If all proceeds on schedule, on November 8, 2012, the People’s
Republic of China (PRC) through its 18th Congress of the Communist
Party of China will choose Xi Jinping to replace Hu Jintao as
president for the next ten years. An initial reaction might be that
this would appear to be simply yet again another internal
disciplined and prescribed, if not pre-ordained, Chinese Communist
Party personnel reassignment.
That’s what they would have liked, but it’s far from the fact.
To begin with the congress was supposed to occur in early October.
This is what had been planned since last spring. Unexpected delays
like this just don’t happen in a government and political structure
that depends on apparent orderliness and thus a certain
predictability. When this requisite consistency is disrupted,
problems reverberate throughout the system. A crucial presidential
year was the worst time for the established form to be bent.
In March a bombshell exploded. Bo Xilai, one of China’s
acknowledged future leaders, a regional party secretary, a
princeling — son of one of the Revolution’s trusted comrades —
was taken into custody along with his wife and Chonqing’s police
chief. The wife of Bo Xilai was quickly convicted in
camera of participation in the murder of a well-known British
businessman with whom the couple had had extensive business and
personal dealings over the years. Bo’s role as a high profile party
leader was particularly important because of his populist appeal
centered on his encouragement of a highly personalized nostalgia
for the imagined halcyon days of Chairman Mao Tse-tung’s
leadership.
Bo Xilai had begun to be suspected of a personal ambition for
increasing Maoist autocratic rule contrary to the political
consensus that has marked Chinese governance for nearly twenty
years. While the murder of the Briton was the incident that focused
international attention, it has been Bo’s political ambition and
strong effort to evolve a popular cult of personal support that has
so impacted what was supposed to be a smooth transition to Xi
Jinping’s presidency this autumn.
As if the Bo incident were not enough, Xi Jinping, always a
socially available politician, went missing in September. No sign
of Xi has turned up in spite of feverish searching on the part of
Chinese and foreign journalists. The best guess as of this writing
is that Xi underwent some form of non-life threatening — though
possibly very debilitating — surgery. Prostate surgery has been
suggested. Another theory, not so generally publicized, is that
this next president is involved in extensive and super secret
negotiations with China’s military leaders (with whom he has had
close ties in the past) to evolve knotty political military
problems that must be addressed before the 18th Party Congress. In
any case, the run-up to the Congress has hardly been the
well-organized affair that people had come to expect of the Chinese
Communist Party.
Not discussed as much as the Bo Xilai affair, but of related
importance and political impact, has been the reduction in status
of Zhou Yongkang, the formerly powerful head of domestic security
as a member of the controlling nine-member standing committee of
the Politburo. Even though Zhou was due to step down by the end of
2012 , his relinquishing of operational control of all aspects of
internal security half a year early was seen as related to his
earlier sponsorship of Bo Xilai for promotion to the standing
committee. A purge of some sort would seem to be in process.
All of these things — and more — reflect a broad scale
struggle over the ideological direction of the country.
Demographics have added an unplanned-for negative aspect to China’s
growth. The aging population has been accompanied by a more vocal
and less easily directed younger workforce. At the same time
increased wages have not had the salutary effect that might be
expected on worker attitudes. As the gap between the wealthy and
the poor has grown obvious, material acquisition has become more
and more an everyday objective of Chinese life rather than the
long-time acceptance of shared deprivation.
The breakdown of governance on a local level has been
precipitated by the central authority’s requirement that local
governments have the financial responsibility to fund stimulus
objectives announced by Beijing. According to Amnesty
International, to accomplish this demand the communities —
especially in rural areas — have taken to evicting small property
owners, seizing the land, and then selling it to developers. While
village demonstrations have become commonplace, there has been
little in the way of Beijing taking action to find alternatives to
this method of gaining revenue by exercising the ultimate in local
governments’ rights of eminent domain.
These among many other issues will face the new administration
of Xi Jinping — when and if he shows up. In the meantime, the
current leadership of Hu Jintao has chosen to divert the Chinese
people’s attention to the East China Sea and the ownership dispute
over the islands called Senkaku by Japan and
Diaoyu by China. Japan took over the island chain in the
late 1800s. Similar expansions were rectified after WW2, but not
these islands. Beijing wants them and Tokyo isn’t budging.
The island contest is a perfect distraction for the PRC at this
moment when its economy is suffering a slowdown as China’s cheap
labor-built exports to a world suffering from its own economic
problems appears to be no longer an engine for growth. Even China’s
falsely valued currency isn’t working as well as a financial
gimmick as it once did. Oh well, they were warned!!!
