Posted on: Tuesday, August 6, 2002

EDITORIAL
China's Jiang Zemin is clinging to power

Deng Xiaoping well understood the difficulties caused by the absence of a system for orderly succession of China's political leadership. That's because he remained the country's "paramount" leader for years after the only formal title he held was head of the national bridge league.

Although he had been succeeded, on paper, by Hu Yaobang and then Zhao Ziyang, it was Deng who put Zhao under house arrest and ordered the bloody 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.

For a nation ambitious to become a major player in the industrialized, developed world, a predictable means of succession, even if it's not democratic, is a must. Yet Beijing today is seething with indications that President Jiang Zemin, 76, is struggling to cling to the reins of power through his role of head of the People's Liberation Army.

That's something of a surprise in the West, where it appeared the heir-apparent was Hu Jintao, 59, who had been anointed by Deng as leader of the so-called "fourth generation" of Chinese leaders. The orderly handover from Jiang to Hu was scheduled to take place at the 16th Party Congress, expected to take place next month but tellingly now delayed indefinitely.

There is a serious campaign under way "begging" Jiang to stay on, and serious opposition, too: Prime Minister Zhu Rongji, for instance, reportedly has threatened to make public some "dirty secrets" if Jiang doesn't step down.

The greatest danger here is a split in the Communist Party, which today is about all that holds fractious China together. Given China's enormous export economy, that would be globally disruptive.