Kevin Rudd
speaker
641 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 14 Jul
Kevin Rudd’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
He then is elevated to become vice mayor of Xiamen, which is one of China's four special economic zones at the
at the forefront not of just domestic economic reform, like in the countryside, but of opening the outside world.
Where I encountered him for the first time, I'm sure he does not recall meeting me.
I'm sure he met a whole bunch of foreign barbarians at the time.
And then he slowly is elevated to the point that he ends up as the provincial party secretary of the entire province of Fujian.
He then ends up for a long period of time as provincial party secretary of the province of Zhejiang.
And then he ultimately goes to Shanghai as party secretary before he's then elevated by Jiang Zemin to the center when he ultimately becomes in 2008 president.
vice president of the country, vice chairman in time of the Central Military Commission.
In the Chinese Communist Party ecosystem, it is invariably advantageous to be what they call Hong Er Dai, which is second generation red.
So because his father is Xi Zhongxun, and his father has been obviously rehabilitated in the reform and opening period,
It is of no small advantage in your own career elevation.
Mind you, his major competitor for the job at the top, a guy called Bo Xilai.
He was also the son of another revolutionary leader called Bo Yibo.
And he was on a similar, as it were, career trajectory.
And for those of us in the China analytical world, these two careers were moving towards a point of collision.
And of course, those in and around Xi Jinping and those otherwise opposed to Bo Xilai dealt with Bo Xilai.
So that's one element of his advancement.
The other is, at a technocratic level, in terms of the growth data coming out of Xiamen, coming out of Fujian, coming out of Zhejiang, and coming out of Shanghai, he has an impressive set of numbers to demonstrate to the party center that he's not just a political showpony.
I think he's always, as I reflect back on his career, been a safe hand sort of guy, keeping his provinces stable while allowing the private sector to do its bit.
And this is the question that many of us in the analytical world are least equipped to answer because we weren't in the room.
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