Teaching Comparative Government and Politics

Sunday, September 30, 2012

Qualities of leadership

Ian Johnson, writing in the New York Times, offers a good profile of Xi Jinping, who is expected to become the supreme leader in China next year.

Ask your students: What qualities and skills does it take to become a successful political leader in China? How many examples of guanxi can they find in the article? How much luck was involved in Xi's ascendance?

How does Xi's success compare to the rise of other leaders?

Here's a link to the BBC's profile of David Cameron
A link to the BBC profile of Goodluck Jonathan.
A link to the BBC profile of Vladimir Putin.
A link to the BBC profile of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
A link to the Reuters profile of Enrique Pena Nieto.

Elite and Deft, Xi Aimed High Early in China

A young Xi Jinping

Thirty years ago, a young government official with a plum job in Beijing made an odd request: reassignment to a poor rural area…

The move offers a window on the political savvy of Mr. Xi… [who] is on the cusp of taking over as China’s supreme leader at a party congress that officials announced... would begin Nov. 8.

Mr. Xi (his full name is pronounced Shee Jin-ping) gained a measure of credibility to speak for rural Chinese compared with many other well-connected children of the elite. He also realized, according to several inside accounts, that his powerful family stood firmly behind him, ensuring that his stint in the countryside would be a productive and relatively brief exercise in résumé building that could propel him up the Communist Party hierarchy…

Even three decades into the country’s rapid industrialization, China’s leadership still pays heed to its heritage as a party of peasants, and it has tended to promote officials who can claim to be deeply rooted in the rural struggle. But it has also tended to favor “princelings,” the privileged offspring of former leaders who had ties to the party’s revolutionary history…

After his time in Zhengding, Mr. Xi could check both boxes…

Still, Mr. Xi took on the assignment with gusto. He wore a green army greatcoat from his involuntary service in another rural area under Mao, roaming the town night and day to survey its problems. Wang Youhui, a local official, wrote in a published essay that he recalls seeing Mr. Xi for the first time and being taken aback by his plain style.

“I realized that this guy, who from his style of dress made him look like a lad from the canteen crew, was the new deputy party secretary,” Mr. Wang wrote…