Not fade away

A REMARKABLE recent improvement in the way China's murky politics is conducted is mostly to do with the succession process at the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party. In decades past, vanquished political foes tended to end up purged, imprisoned or dead. The victors, meanwhile, hung on to power long into their dotage. Now the holders of many high party and state posts face age limits on service, while those at the very top of the heap, notably the president and prime minister, are restricted to two five-year terms. To outsiders, the process of choosing party successors remains as opaquely Byzantine as ever. But it is undoubtedly more orderly—and less brutal—than it used to be.

Yet China must now reckon with a potentially destabilising consequence of this new, improved process. It is that the cohort of retired leaders is burgeoning. And before they go to meet their Marx, most are keen both to continue exerting political influence and to go on protecting the (business or less often political) interests of family members, along with their vast networks of protégés.