China experts divided on country's future

The two survivors will be Vice President Xi Jinping (aged 58), who will step in Hu’s shoes, and First Vice-Premier Li Keqiang (aged 56), who will probably replace Wen.

A first lesson for India: China partly owes its dynamism to the fact that, while remaining an authoritarian system, every five years the Party is able to induct fresher blood into the system. It is not the case with India where the political system is based on gerontology. It is a great pity that the land which invented the Four Ashramas is unable to practice what it once taught.

Can you imagine an India where all leaders above 70 years would be forced to take sanyasa (or at least go into retirement)? It would bring a great deal of new energy into Indian politics and probably new ideas and new ideals. Unfortunately, this will not happen soon.

This apart, India should carefully watch the changes in Beijing. To paraphrase Mao, will the Wind blow from the East or from the West in 2012?

The West Wind is associated with reforms and a more democratic system of governance, while the East Wind symbolizes the Dictatorship of the Party (unfortunately not of the Proletariat!).

This can be considered to be the main challenge of the 2012 turn-over because the direction of the Wind in the Middle Kingdom will have planetary consequences.

China is going to witness a transition, but a transition towards what?

It is what Willy Lam tried to find out in his essay on the Sixth Generation of leaders (Changing of the Guard: Beijing grooms Sixth-Generation cadres for 2020's published by the Jamestown Foundation). The Sixth Generation should assume power around 2020 (if nothing more dramatic occurs before).

One of the key players is Li Yuanchao, the present Chief of the CCP Organization Department, responsible for the selection of senior cadres.

Willy Lam points out: “When he was vice-party secretary and party secretary of Jiangsu Province from 2000 to 2007, Li Yuanchao made a name for himself for broadening ‘intra-party democracy’, especially the ‘scientific’ selection of cadres through means including popular assessment and recommendation. After becoming Director of the CCP Organization Department in October 2007, however, Li has shifted his attention from ‘scientific’ human-resources theories to the time-honored, Confucianist preoccupation with recruiting virtuous cadres”.

He once told local officials that his first priority was to pick "people who are ambitious, who want to do good things, who are capable and who will not make a big mess."

Li’s primary concern is that cadres groomed for fast-track promotion should pass muster in both ‘morality’ and ‘competence’, with priority given to 'morality'.

Apart from 'morality', the new leadership will have to face the issue of 'democracy'; let us not forget that Liu Xiaobo, the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize is still in jail. He was the initiator of the Charter 08, a text signed by 300 prominent intellectuals, suggesting the introduction of some democratic reforms into the opaque one-party system of China.

In the years to come, China is bound to witness new demands for the 'fifth modernization' dear to the intellectuals who wrote large posters on the Democracy Wall of the Tiananmen Square in 1979 (Deng Xiaoping had then spoken of Four (economic) Modernizations).

A few months ago, China witnessed an interesting debate: is Wen Jiabao, sincere or putting on a show when he speaks of democratic reforms? Due to the extreme opaqueness of the regime in Beijing, ‘experts’ are divided on the question.

People like Yu Jie, the author of China's Best Actor: Wen Jiabao do not believe that ‘Grandpa Wen’, as the Chinese media loves to call him, is a reformist. In an interview with BBC's Chinese service, Yu said: "Wen Jiabao and Hu Jintao are like the two sides of a coin. They are on a tandem bike, heading in the same direction. I think they are playing the good-guy-bad-guy routine, like the harsh-dad loving-mum sort of thing.”

In another interview, he affirmed: “[Hu and Wen] share the same goal, which is to strengthen their power base."
When the question was asked to Du Daozheng, director of the editorial board at Yanhuang Chunqiu magazine (former Chinese edition of Asiaweek), he replied: “In my view [Wen] has always worked tirelessly for opening and reform. In terms of action, among the highest-level leaders in the Central Committee, he has not only made his position clear, but he has also worked very hard. His style and manner are about closeness and service to the people. …He is also a living person, with his own thread of life… This is not ‘putting on a show’.”

As in Krugman’s case, specialists do not agree. We will probably have to wait a few years to know who the real Wen was, but the fact that the Chinese Premier is being censored in his own country is nevertheless worrisome.

The South China Morning Post cited a speech in Shenzhen on August 21, 2011 and another one in the United Nations General Assembly on September 23 when Wen’s words about reforms were suppressed in China.

Living in a democracy, it is difficult to imagine a Prime Minister not being free to speak his mind or having portions of his speeches deleted by an all-powerful Publicity Department.
In the 2012 succession race, one should not forget another factor: the People’s Liberation Army. In recent months, the Army has shown that it can influence China’s foreign policy; we have seen it for policies vis-a-vis the US, Korea or Japan. The PLA clique will probably fight hard against the introduction of 'political' reforms.

Will a woman make it to the man-dominated Standing Committee?

We will have to wait to know.

In July, in the front page of The People’s Daily, one could see President Hu Jintao shaking hands with military scholars; third in the handshake line was Liu Yandong, a member of the State Council, the only female member of the 25-member Politburo. Many watchers started to speculate, can she make it?

Another Politburo member who believes in his luck is Bo Xilai, Chongqing’s mayor, who has recently been in the news for his campaign to revive Mao Zedong’s spirit through mass renditions of old revolutionary ‘red songs’.

But according to the Wall Street Journal, while Bo Senior was ordering students and officials to work in farms to ‘reconnect with the countryside’, his 23-year old son, Bo Guagua was spotted one evening entering the US ambassador's residence in Beijing with a red Ferrari. Bo Junior had been invited for a dinner by a daughter of the then-ambassador, Jon Huntsman.
This is one of the contradictions of modern China.

The leadership change in Beijing will also affect the fate of the so-called nationalities, in the first place, the Tibetans and the Uyghurs. The recent transfer of Zhang Qingli, the tough Han official who masterminded the repression in the Tibetan Autonomous Region after the March/April 2008 unrest, was for many a rehearsal for the 2012 changes.

A milder Chen Quanguo, a former Governor of Hebei province was appointed Secretary of the CCP committee of the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR), replacing Zhang Qingli.
 
Will the new Central leadership choose the path of repression or conciliation? It is bound to have consequences for India which hosts the Dalai Lama and more than 1 lakh Tibetan refugees. Beijing’s present aggressive attitude towards the Dalai Lama has not helped smoothen Sino-Indian relations.

In 2012, we will ‘celebrate’ the 50th anniversary of the 1962 India-China War. Contemporary studies have shown that the return of Mao at the center stage of the political scene in China was the triggering factor for the War. Can such a charismatic leader emerge and lead China in another conflict?

It is doubtful. The future leadership will probably have to work as the present one, by consensus, thereby reducing the risk of a conflict.

Another question: will Xi Jinping follow his father’s footsteps? Xi Zhongxun, an associate of Deng Xiaoping is, according to Wikipedia, still “remembered for his friendship to his colleagues, his tolerance to diverse cultures and religions [the Tibetans in particular], his idealism of an open market socialist country and his integrity in his beliefs.”

Xi Zhongxun was one of the architects of the Chinese economic reforms. He proposed and implemented Shenzhen, China's first economic zone which later became the standard model for the other economic zones.

Will the Son emulate the Father by introducing political reforms?

Once again the bets are open. An interesting year lies ahead!


Also read: The perils of diverting the Brahmaputra | 'If France can intervene in Libya, why not in China' | China in 2011: Smiles or threats? | China's new propaganda tool - Buddhism


Born in France, Claude Arpi's quest began 36 years ago with a journey to the Himalayas. Since then he has been a student of the history of Tibet, China and the subcontinent. He is the author of numerous English and French books. His book, Tibet: the Lost Frontier (Lancers Publishers) was released recently.

More columns by Claude Arpi