While many observers were baffled when Vice President Xi Jinping did not get an expected promotion to the Central Military Commission during the recent Party plenum, which would have indicated his ascension to Hu Jintao’s heir apparent, a Chinese scholar says a promotion may still be in the works. From Reuters:
If Xi rises through the ranks according to schedule, it could reduce worries about instability among the secretive inner circles of the Communist Party, which has no transparent mechanism for choosing its leaders.
“At the plenum, there was no reflection of personnel changes related to the party’s leadership of the military, because this was not included in the agenda for discussion,” Wang Changjiang, director general of the Central Party School’s department of education and research on party building, told reporters.
ad_icon“But there will be personnel changes at some point,” he told a news conference designed to explain the decisions of the just-concluded plenum when asked about Xi’s possible promotion.
Wang refused to be drawn any further on possible mechanisms for such a promotion, or the timing of future meetings at which it might be decided.
