Shanghai clique

The Shanghai clique (), also referred to as the Shanghai gang, Jiang clique, or Jiang faction, refers to an informal group of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials who rose to prominence under former CCP General Secretary Jiang Zemin while he served as the party chief and mayor of Shanghai. Chinese politics have long been defined by the competition between intra-party factions' ability to place key members and allies in positions of power within the CCP and Chinese government. In the 1990s when Jiang Zemin was the CCP General Secretary, Chinese politics was dominated by the Shanghai gang as Jiang attempted to place cultivated ideological followers in senior positions within the government. Under Hu Jintao, the Shanghai gang balanced Hu's Chinese Communist Youth League (CCYL) faction in government and under Xi Jinping, the Shanghai gang continues to contend with Xi's faction wherein both factions attempt to obtain the political upper-hand through the nomination of chosen officials to senior roles. Outside mainland China, after Hu Jintao became general secretary of the CCP Central Committee in 2002, there have been many commentary books on the relationship between the Shanghai Gang and the central government headed by Hu at that time. It is still taboo to talk about within the mainland. In the Political Bureau of the CCP Central Committee elected by the 16th and 17th CCP National Congresses, the "Shanghai Gang" occupied several positions on the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CCP Central Committee. Jiang Zemin himself also continued to serve as the chairman of the CCP Central Military Commission after Hu Jintao became the general secretary of the CCP Central Committee. In 2004, he resigned as Chairman of the Military Commission at the Fourth Plenary Session of the 16th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party on September 19, 2004, but still retained his office of the Chairman of the Military Commission until the 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012.