The Hindu : The changes in China

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Monday, Apr 07, 2003

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The changes in China - I

By P. S. Suryanarayana

The future of China will depend on how it manages a gigantic process of economic change.

CHINA'S MODEL of political succession, meticulously evolved, has delivered new leaders in a smooth fashion, as with the latest succession. With China now riding a wave of phenomenal economic reforms, the new leaders have quickly vowed to manage the state's ongoing transformation into a "well-off society" without causing tears in the world's most populous country. In a sense, the future of China will depend on how it manages a gigantic process of economic change. However, the politics of the process itself remains a question of critical mass, in a salutary sense of the term, if the goal of a "well-off society" is to be attained "in an all-round way".

These catch-phrases, conceived by the Communist Party of China (CPC), the sole repository of power, have a vibrant political resonance in today's Beijing. Given the CPC's undisguised desire to retain its firm control over the state's levers of power during and after the current social-economic transformation of China, the stage is set for a new political experiment in history. The CPC reckons that it is in its own hands to make this experiment a grand and memorable exercise. In a positive sense, history's grand jury is still out, of course. The CPC and its acolytes are aware of this, and the historical significance of the latest political changes in China can be traced to this consciousness. The latest emergence of Hu Jintao as China's new President and Wen Jiabao as the Prime Minister in mid-March this year has indeed come as no political surprise. Their successful nominations for these high positions were virtually settled as part of a political package that was agreed upon during the CPC's Sixteenth National Congress in November last year. However, a striking feature of the new spectacle of image politics, which unfolded before an international audience in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing in March 2003, was an atmosphere of transparency, much as the CPC choreographed the fine event in minute detail. Endorsed, this time, by the Tenth National People's Congress (NPC), or the new Parliament, is the sustainable continuance of Jiang Zemin as the Chairman of China's Central Military Commission (CMC). He retains this portfolio in addition to his more important political position as the Chairman of the mirror-image CMC within the ruling CPC. It was in November last year that he was re-elected supreme commander of China's powerful military establishment.

Given the CPC's historical role as the creator of communist China in 1949 under Mao Zedong's leadership, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) has remained under the substantive supervision of the party. So, Mr. Jiang's dual control over the PLA at the levels of the CPC and the Chinese State, without being the leader of either the party or the government, confers on him a unique status. However, Mr. Jiang is only following the example set by Deng Xiaoping, China's late patriarch of the post-Mao period, when Mr. Jiang himself was made the party chief and the state leader in the tumultuous circumstances of the "June 4 incident" at Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989. The memories of that "incident", which involved the "suppression" of an "externally-inspired pro-democracy protest", did not hang over the Great Hall of the People as the NPC Deputies assembled there to choose the country's new leaders at the present juncture. In the vicinity of the hall, the famed Tiananmen Square, bathed in a harsh winter's weather that the Beijingers are so accustomed to, was singularly free of any kind of political dissent that the assembled NPC Deputies could have discerned at this time. For them and the leaders they elected, it has been a good political spring. Now, China may still exude the confidence of a party-state, even as the new leaders have been voted into office on the basis of a single-candidate system for each separate post. Surely, in this context, the CPC is not unaware of the reality that this system is no pluralist democracy. The party is attempting, nonetheless, to democratise its preferred system in a manner that might help silence the stories in the West about "the secret files" that lay behind the choice of "China's new rulers". These "files" are said to have been translated from Chinese and also edited by Western Sinologists such as Bruce Gilley and others. The "files" are claimed to be nothing less than portions of the CPC's own internal documentation on "Disidai" or the "fourth generation". Reminiscent of the "Tiananmen Papers", these "files" are traced to a Chinese individual, with a pseudonym Zong Hairen and with access to the purported documents of the CPC itself. At one level, the issues at stake may go well beyond the legitimate unanswered question about the authenticity of such "files". A pertinent debating point, though, is that about the evidence contained in these "files" that many among China's new leaders, now actually chosen by the NPC, are "determined modernisers" who would be inclined to "integrating" the Chinese economy with the rest of the world's system and "maintaining good relations with the United States".

What then are the trends and perceptions in China itself? Of all the leaders now chosen, Mr. Hu and Mr. Wen have acquired their positions on the basis of overwhelming majorities. These were marked by less than a handful of negative votes out of a total balloting figure of well over 2000 NPC Deputies. In some minor contrast, the negative votes cast for Mr. Jiang's candidature for the Chairmanship of China's CMC exceeded the negligible margin, although he too obtained a truly overwhelming majority. In any case, these leaders were not competing among themselves. Mr. Jiang's political standing in the NPC as China's elder statesman was repeatedly emphasised during the sessions, with Mr. Hu, the new first leader among equals in China's state-and-government hierarchy, openly conferring with him on the stage reserved for the presidium.

Two qualitative aspects of the leadership equations have now come to the fore. First, Mr. Hu, who has been Mr. Jiang's heir-apparent for the presidency for a few years now, was originally spotted by Deng himself even as the patriarch zeroed in on Mr. Jiang as his own successor. Interestingly at present, no similar and definitive attempt has so far been made to look beyond the "fourth generation" of communist leaders. Not much political significance in terms of China's long-term future can be read as a result, though. In fact, the Jiang-Hu equation was, until recently, linked to the manner in which Mr. Hu, as the "successor-designate" could interact with his "patron". Likening this "patron-protege relationship" in China to the classical "vice-presidential dilemma" in the U.S., a Sinologist, Zheng Shiping, has drawn attention to the delicacy of how Mr. Hu, as China's designated number two until recently, may have had to look to a non-communist model in determining his style for the future without falling out with his "patron" of that period, Mr. Jiang. Now, Mr. Hu, who still seems to value Mr. Jiang's political presence on the Chinese centrestage, has yet to indicate his style as President and CPC General Secretary. The second qualitative aspect of the present leadership changes is that Mr. Wen, as the new technocrat Prime Minister, has already identified an ambitious administrative agenda. He has also spoken of the need to satisfy the rising economic expectations of the masses without causing any debilitating risks to the paradigm shift in China's economy. Overall, the political cohabitation among Mr. Hu and the new Vice-President, Zeng Qinghong (Mr. Jiang's protege?), as also Mr. Wen besides Wu Bangguo, who has succeeded the communist veteran, Li Peng, as the NPC Chairman, will be watched with interest.

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