The Hindu : China's political transition

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Nov 28, 2002

Opinion

Opinion - Leader Page Articles

China's political transition — II

By P. S. Suryanarayana

It will be simplistic to talk of 'Red capitalism' as the new banner of the Communist Party of China.

THE MYSTIQUE of China's latest political succession in mid-November this year was sought to be heightened by the manner in which Hu Jintao and his new team of eight others stood in front of a massive portrait of the majestic Great Wall for a "live" television show in the presence of national and foreign journalists. Their objective was to introduce themselves to the Chinese people and the international community after being elected to the Standing Committee of the Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

For Mr. Hu and his nucleus team of fellow leaders, it would have been difficult to find a better symbolism. The pictorial backdrop of the Great Wall of China inside the impressive Great Hall of the People in Beijing was in itself a message that Communist China's defensive wall would not crumble in the manner of the Berlin Wall whose fall in the late 1980s signalled the collapse of communism in Europe.

By any standard, the latest political succession in Beijing is the most orderly one in Communist China's contemporary history. While the rise of the People's Republic of China in 1949 was punctuated by a civil war, the Chinese took quite a while to sketch out a post-Mao dispensation following his death in 1976 and the arrest of the "Gang of Four" that included Mao's wife. Although Deng Xiaoping, once purged during Mao Zedong's long reign, succeeded in taking China towards a definitive form of order, the events of 1989 at Tianenmen Square and the related social and political realities marred the initial phase of the rise of Jiang Zemin as China's new architect in the Deng-mould of a cautious political entrepreneur of the communist kind. It is this political landscape that prompted the Chinese authorities to project their latest succession in the best possible manner, and they did succeed in their endeavour.

The 16th National Congress of the CPC, which "elected" Mr. Hu and his team, was not spoilt by any kind of political protest. While the in-camera discussions might not have been free from some candid exchanges of views, neither the activists of the Falun Gong nor indeed any of the Chinese "dissidents" had managed to stage a "sit-in strike" or any other form of spectacular protest in the public domain during the CPC Congress at this time. This reality certainly redounds to the credit of the CPC leaders that they have either marginalised the so-called "dissidents" at this moment or indeed addressed their "concerns" in some substantive way or other.

However, it is also considered possible that the Chinese "dissident" groups, such as they exist, did not quite manage to draw the international community to their side during the latest CPC Congress. The reason, in part, is that the U.S.-led international community is at present too preoccupied with the Iraq question to pay intensive attention to the other regions of the world. Moreover, China is crucial to the current American calculus of "safeguarding" the world, in particular the U.S. mainland and Washington's worldwide interests, from the predatory terrorist moves of religious radicals. China, which too faces a terrorist threat in Xinjiang province, is a veto-empowered permanent member of the United Nations Security Council - the only full-fledged Asian country with this power. The significance of the current political transition in Beijing is also derived from China's international profile.

Napoleon had said: "China? There lies a sleeping giant. Let him sleep. For when he wakes he will move the world". Today, China, no sleeping giant by any standard, finds itself hard pressed to "move the world". Part of the reason has to do with the challenges of China's unfinished internal evolution as an economic powerhouse. Cognisant of this, the CPC has by now completed a very careful and gradual "demystification of Mao" (Immanuel C.Y. Hsu's phrase in a major work on the rise of modern China). However, there has never been, and certainly not at present too, any move by the CPC to follow the example of Khrushchev who took a particularly dim view of his predecessor in the former Soviet Union. More importantly, the CPC continues to regard both Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought as the party's inalienable legacy. Also commended by the CPC, over a period of time, is the Deng Xiaoping Theory that first introduced communist China to selective capitalist practices in the larger national interest.

The latest CPC Congress has, for the first time, enshrined the "important thought of Three Represents" in the party's constitution. This "thought" is Mr. Jiang's contribution to modern China's political-economic evolution. According to him, the party should "represent" China's "advanced productive forces" (a reference to the benign elements of capitalist enterprise) besides the country's advanced cultural "orientation" and also the "fundamental interests of the overwhelming majority of the Chinese people". The "important thought of Three Represents is a guiding ideology that the party must uphold for a long time to come", the CPC has further underlined. It will be simplistic, however, to talk of "Red capitalism" as the new banner of the CPC.

According to the CPC, its "three major historical tasks" at the moment are "to propel the (ongoing) modernisation drive" in the economic sphere, "to achieve national reunification" and "to safeguard world peace and promote common development" of all countries. The foreign policy content of the CPC's new agenda is the key aspect that will eventually determine China's "reunification" and economic "rejuvenation" as a "socialist" state with "Chinese characteristics". In this sense, the most critical of China's foreign policy concerns is the complex orientation of the U.S. towards Beijing. While China is at present capitalising on America's requirement of friends and allies in "the global campaign against terrorism", Beijing knows full well, as underlined by Wang Hongwei, one of China's leading strategic experts, that the Taiwan issue holds the "key" to any real Sino-U.S. rapprochement. Although the Chinese do not actually wish to visualise the long-term strategic value that Taipei might hold for the U.S., the fact remains that Taiwan, which Beijing wants to reunify with China, can serve Washington's interests in much the same way as Cuba had played a role in the former Soviet Union's strategic gamesmanship as regards America.

China's other foreign policy priorities, as Mr. Hu begins to function as the CPC General Secretary, include Russia, both within as also outside the framework of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, besides Japan and India. Although Neville Maxwell's version of India's China War is still current in the strategic affairs circles in Beijing, a conscious effort is being made by the Jiang administration to engage New Delhi very seriously. For China, Pakistan as a steadfast "partner" in the overall regional situation, besides North Korea as a possibly nuclear-armed neighbour, will also be no less important, whether or not Islamabad and Pyongyang have had a nuclear arms-ballistic missiles deal.

(Concluded)

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