Killing the Different Dreams, Keeping the Same Regime: Xi Jinping's Ten-Year Struggle to Remake CCP Elite Politics

This essay presents a retrospective examination of China's elite politics during Xi Jinping's ten years in power. It focuses on the following questions: Why does Xi Jinping prefer to confront, rather than accommodate, the cadres in his own regime? How has he been able to achieve his goals of leadership reorganization and cultivation of new elites? How has China's elite politics been remade along with Xi's concentration of power? And, to touch on the latest developments in elite politics ahead of the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), why does the belated emergence of elite resistance to Xi's plan of taking on a third term have little chance of success or change the dynamics of China's elite politics going forward? The essay positions CCP elite politics in an institutional context that is defined and framed by China's political regime, and it argues that the nature of the regime requires Xi to confront his cadres to achieve his goals. At the same time, the same regime poses huge dilemmas to both Xi and his rivals.