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HU'S ON FIRST
Part 2: Long road to
reform
Part 1: China restores pragmatism
Editor's note: This series is contributed by
a source who has been within the Chinese establishment
for a long time. It therefore reflects views of many
cadres on their current leadership.
BEIJING
- In essence, the administration of Chinese President Hu
Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao has demonstrated more
transparency and efficiency in handling domestic affairs
than the administration it succeeded a year ago. Yet the
situation faced by the new leadership is anything but
smooth.
First, there remain in place limits on
the country's political systems and tough, long-term
issues left unresolved by former president Jiang Zemin,
including the plight of China's 900 million peasants and
serious corruption among officials. Consequently, the
new administration's political reforms, if any, will not
be realized in the short term.
For the new
leadership, time flies by just too fast. After the 16th
National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
last November, they had to spend some time forming their
cabinet and getting familiar with the new positions.
Then they had to spend another couple of months
containing the deadly SARS (severe acute respiratory
syndrome) epidemic that broke out after the Chinese New
Year. Consequently, the Hu-Wen administration has not
had enough time to give full play to the talents of its
members, and the public has not seen many new policies
in the past 12 months, let alone their effects.
Nonetheless, the new leadership did a good job
in handling the SARS outbreak. In past crises, the
Chinese government has typically adopted strict control
internally while maintaining a relaxing public image
toward the rest of the world. On the domestic side, the
authorities have tended to exercise strict control over
domestic sentiment and circulation of news, continuously
warning the public not to make or spread rumors and
stressing that social stability always comes first.
Meanwhile on the international stage, the government
disseminated propaganda that everything was fine and
running smoothly in China. That policy changed under Hu,
which two high-ranking officials - Beijing mayor Meng
Xuelong and health minister Zhang Wenkang - discovered
too late when they were unseated for mishandling the
SARS crisis.
According to the old rules, Meng
and Zhang did nothing wrong. At the early stage of the
SARS breakout, they tried to cover up the incident, as
traditional practice required. To their surprise, the
new administration seemed to have abandoned the old
practice overnight and decided to reveal the truth to
the world. As a result, Zhang's and Meng's way of
handling the outbreak appeared inappropriate, and they
eventually got the boot. The new administration, though
it showed some hesitation in the early stage of the SARS
crisis, eventually chose to come clean over the disease
and worked with other countries to combat the epidemic.
Eventually, SARS was brought under control at the end of
June.
The sacking of two high-ranking officials,
an extremely rare occurrence in modern China, and the
firm actions to control SARS significantly bolstered
international confidence in the new administration and
boosted its popularity among Chinese people at the same
time.
Though SARS hit China hard, Chinese people
see hope for a responsible and open government. At the
same time, the administration also enjoys the positive
results of adapting to international practices in
information release and finds with delight that being
transparent to its people and the international
community does not necessarily harm its reputation. On
the contrary, the government has won more popularity.
The cases of Sun Zhigang and Zhu Zhengliang were further
examples. After Sun Zhigang was beaten to his death in
police custody in Guangzhou, the leadership acted
swiftly to demand a thorough investigation and
punishment of the officials who had abused their power.
Zhu Zhengliang was a farmer from Anhui province who
traveled all the way to Beijing to set himself on fire
to protest the local government's decision to relocate
his family. The central leadership intervened and solved
his problems.
Last year, a television drama
called Yongzheng Dynasty drew nationwide
attention. The historical drama, in which Yongzheng, an
emperor of the Qing Dynasty, ruled with an iron fist and
attached the utmost care for his people in his reign
(1723-35), was regarded as an artistic interpretation of
the politics of modern China: people are not particular
about methods or procedures so long as officials have
clean hand and work for the people.
But the
grassroots have been disappointed time and again.
1)
The government has vacillated between the planned
economy and the market economy in distribution policies
on materials such as cotton, grains and fertilizers.
2) China's stock market is notorious as
policy-oriented, due to the government's frequent
intervention.
3) The slogan of "rejuvenating the
nation by education" has simply resulted in skyrocketing
tuition beyond the affordability of most families. (Chen
Zhili, the former education minister, was one of Jiang's
colleagues in Shanghai.)
4) Governments at all
levels poured huge amounts of national debt into
infrastructure construction and erected many "image"
projects, so as to inflate GDP (gross domestic product)
growth figures.
5) The notion of city operations led
to a war of land enclosure. The big winners were corrupt
officials and profit-hungry businessmen, and the
victims, of course, were innocent people whose houses
were dismantled and who never received due compensation.
The above all betrayed Beijing's primary
intention. If local governments were to blame, the
central government should not be exempted.
After
the 16th Party Congress, the fourth generation of
leadership has not publicly evaluated previous policies,
nor criticized anyone or anything. Instead, it began to
take actions to redress some wrongdoings in actual
operations.
For instance, it will enforce
rigidly the regulation of maximum tuitions among rural
areas in 2004 so as to lighten farmers' burdens and
decrease the rural dropout rate. In a bid to prohibit
property developers from nibbling into farmland on city
outskirts and maintain the planting areas, the
government will implement strict farmland-protection
regulations and restructure development zones and
industrial parks.
Moreover, the Law on
Administrative Permission will be put forward, stressing
the combination of power and responsibility. Even the
government, during its administration, should not
disrespect or breach legal procedures. "Empower, benefit
and care for the people" is the new administration's
principle on domestic affairs, the new concept stressing
people-oriented, comprehensive, cooperative and
sustainable development.
Economic development is
a major focus of the new leadership. The 16th Party
Congress's communique and resolutions on improving the
market economy have unveiled the new administration's
economic views, prominent among which are the Five
Adherences and Five Coordinations. (The Five Adherences
are adhering to the socialistic market-oriented economic
reform; to respect for people's originality; to the
right resolutions; to interaction among reform,
development and stability; and to the view of
comprehensive, harmonious and sustainable development
stressing humanism. The Five Coordinations are to
coordinate urban and rural development; inter-regional
advance; social-economic progress; harmonious advance
between human and environment, domestic development; and
opening up.)
To put all the above into feasible
and detailed policies and measures will require wisdom
and courage. Otherwise, even with doubled effort, the
Hu-Wen government can hardly achieve those ends in their
term. Take rural-urban economic polarity as an example.
In order to entitle the citizen to freedom of domestic
migration, numerous decades-long roadblocks have to be
demolished, including the Household Registration System
enacted in 1958. Afterward, all Chinese will
consequently be able to exercise their legal rights for
elections of local governments for the first time in
history. But this significant reform will inevitably
touch authorities throughout the nation, and expectedly
encounter various impediments.
Thanks to the
current steady increase in GDP, the government can pay
more attention to the quality, efficiency and balance of
sustainable economic growth.
Hu has advocated
tough action against corrupt government officials, and
the dismissal of high-ranking people such as Cheng
Weigao (former party chief of CCP Hebei committee), Liu
Fangren (Cheng's counterpart in Guizhou) and Tian
Fengshan (former minister of lands and resources) may
have been intended to deter others. So far, however, the
Hu administration has not made any fundamental headway
in the anti-corruption and anti-maladministration
crusade.
The task of streamlining the
administrative structure is not optimistic either.
Premier Wen at his inaugural press conference displayed
sincere anxiety when recalling the number of redundant
bureaucracies in a small county with only 200,000
inhabitants. Of course, it is a simple matter to ax
unneeded bureaucrats in that specific county. But to
expand such a process throughout China would surely
require an effort thousands of times what it took to
send Shenzhou V into outer space.
In respect to
regime reform, the 16th CCP Congress has not mooted any
new and explicit proposal since its installment almost a
year ago. Presumably, substantial measures will not be
seen in a short time. The young administration,
basically speaking, is technical and pragmatic but with
restricted power and a flinching ax. Its people are apt
to be committed civil servants rather than
revolutionists. External speculation, expectation and
analysis may be nothing more than daydreaming.
Although the 16th Congress endeavors to approach
the track of the 13th, democracy in China still has a
long and bumpy way to go, having missed the turning
point in 1989, when students paraded to Tiananmen Square
to protest against official corruption and CCP
dictatorship.
Next:
Clear vision
(Copyright 2003
Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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