중국 지역성 형성의 정치경제: 배경ㆍ동학ㆍ추세

The Characteristics of the Current Chinese Political Elites: “Are they technocrats?”

  This article examines the characteristics of current Chinese political elites. This study reveals two findings about the current Chinese political elites. First, factors that affect promotion in China’s political ranking are gender, ethnic origin, age, terms of service as a member of the Central Committee(hereafter, CC) of the Chinese Communist Party(hereafter, CCP) and years spent as a member of the CCP. In other words, those members with higher political ranking are male, from the Han majority, senior in age, have long been the member of the CC of the CCP and have joined the CCP earlier. Interestingly, education achievements scarcely affect the political ranking because the degree of education of the current Chinese political elite is very high. (The proportion that completed college education is 98.4% by overall educational achievements. The proportion that completed college is 82.3% by educational achievement at the beginning of their career.) This finding shows that political factors (terms of service as a member of the CC of the CCP and years spent as a member of the CCP), are still very important in order to be placed in higher ranks, except for biographical factors (age, gender, and ethnic origin).   Second, this study suggests that we cannot view the current Chinese political elite as only “technocrats,” because it shows that the observation counts are more than the expected counts at a lower ranking group. In other words, the current Chinese political elite consist of “technocrats” and “non-technocrats” although distribution ratios are different in higher ranking and lower ranking groups.