Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party

Based on Wikipedia: Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party

The Twenty-Four People Who Run China

Imagine a room where two dozen people make decisions affecting nearly one-fifth of humanity. No cameras. No public minutes. Consensus required. This is the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party, and understanding how it works reveals something profound about how modern China actually functions.

The word "Politburo" itself comes from Russian, a portmanteau of "political bureau." It was the Soviets who invented this particular form of concentrated power, and communist parties worldwide adopted the model. But China's version has evolved into something distinctly its own.

A Self-Selecting Elite

On paper, the process sounds democratic enough. The Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party—a body of several hundred members—elects the Politburo. In practice, scholars who study Chinese elite politics tell a different story.

The Politburo essentially selects its own successors.

Here's how it actually works: current Politburo members and retired members of its inner circle, the Politburo Standing Committee, gather for deliberations. They conduct informal straw polls, testing support for potential candidates. The process begins at Beidaihe, a beach resort east of Beijing where top leaders have gathered each summer since the Mao era. Behind closed doors, away from the formal structures of government, the next generation of leadership takes shape.

This system produced a predictable pattern for decades. Leaders served roughly ten years before stepping aside. Deng Xiaoping, the paramount leader who opened China to the world after Mao's death, deliberately encouraged this turnover by imposing term limits and retirement ages. The idea was to prevent another cult of personality, another situation where one person accumulated so much power that removing them became impossible.

Then came Xi Jinping.

The Standing Committee: Power Within Power

Most communist parties concentrate authority in their Politburo. China does something unusual: it concentrates power even further, delegating much of the Politburo's authority to an even smaller body called the Politburo Standing Committee.

Think of nested Russian dolls. The Communist Party has roughly ninety-eight million members. From those millions, a few thousand serve on the Central Committee. From those thousands, twenty-four sit on the Politburo. And from those twenty-four, currently seven form the Standing Committee. At the very center stands one person: the General Secretary.

The Standing Committee meets weekly. The full Politburo meets only monthly. Compare this to the old Soviet Politburo, which met far more frequently. The Chinese system appears designed for a different kind of governance—less reactive crisis management, more deliberate long-term planning.

But what happens in those meetings? Even seasoned observers can only speculate. The General Secretary sets the agenda. Decisions emerge through consensus rather than voting. When twenty-four powerful people must agree, the process rewards patience and the ability to build coalitions.

Where Real Power Lives

A seat on the Politburo matters not just for the title, but for what comes with it.

Most Politburo members simultaneously hold other positions—running provinces, commanding military regions, or leading key government ministries. When the same people control both the Party apparatus and the state bureaucracy, the distinction between Party and government becomes almost meaningless. They are two faces of the same power structure.

Consider what this means in practice. A Politburo member who also serves as Party Secretary of Shanghai controls a metropolitan economy larger than many countries. A member who heads the Central Military Commission commands the world's largest military. The Politburo's power comes not just from making decisions, but from the accumulated authority its members wield across Chinese society.

The composition has shifted over time. In the 1980s, most members came from military backgrounds—natural enough for a party that had won power through armed revolution. By 2017, the military was limited to just three seats. The rest divided among party officials, government administrators, and regional leaders. The average age hovered around sixty-two, seasoned enough for experience but young enough for the demands of modern governance.

Democratic Recommendation and Its Demise

For about a decade, the Party experimented with something called "democratic recommendation." Two hundred candidates would face a kind of internal straw poll. The results would factor into who ultimately joined the Politburo.

It was never democracy in any Western sense. But it did introduce an element of peer evaluation, a check on pure top-down selection.

Xi Jinping abolished it.

The official justification cited corruption—"vote buying" and selections made through "personal connections and favors." These weren't imaginary problems. The anti-corruption campaign that marked Xi's early years revealed extensive networks of patronage and graft reaching into the highest levels of the Party.

The replacement system uses "face-to-face interviews, investigation and study." In other words, senior leaders personally evaluate candidates rather than relying on any form of voting. Whether this produces better leaders or simply leaders more loyal to those already in power depends entirely on who you ask.

The Xi Jinping Factor

In October 2022, the twentieth Politburo was selected. Xi Jinping began his third five-year term as General Secretary.

This broke the pattern Deng had established. Previous leaders stepped down after ten years. Mao had ruled until death, and the chaos that followed convinced the Party that orderly succession mattered more than any individual. For decades, that lesson held.

Now it doesn't.

The implications extend beyond one man's tenure. The 2017 Politburo instituted a new requirement: every member must submit an annual written presentation to the General Secretary. Major Party bodies must report their work to the Politburo each year. In March 2018, all Standing Committee and Politburo members made their first such presentations to Xi personally.

This formalizes something that was always implicit: the General Secretary sits at the apex of a hierarchical system. But making it explicit, putting it in writing, signals a different kind of leadership—more personal, more centralized, less dependent on collective consensus.

How They Learn to Lead

China invests heavily in training its officials. The Party operates an entire system of schools designed to produce loyal, competent administrators.

In 2001, the Central Committee published a five-year plan specifically for "cadre training"—cadre being the Party's term for its officials. Salaries at Party schools were raised to match regular universities. Distance education spread training throughout the country. The Central Party School in Beijing sits at the top of this system, with regional schools in cities like Shanghai and Shenzhen feeding into it.

What do future leaders learn? The curriculum blends ideological orthodoxy with practical skills. Students study Leninism and Party discipline, but also how to apply knowledge "creatively and independently" and "deal flexibly with complex issues." The system aims to produce officials who are both loyal and capable—true believers who can also navigate the messy realities of governing a billion people.

This matters for understanding the Politburo. Its members are not random politicians who happened to win elections. They are products of a deliberate system designed to identify, train, and promote talent. Whether that system produces better governance than democratic elections is one of the central questions of our time.

Collective Study Sessions

Since 2002, the Politburo has done something that might surprise observers accustomed to Western political leaders: they regularly attend lectures.

These "collective study sessions" bring professors, think tank scholars, and other experts to address the Politburo on topics chosen by the General Secretary. They usually happen right after regular Politburo meetings, often the same day. The lectures end with "work recommendations" for the Politburo and a speech by the General Secretary summarizing the key points.

The sessions serve multiple purposes. They educate leaders about emerging issues—technology, economics, international affairs. They signal priorities to the broader Party, since the topics are publicized. And they establish the General Secretary as the interpreter of expert knowledge, the person who distills technical information into political direction.

Picture it: the twenty-four most powerful people in China, sitting together like graduate students while a professor explains artificial intelligence or climate change or financial regulation. Then the General Secretary rises to tell them what it all means for the Party's work.

It's a reminder that this system, whatever its flaws, takes governing seriously as a skill that requires continuous learning.

The Readout Culture

One curious feature of modern Chinese governance is the post-meeting readout. After almost every Politburo meeting, the Party releases a summary of what was discussed and decided. These readouts have been widely publicized since 2002, part of a broader effort to make governance more transparent—or at least to appear more transparent.

The readouts matter because they signal direction. Provincial officials, business leaders, and foreign governments all parse them for clues about policy shifts. When the Politburo discusses foreign affairs, as it frequently does, the choice of words can move markets or reshape diplomatic relationships.

But readouts are not transcripts. We learn what the Party wants us to know, shaped in the Party's language. The real debates, the disagreements, the personalities—these remain hidden. Understanding the Politburo means accepting that we see only what filters through carefully constructed communications.

What Comes Next

The Politburo was not always the dominant institution it is today. In the early 1980s, under Hu Yaobang, the Secretariat—the Party's administrative apparatus—eclipsed it. Only after Hu's ousting in 1987 did the Politburo re-emerge as the center of power.

This history suggests the system can change again. Institutions rise and fall based on the people who lead them and the circumstances they face. The concentration of power under Xi Jinping might persist, or future leaders might restore collective leadership. Nothing is permanently settled.

What seems unlikely to change is the basic structure: a small group making decisions for a vast country, selected through opaque processes, accountable primarily to each other. For observers trying to understand China's future, watching those twenty-four people—who they are, how they got there, what they decide—remains essential.

The Politburo is not quite a cabinet, not quite a board of directors, not quite a ruling council. It is something distinctly Chinese, evolved over a century of revolution and governance. And in a world where China's choices increasingly shape everyone's future, understanding this institution has never mattered more.