Summer is coming to a close, which means China’s Communist Party leaders are just getting back from their annual vacation getaway at the beach resort town of Beidaihe - a tradition that dates back to the 1950s. But Beidaihe is more than just a beach where Party leaders can kick back and check out how high Xi Jinping’s swim trunks are. It’s the classic smoke-filled beach, the beach where it happens, full of closed-door wheeling and dealing about the future of the Party.
You might even call it a Game of Thrones.
Like the Lannisters and the Starks, Communist Party Chairman and self-appointed president Xi Jinping is locked in battle with another faction inside the Party—to see who can get and keep his own people in the highest positions of power. The leadership of the Party theoretically changes every 5 years. And decisions are already being made now about who will be left standing after the shake-up coming in the fall of 2017. According to precedent, five of the seven youthful, raven-haired bureaucrats that make up China’s ruling Politburo Standing Committee will step down from office. And one of the new guys will be Xi Jinping’s successor. That’s right, according to precedent again, Xi should only serve two terms. In other words, he’s supposed to step down in 2022. Except that some analysts are now saying that Xi may try to hang onto his job for just a tiny bit longer than that, and avoid naming a successor.
