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Communist Party of China
Inc
By Dinkar Ayilavarapu
KOLKATA - There are two kinds of people in the
world: those who try to make sense out of China, and
those who have given up making sense out of it long ago.
And many agree that the only other country besides India
that can exist with as many contradictions as it does is
the People's Republic of China.
It is neither
the people's nor a republic, but surely its form of
communism is Chinese. On July 1, 2001, President Jiang
Zemin proposed allowing capitalists to enter the
Communist Party. Now isn't that the mother of all
contradictions? But what was more surprising was that
Jiang quoted Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to justify
it. In an interview with the New York Times, he said,
"Marx and Engels lived more than 150 years ago. The
Communist Manifesto was published 153 years ago. It is
impossible to apply every single word they wrote at that
time to today's reality. One thing we should always
applaud Marx and Engels for is that they improved their
views and thinking in light of changing historical
conditions."
Surely, Jiang needs to be applauded
for improving communism in the changing light of the
21st century. It's called improvisation, dragon style.
Fast-forward to March 6, 2002. The country's top
economic planner, Zeng Peiyan, in his report to the
National People's Congress, called for a 7 percent gross
domestic product (GDP) growth. The figure, albeit less
than the previous year's, is required in times of
weakening domestic demand and a slowing export sector.
To keep the growth at 7 percent will need another
massive round of government spending that will push the
budget deficit to a record US$37 billion. In the past
four years the Chinese have relied on increasing
government spending to stave off deflation, by boosting
demand in face of a slowing export sector. This has
resulted in, on the one hand, very impressive growth
figures and, on the other, a rapidly rising budget
deficit and government debt.
If you fault the
Chinese for anything, you can't accuse them of not being
pragmatic. They knew when to invade India and then when
to stop. Deng Xiaoping built bridges with the Americans
exactly when the Americans needed him desperately. The
Chinese liberalized their economy and opened up their
markets at the right time, to capitalize on the Asian
economic miracle, and now they have decided to win over
the burgeoning 21st-century Chinese bourgeoisie.
The decision to open up membership, which
merited very little coverage in the world, is
significant on two counts - it marks the total reversal
of the Tiananmen phenomenon of 1989; and China now is
apparently taking the route Taiwan, South Korea,
Singapore and Indonesia took before it.
In 1989,
students, intellectuals and the middle classes revolted
against the communist authorities. The rural peasantry
and the workers were the bulwark of the regime against
these classes. In the past decade of reform, opening up
and spectacular growth - it is those very students,
intellectuals and the middle classes (if they are alive)
who have taken the cake, and the bread as well, of the
reform process. They have gained most in the decade of
high growth and liberalization.
In the March
convention, what worried the Chinese leadership more
than the rising deficit was what would happen if the
government slackened its efforts to pump up the economy.
Many in the government believe that 7 percent growth is
a must to prevent serious social unrest. The planning
minister's report expected unemployment to rise to 4.5
percent from last year's 3.6 percent. This was not
counting the rural unemployed and numerous urban workers
who were idled but not formally laid off. In the
previous year rural incomes grew at 4.2 percent, less
than half the urban rate of income growth. In many
grain-producing areas incomes actually fell. The
government targets an increase of 4 percent this year to
prevent major rural dislocation. Xiang Huaicheng, the
Chinese finance minister, had more bad news - the budget
would grow only by 7.7 percent as against the previous
year's 20.9 percent.
In the prevailing
circumstances, the erstwhile bastions of the communist
government couldn't have it any worse. The communist
health and social security apparatus is losing state
patronage. To keep the old system in good health, at
least $12 billion is needed - from where is the big
question. Communist-style farms and other rural
employment are drying out fast. Already there is
large-scale migration of rural poor to the cities. With
incomes growing at less than half the rate in urban
China, the local satraps have been facing widespread
discontent that at times has been violent. The
livelihood of millions of small farmers could be damaged
when China opens up to cheap competitive agricultural
imports as a part of the World Trade Organization (WTO).
If the rate of growth of the GDP is not sustained, it
could be chaos.
Working conditions aren't
getting any better. If you factor in the coal-mine
disasters, building collapses, factory fires and even
school-building accidents, working conditions are
seemingly worse than 10 years ago. Protection provided
to the workers over the years is being phased out. Job
security is a thing of the past; hire and fire policies
are already in place in the coastal belt. State-paid
vacations, health benefits, education and other
amenities are history. With China having entered the
WTO, internal markets will be open to international
business. The Chinese will have to adhere to a myriad
web of treaties under the WTO that will put Chinese
industry under pressure to comply, which ultimately will
translate into tougher conditions for the workers.
Faced with a discontented support base, the
communist mandarins, being as pragmatic as they are,
have started looking for new supporters. What better
class of people to reach out to than the gainers of the
past decade, and those with the largest stake in the new
open system - the middle classes? These classes, having
made the most of the liberalization and globalization,
clamor for power and representation in the Chinese
political structure. To be fair to them, they are
seeking their rightful share of the cake.
Another big help to the middle classes has been
the transition in the Chinese leadership. More than half
of the existing leadership is likely to bow out and hand
over the torch to the so-called fourth generation of
Chinese leadership. The first generation was Zhou Enlai
and Mao Zedong, the second was led by Deng Xiaoping, the
third by Jiang Zemin and Li Peng, and the fourth one is
to be led by Hu Jintao, all set to take over as
president later this year. In addition there are other
vacancies in the party structure, for the middle classes
to exploit. With entry no longer barred, the middle
classes can surely occupy more and more of these
vacancies. In simple terms the communists are looking
for a new bulwark against a frustrated and repressed
peasantry, and the bourgeoisie fits the bill perfectly.
In the coming years one will certainly see the
Communist Party turning into an absolute ruling party
with not much communism left in it. The government will
become more and more middle-class-friendly and any
opposition from the peasants and workers will be
crushed, in the finest traditions of Chinese communism.
This is the reversal of Tiananmen. In '89 it was the
workers' party that cracked down on the bourgeoisie, and
now it will be the bourgeoisie party that will control
the workers.
This brings us to the second point:
China following the track previously trodden by Taiwan,
Indonesia, Singapore and South Korea. All these states
began their journey as independent nations by being
absolute regimes (Chiang Kai-shek in Taiwan, Syngman
Rhee in South Korea and Sukarno in Indonesia). Some time
later they capitalized on economic liberalization and
their economies boomed. This boom wouldn't have been
possible but for the close coupling of business and
power. The ruling outfits there changed into
military-business oligarchies. Now, after some tenacious
movements for democracy, they have transformed
themselves into democracies.
China, in the first
stage of its transformation, has stopped being a
monolith run out of Beijing by the supreme leader. The
age of patriarchs like Mao and Deng is conclusively
over. The nation in the past 10 years has been powered
by private enterprise in the coastal belt, and it is
these entrepreneurs who will resist any imposition from
the top. The nation is now run from the various regional
capitals by all-powerful governors. The overall
authority of Beijing has declined. Though separatists'
movements such as the ones in Xingjiang and Tibet won't
be tolerated, the country won't be governed from Beijing
either.
It is in this context that the fourth
generation of Chinese leadership assumes importance.
Going by the past record, these leaders are likely to
run the show for the next five to 10 years. It would be
under them that China would make any of the transitions
mentioned above.
Hu, as the head of the Central
Party School, allowed research into alternative systems
that may suit China. On a trip to Europe last year, he
expressed a profound interest in the structure of the
Social Democratic Party. In a conference in January in
Beijing, critics of the government called for more rapid
democratization. The notable feature was the presence of
several top communist officials who participated as
well. The National People's Congress, which in the past
has acted like a rubber-stamp parliament, has regularly
voted against government policy recently. The official
press, though still tightly circumscribed, has started
reporting on official malfeasance.
This said,
there is a difference between discussion and
implementation. Despite nascent signs of democratization
and Westernization, none of the new generation of
leaders foresees any other future for China than as a
single-party state. The communists in China have
apparently graduated to become a military-business
alliance. And it is hoped that some day in the future,
China might become democratic.
It is quite
common that when there is major change, there is
turmoil. When a generation hands over power to another,
as China will do, there is opposition. The Chinese have
already completed the biggest crackdown since Tiananmen
in 1989, on the Falungong religious sect. There is a
story about the Falungong. The Beijing chapter of the
Falungong rubbed a minor communist official the wrong
way with its public prayer meeting. The official banned
public prayers of the sect. In protest to this the
Falungong held a prayer session outside the official's
house. This is said to have driven home the point to the
communists that there was an organization in China that
could drum up popular support on the streets at very
short notice, and which was not called the Communist
Party. Any challenge to their authority is not taken
kindly to by the communists, and the rest is history.
An
interesting piece of trivia is that the organizer
of this crackdown is a leading light of the new
generation of Chinese leadership. Luo Gon, a confidant
of National People's Congress chairman Li Peng, is the
law-and-order chief of China and the man whom Human
Rights Watch holds responsible for the Falungong
clampdown. He has been named head of the party's
discipline body in the new dispensation. He is also the
man behind operation "Strike Hard" against crime in
which hundreds were executed. And he imposed martial law
in Tibet after public protests during his four-year
tenure with the party there. Despite all the talk of
democracy, the new generation might not yet loosen its
hold on the reins of the state.
Change in China
can be for the better or for the worse. After their
Great Leap Forward in the 1960s and 1970s, the Chinese
abandoned all they fought for and joined the ranks of
fellow East Asians as a free-market economy. After
having opened itself to the winds of liberalization,
China stands poised to become a nation of the middle
class, freer and more democratic in disposition. In this
situation, the workers of the world need to look
elsewhere, for now. The Maoist revolution, finally, is
devouring its children.
(©2002 Asia Times Online
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