Leading China where?

Abstract

The members of the fifth-generation leadership, with President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang at its core, have been in their party places for a year and in government positions for half a year. Now is a good time to assess how they are doing and the context in which they have to operate, especially as the party plenum to be held in late 2013 will articulate their economic policies more fully. As the articles by international experts in this issue of EAFQ make clear, this is a leadership that practices incremental reform. In internal issues, like managing the falling growth rate and the structural issues of increasing consumption, supporting sustainability and making the Chinese economy more competitive, it is a leadership that maintains faith in the market but also in state control. Its members support private-sector development and greater international access to the domestic market—but only up to a point. On China’s international role, they inherit from the previous administration the problem of managing the country’s increased profile and importance while maintaining constructive relations with America, Japan and other key countries. They continue to plan policy around what they perceive as US attempts at containment and a Japan whose behaviour over the Senkaku–Diaoyu islands is curtailing their strategic space. At the heart of both these issues is the dominant contradiction in China’s current role—a major country central to global growth and stability, but one that feels beset by immense internal challenges and the need to give these priority rather than involving itself in the affairs of others. The Xi–Li leadership has been working within a framework created by its predecessors, but one which put GDP growth ahead of almost everything else. Its language of a ‘China dream’ and of needing to create a more urban, sustainable economic model starts to move away from this GDP dominance. But as these articles show, the challenges in creating political consensus among a highly fractured polity remain dauntingly high. And it is too early to say just how radical the new leaders will be as reformers when the time comes to make choices between the options available to them.