A newspaper report from Hong Kong says the man expected to be China’s next leader has been brought-in to oversee Beijing’s Olympic preparations. The South China Morning Post says Xi Jinping will take charge of crisis management in human rights issues, air pollution strategies and security planning for the Games. But the position could be a “poisoned chalice” for his political career if the Games don’t turn out as well as expected.
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Talent: Professor Joseph Cheng, Chair of Political Science at Hong Kong’s City University; Ron Walker, Chairman of the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games.
CONNORS: Xi Jinping, the 54 year old top ranking member of the Secretariat of the Communist Party of China and Shanghai’s party chief is reportedly about to head the biggest sporting event in the world. He was recently appointed to the nine member Politburo Standing Committee, the country’s most powerful body and as Professor Joseph Cheng, of Hong Kong’s City University explains, big things are expected of him.
CHENG: Xi Jinping has certainly been identified as the successor of Hu Jintao. He’s expected to emerge as the leader of the Communist Party of China five years from now, in the next party congress. So naturally he will be given tests to prove his capability to prepare him for succession.
CONNORS: As the central figure in coordinating China’s complex web of government departments, ministries and provinces, to deliver the Beijing Olympics, Mr Chi will have the whole world watching.
CHENG: From Beijing’s point of view, the Chinese leaders certainly believe that they have spent tremendous resources on the project and China is expected to show its best aspects to the international community. So someone in charge of such a project is expected to gain credit and to present himself as an important world statesman so to speak to the international community.
A comparison may be made with Hu Jintao, in fact during a crisis when the Chinese embassy in Belgrade was bombed by a NATO cruise missile in 1999, Chen Zhiming was travelling abroad and Hu Jintao was put in charge and he was seen to be accepting a test, accepting a challenge. So in a similar way, you may say that Xi Jinping again has to prove himself.
CONNORS: But running the Olympic Games and other large events has damaged more than one political career, as Ron Walker knows well. Mr Walker was the chairman of the 2006 Commonwealth Games, the world’s second largest sporting event after the Soccer World Cup in that year.
WALKER: If he hasn’t had experience in running the games, it’s going to be very hard for him. I mean the man in India whose running the Commonwealth Games in 2010, is a politician. He doesn’t know anything about running the games either and things are not going so well in India, because they haven’t got their act together properly.
CONNORS: He also remembers the fall of Michael Knight, the minister for the Sydney Olympics, an ascending politician who quit politics one week after the close of the Sydney 2000 Olympics. He’s well documented falling out with his management team is in bleak comparison with Mr. Walker’s relationship with Melbourne’s minister for the Commonwealth Games, Justin Madden and Mr. Madden’s continuing political success.
WALKER: I mean Michael Knight’s case it was probably a bad move, because he didn’t come out of it to well in the end. Justin Madden’s case, he was a sports person, understood his sport backwards, was a very good minister to get on with. He and I knew we both had different roles and we agreed to agree right from day one, that we wouldn’t argue, we’d settle everything, rather than have the problems that the Olympics did with two or three different chief executives and a lot of bad blood. And from that day on, we got on very well. I did the job that I did best and he did the task allocated to him and it worked fine.
CONNORS: Is that the best way to run things, surround yourself with the right people, in the right areas, with the right stakeholders, with the right ministers?
WALKER: If you do it any other way, it’s a disaster. Believe me, I’ve be through it before and you have to be the right people that can get on well together, that understand their place in life, their expertise, the values that they bring to the table, and you can get on and do it. But if you become imperious, and you start to gloat over those people that are perhaps subservient to you in terms of knowledge, then it’s a disaster.
CONNORS: While the political dangers are numerous, Professor Cheng says this test of Xi Jingping’s political strength and ability to deliver the complex nature of an Olympic Games is a worthy test for a future leader.
CHENG: There are several challenges. First of all, there is always the possibility of security risk, some kind of terrorist attacks and so on and again even when such a crisis emerges, this is again an opportunity for Xu Jingping to be tested.
