FAMILY POLITICS, ELITE RECRUITMENT, AND SUCCESSION IN POST-MAO CHINA

The family members of senior Party leaders are very obviously becoming a large and growing source of elite recruitment in China, and an increasing number are emerging as senior political leaders in their own right. Their rise to power may be hard to check, because the roots lie not only in recent policy decisions, but are also reinforced by China's Confucian culture, its past educational policies, the bureaucratic system, and lack of an institutionalized succession system. From a theoretical perspective, China has decided to resolve one of the key dilemmas of elite transformation in a developing, one-party state by promoting succession "within the family'. As the 1989 demonstrations reveal, this strategy of recruiting "cadre kids' and other relatives into the elite has had tremendous costs. Nepotism remains a potent source of mass resentment against the leadership. -from Authors