The Congress leadership’s self doubt today stands in contrast to Rajiv Gandhi, who boldly ordered the scientists to build nuclear weapons in the late 1980s and his mother Indira Gandhi, who tested a nuclear weapon in 1974, signed the controversial security pact with the Soviet Union in 1971, and liberated Bangladesh in the same year.

The Chinese would surely judge that a Congress leadership that is incapable of doing the nuclear deal with Washington has little credibility as an interlocutor on the boundary dispute with Beijing.

All eyes on Xi

As the 17th Congress of the CCP ended with the unveiling of a new line of leaders on Monday, all eyes are on Xi Jinping, the 54-year-old Shanghai party chief, who is among the four new faces elevated to the Politburo Standing Committee.Xi’s meteoric rise has now culminated in his emergence as the likely successor of Hu Jintao who will step down as the CCP chief at the 18th Congress of the CCP in 2012 and as President of China the following year.

It was widely assumed that Hu’s preferred successor was the 52-year-old Li Keqiang, who heads the CCP in the Liaoning province in northeastern China. Xi’s elevation above Li is said to be part of a complex political bargaining between different factions in the CCP.

Clearly Jiang Zemin, who has continued to exercise influence in the CCP after yielding power in 2002, and his so called ‘Shanghai clique’ have had enough clout to position one of their own nominees to succeed Hu. Xi and Li, representing the fifth generation of leaders in Communist China, have now been truly launched. While Li represents the old rust belt in China and is closer to the populist strain represented by Hu Jintao, Xi comes from the dynamic east coast that is more liberal in its political orientation.

... contd.