Xi Jinping’s Successor and the Future of China

Chloe Fox

Thank you, Tyler and Dan, for joining us, I’m so excited about this conversation. And thanks again for your piece in the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs. It's titled “After Xi,” and in it you write that although the past decade has been characterized by Xi Jinping's grip on power in China, soon everything will start to change. You write, and I quote you here: “As the [Chinese Communist Party] elite begins the search for a leader to replace the 72-year-old Xi, China is transitioning from a phase defined by power consolidation to one defined by the question of succession.” You also issue a kind of warning that, quote: “Succession shapes political choices well before leaders finally relinquish control,” and that the “prelude, execution, and aftermath of transitioning power will shape China's foreign and domestic politics in the coming years.” So I wanted to start with some basic scene-setting. Can you walk us through why succession is so difficult for China? What is it about the CCP that makes periods of succession such tumultuous times?

Daniel Mattingly

Yeah well thanks, Chloe, for having us on, I'm really excited to be on the program. And I think the problem that you're talking about is a sort of general problem for authoritarian regimes. Succession is in general sort of the Achilles heel for authoritarian regimes. It's this sort of critical moment where other elites can coordinate to try to oust each other and kind of change the course of the regime. So it's a problem generally, and the CCP is basically not immune from this problem that authoritarian regimes in general have—that elite fights tend to happen around these succession battles. And it tends to be especially acute when you have the fall of somebody like Xi Jinping once he retires, passes from the scene one way or another. As somebody who has consolidated a lot of power it's going to sort of raise the stakes.

So if you look back in Chinese history, leaders in general have had trouble handing off power to successors. And there have been very few, if any, untroubled successions in the history of the [People’s Republic of China]. So if you think about Mao [Zedong] for example—Mao first designated Liu Shaoqi as his successor, and then ended up ousting Liu Shaoqi in the 1960s in the course of the Cultural Revolution, he died. Then Lin Biao effectively becomes his successor; Lin Biao also perishes in this kind of mysterious plane crash as he's attempting to flee China after—in this case probably it's his son is trying to organize a coup, it's this very Byzantine, complicated process. And then Mao finally designates a successor, Hua Guofeng, who's only able to hold onto power for a couple of years. He's then kind of pushed aside by Deng Xiaoping, who then, Deng Xiaoping cycles through a bunch of successors. So you can sort of go on and on through the set of Chinese leaders, as we do in the beginning of the piece, and it's a problem for all of these leaders—settling on a successor and having that successor actually take power is quite tricky.

Chloe Fox

Yeah, you mention in the piece that Hu Jintao is the only leader of the People's Republic of China to have voluntarily relinquished power and that was to Xi Jinping. I feel like it's easy to lose track of how recent a problem this has been for China and that they are still struggling to figure out how this goes. Tyler, do you feel like there's any sense that Xi Jinping has learned and is going to do this more gracefully? Or do you think that we're in for more rocky road down the line here?

Tyler Jost

Well first let me just echo Dan in thanking you for hosting us, it's a pleasure to be here. I would say that Xi Jinping—not because he has learned or not learned—actually faces a more acute set of challenges in handing over power because of the extent to which he has successfully consolidated power since taking over from Hu Jintao. And essentially the reason behind that claim is that there was a period of what you might refer to as “collective leadership” in which the balance of power amongst elites within the CCP was much more even than it was certainly under Mao Zedong and even Deng Xiaoping. Which in some ways makes the process of transitioning power between individuals more smooth. You could debate that point, but I think that's probably true. But Xi's consolidation of power essentially means that only he is going to be making most of these critical choices. And that, on the one hand, allows him to set the scene, set the table so to speak, for the succession to go exactly as he wants it to, picking a successor that will share his vision for what China is both domestically and internationally. But then, he'll also have tremendous power at his disposal to adjust things as he goes along. So in other words, if that successor is gaining too much power or deviating from the path that Xi would like while he's still alive, it'll be relatively easy, we think, for Xi to alter course in the way that all the leaders that Dan just referenced, Mao and Deng in particular, did before Xi.

Chloe Fox

So as we consider the succession question, who are the front-runners these days? Which members of Xi's circle are emerging as genuine contenders? And who should we—in the United States and elsewhere—who should we be keeping an eye on?

Daniel Mattingly

Yeah, I think there's a question of, you know, [if] Xi Jinping had some health issue or something and had to step down suddenly, what would happen immediately? If you look at the Standing Committee, I think there are really a couple of potential people to look at. Neither of them, by the way, especially young either. One is the sitting premier, the number two, Li Qiang, who would presumably take over for Xi Jinping if we just kind of look down at who in the official party roster is number two. There's a lot of people who think, though, that Cai Qi, who is another Standing Committee member who is arguably closer to Xi Jinping, head of the Secretariat, is actually somebody who maybe wields more power behind the scenes and could take over for Xi Jinping. But neither of these men is young enough to take over for Xi Jinping in a typical succession scenario for the party, which for the last couple of leaders has involved designating a leader who is in his early 60s by the time that he takes over. Both of these men are too old to take on that role.

A potential successor in the broader Politburo is Chen Jining. Chen Jining is the party secretary of Shanghai, which by the way is the role that Xi Jinping had when he joined the Politburo. It was also the role that Jiang Zemin had when he joined the Politburo, so there's a history of party leaders from Shanghai going on to become the top leader. And Chen Jining, who is currently 61, is young enough to potentially take over in if Xi Jinping handed over, handed power, or if Xi Jinping was willing to sort of go against the recent norms that the leaders start the position in his early 60s. You could even imagine Chen Jining taking over potentially in 2032.

Chloe Fox

That brings me to what I have been wanting to ask you guys. We have to talk about the hot mic moment. This is when Xi Jinping and [Russian President] Vladimir Putin were walking together in Tiananmen Square talking about organ transplants and the possibility of living to 150 years old. And they seemed practically gleeful in their discussion, which makes me curious—do you think that Xi Jinping is actively thinking about succession? Or do you think that, even if he hands over control nominally at some point, he plans on living to 150 and controlling things behind the scenes?

Daniel Mattingly

I think—yeah I mean first I feel bad for whatever Xinhua producer let that conversation slip through. They’re probably in real hot water. It was this amazing moment of these two authoritarian leaders, these two autocrats, talking about their desire to basically live forever. I would guess they probably share something in common, which is they both probably feel like they're the best person, and maybe the only person, to lead their countries forward. In Xi Jinping's case, to finish the process of China's national rejuvenation. And I think they were probably joking around a little bit with that conversation. If you're somebody like Xi Jinping, if I was going to get inside his head, I would imagine he probably thinks that he's the best person to lead forward the country, and so he wants to probably hold off on naming a successor as long as he can.

And I think if you look at the kind of roster that he's built below himself—and this is really Xi Jinping's leadership right now—it's clear that he hasn't yet taken steps to cultivate a clear successor. Unlike Mao, unlike Deng, who both were the previous two strong men in the history of the PRC, both of them had clear potential successors—men who were their number twos, who were younger than them, who could potentially succeed them. If you look at the lineup of the Politburo Standing Committee, which is a group of seven men at the top, if you look at the lineup of the larger Politburo, which is a group of 24 men, and even if you look at the broader Central Committee, it's not super clear who Xi Jinping is cultivating, who could potentially take over. There's not somebody who is obviously young enough and has the right portfolio to take over in the next party congress in 2027. And even if you look ahead to 2032, it's still not clear who’s out there who has the right mix of experience and youth to take over, which is a real change from the PRC of the past.

Tyler Jost

To that I would just add—and this is a bit tongue-in-cheek—but if Xi Jinping actually lived well into his hundreds and did not transfer power to another younger cadre within the party, that in and of itself would pose tremendous challenges for governance in China. Unless medicine were to advance such that you could really have effective leadership into one hundred. You see this in Mao's last years, right? It was, for even senior members of the party, difficult to pin down what Mao wanted. Access to the senior leader in his last couple of years was restricted to individuals that Mao had personal ties [to] and trusted deeply. And to a certain extent that shapes your ability to be able to not only govern domestically, but to be able to do the types of things internationally like foreign visits and receiving foreign leaders that are kind of the bedrock of contemporary international diplomacy.

Daniel Mattingly:

Adding to that point about Mao and thinking about Xi as a potential parallel. Mao in his later years in very bad health, [it] was hard to understand what he was saying in his final months in office. So the man who ended up succeeding him, at least for a couple years, was Hua Guofeng. One of the key things he had was Mao's imprimaturs as his successor, but it was basically because Mao scribbled on a piece of paper, “ni banshi wo fangxin.” Basically, “with you in charge, I'm at ease.” It actually wasn't entirely clear if he meant that with Hua Guofeng as his successor in charge of the country he was at ease, but it did create some problems.

And I think a second dynamic, building on what Tyler was saying, for the party is if you imagine this bionic Xi that lives to 150 years old—an additional problem that's creating is you have this whole group of people who are rising up in the party who are basically being passed over for the chance at running the country. And that can create some potentially bad dynamics for the party.

Chloe Fox

Yeah you have a line in your piece about the thwarted ambitions of a whole generation of potential leaders, and that is a—when you start to think about the psychology at play and the egos at play here, you can imagine how that could be risky. Building on your bionic Xi point, I have heard people joke about how some of these issues as he ages won't be what they were in the past because they could just upload Xi Jinping thought into a large language model and you could have “ChatXiPT.” So potentially that could solve some of the problems.

Tyler Jost:

A truly terrifying world if someone were serious about that claim I think.

Chloe Fox:

But I want to go on something, Dan, that you mentioned here about Xi Jinping and his mission of this national rejuvenation, because one of the things that comes up a lot when we talk about succession and what Xi Jinping feels like he needs to accomplish or not is Taiwan. And you guys have alluded to some of the historical disasters or things that happened in succession crises in the past in China. So I want you to just walk through some of the foreign policy choices that were made in the past during succession chaos, and if and how you see them playing out with relation to Taiwan in the next few years.

Tyler Jost

I think [it’s] helpful to zoom out and think about two sets of challenges in the foreign policy domain that are features of the foreign policy decision making system within China at any point in time, but they just become more acute during periods of succession. And so the first is essentially the problem of getting good information about what's going on, both within your own organization—so, how strong is the [People’s Liberation Army] relative to, depending on the scenario, some aggregation of Taiwan military forces, U.S. military forces, so on and so forth? And then thinking very carefully about, well, if the PRC were to try to attempt military action—you raise the issue of Taiwan; it could be other things, but most likely Taiwan—what would that scenario look like? How would it play out? That is a strategic assessment problem that demands a lot of intelligence collection, a lot of information collection from the foreign policy bureaucracy. And it's not the military, right, you need information from abroad in your embassies, from diplomats, people to assist the leader in thinking through what you're trying to accomplish and whether or not you possess the capabilities to actually see that through. So that's problem number one. 

Problem number two, this is more unique to the PRC, is that the use of military force has a kind of positive externality when you're in the midst of some sort of leadership challenge or when you're trying to demonstrate to others within the party that you are the head honcho. And the reason behind that is that military operations kind of allow for a leader to demonstrate that the military is following their orders. And so from that perspective, a military operation that might be unsuccessful on the battlefield could still theoretically be politically efficient for a leader because, again, it allows you to flex your muscles and show that the military follows your orders.

So coming back to the problem of succession, both of those things can be true generally, but succession essentially puts added pressure on that. One of the key challenges in handing off power is that whoever you're trying to put in place to succeed you is going to be vulnerable, both in the time that you're still around and then certainly once the leader passes away. And as such, leaders have an incentive to try to protect or ensure that the individuals who are passed over, right, those individuals don't rally to try to push that leader aside. What that means is—and this is particularly true in the context of the military—you get a lot of shuffling of appointments, a lot of reaching down and removing individuals with the aim of securing not only your own power, but making space for the power of the person that is going to succeed you.

And what we see in the past is that when supreme leaders in China have reached into the PLA and reorganized things, it puts everyone on edge, as one would imagine it would. And so, speaking truth to power in those informational tasks that leaders assign to the national security bureaucracy under those circumstances become[s] particularly difficult, particularly if you have bad news to relay. If the PLA's capabilities actually do exceed [the] sum of Taiwan and the United States such that everyone truthfully in their heart of hearts feels good about a military operation as the mechanism to resolve the dispute, then there's not the informational problem that I'm drawing attention to because essentially everyone that—subordinates know that's what Xi wants to hear, that the PLA is ready, and PLA leaders genuinely think that. The far more dangerous situation is a situation in which PLA capabilities haven't actually advanced as much as Xi has hoped, and this has been the case historically. And as such, generals feel reticent to green light a military operation, or just see the cost as being quite high and the probability of success as relatively low, but they're afraid to speak—relay that bad information up the chain. Which could lead to a situation in which Xi is making choices about foreign policy generally, but Taiwan specifically, based upon these overly optimistic views of what's going to happen. So that's that application of succession to the first set of problems, the informational ones.

And then thinking about the problem of demonstration, right? So from a certain point of view it always pays to be able to show that you're in charge of the military in the Chinese system. Given the importance of the military in the period of succession, it becomes really very acute incentives for the supreme leader to be able to show that they control the military. This could even be more the case after whoever succeeds Xi comes into power. So if they're thinking about a potential Taiwan scenario and they're sort of on the fence—let's say the information and the intelligence comes back and it's 60-40 about whether it will succeed at some level of cost, and whoever takes over is—that's not quite what they would like to hear before green lighting something. The cost geopolitically, internationally that China would pay for such an operation could be outweighed at least in part at the margins by the positive political externality of showing who's boss within the domestic political scene. So that's how I would think about it.

Chloe Fox

Dan, can you pick up on that last point that Tyler made? Because that's more or less what happened in 1979 when China invaded Vietnam, isn't it? And the Sino-Vietnamese War was— correct me if I'm wrong—it was the last hot conflict that China was involved in. And it happened in the midst of the long succession struggle that followed Mao's death, right?

Daniel Mattingly

Yeah that was China's last major military operation. So there's one interpretation of the reasons why Deng Xiaoping entered this conflict in Vietnam, [which] was that it was at least partly to do with domestic politics and elite politics. So the conflict that China fought in Vietnam, the lead up to that was at the end of 1978. And the end of 1978 was also the period in which Deng Xiaoping is trying to push aside Hua Guofeng. Sorry, Hua Guofeng again is Mao's successor, this kind of relatively weak leader who comes in after Mao. Hua Guofeng at least initially has the backing of the PLA, who helped Hua Guofeng oust the Gang of Four in essentially an internal palace coup. They arrest the members of the Gang of Four, then Hua Guofeng gets to take over as party chairman. 

Hua Guofeng is there for a couple years, but Deng Xiaoping, who has much more prestige and influence in the PLA, starts to gradually accumulate more power. Mao called Deng Xiaoping a “needle wrapped in cotton“ because he was such a powerhouse of a man. Even though he was actually quite short in stature, he was large in prestige and influence. And he was this hero of the revolution, the political commissar of the Second Field Army. So he's starting to pry power away from Hua Guofeng at the end of 1978, this critical moment during a party plenum where Deng basically starts to take over as the de facto leader of the party.

As a side note, I'll just say—Deng never becomes the party chairman, he never becomes the party general secretary, he never is the premier or president of China. He holds but one key post and that is chairman of the Central Military Commission, which should tell you something about where power resides in the Chinese system. And that is the post through which he exercises the role of paramount leader in the 1980s.

And so in the spirit of 1978, in the lead up, there's one interpretation—I mean there's some national security reasons why China might want to go into Vietnam. But there's also a set of political reasons for Deng to want to go into Vietnam. Deng wants to push aside Hua Guofeng and show that actually he, Deng Xiaoping, has control of the military and can make the military dance when he tells them to dance. The actual conflict happens at the beginning of 1979, but in the lead up to it is when Deng is starting to consolidate power, or really push aside Hua Guofeng. And he enters this conflict in Vietnam, partly against the objection of some of the PLA and the civilian leadership, who see this as a risky gambit that is not worth it. In some ways, it's proven to be true; it's not a huge battlefield success. China sort of declares it successful, but really I think most people would say—and Tyler, you can jump in here—that this was not a huge success for the PLA. It was effectively something close to a loss. But one of the reasons the party entered, arguably, is that it benefited Deng in this period of leadership transition to show that, “Hey, the PLA is going to follow my orders over the objections of others.“ Could you imagine a similar dynamic at work in other potential future conflict scenarios, whether that's in the South China Sea or across the Taiwan Strait, is a question that we're trying to raise in this piece.

Chloe Fox

I think one of the things that is alarming is when you think about the succession politics starting to ramp up, as you guys noted, in addition to Xi Jinping's order that the PLA be ready for a Taiwan contingency by 2027. Plus, the recent purges that Xi Jinping has carried out against the PLA, which seem to suggest that he's—we can talk more about this, too—but perhaps that he's not happy with his military right now, that he is exerting more control over the military or reshaping the PLA. If you take all these three things together, how concerned should we be?

Tyler Jost

It's not great I would say. I mean, on the positive side of the ledger, it's perhaps helpful to raise the fact that China hasn't green lighted anything yet. But if one were looking out and thinking about whether or not those meetings, formal or informal, between Xi and his advisors are going to be fruitful discussions about whether they can actually do a military operation—I mean, I wouldn't want to be the military leader that told him that they weren't ready, right? That the 2027 deadline was not met, or it was met but there's still going to be huge costs, so on and so forth.

I guess the other thing to add here is that there's just so much uncertainty about the present decision making system. One of the benefits of looking historically to events like the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War, or things that happened during other succession periods like the Sino-Soviet border conflict, so on and so forth, is that we can really see much more clearly into the chain of events that led up to things—the information flows, who might have, in the past, provided half-hearted assessments or withheld what they were truly thinking at a given moment in time.

Daniel Mattingly

Just building off of that, I'll say that, Chloe, you raised the recent purges, which are I think remarkable and worth talking about, just in general, but also in connection with our piece. I mean you have He Weidong, the vice chairman of the Central Military Commission; Miao Hua, a member of the Central Military Commission; you have two ministers of defense who've been taken down in these purges. And I mean it's pretty remarkable to see this happen. It is something that we really haven't seen, maybe since the Deng era, or you could even reach back to the Mao era maybe, depending on how you define how wide-ranging this is. And so I think there are a couple things here that I think might make me, I suppose, less pessimistic in the short run about any kind of Taiwan contingency, and make me think that maybe there are reasons that Xi Jinping wouldn't, in the short run, trust his military. 

The first is if you think about these purges, I think there's probably two dynamics at work. I think one is probably ongoing corruption. If you think about—there was a set of purges in the [PLA] Rocket Force that happened. I think there might have been a number of things here, but I think probably one of the more plausible explanations for this is corruption in procurement and the lack of readiness in the Rocket Force. Maybe also, again, as a result of corruption or incompetence that made Xi Jinping dissatisfied with the Rocket Force.

When it comes to some of these other purges, particularly, I mean, I think the most intriguing ones are Miao Hua and He Weidong being taken off the Central Military Commission. These are people who are tied to Xi Jinping. They both knew Xi Jinping almost certainly in Fujian [Province] and Zhejiang [Province] when Xi Jinping was a local leader. They were group army leaders at the time. And so I think there are a couple of things at work. And I mean both of them really are related to elite politics and succession. We don't know what happened with them, but I think there's two explanations that I think are the most plausible. The first is that I think there's some evidence that Miao Hua was trying to empire-build within the PLA and kind of create a Miao Hua faction. And maybe he thought this was okay because maybe he thought a Miao Hua faction is also a Xi Jinping faction. But it does seem to be the case that people who served under Miao Hua were being promoted at higher rates than other people. I think that's suggestive that he was kind of trying to empire-build in a way that Xi Jinping might not have liked. One, because it probably degrades military readiness. Two, because factionalism in the PLA is maybe also bad for elite politics. But if you're Xi Jinping looking at somebody like Miao Hua who maybe was engaging in this sort of behavior, you have to maybe doubt some of the competence of the people that he has promoted as a member of the Central Military Commission.

There's a second dynamic I think that might be at work here. Again, we don't know, but I think it's pretty plausible that the top PLA general has been Zhang Youxia, who again is somebody whose known Xi Jinping probably since they were children. Zhang Youxia's father was also a leader like Xi Jinping's father. And Zhang Youxia is, he's in his mid-70s—I guess maybe he'll also live to 150 if this all comes to pass—but presuming he doesn't, someone will also need to succeed Zhang Youxia. And so if you think about what Miao Hua and He Weidong might have been doing, I think there's an element here that might have been like jockeying to succeed Zhang Youxia.

But an element of caution to all this that this is all essentially speculation about what's happening. But even taking this with a grain of salt, it does suggest that maybe Xi Jinping should, on the margins, probably be a little bit concerned about PLA military readiness. That doesn't mean that he's not going to act. I think that this is probably second order to whatever his reading of the larger national security situation is. But I do think that these are at least suggestive that, in the short run, Xi Jinping is probably worried about military readiness and worried about how competent the officer corp is at the top.

Chloe Fox

I think one of the interesting things that comes up as I'm hearing you guys talk, but also in your piece, is you identify certain tensions that exist for Xi Jinping as he thinks about a successor. One is [in order] to find a strong and competent heir he has to select somebody who has strong connections to the PLA because having military connections is so important to the center of power. But, Dan, as you mentioned, if somebody starts to have too much power themselves and there's factional politics involved, [or] if he chooses somebody or identifies somebody too early, it becomes a threat to himself. So there's that tension of picking somebody strong and competent, versus somebody who is not going to threaten him. There's a second tension going on, which is getting an older and more experienced heir or a young dark horse. And you guys also in your piece talk a little bit about the age factor here and how there's really nobody currently around who fits the bill in terms of experience, but age as well. They all seem to be about Xi Jinping's age or close to it. Is that right?

Daniel Mattingly

The Standing Committee is stocked with people who are close to Xi Jinping's age, in their late 60s, in some cases into their 70s. But the—and the larger Politburo has some people who are a bit younger who—Chen Jining is the Party Secretary of Shanghai who is sometimes, sort of, people suggest he could be a potential successor. But he's also, as one of the younger people on the Standing Committee, he is himself also not that young, he's 61. So if you imagine that Xi Jinping is going to hand over power in 2027 to somebody like Chen Jining, okay, maybe. By the time you get to 2032, he's going to be certainly older than has been the norm in party succession. It's this sort of funny dynamic where there's nobody who’s the clear person waiting in the wings if you think it's going to be 2032. And if you think it's going to be 2027, Xi Jinping hasn't taken any of the steps to identify and cultivate a successor. He hasn't elevated someone like Chen Jining to the Standing Committee, or given him a post like head of the party secretariat, which is kind of what Xi Jinping did as an apprentice leader which helps him understand the internal workings of the party. He hasn't elevated anybody to be vice chairman of the Central Military Commission—all these things that might indicate that someone like this is a potential successor. So it's a real puzzle what the plan is and if there's any plan.

Chloe Fox

I was reading your piece around the same time as I was reading Joseph Torigian's new biography of Xi Jinping's father. And in that Xi Jinping's father was a senior CCP leader himself and he served with Mao during the Chinese Civil War. And one of the things that really comes through is just how deeply impacted both the father and the son were by the revolution, by the Cultural Revolution, and the modern Chinese history of struggle. And both men emerged from these challenges more loyal to the party as a result it seems. So I wanted to talk about this age issue because it seems to me, and correct me if I'm wrong, but is it right to think of Xi Jinping as kind of the end of this generational tie to the revolution, to this critical period in Chinese history? If he does hand over the reins to somebody younger, if we actually find somebody who was maybe born in the 1960s who he passes the reins to, does that represent a generational shift? Is the era of the princelings coming to an end?

Tyler Jost

Well I mean in some ways we're already at a point where the senior leadership of the party is not the founding generation of revolutionaries who fought against Japan and fought against the KMT to establish the PRC. You bring up the Cultural Revolution. It is a mark I think to note that the next generation of leaders probably will not have lived through that. But from a certain perspective, the interesting thing here is that Xi Jinping has tried to bring revolution or the revolutionary tradition back to Chinese politics in a kind of artificial way. Of course he can't manufacture a long march for all within the party. But he has made it more important in ideological terms, that revolutionary roots of the party. So it'll be interesting to see whether or not he will be successful in, from this perspective, picking an heir or picking a successor that shares that same vision going forward. Because it's not obvious—if you look at Xi Jinping's childhood and his experience with the Cultural Revolution—you bring up the fact that Joseph Torigian argues that he becomes more loyal to the party—it's not totally obvious that that would always be the case. Plenty of people come out of the Cultural Revolution deeply scarred and have visions that are much more liberal as a result of that, as opposed to politically conservative. And so it's not obvious, I think, that whoever replaces Xi Jinping will have that same vision that a more politically conservative China is the right way forward. We could potentially see something that changes quite drastically, at least domestically.

Daniel Mattingly

I want to pick up on that last thread of thinking about the potential ideology of Xi Jinping's successor. So there's a question of who is Xi Jinping and what is his ideology? I think if you spend a lot of time reading some of the Xi Jinping ideology books, it's not a fun time reading those books. But I do think that there is a consistent vision. Yes, it's kind of turgid. No, Xi Jinping is not as creative a political theorist as Mao was, for all of Mao's terrible flaws. He's not the poet that Mao was. But he does I think have a vision for China and it's a more, in the Chinese sense, leftist vision for what China should be. It's a country that is more socially conservative, but crucially it's also a country where the state has a larger role in the economy and the market has a somewhat smaller role in the economy than predecessors. I mean he's not talking about taking China all the way back to the mid-1960s, but it is definitely a change in direction from the reform era. And he's also of course advocating for this process of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation. So I do think that there is a kind of ideology there. I do think it's a to the left ideology that borrows from, among other things, the new left in China. 

I think Xi Jinping is also taking a page from his former now incarcerated political rival Bo Xilai, who was part of the succession mess of 2012 when Xi Jinping took power. I do think that as Xi Jinping picks a successor, if the past is any guide, I would think that he's going to want to pick a successor whose political vision is closer to his own. And the trick with that is that it's hard to know—once you have relinquished power or once you “go to meet Marx,” as they say, will the successor actually follow through on this? And this partly explains a lot of the dynamics of cycling through successors of Mao, and also arguably Deng Xiaoping. Mao was never satisfied with Liu Shaoqi. He just thought Liu Shaoqi was too conservative and not radical enough. Deng cycled through two successors, both of whom he felt like were not basically hard line enough on politics; he felt like they were too liberal, too accommodating to student protestors, so he pushed aside two successors for that reason. Xi Jinping hasn't done that because he hasn't identified or cultivated potential successors, but I wouldn't be surprised if he wants to try to pick somebody who is close to him ideologically.

And you're right, though, that anybody he picks, just biographically, this generation that are the sons and daughters of this founding generation, that generation now is starting to retire, so—but I don't think that that means that the princelings are gone, I think we're just talking now about grandchildren. I don't think this will necessarily disappear in Chinese politics, I just think, as with all things, it will take on a new form.

Chloe Fox

You reference 1989 and Tiananmen multiple times in your piece in Foreign Affairs, and I hadn't fully appreciated that the sudden death of the liberal leader Hu Yaobang—who might have succeeded Deng Xiaoping—”galvanized protesters,” you're right. Because with his death, protesters “saw a more liberal future for China slipping from their grasp.” Do you see any potential for unrest like that with the Xi Jinping succession question? Do you think Chinese citizens will be hoping or watching for signs that Xi's successor might mark a change in methods or ideology?

Tyler Jost

I think it's tricky to draw a neat parallel there. I mean, one might have expected the death of [former leader] Jiang Zemin to have a similar rallying cry amongst more liberal-minded individuals within China. The perhaps sad fact of the matter is is that the political climate in China today is not what it was in the late 1980s. So the kind of opportunity for such a movement to occur I think is just different. And then the second is just the kind of decisions that the party has made regarding surveillance of society has made it such that I think it would be incredibly difficult to organize even around some sort of political event that might genuinely stir up emotions or galvanize people to think about, “Well, something's slipping away from us.“ But, on the other hand, Chinese history is infinitely unpredictable. So things happen that surprise everyone, and so of course you can't rule it out. It's just I think difficult to draw a clean parallel to the events of 1989.

Daniel Mattingly

Yeah, I agree. I mean I think we shouldn't be naïve about the strength of the Chinese Communist Party, the strength of the surveillance apparatus, the strength of the security state in China. I do think that with Jiang Zemin's passing, right, Xi Jinping of course is still alive and still in control of the system. I do think there will be a moment of peril for the party after he retires or passes away, really, because I think as long as Xi Jinping's alive he's going to continue to be probably the most powerful person of China. I mean it's hard to say, but even if he retires it's going to be hard for him to fully relinquish power. But after he's gone, in a similar way to after Mao was gone, it's not that hard to imagine there being discussion and conflicts at the top over the future direction of the country in ways that could then spill out potentially in public.

And those are the real dangerous moments for authoritarian regimes, is when you have elite disagreement over the future of the country, elite disagreement over who's going to be in power, and that then spills over into public. And so I think one way to think about 1989 and some of these other movements across other authoritarian regimes is they're partially about elite politics spilling into public in ways that then become difficult to manage. Because if you imagine a scenario where you have a leader who's pretty weak and a rival who is stronger who then has maybe incentives to allow or encourage there to be some kind of political opening of protest to happen in a way that makes it hard for the security services to know what to do. You can imagine an elite split like that potentially over the policy, the direction of the country leading to some kind of moment. 

But as Tyler says, these things are quite difficult to predict. It's not necessarily the case that the person who succeeds Xi Jinping is more likely to be ideologically close to Xi Jinping. And I do think it's also probably true that the party has such a strong tendency towards not opening up politically, having learned the lesson of the Soviet Union with Glasnost and Perestroika.

Chloe Fox

Your piece also contains a bit of a warning for the United States to not meddle. You say Washington might be tempted to intervene or exploit the chaos around Xi Jinping's succession, but you advise against it because it would “probably backfire.“ Why is that? What's the worst that can happen?

Tyler Jost

Well, I think there's two points. One, it could backfire. But two, it's just unlikely to succeed. And there's probably a third point too, which is that U.S. insight into the contemporary factional battles within the Politburo—the United States just has limited insight into who they would or how they would try to manipulate this.

The way it would backfire of course is that there is a long historical tradition within the PRC that sees countries like the United States as intervening in domestic political affairs, hostile foreign influence, so on and so forth—or hostile foreign forces, pardon me. Part of that is manufactured for domestic political purposes, but I think that part of that is genuinely felt amongst the leadership. And so, as the United States and China are trying to navigate this very, well, increasingly tense geopolitical relationship, one of the things that can undermine a stable relationship, or potentially even a more productive relationship on certain issues, is this sense that the United States is trying to interfere with what China perceives to be its domestic internal affairs.

And so the catch for decision makers in Washington, of course, is that the moments that lie ahead will make it seem like the costs of intervening to get whatever the United States would prefer the outcome of the elite power struggle to be—those costs will be perceived as decreasing, right, because it will look like there is potentially tension within the party. If it does spill over into a public setting, it's much easier to get to protestors as opposed to individuals high up within the party. So from a certain point of view, it could be easy to conclude that now is the moment that the United States should try to intervene to push China in a direction that would be more in accordance with either U.S. preferences or U.S. values.

Our sense is that it's really easy to underestimate just how difficult that will be, and it's easy to underestimate the costs that that will have to maintaining good geopolitical relations at a bilateral level, right. If the United States and China want to maintain a steady course—that has more or less been the case since around 2023, halfway through 2023—intervening in China's domestic political affairs, particularly perhaps the thorniest political question, the question of succession, would have real costs in international terms.

Chloe Fox

Dan, anything to add?

Daniel Mattingly

Yeah, I agree. I mean, it would be folly to try to intervene. I don't think that the United States could do anything, and I think if the United States did try to do anything, you know, as Tyler said, it would just feed into I think a perception in the Chinese leadership that the United States is constantly trying to meddle in Chinese politics in ways that violate Chinese sovereignty, but are just ineffective. So I don't see any gain for the United States attempting to do anything like that.

And just to kind of close off an earlier line of conversation, too, every time this has happened there has—I mean each of the succession battles have involved some drama. The last one in 2012 was in some ways the smoothest succession. The Deng succession was frustrated by, in 1989 he gradually hands off power. Jiang Zemin's handing off power to Hu Jintao, Jiang kind of kneecaps Hu Jintao by not giving him the post of military leader, only gradually relinquishing that role. But then last time was the Bo Xilai incident, which as listeners will probably remember, was this extremely lurid tale of a Politburo member's wife committing murder. Bo Xilai then tries to cover it up. The police chief of the jurisdiction that Bo Xilai is governing flees to the American consulate and everything unravels. So it’s definitely, you know—past successions have been high drama.

Tyler Jost

I do think—just to add to Dan's point, which I think is generally right—is from Washington's perspective, I do think that, while we wouldn't encourage decision makers to intervene in any way, I mean I do think it's helpful to think about the problem of succession when you're trying to anticipate what Chinese foreign policy will be in the coming decades. These are a set of considerations that we should be paying very close attention to. They're likely to change over time. The dynamics of the recent purges, both within the foreign ministry and within the PLA, are important, but as Dan mentioned they're relatively new, right? They're not even really characteristic of the purges that Xi had against the military in the first and second term. This is a very new thing. And so it's likely, if one thinks about Xi's fourth or even fifth term, that the salience of those dynamics will rise and fall. And so as decision makers in Washington are contemplating what U.S. foreign policy should be, and what they anticipate China's actions, not just towards Taiwan but the world generally will be, it's a helpful reference point or a helpful framework for thinking about one of the big political problems that Xi will be thinking about over the coming decade or so.

Chloe Fox

Dan and Tyler, thank you guys so much. Really appreciated this talk and loved your piece, “After Xi,“ in the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs.

Tyler Jost

Thanks so much for having us, Chloe. It was really a pleasure.

Daniel Mattingly

Thanks for having us.