In this news reports in the New York Times, “China’s Leaders Deadlocked Over Succession,” it is suggested that Jiang Zemin, the former General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, still possesses great influence, even veto power, over Chinese leaders currently in office, in particular over the issue of succession.

Western observers of Chinese affairs tend to believe such things. Reality, however, may very well be quite different, as China today is quite different from China yesterday, significant continuity between the two notwithstanding. As a matter of fact, Chinese leaders of Mr. Jiang’s generation, the topmost of them being Jiang himself, former premier Zhu Rongji, and former premier and congressional head Li Peng, have remained notably quiet since they left office, and there have been little indication that they actively interfere with government affairs today. What some Western observers fail to realize is that recent history has made it very clear to the retired officials that it can be very unpleasant, sometimes outright dangerous, to meddle with leadership succession in China. As powerful as Mao Zedong was, he incurred strong opposition in the Communist Party and in the country as a whole as dismiss one successor after another. Deng Xiaoping, who fought his way to the top after Mao had thrown him out office, later encountered similar difficulties, which led to the 1989 Tian’anmen Square upheavals; it was by a narrow margin that the Chinese Communist Party and Deng himself narrowly escaped from the terrible consequences.

Given such painful and still fresh memories, it is not unreasonable to suggest that former leaders such as Jiang Zemin are not particular eager to continue to play the role of paramount leaders of China. This is not to mention that these former leaders were far less powerful, even while they were in office, than Deng or Mao before them, and therefore they’re hardly in a position to boss around leaders currently office. Generally, situations in China have changed notably in the past few decades, and observers in the West need to reexamine of some of their old assumptions.