The New Emperors: Power and the Princelings in China.

• Author: Smith, Anthony
• Position: Book review

THE NEW EMPERORS: Power and the Princelings in China

Author: Kerry Brown

Published by: I.B. Tauris, London, 2014, 244pp, 20 [pounds sterling].

This interesting book begins with the wholly remarkable 2011 story of Gu Kailai, the wife of Bo Xilai, party secretary of Chongqing and then rising political star in China. Gu was convicted of the murder of Neil Haywood, a British businessman. She would later claim that Haywood had threatened the safety of her child. Gu Kailai is alleged to have met Haywood in a hotel room, poisoned his drink with cyanide, left him ailing in his room and instructed the hotel staff not to enter his room. Haywood's body was not discovered until days later. Bo Xilai also faced his own serious accusations of corruption. Whatever the facts of the matter are, Bo very quickly found his career was over when it had once looked like he was destined for higher honours.

It is an instructive thought experiment to consider what the New Zealand public knows about the leadership of our largest trading partner. People are likely aware of Xi Jinping as China's president, but would likely struggle to name the premier (Li Keqiang). Would they know how the roles of president and premier differed? (The premier position is largely a crisis management role, according to Brown.) Would they be able to appreciate the difference between the Standing Committee and the Politburo? Addressing a lot of this and more, Kerry Brown, Australian based academic and former British diplomat, offers some intriguing conclusions on the nature of power in the Chinese system.

When it comes to assessing the Chinese leadership, without access to the primary and secondary sources that form the usual raw material for historians and political scientists, how does an author cast judgments? (Domestic attempts in China to comment on Chinese leaders can come badly

unstuck. Brown recounts the story of the commentator Yu Jie, who was put under house arrest and eventually went into exile in the United States for writing a critical story on a previous Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao, and flippantly calling him 'China's Best Actor'.) A bit like the shadows in a cave, in Plato's famous analogy, a lot has to be inferred from key events; such as the story of Gu Kailai above.

Brown looks at one of the prevailing views of Chinese politics, which is to divide the elites into 'factions'. Both Bo Xilai and Xi Jinping are the children of Communist Party leaders, as are indeed many other...