Appendix B: Leadership Mechanisms

Politburo members may carry out their oversight responsibilities in a variety of ways, of course, informal as well as formal. Besides family members, personal assistants and bodyguards, each has a staff of aides (secretaries), who may be assigned as liaison for specific arenas (political, military, and so on). In the Chinese system, like the Soviet system, these secretaries tend to be better educated than the leaders and actually do much of the work, making important decisions on their own. According to one foreign expert who worked in the propaganda system through the 1960s, each unit knew to call directly to the secretary assigned it by Lu Dingyi, who headed the Propaganda LG.

Little is known about the workings of the secretarial system at this level, but the fact that former political secretaries of top leaders have regularly become prominent officials in their own right was suggestive of the key roles they play. Examples include Gan Ziyu, science, planning, and propaganda official, once Nie Rongzhen's secretary; Wu Mingyu, former State Science and Technology Commission vice-chairman and later deputy director of the State Council Economic, Technological, and Social Development Research Center, Zhang Jingfu's former secretary; Zhou Taihe, Economic System Reform Commission adviser, Chen Yun's former secretary; and He Guanghui, the Reform Commission's deputy director, former secretary to Li Fuchun and Bo Yibo; Wang Xicheng, former Finance and Economics LG office director and later Propaganda Department deputy director, Li Xiannian's former secretary; and so on. Zhao Ziyang appointed his own political secretary, Bao Tong, as the secretary to the Politburo

standing committee. What his role was, or his relationship to staff offices and other secretaries, personal or organizational, is not known.