ABSTRACT
In China, seniority is a critical variable in politics as well as in many daily life settings. The steady growth of the average age of Chinese provincial leaders over the span of more than three decades is rather remarkable, given frequent political campaigns during the interim. When China began to implement economic reforms and open door policies in the late 1970s and early 1980s, it became imperative that a different group of leaders would be needed at the local level as well as in the center. After almost thirty years, the age structure of Chinese provincial leaders seemed to start to correspond to the power structure of the provincial government: the older, the more powerful. A more important measure of seniority in Chinese politics is years of being a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) member. Provincial leaders as a group are among the best-educated people in China.
