Noah Feldman, Columnist

One Path to Power in China Is Closed

The Communist Youth League had helped promote smart leaders without family connections.

August 9, 2016 at 9:34 PM UTC

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

He's a princeling.
Photographer: Wang Zhao/AFP/Getty Images

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A troubling development last week casts some doubt on China’s long-term stability. The story on the surface sounds innocuous, as is often the case in China’s opaque internal politics: The People’s Daily, the official Communist Party newspaper, announced a reorganization of the Communist Youth League.

But what makes this so significant to China’s future -- and therefore global security -- is that the league has for decades functioned as one of two incipient political parties within the Communist Party. That President Xi Jinping has essentially purged it is evidence of his gradual, mindful push to become the country’s all-powerful dictator.