Angela Merkel was a physicist before she entered politics, but you have to take into account two things:
1) She was heavily involved in politics while a student and researcher.
2) Even more importantly, she came into politics right after the fall of the Berlin Wall - right after they threw away all the old career politicians. At this point, she abandoned her scientific career to fill this enormous vacuum.
Thatcher got a bachelor's degree in Chemistry, but within three years of graduating college she was in politics and another three years later she had a law degree, I don't think I'd call her a "scientist leader".
I'll admit my ignorance about the Chinese Communist party. But that whole system is very different, especially because the leaders don't need to get elected, so it's a much more technocratic system in general. In the US, there's a difference between people who come up with new policies and the politicians who get them implemented, I suspect this is less true in China.
Wasn't Merkel a chemist, not a physicist? The upper levels of the CCP are full of engineers, not scientists. Don't know about the next or nextnext leadership generations/cadres.
1) She was heavily involved in politics while a student and researcher.
2) Even more importantly, she came into politics right after the fall of the Berlin Wall - right after they threw away all the old career politicians. At this point, she abandoned her scientific career to fill this enormous vacuum.
Thatcher got a bachelor's degree in Chemistry, but within three years of graduating college she was in politics and another three years later she had a law degree, I don't think I'd call her a "scientist leader".
I'll admit my ignorance about the Chinese Communist party. But that whole system is very different, especially because the leaders don't need to get elected, so it's a much more technocratic system in general. In the US, there's a difference between people who come up with new policies and the politicians who get them implemented, I suspect this is less true in China.