Author: Zhao Yantao · Editor: Lu Cong
There is a saying from ancient China:
“All under Heaven is the king’s land; all who dwell within the shores of the land are the king’s subjects.”
The emperors regarded the state as their own realm, and power was transmitted without cease through the imperial house, the clan, and blood relations.
Several thousand years have passed, and China is no longer in the age of emperors.
Yet a question worth our reflection is this:
If the supreme political power of a modern state is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few political families, political groups, and networks of interest, then how much difference is there, in the end, between it and the ancient “realm as family property”?
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1. From “Hereditary Emperors” to “Red Families”
After the Chinese Communist Party established its regime, what it set up was, in name, a modern political system, and not an imperial institution in the traditional sense.
However, over the long course of political development, a special political stratum gradually took shape — the so-called “princelings.”
The “princelings” generally refers to the political group formed by senior officials of the CCP, revolutionary elders, and their relatives.
Scholars who study China’s political elites have discovered that the children of revolutionary elders often possess special family backgrounds, social connections, and political resources; such backgrounds may affect the educational opportunities, political connections, and career development available to them.
Therefore, what is truly worth discussing here is not simply saying:
“So-and-so became a leader entirely through his parents.”
The more accurate question is:
Can a person’s family background provide him with political capital that ordinary people cannot obtain?
If the answer is yes, then political competition is no longer built entirely upon individual ability, open competition, and institutional procedures, but is instead influenced by blood ties, family relationships, and political networks.
This is the problem of “familialization” in modern politics.
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2. The Case of Xi Jinping and the “Red Families”
Xi Jinping is of typical “red family” origin.
His father, Xi Zhongxun, was one of the important leaders of the CCP’s first generation and held posts including Vice Premier of the State Council.
Xi Jinping himself later became China’s supreme leader.
Of course, Xi Jinping’s life experience cannot simply be summed up as “relying entirely on his father.”
In fact, during the “Cultural Revolution” he also suffered political blows against his family, and he went to live and labor in the countryside of Shaanxi; after the 1970s he entered Tsinghua University to study, and thereafter began working as a local cadre at the grassroots level.
On the other hand, however, researchers have also pointed out that Xi Jinping belongs to the “princelings” of Chinese politics, and that his family background and the political networks of his father’s generation constituted part of his political capital.
Related research has particularly pointed out that many “princelings” were able, early in their political careers, to obtain important resources from their fathers’ generation and its political networks.
For example, in his early years Xi Jinping served as secretary to Geng Biao, Secretary-General of the Central Military Commission. Geng Biao had connections with the revolutionary political network of Xi Jinping’s father’s generation.
Later, Xi Jinping was promoted step by step in Fujian, Zhejiang, Shanghai, and other places, entered the Standing Committee of the Politburo of the Central Committee in 2007, and became General Secretary of the CCP Central Committee in 2012.
Therefore, the more accurate formulation should be:
Xi Jinping was not, in the simple sense, “carried directly to the position of supreme leader by his father”; rather, he grew up within an institutional environment in which red families and networks of political relationships exist, and he possessed political capital that ordinary political participants can hardly replicate.
There is an important difference between these two ways of putting it.
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3. The Core of the Problem: Not One Person, but an Institutional Phenomenon
What truly deserves vigilance is not the family background of any one leader.
It is this:
When political power is concentrated over a long period in a few families and networks of interest, will a new stratum of political aristocracy take shape?
The power of ancient emperors came from inheritance by blood.
In modern politics, however, another form may appear:
The fathers’ generation accumulates political capital → the children inherit social connections → the family possesses resources → the children enter the core of power → the next generation continues to obtain advantages.
This does not necessarily mean “hereditary succession” in the legal sense.
But it may form a kind of:
intergenerational transmission of political resources in actual fact.
This is what modern society calls political elite reproduction.
Academic research has made a special study of this phenomenon of “elite reproduction,” and has pointed out that the parent–child relationship in Chinese politics is a very important form of familial linkage among political elites.
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4. North Korea Provides a Still More Extreme Example
If China’s “red families” manifest themselves more as the intergenerational transmission of political capital and networks of connections, then North Korea has developed this model into a still more explicit family rule.
North Korea has been ruled by the Kim family ever since 1948:
Kim Il-sung → Kim Jong-il → Kim Jong-un.
This is a very explicit political inheritance across three generations.
The Kim family maintains its rule through political patronage, networks of interest, and control over the political elites and the military.
This is in fact very close to “the realm as family property” in the traditional sense.
The supreme power of the state is no longer understood as belonging to all citizens, but increasingly manifests itself as:
one family’s long-term control over the power of the state.
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5. From “the Realm as Family Property” to “the Realm of Interest Groups”
Therefore, what we truly need to discuss today is not:
“Has yet another emperor appeared in China?”
It is a more modern question:
To whom does political power ultimately belong?
If a country’s political resources are concentrated over a long period in a few families, political relationships, and interest groups, then a new class structure may emerge in society:
Ordinary people compete for positions;
political families compete for power;
and power itself can generate still more resources and connections.
And so a cycle may come to form:
Power → resources → connections → advantage for the next generation → more power.
Its greatest difference from ancient imperial power is that it does not necessarily manifest itself as an emperor passing the throne directly to his son.
But it shares with “the realm as family property” one common point that is worth comparing:
Political resources may become ever more concentrated, while the opportunities for ordinary people to enter the highest levels of power become ever more limited.
Therefore, we may call this phenomenon:
“From the bloodline inheritance of imperial power, to the familialization of modern political capital.”
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6. What Effects Might This Model Bring to a Country?
First, it weakens the fairness of political opportunity.
If family background can significantly affect a person’s political starting point, then ordinary people, even if they possess ability, may face a higher threshold of entry.
Second, it easily gives rise to interest groups.
When long-standing networks of family, teacher–student, colleague, and political relationships exist among political figures, power may concentrate around particular circles.
Third, oversight of power may become more difficult.
If a political system is controlled over a long period by elite groups that are interrelated with one another, then internal oversight, conflicts of interest, and checks and balances on power become important issues.
Fourth, it easily produces a political psychology in which “the state and the family are mixed together.”
The most typical problem of the ancient emperors was precisely:
The state is the state, and the imperial house is the imperial house — or is it “I am the state”?
What the modern state must resolve, by contrast, is:
Is the government a public institution, or an instrument of power of some political group?
Fifth, the transfer of power may come to rely ever more on internal arrangements rather than open competition.
If supreme power is produced mainly through internal political networks, then the space for ordinary citizens to participate in supreme political power will be restricted.
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7. True Modernization Should Not Be Only Economic Modernization
That a country possesses high-rise buildings, subways, the internet, and modern industry does not mean that its political system has completed its modernization.
True political modernization also includes:
power can be supervised;
power can be restricted;
political office is not a family asset;
public resources cannot become the inherited property of private groups;
ordinary citizens possess equal opportunities to participate in politics;
the state is not the state of any one family, nor is it the state of any one interest group.
The ancient emperors said:
“My realm.”
What the modern state should answer is:
“Whose country is this, in the end?”
If the answer is some one person, some one family, or some one interest group, then no matter what modern political language it uses, the structural problem of “the realm as family property” still exists within it.
A truly modern state should be one in which:
all under Heaven is not the realm of one family, but the realm of the public.
This is perhaps the most fundamental difference between “the realm as family property” and the road to the modern state.