the book is centered on the lives of these individual Chinese communist leaders it is also very much focused on their times as well. It is thus simultaneously a survey of the evolution of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) over the past seven decades. Taken together, I hope that the combined focus on leaders and their times will serve as a good overview and introductory text for students and readers who seek a comprehensive survey of the PRC. In trying to make this an accessible and readable account that keeps the narrative moving along, inevitably I have had to make numerous judgments along the way concerning certain facts and events—providing sufficient detail but not so much as to bog the reader down. This has been a fine balance to strike—providing lots of detail but not too much. As Chinese politics (like all systems but perhaps more than most) are filled with lacunae, specialists and scholars of Chinese politics will inevitably ask, “What about this or what about that?” But I have intended this book to be more for the general public and students than for my scholarly colleagues, so I hope they will remember this when they read it.
Although I have been teaching this material for a long time and thought I had a pretty thorough grasp of the intricacies of different leaders’ careers and their periods in power, once I got into the research and writing I realized that there was still a great deal that I either had forgotten or did not know. I have done my very best to check, double-check, and be very careful about all the events and actors covered in this study—but any errors or oversights are, of course, my own. For certain periods and leaders I have sought the advice and expertise of some of my close and respected colleagues, who were generous enough to read over the draft text to help catch any errors and offer suggestions for improvement. Stanford University Professor Andrew Walder is truly one of the world’s leading experts on Mao and the Maoist era,3 and he was most gracious in reading and reviewing that chapter, as well as the introductory chapter. Robert Suettinger—now an independent scholar who had a distinguished career in the US Government as one of the CIA’s chief analysts of Chinese politics, as National Intelligence Officer for East Asia, and as Senior Director of Asian Affairs on the National Security Council—was kind enough to read the Mao chapter and parts of the Deng Xiaoping and Hu Jintao chapters. Professor Ezra Vogel of Harvard University (recently deceased), who himself wrote the definitive biography of Deng Xiaoping,4 was kind enough to read and improve the draft of my Deng chapter. Robert F. Ash, my former colleague at the University of London’s School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS), was extremely generous with his time and carefully read all of the chapters in draft—his careful eye and “blue pencil” caught countless things that merited revision. Bob also was a particular help with the sections in each chapter on China’s economy, and helped to design some of the graphics in the book. I am enormously grateful to all four individuals—Andy, Bob, Ezra, and Bob—each of whom have been close personal friends as well as much-respected professional colleagues. I am also grateful to Harry Harding for steering me to broader studies of leadership (he too has been a close China colleague and friend for many years). I am also in debt to the two anonymous reviewers arranged by Polity Press—I do not know who you are, but I am sincerely grateful for your eagle eyes and constructive suggestions. Lastly, I am grateful to my student Miles Ogden-Peters for his research assistance on the Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping chapters.
I am also indebted to the great team at Polity Press in Cambridge, England, for their highly professional support throughout the writing process. This is the second book I have published with Polity,5 and I cannot recommend the press more highly. Louise Knight, editor for politics and international relations, is an absolute joy to work with. Editorial assistant Inès Boxman has also been superbly helpful and hardworking on many logistical dimensions of the book, most notably tracking down photographs and permissions reproduced in this book. Evie Deavall has been a first-rate and efficient production editor, shepherding the manuscript through to publication. I am also grateful to Ann Klefstad for expert copyediting and to Elizabeth Ball for compiling the Index. One of the great things about Polity as a publisher is their speed of production—this volume went from final draft manuscript to published book in six months! It was truly a team effort by all of these individuals. Altogether, working and publishing with Polity has been a very enjoyable experience.
While this book has been brewing in my brain for a long time and I have been teaching it for many years, I actually wrote it over a brief ninemonth period (May 2020–January 2021) during the COVID pandemic (it was one positive side effect of hibernating at home). Like all of my previous books over the past quarter century, it was written mainly at our summer home near Traverse City, Michigan and at our winter home in Arlington, Virginia. I am most fortunate to have such wonderful domiciles in which to live and be creative.
Last, but not least, I must again thank my wonderful wife Ingrid Larsen for her love and support throughout our four decades of marriage, as well as her patience and tolerance during the writing of this book. Our two wonderful sons Christopher and Alexander, now young professionals in their own right, are a constant source of pride and love for me. Our faithful golden retriever Ollie once again lay by my side and kept me company as I wrote this book, although sadly she passed away just before its conclusion. One could not ask for a better canine companion. Such family support has been critically important for me personally and professionally for decades, including during this project. I cannot be more grateful to them.
January 2021
Arlington, Virginia USA
Notes
1 1. David Shambaugh, The Making of a Premier: Zhao Ziyang’s Provincial Career (Boulder: Westview Press, 1984).
2 2. Roderick MacFarquhar, The Politics of China: Sixty Years of the People’s Republic of China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, third edition, 2011). Also see Jane Perlez, “Roderick MacFarquhar: Eminent China Scholar Dies at 88,” New York Times, February 12, 2019: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/12/obituaries/roderick-macfarquhar-dead.html; David Shambaugh, “In Memoriam: Roderick MacFarquhar (1930–2019)”: https://www.soas.ac.uk/news/newsitem138486.html.
3 3. Among his many impressive and insightful publications on the Mao era, see Walder’s magisterial study China Under Mao: A Revolution Derailed (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015).
4 4. Ezra Vogel, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2013).
5 5. See David Shambaugh, China’s Future (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2016).
CHAPTER 1 ON CHINA’S LEADERS AND LEADERSHIP
LEADERS MATTER IN ALL POLITICAL SYSTEMS—BUT IN SOME THEY MATTER much more. Leaders in totalitarian systems, or authoritarian leaders in single-party systems, are unconstrained by the checks and balances of democracies, and thus their actions are more determinative and have an outsized impact on their societies and the world beyond their borders. China is such a case.
This book assesses and contrasts the five main leaders that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has had over its first seven decades: Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao, and Xi Jinping. While a number of other leaders have served as President of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and as Premiers (heads of government), this study focuses on the five principal Party leaders (Hua Guofeng, Hu Yaobang, and Zhao Ziyang will be folded into the Deng chapter, as their brief tenures at the top were not really long enough to merit separate chapters). The book is about the leadership styles of these five individuals, as well as about these men’s times and records as paramount leaders. Each had a distinctive leadership style: I characterize Mao as a populist tyrant, Deng as a pragmatic Leninist, Jiang as a bureaucratic politician, Hu as a technocratic apparatchik,
