plenum. It's so interesting, Damian, because we have on the one hand a party and a country that is obsessed with forward planning and long-term planning. And on the other hand, we have a leader who was firmly in power with no real indications of who might succeed him and no open talk about a successor either. It just doesn't seem to add up, really. Succession has always been a challenging thing in the indie Communist Party system. But if you boil a downshine, it's really had only two models. The mouse-a-dome model is you basically surf until you cannot physically. The other model is you kind of step down, like Dan Xiaoping did, but then you actually have still have full authority and seniority behind the scenes. So you're still essentially the top dog, but you formally step down from some of your positions. The question, you know, I think if you're really observing Chinese politics closely over the next year is, are their size indicating it's going to be one or the other model in terms of how the top is thinking about succession? Damian Ma speaking there from Carnegie China. Steven, let's talk about this possible next generation of leaders now. I know we're not expecting any names to be announced right away. It's not really how China works. But we should start to get an indication of who the rising stars are in the party over the next year or so. What do we know about them just based on their age and their background? I think the age and background thing is interesting because if you consider not individuals, but whole swathes of people, like as you say, are a generation. Now, she's generation. They're the last ones to have some sort of a connection to the Mao era. I mean, she's father was, you know, there he was, a guerrilla fighter, side by side with Mao, both his father and even Xi Jinping himself were taken down by Mao. So there's big memories there of that. But the people coming through, I suppose if you said China's generation X, the sort of sixth generation, I think they're talking about, of leaders. This is people who imagine they're coming through in the 80s at a time of opening up here, more experimentation with democratic processes, freedoms in the media. Now it all came to a dramatic bloody end with the crackdown in Tiananmen Square. But these were the formative years of those people. And then if you look further forward to the even more recent generation, are those people going to start to be appointed? They are in some ways less inclined to democratic reforms because they've grown up even after all of the Tiananmen crackdowns. So if you look at people's life experiences, it is, you know, something that you can consider in terms of shaping the way they see the world. Now that said, I should couch this that people shouldn't think, oh, great, all these people look at the next slide. They're coming through the battle these years of China opening up. Therefore, they're going to open China up again. No, not necessarily because once you get to that level of being appointed to the Central Committee, you're a hardened party. like they've shown their loyalty time and time again. So we might think of them as, well certainly they're not going to be as attached to the old Malia or stuff and they have had experiences of China opening up that it's going to be interesting to see that, you know, if that leads to them wanting more of that, given the fact that Xi Jinping, since the Olympics, has tightened the screws. Really, he's shut the place down again. He's closed off reforms. He's put the party right back at the center of production and all this sort of thing. So it's going to be a very interesting time indeed and it all starts with this meeting, this planum, when we're going to see some new appointments and then even more at the party congress next year. - Yeah, quite a few, right? So I know that two thirds of the Communist Party's central committee, that's got 200 people in it, that's one of the top committees. Two thirds of those people are expected to retire. So we really are going to start seeing a whole new generation come in, Sean, what do you think? - Yeah, I think, I just want to go back to what Stephen was said earlier in terms of kind of applying this broad stroke towards the entire generation, saying those people were born in the '60s or '70s. Therefore, their political view must be significantly different or similar to the generation before. It's important to know that it is not a monolithic generation. The same people who went to Tehran Square to protest, the same age as those people who gone down them, you know. So I think it's important to notice that after all the purchase has been going on, after all the party house clearing has been going on, a lot of people who will potentially be the successor to shouldn't have been, will have been vetted personally by himself. So even if we have people who are more, for example, from pro-reform, pro-mode liberalism, all those sort of things, during the entire vetting process, which is very secretive and enigmatic, those people might be weirded out. There's some symbolic moments, for example, you have, there probably be a standing community people, walk down the stage and that's the first time the entire nation has known who the next generation of leader would be, and that's very different from all the other democratic countries of things so far. Like, China is such an important power, both economically and politically and militarily, to selected leader behind such close doors, not just through the outside world on the international stage, but for people inside China as well. That's reason why it's fair to ground for rumors and speculations, and that's exactly the reason why we're talking about this, because nobody really knows, and that's what's intriguing about it as well. Shiny brought up rumors and speculation, and Steve and I have to kind of address one elephant in the room right now, because there's been a lot of talk around Xi Jinping himself and his health, and reports that maybe he isn't as healthy as the party says that he is. We have to remember he's 73. Can you take us through that story a little bit right now, and what reportedly might be happening? Well, one thing that set the tongues wagging, if I could put it that way, was when he was on a trip recently, he's coming out of the plane and walking down the stairs next to his wife, and she's sort of holding his arm and helping him kind of step down the plane stairs, and be like, "Oh my goodness, who knows what does that mean "about Xi Jinping's health?" Now look, he might just have a spray an ankle. I mean, if he's never know what it is, it could be nothing. It could be absolutely nothing at all. But every time we see something along those lines, people will all of a sudden worry. I mean, he turned up at one point in Tibet. I think about it being last year, and he was looking terrible. People thought, "Oh no, look, Xi's. "He's got some health issues, "but it just could have been altitude sickness." I mean, who knows? Let's turn now to a question that we got from one of our global news podcast audience members. This is John, who's a listener in Europe. Here's the question read out by one of our producers. I am particularly interested in finding out who are the potential successors to Xi Jinping. I can imagine that the battle for the position must be fierce and ferocious. Generally, autocratic dictators tend to change their mind about their successor because it reminds them of their soon-to-come demise. Look at Rupert Murdoch. Okay, so Steven, we brought up a fellow RC Rupert Murdoch. Do you think that's what's happening? Are we, is it a sort of succession-like situation going on, do you think within the party? Well, the problem is, if you're putting yourself forward as a possible successor, you wouldn't put yourself forward as a possible successor, if you know what I mean. Because if you look even remotely like you'd be threatening Xi Jinping, you are gone. I mean, he even speaks publicly about sort of castigating party leaders who show off, who sort of exaggerate their abilities in this type of thing. So you've got to be very careful. I mean, I think if you wanted to be considered, you just got to try and do the best job you could do and hope that in the wash-up, you'll come through at the end. I mean, Xi Jinping could be the leader for another 10 years. Who knows what's going to happen in all that time? People do come into favor and you think, "Oh, they're coming next." But, you know, the next thing, they're down, it's like snakes and ladders. Okay, Steven Chan, thank you for that. And stay with us on the Global News podcast, Special China Edition. 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(dramatic music) - This is a special edition of the Global News Podcast. We're focusing on China. I'm Celie Hatton, thanks for staying with us. - Well, when we talk about China as a superpower, it's a military and diplomatic giant, of course. But almost above all, it's got a massive economy, the world's second largest. But it's an economy that's doing huge trade globally, dominating some sectors while stagnating domestically, many say. I asked Yanmei Cies, she's a senior fellow with the Asia Society in Switzerland about that gap. Let's hear what she said. Everything that is high tech, industrial, and especially exports or entities is booming. So, we're thinking of renewable energy equipment. We're thinking of the rapidly advancing AI technology. We're thinking of Chinese electric vehicles, Chinese machinery. But pretty much everything domestically oriented is quite bleak. The realistic sector has not found the bottom yet. Domestic consumption is pretty weak. Income growth is stagnating, and many people feel their future job prospect, especially for young people, is also quite depressing. So we're facing this widening gap between the external oriented economy and the domestic driven economy. - We know that Chinese exports have been rising. Wouldn't that automatically help what's happening within the domestic economy? Wouldn't those profits flow through and help people domestically within China? - I think that's what the leadership hopes, but there can be couple risks in this scenario. One is that we're now seeing pushbacks around the world for what they perceive as the mercantilist policy of China. So basically, China is trying to grow at the cost of the rest of the world. So we're seeing the US closing its market to China. We're seeing Europe is now considering pretty hard line trade policy versus China. So even if these policy, these pushbacks are not effective, another risk is that ultimately, the rest of the world may not just have enough demand to pull the size of the economy, right? So if we think of the way of a train, the freight is growing heavier and bigger, and the engine, part of the engine is the external export market can have to pull it out. more and more and eventually it will become you know slower and slower. So counting on export alone to pull the economy in the long term may not be sustainable. Also yeah maybe when we talk about the Chinese economy what's happening inside China we often go back to what's happening with the real estate sector you mentioned it yourself. What is happening now with the real estate sector and why is it so important? A real estate sector was very important to China because it was nearly 20% of the GDP right and then the bubbles start bursting about five years ago but rather than just letting the bubble burst and I think what the the Chinese government wanted was let's say control the leaking of the balloon and then anecdotally would be hearing that local governments for example would not allow property owners or real estate developers to sell the apartments below certain price. So they wouldn't allow the market sort of finding the the price where the supply meets the demand. So it's kind of slow leaking of the air from the balloon but the result of that is we still haven't seen the housing market reaching the bottom and nobody knows where the bottom is. So do you put yourself in the mind of a Chinese buyer if you wait another month if we wait another two months the price may be even lower than today you would wait. One more question for you and it's from a listener actually I believe a listener in Europe sent us this the listener says I'm interested in your analysis if the next leaders economic strategy will continue to be global economic domination with massive dumping into market segments to achieve a monopolistic position killing all the competition and then moving on to the next market segment we saw that with renewable energy what market segment is next. Right so I think what the listener is looking for is they're going to be a major pivot in China right major pivot from exports driven growth to more domestic consumption driven growth as well as a pivot towards more balanced trades with the rest of the world. So far we have not seen any sign of it right so I think partly because this favoring of production over consumption and also partly I think Chinese policymakers genuinely believe that given time and given patience of these high tech industrial sectors that's the only path for China to escape the so-called middle income trap and I believe that they see their export strength as well as the you know Chinese brands are now becoming global household names as evidence of the success of this policy they do not necessarily see that as weakness because of that I do not see a major change in the policy and also the listener asks what are the next sectors right so Chinese drugs pharmaceutical products becoming very very competitive as well and I think on a more stealth mode because these are not consumer facing Chinese industrial machineries industrial robotics are also becoming globally very competitive and stunningly Germany now imports more machinery from China than exports and that's like a kind of major turning point for Germany. That was Yamei Sier senior fellow with the Asia society Switzerland it's interesting because Yamei is saying that this global strategy has been quite a success for China but I wonder you know are the listener question to me also had some embedded criticism. As Yamei was saying China has been putting so much emphasis on the exports I was breaking China just a few months ago and it was traveling around not a single person that I've met not a single one was optimistic about China's economy everyone is doing awfully they cannot find a job the cost will be still quite high and if you really talk to people the entire transportation is really struggling quite bad. Steven your thoughts on what Sean's just said do you you know you've been there for so long you you travel a lot around the country do you see that gap as well and that pessimism. Yeah I mean I think people are much more pessimistic than they used to be about the economy here that's for sure but the problem is these amazing bits of the economy robotics electric vehicles solar panel production wind turbines all this stuff I mean China's selling this fantastic products around the world they don't employ enough people and youth unemployment hovering around 18% and that's the official figures could be even worse so if you've got high unemployment if people who've got jobs are worried they'll lose their jobs it means they're not going to go and buy things because they don't feel secure and on and on and on it goes and this is a huge political headache for the government. When you speak to people inside China or you look at what the conversations that are being had limited conversations admittedly on Chinese social media where does the blame lie if people are feeling pessimistic do they automatically blame see at the top or are they looking at local government. Sean when you talk to people you know what do they tell you. It's very interesting in terms of like the social contract that Chinese government has with this people for the very very long time the contract has always been you give up certain liberties you give up your criticism in exchange for betterment of your life and that has been true for a very long time but over the past few years I think that there's a different layer to that contract now more than just making your life better because the government is aware that people's life is actually not getting better so they sort of started shifting the direction to a different kind of contract where you give up certain things in exchange for feeling that the Chinese nation as a nation is standing up again on the world stage China has been hosted different summits for example to project itself as a stable partner of the global south and the the trade war and it has come out as this kind of rational voice for the world to look up to so there's a new layer of contract even though your life might not be getting better but we as a nation abide in our time to make sure that we stand again on the world stage and with that time our economy is going to better your life is going to get better as well and of course I'm not saying that there's no criticism within the population against that but if you go and try and social media know it's going to be talking about it but if you go actually talk to ordinary Chinese especially further away from the political scene I might personally for example have talked to a lot of people who lay the blame on Xi Jinping himself and especially people who are in the property sector for example and then they have been hit the hardest and the the use for example they face such high rate of unemployment and a lot of people do lay the blame on him all right well we've been talking a lot about what's been happening inside China let's focus now on how China deals with the outside world we have one audience question let's take a listen hi this is Richard from Cape Town South Africa I wonder what are China's medium and long-term ambitions within Africa in particular how they either align or conflict with the ambitions of Russia and also the United States of America in Europe Sean I think it's important to know that Africa is sort of the crown draw of China's overseas expansion and it was the first continent when the the whole idea of Belt Road Initiative was introduced Africa was the focus we have the for example the railway in Kenya and in Ethiopia and we have dams being built and we have EVs for example being exported to the continent or all those things are very important for China's expansion and over the past few years I think that their relationship has shifted fundamentally in a way that we're no longer seeing a lot of big ticket infrastructure items being implemented in Africa anymore we're seeing small and beautiful projects we're talking about important avocados from Kenya for example or building ships for a certain village so they can go shipping but now moving on to the second part of the question when the listener was talking about how he sort of collides with the interest of Russia, Europe and the United States. I think Russia's ambition in Africa is very different from China's ambition we've been seeing a lot of for example Wagner groups in the Sahib region and Russia's focus has been predominantly security based very military based and now China obviously I'm not saying China does not want to get involved militarily in Africa because we do have the only overseas military base of China in Djibouti those open 2017 and you also have a bunch of private security companies not mercenaries that Russia deployed to Africa but private security companies were there to secure the interest of Chinese state owned enterprise or infrastructure projects but knowing that China and Russia are good buddies they could very well wear together for example after France with Drupal from the Sahib region Wagner quickly took over Russia was a major influence in in that region now and with that comes with a certain level of stability and China is able to exploit that security stability on a bleak a note both China and Turkey are accused of encouraging some conflicts there by selling arms and especially military drones to Africa so according to some analysts the flooding in of these Chinese and Turkish drones has made some conflicts even worse in Africa so it's not all rosy that's for sure yeah okay I'm maybe that's a good time for us to turn to another part of the world where China is accused of exhibiting some assertive behavior some might say let's hear from one of our audience members in the Philippines. Hello BBC team I am DN. I am deeply concerned with China's aggression towards our country the Chinese ambassador Jin Kuan made a controversial statement regarding the China's use of force and how they could easily defeat the Philippines if they chose to do so. How would a change in China's leadership, or send, or improve the situation? - Sean, let's go to you for this one. I mean, do you sense that a lot of China's foreign policy is down to Xi Jinping himself? If there was another person sitting in that seat, would we expect some kind of change? I just wonder how personal we think this might be. - Xi Jinping does dictate a lot of China's foreign policy, and that's quite clear. His decisions are very calculated. But think when it comes to the Philippines, it's a bit different because the aggression does not come exclusively from the Navy. Most of the aggression has been carried out by Coast Guard and militias. And those people do not directly answer to the Navy. Not to say that Xi Jinping does not know about their existence. There might be some encouragement, there might be some IQ essence. The listener was asking whether a change of president is going to change the behavior, change the policy China exhibits towards the Philippines or the world in general. Frankly, I don't think so. The security in South China see affects directly how China is going to be able to engage with Taiwan, engage with the rest of the world. And that's reason why even during negotiation between China and the US, Taiwan has always been a big part of it. Just because both countries know how important this region is to China, coupled with the fact that the US and the Philippines have certain treaties and then how he's going to be changed, it's not necessarily dictated by who the president is. It's a long lineage of domestic policies of China's claim over these territories. Those things will not change simply because we have a new president. - Why do you think we're so fascinated with Xi Jinping as a character? Why is this man, somebody who we speculate so much about, even though honestly, we know so little about him as a person? Just even what do you think? - Yeah, I mean, it certainly keeps his cards close to his chest, doesn't he? I mean, you compare him to other leaders, like Jiang Zemin. There he is singing songs and putting on hats and having a beer and chewing out the Hong Kong media and didn't mind being really colorful. And then you've got Xi, it's just like, you never see any change in his mood or anything like that. You know, it is interesting because years ago, he went to Australia and at one point, he said, oh, he's really interested in Aboriginal art. And so they took him out to this remote area to show him these ancient cave paintings because he's fascinated by that. No, it's sort of amazing in a way that he and the party doesn't show that side of him. I mean, that's quite endearing. Doesn't that make him more of a warm figure or what have you? And yet they don't want it. They don't want to give up anything because I suppose any sign of weakness or anything that could make him seem anything other than completely infallible, they're worried about it. Or certainly he seems to be worried about. And he's got one of the most important jobs in the world. He's one of the two most powerful people in the world. And we know so little about him. (upbeat music) And that's all from us for now. Thanks to Stephen McDonald in Beijing and Sean Yuan here with me in London. And to my two other guests, Damian Ma from Carnegie, China and Yamesia from the Asia Society, Switzerland. If you want to get in touch, you can email us at [email protected]. I'm Celia Hatton. Thanks for joining us. Bye-bye. (upbeat music) The Hubble Space Telescope was designed to peer deeper into the universe than ever before and locking some of its greatest secrets. The significant spherical operation appears to be present in the optics. The BBC Space Podcast 30 Minutes is telling the inside story of how NASA rescued Hubble. - The future of space astronomy depends on it. - From the BBC World Service, 13 Minutes, Trouble with Hubble, all ever sayings available now, wherever you get to your BBC Podcasts. (upbeat music)