What does it take to get promoted in Chinese politics? Up-and-comers offer clues

Those with regional leadership experience, technical backgrounds and ties to the top most likely to ascend the Communist Party ranks, observers say

Loyalty still matters, but those closest to Xi are ‘not necessarily tied to any particular ideological position’, according to Chinese politics expert

Reading Time:6 minutes

Published: 6:00am, 22 Sep 2022

The Communist Party is set to hold its 20th national congress in mid-October, a gathering that will usher in a new line-up of the party’s leadership. In the third piece in a three-part series exploring the rules of the personnel reshuffle, Mimi Lau looks at the shared traits among those likely to be promoted to key national positions.

In February 2020, the Communist Party faced one of its worst crises in three decades as the deadly coronavirus, first detected in the central Chinese province of Hubei, rapidly spread across the country, and a poor initial response fuelled rare public discontent.

Beijing purged party heads in Hubei and Wuhan, replacing them with former Shanghai mayor Ying Yong and Wang Zhonglin, ex-party boss of the city of Jinan in Shandong province, to tackle the outbreak. Chen Yixin, secretary general of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, was appointed deputy head of the national team overseeing the fight against the virus in Hubei under vice-premier Sun Chunlan.

In a matter of months, Beijing declared victory in containing the outbreak while maintaining one of the lowest death tolls in the world. Ying, Wang and Chen were praised for their speedy handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and tipped for promotion to more important roles. The trio of “crisis fixers” offer clues about what it takes to climb the party ranks.

Ying, 65, a member of the party’s Central Committee, was recently promoted to deputy party secretary of the Supreme People’s Procuratorate and will take over as the country’s top prosecutor in March.

Wang, 60, was promoted from Wuhan party chief at the height of the Covid-19 outbreak to Hubei governor last May.