This final chapter looks closely at the Nineteenth Party Congress in 2017. This was a remarkable congress; there had not been such extensive personnel change since Deng Xiaoping took over from Hua Guofeng. Of greatest significance was the personalization of power as Xi elevated two allies to the Politburo who had never served on the Central Committee, as well as four other allies who were promoted from the alternate list of the Central Committee. China had generally avoided such “helicopter promotions” since the Maoist period, but here they were again, underlining the lack of institutionalization and the inability of party institutions to constrain Xi. At the same time, we have seen a renewed emphasis on ideology, combined with nationalism, as Xi has sought to reinvigorate Leninism. Can such a reinvigorated Leninism successfully fight the pathologies looked at in Chapter 4?

Chapter 4, I examine “sites of memory”: the exhibits in the 1990s and museums since the 2000s. I show that memory entrepreneurs and dynamics of cultural production fields result in a pattern of representation centered on “people but not the event.” Such a pattern, however, provokes even more public debates than expected.

The rise of Xi Jinping presents a stark contrast to the early periods of Jiang Zemin’s and Hu Jintao’s rule. Like Jiang and Hu, Xi was given a weak hand to play. But unlike Jiang and Hu, Xi launched a campaign against corruption that strengthened his power enormously. At the same time, he stressed the threat of “peaceful evolution,” which had brought down the Soviet Union, and underlay the “color revolutions” in Central Asia. This campaign saw a tightening of control over ideology. Xi also undertook an extensive reform of the military. Although this reform facilitated operational matters, it enabled Xi to gain personal control over the military (PLA).

This chapter examines Deng Xiaoping’s rise to power and his efforts to build a structure that would prevent the return of Maoism. That structure included rejuvenation, the building of leadership groups at different levels, and the introduction of balances. This chapter also discusses the forces that undermined party unity, leading first to the purge of Hu Yaobang and then the Tiananmen events, followed by the ouster of Zhao Ziyang. The military proved to be an important part of Deng Xiaoping’s structure of power. In many ways, Deng tried to introduce institutionalization to correct the concentration of power under Mao Zedong, but Deng’s own dominance of political power contradicted and undermined these efforts to introduce institutionalization.

Looking in detail at how the four leaders of China during the reform period came to power, how they consolidated power (or not), and their (weak) ability to pass on power, they all reflect not institutionalization but the Leninist framework in which they have worked. One factor that, in various ways, seems important across these four decades is the military. The fact that both Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin held on to the chairmanship of the CMC after giving up their party positions is highly telling. More recently, Xi Jinping has reorganized the military with an eye both to improving military operations and to strengthening personal control.

In Chapters 1 and 2, I use qualitative and quantitative analyses of the life history interviews with the zhiqing to describe and explain various patterns of their autobiographical memory. Their autobiographical memory varies greatly, and the variation can be explained by “class,” including their present class positions and their chushen and habitus formed in the Mao years. Chapter 1 focuses on those zhiqing with higher class positions today.

The Introduction sets out the theoretical and empirical concerns of the book. Institutionalization is defined as a decision-making rule that allows power to pass from one leader to another. Institutionalization is, by definition, a set of rules that constrain the personalization of power. Leninism, as a mobilizing system, provides no such rule, and the repeated consolidation of power and the accompanying tendency to build personal networks prevent the system from institutionalizing. It should be noted that the elaboration of intra-party rules does not mean that such rules extend to the core leadership; rather they are rules that bind others. Finally, Leninism as a specific form of organization is different from the broader term “authoritarianism.” Inherent in the concept is the notion that Leninism develops through phases. Leninism under reform is subject to certain pathologies that weaken it.

This chapter examines the passage of power from Deng Xiaoping to Jiang Zemin. It shows at least four things. First, that Jiang did not consolidate power until he had been in office for approximately five years. Second, the purge of the military leadership allowed Jiang to build support in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Third, Jiang was able to move supporters into critical positions and thus consolidate power, and, fourth, he was able to extend his influence even after he stepped down. Together, these phases in the consolidation of power show how difficult it is to pass on power in a Leninist system, that control of the military remains a critical part of consolidating power, and that personal networks remain critical to understanding how power works in a Leninist system.

In the conclusion, I return to where I start. I first discuss how the research presented in this book can help us understand the Chinese state’s official memory of President Xi Jinping’s zhiqing experience. Then I recapitulate the major arguments and discuss in detail the broader empirical and theoretical implications of this study. I will end the book with a discussion of the political ethics of the zhiqing generation’s memory, the normative goal of my book, to reflect on the ethical issues in similar cases of memory.