[MUSIC] Another key thing that we've discovered about elites and leadership in China is that retired leaders can still play a very important role in politics, long after they have been retired. We see this in other countries. We see this particularly in Japan, where this process is under someone. You'll be talking about the Nakasone faction. Nakasone could have retired 20 years before, but his group of people are still powerful and he can still have some kind of influence. Now you could say that this is good. We see some kind of continuity, of policy, of stability. But we can also argue that this is a strong source of opposition to political reform because the old guard, as they get older, they don't want to see any kind of major, significant policy, political change, and they try and hold on. There was a group of older leaders who become known as the Eight Immortals, and they helped Deng. They had been removed from public office as of 1982, 83. They've been put into this special committee, an advisory committee. But they are still able to come out of that committee and get involved actively in Politburo meetings, what we call expanded Politburo meetings, and play a role in purging leaders. So we see that, in fact, when Hu Yaobang is purged in January 87, Zhao Ziyang is purged in June 1989. Both of these leaders are purged at expanded Politburo meetings where these formerly retired officials participate, that's why it's called expanded. But they really, by the Chinese Communist Party norms, have no right to be there at all. And here's an example of a photograph taken from Zhao Ziyang's memoirs. And here, this is [FOREIGN] one of the Eight Immortals. He should not be at this meeting. Deng Xiaoping should not be holding this meeting. He's one of the immortals. But this is a key meeting that takes place to kick out Zhao Ziyang from the leadership position as the general secretary of the Communist Party. And this meeting, by party rules, was basically illegal. But we see them playing this role. Now we also can see sometimes where stability is good. In 1993, after Jiang Zemin is appointed as the general secretary of the Communist Party, he comes under attack by the Yang brothers, and they want to throw him out. Deng Xiaoping protects them, and then we get a major purge within the military which strengthens Jiang Zemin because then he's able to put his own people into power. We also know that in 2002 Jiang Zemin steps down as the general secretary of the Communist Party and passes that position to Hu Jintao for what we now recognize is the first, I'm going to say this and I'm going to say it slowly, the first peaceful transition of top leadership power in the history of the Communist Party. It took them 80 years for the top leader to just give up and retire and pass on his position to somebody else without some major confrontation happening on the street. In the case of Tiananmen, that's how Jiang Zemin gets into power. But Jiang formally, in the end, gives up power and passes it on to Hu Jintao. But it's very interesting and let me show you one of my favorite photographs, right? This is a photograph of a newspaper, The People's Daily, which is the top Communist Party newspaper. And it's the 11th of March, 2003, so there is a transition underway. At this point in the transition, Jiang Zemin has already given up his position as the general secretary of the Communist Party. So the top party position, he's given that up. He gave it up actually the fall before. A few days before this newspaper was published, Jiang Zemen also gives up the presidency of the PRC of China, not a very important post, but it's one of the three key posts within the system. So already at this point, Hu Jintao has two of what would be considered to be the three top positions in China. What he doesn't have is he doesn't have the chairman of the Military Affairs Commission. So here I show you this newspaper and what here, in each of these reports, Jiang Zemin's name comes first. That's why I wrote here, Jiang Zemin, in Chinese, for those of you who can't read Chinese. So this says, Jiang Zemin talks to George Bush. Jiang Zemin talks to Prime Minister of Germany. Jiang Zemin makes a big speech. Jiang Zemin, here again, makes another big speech. It says here Hu Jintao attends the meeting. Here's the picture of Jiang. Here's Jiang and Hu. And if you look carefully at this picture, Jiang Zemin's head is still bigger than Hu Jintao's head. Which clearly shows to all people in China that even at this point, Jiang Zemin is more powerful than Hu Jintao. Similar kinds of events happened in the transition to Xi Jinping becoming the leader in China. When he becomes the general secretary of the Communist Party in 2012, we wondered who would get into the Politburo Standing Committee and join him. And people were anticipating that at least two people who didn't make it into the Politburo Standing Committee were going to make it. I've circled their heads over here, Wang Yang and Li Yuanchao. Both of them were already in the Politburo, but they were not promoted into the Politburo Standing Committee. Instead, four rather conservative people were promoted into the Politburo Standing Committee ahead of them. And we attributed that mostly to the continued influence of retired leaders. Particularly Jiang Zemin and Li Peng.
