Chinese Provincial Leaders: Economic Performance and Political Mobility Since 1949 by Zhiyue Bo

Author:Zhiyue Bo [Bo, Zhiyue]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Ethnic Studies, General, Regional Studies
ISBN: 9780765609168
Google: EiGwDwAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 4051056
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2002-05-31T00:00:00+00:00

Retirement

Until the early 1980s, there was no system of retirement for high-ranking cadres in China. Unless he or she made political mistakes, a political elite could stay in power until he or she passed away. This lifetime employment of political leaders has created a mentality of "easy going up but difficult stepping down" (neng shang bu neng xia). Short of political purges, a political leader is supposed to stay in his or her position to accumulate seniority for a higher position. For veteran revolutionaries, this is completely justified on the ground that these positions are the rewards for their struggles during the Communist revolution before 1949. For this reason, provincial leaders who had been purged at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution recovered their positions of the pre Cultural Revolution era in the late 1970s. They saw the Cultural Revolution as nothing but an interruption of their political careers. In the eyes of those veteran revolutionaries, the pre-Cultural Revolution era was a "normal" time and they expected everything to be restored, including their original positions. One thing, however, was dramatically different: those provincial leaders were much older. In 1965, for instance, the average age of provincial leaders was 55, while in 1980, the average age of provincial leaders was 62. As China shifted its focus from politics to economics in 1978 and was ready to realize the "Four Modernizations" by the end of the twentieth century, a more energetic and better-educated provincial leadership was desperately needed. To rejuvenate the political leadership, Deng Xiaoping, the paramount leader of the CCP, decided to institutionalize a system of retirement for elderly political leaders.23

The institutionalization of a retirement system for political elites in China proceeded in two stages. At the first stage, which lasted from 1982 to 1992, some semiretirement arrangements were made to facilitate the transition. At the national level, a central advisory commission was set up in 1982 to allow veteran leaders to leave the formal political institutions, while at the same time retaining some measure of power and privilege. In fact, according to the 1982 CCP Constitution, it was a privilege to be in such an organization, because only those party elders who had had at least forty years of party service were eligible for membership in the Central Advisory Commission.24 At the provincial level, similar commissions were also set up, though they were not mentioned in the CCP Constitution. For those who were not qualified for a membership in advisory commissions, they often "retired" either to provincial people's political consultative conferences or to provincial people's congresses. Finally, a few provincial leaders indeed exited completely from the political structure in these years, with considerable perks.25 Eventually, the advisory commissions were abolished in 1992, and those who reached retirement age would have to leave the system altogether, although some provincial leaders still had the options of staying in the formal power structure either in the congressional system or in the political consultative conference system at either the national or the provincial level.

Figure 4.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.