Leadership core

In modern Chinese politics, a leadership core (Chinese: 领导核心; pinyin: lǐngdǎo héxīn) refers to a leader who is recognized as central to the leadership of the Communist Party of China. Four individuals so far have been given this designation: Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, and Xi Jinping.

The designation is not a formal title and does not hold legal weight, but its use in official party documentation gives its holder a precisely defined place in party theory on their relative standing to the rest of the Communist Party leadership. The leadership core operates as part of the Leninist-inspired framework of democratic centralism, and is intended to represent a vital center rather than a hierarchical peak, which differentiates it from the role of paramount leader, although the two roles have often coincided in the same person.

From the pivotal Zunyi Conference forward, Mao Zedong was the undisputed leader of the Communist Party of China. He was Chairman of the Communist Party of China, but much of his authority was informal, earned after years of building clout through the civil war and intra-party struggles. After Mao died in 1976, his successor Chairman Hua Guofeng was unable to build a strong coalition of support in spite of having a wide range of official titles. Deng Xiaoping emerged as the pre-eminent leader of China in 1978, and was undisputably the highest authority in the country throughout the 1980s despite not holding any of the top titles of the party, state, or government.

Following the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, Zhao Ziyang, the party's General Secretary and widely recognized as Deng's successor at the time, was sidelined due to his sympathy to student protesters. In his place, party elders brought in then Shanghai party secretary Jiang Zemin to take over the position of General Secretary of the Communist Party of China. However, Jiang, who had spent much of his career in Shanghai, was a compromise candidate who had no prior experience in the party's central organization. Consolidating his power and raising his stature in the party required the backing of Deng and other party elders, but also a recognition from other members of the party leadership that Jiang was now the dominant leadership figure.

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