China's stability - a test for its national leadership team

Comments on Kerry Brown “Will China find the memory of Zhao Ziyang too hard to handle?” 25/02/2014, http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2014/02/25/will-china-find-the-memory-of-zhao-ziyang-too-hard-to-handle/

From what have happened so far under the new leadership team centred around Xi Jinping, it does not appear this team of President Xi is tactical not strategic. Xi, if successful in his likely ten years in the position of the top power, is likely to be ranked similarly with Mao and Deng, though success is far from being a certainty at this early stage of the 10 year period.

From the number of high level people who have been investigated (so called tigers) and charged in the anti-corruption campaign, it seems so far that Xi and his team are much bolder than the two previous leadership teams.

While from certain aspects that it would be important to revisit the issue of Zhao, that may be fairly minor from those more important and pressing issues that the new leadership team is facing now. The risks in rehabilitating Zhao and its potential for causing confusion even unrest may be very heavy for the leadership to bring that issue into their not too distant future agenda.

Media information/speculation seems to suggest that there may be some split within the current and some of the past top leaders as part of the anti-corruption campaign. The Zhao issue would add further fuels to that should that be brought to light any time soon.

Stability has to be one of the most important issues that the current leadership should be focused on.