The 17th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, which ended on Sunday, was no exception. It highlighted a figure who from this Monday is considered to be the official successor to Hu Jintao.
The position is calculated from the ranking of each person concerned among nine members of the party's politburo standing committee.
The highest ranking was given to Xi Jinping, 54, Ph.D. (Economics), former secretary of the party's Shanghai Municipal Committee. It is very likely that in 2012, i.e. at the next congress, he will replace Hu Jintao.
The second (probable back-up) man is Li Keqiang, 52, secretary of the Liaoning Provincial Party Committee. Both are part of the next generation after the 63-year-old Hu Jintao.
The Chinese system is not a replica of what existed in the U.S.S.R. in the time between Leonid Brezhnev and Mikhail Gorbachev. China's system is different.
To begin with, a chosen few knew that Hu Jintao would replace Jiang Zemin as president several years ahead of time. But the number of these few kept growing all the time.
And a moment arrived when the entire Chinese nation knew who its next leader would be. People knew despite the fact that this leader could slip on the way up - as was nearly the case with Hu, who is reported to have tried to plead sickness to avoid appointment a year or two ahead of the zero hour. The disease was real, not a diplomatic cold. He was not let off, however, and the decision now seems to have been correct.
A public and gradual assumption of office is not entirely a Chinese tradition. It is enough to recall what happened in the wake of Mao Zedong's death in 1976, when before he died he said the cryptic words, "If the matter is in your hands, I will rest assured", to a rather colorless personality named Hua Guofeng.
Things later developed according to the logic of palace revolutions until the reformer Deng Xiaoping took over, although ambiguity about succession remained during some of his tenure. There was no open or well-organized institution of succession at the time.
China looked to the experience of its southern neighbors, specifically Singapore, where the nation's founding father Lee Kuan Yew passed the reins of government to a new premier, Goh Chok Tong, while maintaining some of the power and informal influence during the first few years of the successor's installation. This method is now the accepted rule in China.
Malaysia did the same (although the first attempt was unsuccessful) with the legacy of premier Mahathir Mohamad.
The system of transferring power is only part of the highly successful model of economic and social reform, which is used by China as well as by Kazakhstan and many others.
Chinese experience is important because it gives the world an alternative to the model of Euro-American democracy, which is functioning very poorly in its exported version. "Field tests" of Euro-American democracy in Russia and other countries have only resulted in failure.
The forcing of democracy on the rest of the world has begun to be viewed as an attempt at stalling the development of a country, and creating a crisis in it.
This was especially true of the CIS countries, where it soon became clear that competitive democracy does not work if society lacks the habits of self-government. That is to say, the first step must be to lay down a foundation, not a roof, which means to establish the middle class.
At a recent meeting of CIS experts on the shores of Kyrgyzstan's Lake Issyk-Kul, it was almost unanimously agreed that in post-Soviet societies the only working model of government is one of rigid control and it alone offers the chance of economic growth.
Experience confirms this, both in China and in Russia, with their investment booms. An overseas financier invests in stability, not in an imported kind of democracy.
But such a model has one weak spot - the handover of power often accompanied by crisis. In turn, crises in many countries cause a threat to the achievements of the governing elite and may stunt economic growth.
The Chinese option of a smooth takeover is an undoubted solution for this situation. Post-Soviet countries are only now awakening to this experience, unable to import it in one piece. And while they are trying it out, China forges ahead.
While 17th Congress met, the Chinese press quoted the American Boston Consulting Group (BCG) as saying that by 2015 the country would become the world's second largest consumer market (after the U.S.).
At about the same time the party plans to switch the Chinese economy from producing relatively cheap exports to focusing on high technologies and innovation.
Understandably, people rather than production will experience the most change.
And that means that Mr. Xi, who will have replaced Mr. Hu by that time, will have a different kind of society to lead, one which may generate new political models.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
