The new name at the top of the party roster reads Jiang Zemin, but power in China still rests in the hands of a few octogenarians. So it made sense for them to choose as party General Secretary a man known as "the weather vane." Jiang is the consummate apparatchik, whose rise to nominal power rests almost wholly on his ability to read China's swirling political winds correctly. The 63-year-old former mayor of Shanghai perfectly mirrors the party line of the moment -- slower economic reform coupled with rigid political orthodoxy -- as he made clear last week in his maiden...
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