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The third-generation leaders such as Jiang Zemin, Li Peng, and Zhu Rongji were technocrats, whose education in engineering and technology instilled in them technical perspectives, which in turn were used in handling state affairs.
In terms of educational attainment China’s current leaders, the fourth generation, are among the highest in the world. All nine Politburo Standing Committee members of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee, who concurrently hold the top national positions, have college educations. Premier Wen Jiabao – called the “scientist premier” in the most recent issue of Science, the renowned international science journal – has a master’s degree in geology. Two other members hold doctoral degrees, Vice President Xi Jinping in law and Vice Premier Li Keqiang in economics.
The Chinese leadership has also become more diversified: while technocrats still dominate, those with training in law, social sciences and humanities have begun to emerge.
In fact, China’s cadres, or those holding official positions at all levels, possess impressive educational credentials that leaders in other countries could only envy.
One would say that it has been a Chinese tradition to appoint scholar-officials. Moreover, given the increasing number of Chinese receiving higher education, it has become easier for the nation to select and recruit leaders from among the highly educated and highly qualified.
However, some of the degrees have been attained problematically. While a Standing Committee member of the CCP Committee of Guangdong province, for example, Yu Youjun was able to find time to finish both his undergraduate and graduate degrees between 1993 and 1995, and more amazingly, to study toward a doctorate in less than three years between September 1996 and June 1999!
Yu’s degrees had become an open secret, but were never challenged until recently when he was deprived of membership in the 17th CCP Central Committee for his involvement in corruption. Of course, Yu is not the first or the only Chinese in leadership position whose higher education credentials are dubious, if not fake.
For many years educational attainment, along with age and performance, has been critical to a cadre’s promotion in China. Many Chinese universities, including prestigious ones, are willing to make their education available to officials – who most likely will not live on campus, attend classes or sit for examinations as their fellow degree seekers do. Consequently, though the degrees obtained this way are “real,” the credentials are bogus.
Given this hidden but well-known rule, it really was a surprise that Zhang Ping was appointed head of the National Development and Reform Commission at the first meeting of the 11th National People’s Congress in March. Zhang’s education is absurdly low – only three years of vocational education beyond junior high school. But his honesty and decency were appraised, as he could easily have inflated his educational level.
Another sign that educational credentialism may have reached its end in China is that the CCP Party School recently revised a regulation so that short-term Party School students will not receive formal credentials. It remains to be seen what the revision means to the estimated 3.2 million officials who have used the education received at Party schools at various levels as stepping-stones to climb the cadre ladder, but at least from now on the Party School education should not be misused. At the end of the day, it is real talent, not conspicuous degrees, that matters.
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(Cong Cao is a senior research associate with the Neil D. Levin Graduate Institute of International Relations and Commerce at the State University of New York. He received his PhD in sociology from Columbia University in 1997 and has worked at the University of Oregon and the National University of Singapore. Dr. Cao is interested in the social studies of science and technology with a focus on China. ©Copyright Cong Cao.)
