Read on Twitter
I’m a big fan of Gao Xin’s Nighttime-chat Zhongnanhai (夜谈中南海). Recently he’d been digging into Zhao Leji (赵乐际). Zhao runs the Central Discipline & Inspection Commission (CDIC), the tip of the anti-corruption spear, is sixth on the Politburo Standing Committee (PBSC).../1
...& is a whipper-snapper at the age of 63. Wang Qishan gets attention, but Zhao – who Xi entrusted with the critical CDIC machinery after Wang – gets far less. He’s the quiet man of the PBSC. Some of the following is a bit gossipy – for those who like their politics more.../2
...tied down here’s Zhao’s CV ( https://www.chinavitae.com/biography/Zhao_Leji) and Cheng Li at Brookings wrote up the CV here https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/china_20171013_19thpartycongress_zhao_leji.pdf. For those who like a story, read on./3
Again, the cool thing about Gao Xin’s writing – in addition to the detail on administrative ranking – is that it reveals broader truths about Chinese politics. I’m not claiming these are original, but there are three lessons I drew from Zhao’s career./4
First, factions can be created. While Xi Jinping’s Zhijiang/Fujian armies look set to occupy politics over the next ten-plus years, the Shaanxi gang (or the ‘Yellow Earth Group’, 黄土地情结, after the loess soil) has provided the seniority Xi needed in his first terms./5
They were essential for Xi’s power consolidation. Cheng Li has a Shaanxi table here: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Xi-Jinping-Inner-Circle.pdf (2006). Fang Fenghui, who was born in Shaanxi but didn’t seem to have other connections, got himself arrested, but Li Zhanshu, Zhang Youxia (vice chair of the CMC)../6
..and Zhao Leji are in key positions. I remember hearing the claim in 2007 that Xi did not have a faction, so he’d be a weak leader. I certainly didn’t know much better. Factions it seems are amorphous things; they can be forged if you’ve had a long enough career, it seems./7
Second, red blood matters. Zhao is where he is today thanks to his revolutionary dad & friends accelerating his career in Qinghai, where he spent 1983-2007. By the age of 42, Zhao was the youngest governor in the country. In the early 1980s, Chen Yun in Beijing was arguing.../8
... that the “political class needs a political consciousness” and needs to promote their sons to protect the party’s legacy. A few spotted the importance of red background early and wrote it out ( @jgarnaut) . /9
Third, character is important for Xi. Part of Xi’s enigma is that he’s both a revolutionary (he’s torn up important precedents, reshaped the Party-State, & is trying to export the “China Dream”) & a deeply conservative man (he seems to ache for simpler, more virtuous times)./10
As we’ll see, Zhao is the kind of guy Xi likely thinks is really solid, “one of us”. But before we dive into the history, I like this snap of Zhao making a new friend from Latin America. Glamorous leftist meets slightly less-glamorous leftist./11
OK, let’s start with Zhao’s dad, Zhao Ximin (赵喜民). He travelled to Yan-an in northern Shaanxi when he was 15 in 1948, enrolled in the “university” there, and then moved with the school to Xi-an, the capital of Shaanxi, where it was renamed.../12
...Northwest People’s Revolution University after the Liberation. At the school Zhao led the New Democracy Youth Group (a precursor of the Youth League), where he apparently met Hu Yaobang. During 1949-52, Xi Zhongxun ran Shaanxi and was dean of the university./13
Selected by Hu Yaobang, Zhao was sent to study in Moscow. He returns to Qinghai, where Zhao Haifeng (赵海峰), also a comrade of Peng Dehuai & Xi Snr in the Northwest’s First Field Army, & later Qinghai PS, looks after him. Zhao Snr. is posted to Xining, then Haixi. /14
Missing home, Zhao Snr. asks to return to Shaanxi in 1981, where he spends two years in Shangluo in the southeast and then wangles a transfer to Xi-an in 1983. There he ends up running Shaanxi’s publishing house, which turns out to be important (on which more below)./15
His move to Xi-an was facilitated, Gao Xin writes, by Ma Wenrui (马文瑞), Zhao’s own patron. Ma was party secretary of Shaanxi during 1978-82, and in another link to the Xi clan, was one of the victims, along with Xi Zhongxun, in the Liu Zhidan incident (which I wrote.../16
... about here: http://credibletarget.net/notes/LiuZhidan ). Zhao’s eldest son, Leji, stays in Qinghai and rises rapidly with his dad’s friends support. /17
It’s worth considering the many parallels betwixt Zhao Leji’s & Xi Jinping’s lives, tho Zhao is four years younger. Sons of CCP leaders, both get sent down to the countryside as teenagers, manage to escape to university in Beijing & then, with a few years’ resistance from.../18
Xi, go back to serve the Party in the countryside. Both then benefit from the 1980 call from Deng Xiaoping to foster young talent, and Chen Yun’s push for young red blood. Once identified as a talent, those who want to promote Zhao Jnr have a good reason. /19
Zhao Jnr. spends only 1 year being sent down in the countryside (two-plus was expected). His dad appears to have pulled some strings, and Zhao Jnr. enrolls at Beijing University. After that, he returns to the heartland, to Xining, Qinghai in 1983 as a political officer in.../20
...the provincial commerce admin (Qinghai shangyeting zhengzhichu fuzhuren). This gets him division head (zhengchuji) rank, which for a 26 year old is very cool. Gao Xin suggests that out-going Qinghai party secretary Liang Buting (梁步庭), a friend of dad, got him that job./21
After Liang, Zhao Haifeng – another friend of Zhao Snr. – takes over, having worked his own way up the Qinghai bureaucracy. Before leaving for Shandong in 1985, he pushes Zhao Jnr. up. to deputy bureau head (fu tingzhang) rank. then after Zhao comes Yin Kesheng (尹克升)../22
another former comrade of Zhao Snr., who runs the province for the next 11 years. Zhao Leji becomes deputy governor (fusheng buji) in 1994, and deputy party secretary (shengwei fushuji) in 1997, just before Yin leaves. By 2000, at 42 years old Zhao is Qinghai governor.../23
... (youngest in China!) & three years later he’s party secretary. After four years, he’s transferred to…Shaanxi! (as party secretary in 2007). Here’s Zhao inspecting something./24
Of course, Xi by 2007 is top leader-in-waiting. Zhao’s career rise wasn’t the fastest, it turns out, despite the parental help. being stuck in one province is good and bad! /25
Xi had left Tsinghua in 1979 and unlike Zhao, wanted to stay in Beijing. He went to work for Geng Biao, secretary general of the Central Ministry Commission (CMC) and deputy premier. Geng had served with the Eight Route Army in Gansu, an area governed.../26
... by Xi Zhongxun’s Yan-an Soviet. So that clearly helped get Xi the job. Xi Jnr. served as Geng’s political secretary (zhengzhi mishu) till 1982, with the rank of ‘deputy operation officer’ (fu yingji), equivalent to deputy village chief (fu xiangzhang)./27
This job allowed Xi to claim military service on his CV in 2007. Nice! /28
Geng Biao, though, as part of the Northwest group, doesn’t seem to get much love from Deng Xiaoping. By 1982 he had lost both jobs, with Deng’s fellow-Sichuanese Yang Shangkun taking one. Geng ends up at the National People’s Congress, but before he goes,../29
... Gao Xin claims that Geng advised Xi that he should look after himself and find a new job in the grassroots. So in 1982, Xi trudges off to Zhengding, Hebei. /30
In Zhengding, Xi is the county’s deputy party secretary (xianwei fushuji) a two bump up on his previous job, & a year later in 1983 he’s party sec (xianwei shuji) at 30 years old. That’s equivalent to division head (zheng chuji), the post which Zhao Leji gets the same year../31
... over in Qinghai. From there, Xi rises steadily, and in the mid-2000s gets helicoptered up, through Shanghai in 2007, into Beijing. That story has been well told, let’s get back to Zhao./32
Zhao Leji rocks up in Beijing in 2012, at the 18th Party Congress, when Xi gets the top job, Zhao is appointed into the Central Secretariat and is given the critical Organization Department to run. At no point in their careers have Zhao and Xi overlapped./33
It’s possible, of course, that Zhao’s appointment was made without Xi’s say so. But given its importance – and with hindsight knowing how well Xi plotted this very dangerous bit of his career – I kind of doubt it. /34
Which brings us back to Gao Xin, who has a cool theory as to how the Xi & Zhao families got to know one another. When Zhao Snr. was running Shaanxi People’s Publishing House in the mid-1980s, he promoted works on the CCP’s history in the northwest. For that he frequently../35
... trained it over to Beijing to talk to Xi Zhongxun and his wife Qi Xin, visiting them at home. From 1982, Xi Snr. was back working in the Party’s Central Office. Here he is./36
After the fall of Gao Gang (more here: http://credibletarget.net/notes/Xiprivate ), Xi Zhongxun’s own leader and one-time favorite of Mao, the northwest group that Zhao Ximin was associated with was not popular with Mao, Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi or indeed Deng Xiaoping, it seems./37
And Xi Zhongxun wanted to get that suppressed history told. Indeed, Xi’s support for a book about another northwest hero, Liu Zhidan, was how he got skewered by the machinations of Kang Sheng (and Mao) back in the 1960s./38
And so, until scholars tell us otherwise, one supposes that when Xi is casting around for people he can really trust, the Zhao name came to mind. Leji is a son of the yellow earth, he has red blood running through his veins but he’s still worked his way up the bureaucracy./39
He’s an experienced man to be trusted. And that seems to have been the right judgement. Having helped Xi’s people rise while at the Organization Department (2012-17), Zhao got a PBSC seat and CDIC in 2017. And with the anti-corruption system (and military) in safe hands,../40
Xi could turn his attention to the internal public security apparatus in his 2nd term. Whether Zhao gets a 2nd term at the 20th Congress we’ll wait & see. He’s young enough. Keeping him on would allow Xi to limit the no. of potential successors coming on the committee./41
And with the old Li Zhanshu almost certainly retiring at the 20th, and the wily Wang Huning maybe staying on, the boss might decide he still needs some reliable yellow earth around, especially as Xi’s newer coastal friends start looking to the future. //42 and The End
