SEOUL -- A little over a month ago I was on the way to Shanghai to spend a month teaching at Fudan University. I read an article in a Hong Kong newspaper that said the topic on everyone's lips in China was the upcoming 16th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. This is the congress at which the new leaders of the party will be announced, those taking over from President Jiang Zemin, Premier Zhu Rongji and National Peoples' Congress Chairman Li Peng.
Well, that may be the topic on the lips of the people who hang around in expat bars in Beijing, but it is not a topic that it is easy to get people to talk about at all in Shanghai. A bored glaze comes into people's eyes when the topic is raised.
For most people it does not matter who gets the top posts. Some go up, some come down, as they say. Who cares who gets what post? Nothing much will change as tight party control means that individual leaders do not have a great deal of room to maneuver on major issues. Top national leaders simply implement the party line; deviation is not appreciated.