four out of the seven men who would now lead the country were members of aristocratic Communist families; the Party had once taken pains to avoid the perception of nepotism, but now it placed political reliability above all, and the incoming generation included a larger share of hereditary rule at the top than any time in the history of the People’s Republic. Outwardly, the Party had vowed to select officials in a “democratic, open, competitive and merits-based” way, but political watchers had been able to predict the lineup by tracking the backroom negotiations
