Li's Book Reviewed in Foreign Affairs

In China's Leaders: The New Generation, Cheng Li takes a quantitative approach to assess the next generation of Chinese leaders, finding that they will be solid technocrats, if not the world's best scientifically trained elite. More than 90 percent of the Politburo, Central Committee, state ministers, and provincial leaders are college graduates; of these, nearly 75 percent are trained in engineering and the natural sciences ... Li believes that the fourth generation is also the generation of the Cultural Revolution. That terrible experience may have hardened them, he writes, but it also gave them "grassroots consciousness," ... He concludes optimistically that an effective leadership will take over and give China a better images.