ABSTRACT
In 2002 Jiang Zemin was seventy-six years of age and had served two-and-a-half terms as general secretary. In mid-November 2002, after a formal election of the Central Committee following the Sixteenth Party Congress, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) announced the coming to power of a new group of leaders. The fourth generation leaders are the product of a meritocratic process of selection started by Deng Xiaoping in 1980. China at the beginning of the twenty-first century remains a land where contradictions, improvements, and setbacks go hand in hand. Despite remarkable economic progress since 1980, it still has a fragmented economy. The CCP has the support of much of the Chinese population, including China's youth, who have developed a sense of nationalism, in part due to the success of China's economic reforms. In 2006, China's Ministry of Health claimed 650,000 HIV/AIDS cases, but World Health Organization (WHO) scientists argued that the figure is closer to 1.5 million.
