Secretary of the CPC Shanghai Committee Yu Zhengsheng attends a meeting of the 18th Communist Party Congress at the Great Hall of the People on Nov. 9, 2012 in Beijing, China
The Shanghai Party chief seems like a typical princeling—his father was a former mayor of the megalopolis Tianjin, near Beijing, who also happened to be the first husband of Jiang Qing, otherwise known as Madame Mao—except for one family quirk. In 1985, his brother, a high-ranking intelligence agent, defected to the United States. Surviving such scandal, not to mention the inconvenient fact that his forbears included imperial bureaucrats in the Qing dynasty and bigwigs in the Communists’ nemesis Kuomintang, is a sign of Yu’s political dexterity. But Yu’s age—67—means he will almost assuredly not last more than one five-year term before sliding into retirement.