水凝胶导电原理:Ranking China's Power Brokers

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How do you rank power brokers in a political system where major decisions are typically made by consensus and behind closed doors?
That’s one of a number of questions raised by China’s showing on the latest Forbes’s list of the world’s most powerful people, recently unveiled on the magazine’s website.
A counterpart to Forbes’s annual ranking of the world’s wealthiest people, the power list attempts to identify the individuals “that matter” based on (among other things) the number of people and amount of financial resources they have power over. Despite rumors of its impending demise, the U.S. thoroughly dominates this year’s list, accounting for 26 of the 70 spots.
China comes in second with seven people making the list, up from six last year, though the country’s most powerful man, president Hu Jintao, has been knocked out of the top spot he held last year. Mr. Hu now ranks No. 3, behind Barack Obama and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, a fall the magazine attributes to China’s impending leadership transfer.
While there’s plenty to say about where Mr. Hu should rank vis-à-vis Messrs. Obama and Putin, the arguably more noteworthy ranking is that of Chinese central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan, whom Forbes lists as the world’s 15th most powerful person, one spot ahead of Hillary Clinton.
On the surface, ranking Mr. Zhou ahead of the U.S. Secretary of State makes a certain amount of sense. After all, he’s the head of a bank that boasts more than $3.2 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves and is estimated to own a whopping $1.2 trillion in U.S. Treasurys.
But unlike his U.S. counterpart, Fed chairman Ben Bernanke (No. 8 on the list), Mr. Zhou does not determine his own country’s monetary policy. That power resides with the nine-member Politburo Standing Committee, China’s highest decision-making body, which issues orders on the basis of internal debates. The details of those talks are almost never disclosed.
In this system, analysts say, Mr. Zhou’s role is akin to that of an economic adviser a position not exactly on par with Ms. Clinton’s.
The way the Standing Committee and the rest of the Chinese government do business means similar doubts can be raised about virtually any of the Chinese people who appear on the list, possibly even premier Wen Jiabao (No. 14), whose many public calls for political reform this year have produced little in the way of visible reform.
It’s an issue that Michael Noer, one of the Forbes editors responsible for putting together the power list, acknowledges is problematic.
“Power is measured in very different ways in different systems,” Mr. Noer told China Real Time after the rankings were released late last week. “[Ranking the most powerful people] is really hard to do…The Chinese in particular have been difficult.”
To compile the rankings, Mr. Noer said, he and another editor started with a list of 230 initial candidates, which they whittled down to 104. They then asked Forbes’s editors around the world to give each candidate a numerical score based on a handful of criteria.
The difficulty in determining who controls what in China had “complicated” the rankings process, Mr. Noer said, but he argued that the list still offered insights into the nature of power in China.
“China has more government officials on the list than any other country and almost all of the people on the China list come from government,” he said, adding most of the Chinese people who appeared on the magazine’s rich list this year were also candidates for the power list.
The only mainland Chinese person to be ranked on the power list who doesn’t come from government is Baidu founder and CEO Robin Li (No. 42). Hong Kong shipping magnate Li Ka-shing also makes the list (No. 44).
“I think that’s an indication that the state is still very much in charge, even if it’s somewhat murky how that power is exercised,” Mr. Noer said.
Nor is does that seem likely to change in the near future with Xi Jinping, the likely successor to Hu Jintao, sliding in at No. 69 this year.
Josh Chin