Who Runs that Place?
Analysis
BBC
4.6 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 9 November 2020
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Increasingly, Western governments see China as a problem to deal with because, as it has grown more powerful, it has re-committed to being a Leninist state.
But under President Xi Jinping, how far does it still conform to the Leninist model and how far does it reflect much more traditional forms of Chinese statecraft? Is a country with a massive bureaucracy run by its nominal leaders or by other actors? And why do senior government figures - who in Russia and Western countries carry clout and influence - seem in China to have little to say about the policies Beijing is following?
As the rest of the world continues to grapple with the consequences of Covid-19, these questions have never been more pertinent or more urgent. In this timely edition of "Analysis", Isabel Hilton, the eminent student of Chinese politics, considers who makes the decisions in Beijing and how they are reached.
Speaking to China-watchers both internationally and in the UK, she explodes some myths about Chinese politics - including that it is a seamless polity with a single unchanging party line - and explores how power struggles take place and what happens to the losers of them. With the 14th Five Year Programme finally due to be unveiled next year, she assesses how far state planning still drives decision-making. And she considers how and when Xi Jinping's successor is likely to emerge - and what lessons that figure may draw from Xi's leadership since 2012.
Presenter Isabel Hilton Producer Simon Coates Editor Jasper Corbett
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.6 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.4 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable |
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| 0:36.0 | BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. |
| 0:42.0 | Thank you for downloading this edition of Analysis, the podcast which examines the ideas shaping our world. |
| 0:49.0 | In the next half hour, China expert Isabel Hilton looks at how the Chinese Communist Party seeks to run the country. |
| 0:57.0 | In the last week of October, some 370 people, mostly men, gathered at the Chinghi Hotel in West Beijing for a closely guarded |
| 1:07.0 | four-day meeting. |
| 1:09.0 | They were all members of the 19th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the CCP. Their meeting, the 5th |
| 1:16.0 | plenum, was held as is usual for party gatherings in semi-secrecy. No media were admitted, |
| 1:22.4 | no details of the discussions released. |
| 1:25.0 | But the decisions taken on China's investments on the imminent new five-year plan |
| 1:30.0 | will directly affect the lives of 1.4 billion people in China and indirectly many |
| 1:36.2 | hundreds of millions more outside. |
| 1:39.4 | So who are these decision makers? |
| 1:41.8 | How does the secret of organisation they belong to, the |
| 1:44.4 | CCP, actually operate? And what does the way it functions tell us about China's |
| 1:50.3 | likely future direction? Modern China for all its glitz and glamour and the like still runs on Soviet hardware |
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