New characteristics of CPC's leadership transition

More than 2,200 delegates to the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) began on Sunday to deliberate a proposed name-list of nominees for the candidates for the Party's new leadership.

Within days, they will elect members and alternate members of the 18th CPC Central Committee, the leading body of the world's largest ruling party.

China's leadership transition, which began last year from township level, will surely determine the future of the world's second largest economy, and influence the world.

A new standing committee of the CPC Beijing municipal committee was elected on July 3, marking the completion of the leadership change at the provincial level.

Since the beginning of the year, main leaders of some central departments and centrally-administered enterprises have been replaced. The seventh plenum of the 17th CPC Central Committee early this month appointed two vice chairmen of the CPC Central Military Commission.

The local leadership transition and central-level reshuffle are preparations for the leadership transition at the 18th Party congress, Dai Yanjun, a scholar on Party building with the Party School of the CPC Central Committee, said.

From central to local levels, the new army of CPC officials bear the distinctive characteristics and personal styles and they are to lead China's new round of reform and development, said Dai.

GROWING UP UNDER RED FLAG

Among the delegates to the 18th Party congress, a number of CPC officials born in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, were under the spotlight.

Dai said they grew up in a totally different historic and social environment from their predecessors, which will, to a great extent, lead to a different administration concept and approach.

Unlike the founding fathers of the People's Republic of China and previous generations of leading officials who grew up in wartime, the new leadership, mostly born around the founding of New China, grew up in peacetime.

This allowed them to have a complete and systematic education of the mainstream socialist ideology, and shaped their worldview and value orientation.

In their youth, they underwent severe tests during the Great Leap Forward in 1958 and "three years of natural disasters" (1959-1961). The turbulent Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) was a hard time for them. Some, in their teens, were forced to live and work in the poorest villages after their parents were persecuted.

"In short, they all went through starvation and had the experience of working hard in rural areas," said Dai. "They are victims of the Cultural Revolution. They witnessed the ups and downs of China's development and the success of the national rejuvenation. They are firm supporters of reform and opening up."

The leading officials born after 1950 and with experiences as "educated youth" are an idealistic and realistic group. They are closely watched by foreigners who are looking into China's future, said Cheng Li, director of research and a senior fellow at the John L. Thornton China Center of the Brookings Institution.