Challenges for the fourth generation: the RIAP Emerging Voices Project uncovered some top young talent around the region, all of whom were asked to write an essay on the topic of generational change in Asia. The competition's second winner, Sarah Hill, chose to tackle the vexing problems facing China's next generation of leaders.

• Author: Hill, Sarah
• Position: RIAP Emerging Voices Project

Hu Jintao's succession to the presidential seat in Beijing, November 2002, signals the start of a generational changeover in China and in Asia generally. Over the next decade, China's "fourth generation" leaders, those now in their forties and fifties, will make their way into the highest ranks of government ministries, financial institutions, think tanks and business networks.

Political and economic analysts are watching this period of transition not without a little apprehension. Over the past 20 years, dazzling economic growth in China has made it a rich and powerful nation, a new heavyweight in the global economic order. China's economy doubled in the 1980s and then doubled again in the 1990s. According to reports such as the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade's China Embraces the World Economy, China is now set to outstrip the United States to become the world's largest national economy sometime in the 2030s.

Danger

Yet there remains a certain amount of danger associated with China, The devastation inflicted upon China's people by the Cultural Revolution and the horror of the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident are still vivid collective memories for many in China and around the world.

For the West, China is also a perplexing problem ideologically as its new wealth has challenged the presumption that a capitalist democracy is the best formula for economic success; instead, China has retained its communist political system (even if it is a spurious form of communism), and nurtured its own ways of doing business, inscrutable to many a Western eye, to achieve its current state of prosperity.

For outsiders, this has resulted in an economic regime that is opaque and unpredictable. It is a more informal system of business based on inside knowledge and on a highly cultivated use of guanxi and personal networks. This, on top of the language and cultural barriers, means that conducting business in China can be a very risky proposition. The coming of a new generation of Chinese leaders who are more globally aware, of whom many have been educated in the West, means China's old ways could change.

So, whether the fourth generation will do business differently, especially now China has joined the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and formally opened its doors to global business, is a question many an analyst is anxiously trying to answer.

Gradual change

Amongst the many theories concerning China's future trajectory, the most hopeful one is that the fourth generation will gradually bring in political and economic reforms such as the rule of law, improved public and corporate governance, better fiscal transparency...