In this study I establish a universal typology of Chinese political elites and trace the elites' transformation by analyzing the demographic and sociopolitical composition of the Chinese Communist Party's Central Committee. The data set comprises the full and alternate membership of the Central Committees, from the First (1921) to the Seventeenth ( 2007 ). China's political elites started out as ideologyoriented/replacement types with strong unity, low differentiation, and wide circulation

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... gh radical methods. However, they have evolved into fragmented/reproductive types with weak unity, high differentiation, and narrow circulation through moderate methods.