Wang Huning
Wang Huning is a Chinese politician who is one of the top leaders of the Chinese Communist Party. He is currently the chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. He has been a leading ideologist in the country since the 1980s. He has been a member of the CCP's Politburo Standing Committee, the highest decision-making body within the party between convocations of the Central Committee and the National Congress, since 2017.
A former academic, Wang was a professor of international politics and dean of the law school at Fudan University. During this time, he gained attention due to his belief in "neoauthoritarianism", which held that a strong leadership was needed for China's stability and political reforms. He became a policy author for the CCP leadership in 1995 as a director of a research team at the CCP's Central Policy Research Office. He became the CPRO's deputy director in 1998, and became a member of the party's Central Committee and director of the office in 2002. He remained in the CPRO until 2020, the longest tenure in the office. As CPRO deputy director and later as director, he was instrumental in developing the Three Represents, a new ideological theory formulated under Jiang Zemin's leadership. He continued this work under Hu Jintao, and is believed to have had an important role in developing the theories, Scientific Outlook on Development, as well as Harmonious Society. He became a member of the CCP secretariat in 2007, a central leading organ responsible for executing and implementing policy decisions.
Wang became a member of the Politburo in 2012, and is believed to have developed close relations with CCP general secretary Xi Jinping, becoming one of his closer associates. In 2017, he was promoted to the 5th-ranked member of the Politburo Standing Committee and was elected to the Secretariat. He has also chaired leading commissions on ideology and reforms and is believed to have been instrumental in developing key concepts under Xi, including Xi Jinping Thought, Chinese-style modernization, the Chinese Dream, and the Belt and Road Initiative. In 2022, he stopped serving in the Secretariat and became the 4th-ranking member of the PSC. He became the CPPCC chairman in March 2023, succeeding Wang Yang. He also became the deputy leader of the Central Leading Group for Taiwan Affairs, an internal policy coordination organization on Taiwan policy.
Widely regarded as the "Gray Eminence" of the CCP, Wang is perceived by external observers to be the informal chief ideologue of the CCP as well as the principal architect behind the party's political ideologies since the 1990s. He has held significant positions under three paramount leaders, a rare occurrence in Chinese politics. Wang believes that a strong, centralized state is needed in China to resist foreign influence, an idea that has been influential under Xi.
Early life
Wang was born on 6 October 1955 in Nanshi, Shanghai. He traces his heritage to Ye County, Shandong province, though he never lived in Shandong. Wang's name, "Huning ", literally means "the peace of Shanghai ", a typical name given by his Red Army parents, who fought in the Shanghai Campaign of the Chinese Civil War and remained in the city thereafter. As a military official, Wang Huning's father was implicated during the anti–Peng Dehuai campaign launched by Mao Zedong and suffered persecution during the Cultural Revolution. His mother was hospitalized several times due to illness after 1965, requiring Wang and his two older brothers to look after her. In order to prevent his three sons from dawdling amidst the Cultural Revolution, his father locked them inside their home and required them to either copy the manuscript of the Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung or read books. This experience fostered Wang's calm personality.During his youth, Wang went to the Shanghai Yongqiang Middle School, where he obtained books that were forbidden from his teachers. After the school opened a mechanic class, Wang participated in it as an apprentice worker. He graduated from this junior high school in 1972. After Nixon's visit to China, the Chinese Communist Party found itself lacking diplomats familiar with foreign languages. Following an order by the CCP Central Committee, the Shanghai Revolutionary Committee established the Foreign Language Training Class in the Fudan University, the Shanghai Normal University and the Shanghai International Studies College, with each university being required to enroll 200 students in the first enrollment year of 1977. Wang was recommended to enter Shanghai Normal University 7 May Cadre School's Foreign Language Training Class to study French with 24 other classmates. The Training Class was first located in Dafeng County, Jiangsu Province, where Wang began his study in October 1972. The 7 May Cadre School later moved to Fengxian, Shanghai in April 1973.
After his graduation in February 1977, he became a cadre at the Shanghai Publishing Bureau. In 1978, he participated in the Graduate Entrance Examination and was admitted as a postgraduate student in the Department of International Politics of Fudan University. His mentor was Chen Qiren, who later recalled Wang was late during the interview for the entrance examination, but he gave Wang a pass due to his excellence in the primary exam. Wang's Master dissertation was "From Bodin to Maritain: A review on the development of the Western sovereignty theory". The thesis was highly approved by the defense committee, which called it "a preliminary attempt by the Chinese academic circles to systematically study bourgeois sovereignty theory". He received a Master of Laws degree in 1981 and stayed in Fudan as an instructor at the Political Science Teaching and Research Department. During this time, he established a close relationship with department director Wang Bangzuo. They were usually referred to as "the two Wang" by their counterparts. According to Radio Free Asia, the theoretical framework for the one country, two systems principle for Hong Kong was first developed by Wang Huning and Wang Bangzuo in an unpublished article in the early 1980s.
Academic career
In April 1984, Wang joined the Party. In 1985 at age 29, without first needing to serve as lecturer, Wang was promoted to associate professor in international politics, making him China's youngest associate professor at the time. This made him a national figure in China. Young people wrote to him for guidance and asked him to help compile bibliographies, while his superiors often asked him to give reports and talk about his experiences. Regarding his fame Wang told an interview in 1986: "What I want most now is a peaceful and quiet environment, otherwise I will be very depressed. I have to prepare to teach new courses, I am writing two monographs, and I have my own plans. All of these take time." As a teacher, Wang continuously introduced new courses, usually teaching two or three courses per semester, and sometimes teaching four courses at the same time.During this time he published widely in academic journals, newspapers and magazines, which were read by the intellectual elite. By the end of 1985, Wang had published nearly 80 articles and compiled 700,000 words of materials. He also translated Robert Dahl's Modern Political Analysis. He was also selected as a special policy researcher by Organization Department of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee, which controls staffing positions within the Municipal Committee, and was the main contributor to the book Introduction to Political Science, a key social sciences project during the sixth five-year plan.
In May 1987, he published the book Comparative Political Analysis, in which he proposed the concept "historical-social-cultural analytical framework". In 1988, Wang was a visiting scholar in the United States for six months, spending the first three months at the University of Iowa, three weeks at the University of California, Berkeley, and visiting many other universities. During his time in the United States, Wang visited over 30 cities and close to 20 universities, and later wrote about his experiences in his book America Against America. After returning to China, Wang served as director of Fudan University's Department of International Politics from 1989 to 1994, and as dean of the law school in 1994–95.
Wang has been a well-known scholar in academic circles since the 1980s. He wrote columns and essays for literary magazines such as Dushu and World Economic Herald as well as numerous party-sanctioned publications including Wenhui Bao, Jiefang Daily and Guangming Daily. He was featured on the cover of current affairs magazines such as Banyuetan, attracting the attention of Shanghai's top political leaders, and he was known by Jiang Zemin, then Party secretary of Shanghai. His achievements led to him being selected to participate in the drafting of theoretical documents for the CCP beginning from the 13th CCP National Congress in 1987. In 1993, Wang led the Fudan student debate team to participate in a Chinese-language international college debate competition in Singapore. The team won the championship between 1988 and 1993, greatly enhancing Wang's reputation.
On 12 February 1993, Wang established the Fudan University Development Research Institute. During this time, Wang participated in bimonthly seminars organized first by Shanghai mayor Jiang Zemin. The Development Research Institute submitted various reports, including on the 1989 revolutions in the Eastern Bloc and the political status of Taiwan. Wang was one of the two chief planners, of the China Development Report published by the Development Research Institute at the end of 1993; he was also the chief writer of its political section. Wang's work in the 1990s expressed the position that China should reclaim a sense of Chinese cultural and intellectual autonomy. This drew increased attention from high-standing state-party political leaders. In 1994, he wrote a diary titled Political Life, in which he talked about his daily life and thoughts on political and non-political issues.