Mary Hennock of Newsweek reports on a new generation of non-Communist, Western-educated leaders. One of them is Chen Zhu, China’s Minister of Health:
[…]Chen, 55, is no bland bureaucrat. He’s only the second Chinese minister not to be a member of the Chinese Communist Party in 36 years. The first, Science and Technology Minister Wan Gang, was appointed in April 2007. The two of them are leading members of a generation of Chinese officials just now coming into power—men (and a few women) who take a more sophisticated approach to governing. They’re defined by a “growing professionalism, a greater emphasis on functional expertise, a greater emphasis on actual performance as opposed to who might be in your network … [and] a growing emphasis on pure competence,” says Kenneth Jarrett, a former U.S. diplomat who served as Asia director on the National Security Council from 2000 to 2001. Non–party members are growing increasingly influential in China’s public life. Though there are no reliable statistics, Chen says that there are now many of them at the provincial level. “When I go to the provinces, I meet many people of this kind,” he says.
For more information on Chen, see his China Vitae page.
