This week, some 370 top officials in China’s Communist Party are meeting in Beijing to hammer out the country’s next five-year plan. They’re expected to discuss household spending, old-age care and robots, among other things. I talked to my colleague Chris Buckley, who has covered China for more than two decades, about one subject that won’t be discussed but is on many people’s minds: Who will succeed President Xi Jinping?

本周，大约370名中国共产党高级官员在北京开会，制定中国的下一个五年计划，预计将讨论家庭支出、老年护理和机器人等问题。我和我的同事、报道中国逾20年的资深记者储百亮(Chris Buckley)谈了谈，探讨一个虽未列入议程却牵动无数人心的问题：谁将是习近平主席的接班人？

Mao Zedong ruled until he died at 82, badly incapacitated by illness. One change that his successor, Deng Xiaoping, put in place was a two-term limit for Chinese presidents. Deng’s own successor, Jiang Zemin, added a mandatory retirement age for top politicians. He started at 70, then lowered it to 68 but made an exception for himself.

毛泽东执政直至82岁逝世，当时他因病已无法胜任。其继任者邓小平推行了国家主席两届任期制。邓小平的继任者江泽民又增设了高层官员强制退休年龄——最初定为70岁，后降至68岁，但为自己破了例。

Xi has scrapped both. At 72, he’s younger than President Trump (79) and Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin (73). But in the absence of any mechanism requiring Xi to leave office, the question of who might take over from him — and when — is only becoming more relevant. Chris recently wrote a story about what he called the “forbidden question.”

习近平将这两个规定都取消了。他今年72岁，比特朗普总统（79岁）和俄罗斯总统普京（73岁）都年轻。储百亮最近写了一篇文章，讨论这个他所称的“禁忌问题”。

So Chris, will Xi Jinping be the one to see this next five-year plan through to completion?

所以，习近平会是那个把下一个五年计划执行到底的人吗？

I’m pretty confident he will.

我很相信会是他。

And when we look at Xi’s rhetoric and his policies, they speak to ambitions and a vision for China that covers 2035 and beyond. That’s a signal that, health permitting, he would like to stick around.

如果我们研究习近平的言论和政策，会发现其中展现出中国在2035年及更远未来的雄心与愿景。这释放出一个信号：只要身体状况允许，他希望继续留任。

Has he talked about succession plans at all?

他谈过接班计划吗？

No. It’s one of those taboos in Chinese politics. He doesn’t talk about it. Nobody really talks about it. But people read between the lines. And we don’t see any likely successors to Xi in the central leadership at the moment.

没有。这是中国政治的禁忌之一。他不会谈论这件事。没有人真正谈论它。但人们会研究字里行间的意思。目前中央领导层中尚未出现可能接替习近平的人选。

It takes years to put people in place so they can be given the right experiences and the right assignments. And given that we don’t see younger people taking up those key positions, we can assume the process is not underway yet. Xi hasn’t even begun making those early moves on the chessboard.

让接班人到位需要数年的时间，这样他们才能获得正确的经验，承担正确的任务。鉴于我们没有看到较为年轻的人士担任这些关键职位，我们可以推断这个过程还没有开始。习近平甚至还没有开始在棋盘上布局。

Why do you think he’s so reluctant to choose a successor?

你认为他为什么如此抗拒选择接班人？

There are reasons that are simply part of the arithmetic of politics everywhere. Once you name a successor, people’s attention and perhaps even their loyalty begin to drift.

其中一部分原因无非是政治上的盘算，跟其他地方并无不同。一旦指定继任者，人们的注意力甚至忠诚度就会开始转移。

Some people may think it’s entirely cynical, but there is a strong current in Xi that believes he is a man of destiny, that he is a leader who has been appointed at a time of opportunity and danger to ensure that China and the Communist Party survive and thrive. That sense of historical mission matters if you want to understand Xi Jinping.

有些人可能认为这完全是自私的考量，但习近平深信自己是注定的领袖，在机遇与危机并存的时代担当大任，肩负着确保中国与共产党存续发展的使命。理解这种历史使命感，方能真正理解习近平。

How different is this from what past Chinese leaders did?

这与过去中国领导人的做法有何不同？

In some ways, what Xi is doing has broken the pattern that was beginning to form under his most recent predecessors. Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin both stepped down after around a decade in power — a bit longer for Jiang. (Xi has been in power since late 2012.)

从某些方面看，习近平的做法打破了他的最近几位前任开始形成的模式。胡锦涛和江泽民都在执政约十年后卸任——江泽民的任期稍长。（习近平自2012年末执政至今。）

Hu encouraged this idea that even if China hadn’t democratized, it had modernized to become more collective, more rules-driven and more predictable. Hu was very much focused on a clean handoff of power to his successor, who happened to be Xi.

胡锦涛鼓励这样一种观点，即虽然中国没有民主化，但现代化进程也让中国变得更倾向集体领导，更受规则驱动，更加可预测。他极度注重实现干净利落的权力交接，而他的继任者恰好是习近平。

Xi came into power, and it became clear that he believed this collectivist leadership was a mistake — that it had encouraged factionalism within the party, corruption, disrespect for the central leader and ultimately for the party itself. So Xi has gone back to a kind of centralized, unconstrained leadership that we saw in different ways under Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. But that makes succession trickier.

习近平上台后，其立场逐渐明朗：他认为集体领导制是错误的——这种模式助长了党内派系斗争、腐败现象、对中央领导人的不敬，最终损害了党的根本利益。因此习近平回归了毛泽东和邓小平时代不受约束的中央集权领导模式，形式有所不同。但这种模式使权力交接变得更为复杂。

How do you think this is affecting Chinese politics?

你认为这对中国政治有什么影响？

At the moment, Xi is so powerful and there doesn’t seem to be any sign of him stepping down any time soon.

目前习近平权力如此之大，似乎短期内没有卸任的迹象。

But say five, 10 years hence, people inside the system might start thinking more about the long-term stability of this arrangement and wondering whether by pushing off this process, Xi is sowing the seeds of potential instability. Eventually, Xi’s age will force the issue into officials’ minds, even if they can’t do anything about it. It may be that rivalries emerge between different potential successors’ camps.

但假设五年或十年后，体制内人士可能会开始更多思考这种安排的长期稳定性，并质疑习近平推迟权力交接是否在埋下动荡的种子。终有一天，习近平的年龄将迫使官员们正视这个问题，即便他们无力改变现状。届时不同潜在接班人阵营之间可能出现权力角逐。

The refusal of old leaders to cede power was a theme in Soviet politics, right? And may have accelerated the end of the Soviet Union?

老年领导人拒绝让出权力曾是苏联政治的一个主题，对吗？这可能加速了苏联的解体？

Xi is a very attentive student of Soviet history. And he blames the downfall of the Soviet Union essentially on selecting the wrong leader — Mikhail Gorbachev — who turned out to be a revisionist reformer.

习近平细致研究过苏联历史。他把苏联的垮台归罪于选错了领导人——米哈伊尔·戈尔巴乔夫——结果证明他是一个修正主义的改革者。

But while it’s true that the Chinese leadership is getting older, it’s far from a complete gerontocracy. The leadership is now cultivating and promoting officials who were born in the 1970s. There are young officials in their 40s, even their 30s, emerging into powerful positions at the provincial and city level.

但是，虽然中国的领导层确实在变老，但它还远不是一个完全的老人统治。领导层正在培养和提拔出生于70年代的干部。有一些40多岁甚至30多岁的年轻官员身居省级和市级要职。

So there’s an awareness of the need for generational replenishment — as long as that doesn’t apply to Xi Jinping.

这表明高层意识到需要代际更替——当然，这不适用于习近平本人。