Family Politics, Elite Recruitment, and Succession in Post-Mao China

This plaintive question, emblazoned on a banner in Beijing's Tiananmen Square days before the bloody massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators, eloquently posed two of the key problems which any political system must resolve: 'Where will our political eadership come from?' and 'What will the character of that leadership be?' As China enters the 1990s as the world's last major communist power, and as a developing country still led by many of the same individuals who helped Mao establish the People's Republic in 1949 few questions could be more pressing. Observers of Chinese politics will clearly recognize that the banner's question carried an additional, deeper message of popular criticism of the way in which China has been selecting its new leadership in recent years. Ostensibly, the question, 'Who will come after Premier Zhou Enlai?', has already been answered by the selection of Li Peng as Premier. As is well known, Li is the adopted son of Zhou Enlai and his wife Deng Yingchao. But whereas Zhou Enlai's name has been synonymous in the popular mind with rectitude and honourable public service, Li Peng's name now symbolizes those Chinese officials who owe their high positions more to family connections than to their own meritorious public service.