As China’s leader, Xi Jinping, forges toward a fourth term in power, he confronts a dilemma common to aging autocrats: testing and recruiting a rising generation of loyal officials while ensuring his own dominance.
To manage this looming challenge, he is leaning on Cai Qi, a longtime deputy who is probably the most influential official in Mr. Xi’s inner circle.
Tall, silver-haired, and constantly at Mr. Xi’s side, Mr. Cai is a supercharged chief of staff to his leader. Mr. Cai holds multiple leading roles, including in national security and running the central office for Mr. Xi and other senior Communist Party officials.
Mr. Xi recently appointed him president of the Central Party School, the elite academy that trains rising officials. Mr. Cai is also overseeing a new campaign to instill Mr. Xi’s ideas about discipline and loyalty among cadres.
Mr. Cai’s new roles indicated that he might take an important role in vetting potential new senior officials and enforcing the strict ideological standards that Mr. Xi is likely to expect from a new cohort of potential leaders. Mr. Xi is expected to secure another five-year term at a Communist Party congress late next year, a feat that would extend his rule to at least 20 years and potentially well into the 2030s.
“The ability to speak on behalf of Xi Jinping is the rarest commodity in elite Chinese politics, and Cai Qi has that,” said Julian Gewirtz, who served as the senior director for China at the National Security Council during the Biden administration and is now a scholar at Columbia University.
