Harvard-Trained Communists Vie for Power as Party Gathers

Li Yuanchao serves the Chinese Communist Party as head of its organization department. For a few months in 2002 he had a different overseer: Larry Summers.

Li controls the patronage system of the 82 million-member party that this month is unveiling its next generation of leaders, overseeing an apparatus that names cadres to posts in state-owned companies including China Mobile Ltd. and acting as career manager for thousands of rising officials. He took part in an executive training program at Harvard University when former U.S. Treasury Secretary Summers was the school’s president. Li reminded Summers of that when the two met in 2010 in Beijing.