The rare tale of an honest Chinese
cadre By Li YongYan
BEIJING -
Punishable by demotion, dismissal and even imprisonment,
dissent from the Communist Party of China (CCP) is rare.
Rarer still is dissent within the party hierarchy, since
every member stands to gain from going along with such
party lines as, "Corruption is a word that labels all
other political systems than the communist."
To
be sure, an occasional communist official comes along
and criticizes the corruption within, but such a brave
man will more often than not end up silenced by the
party, because what he does amounts to "sullying" the
image of the party. Former Defense Minister Peng DeHuai
complained about the disastrous fake harvest in 1959,
which caused famine and death. He lost both his job and
later his life for his troubles, for speaking out and
telling the truth.
However, the rarest of all is
the Communist Party turning around and endorsing an
official who exposed corruption within its own ranks. On
August 11, Huang JinGao, party secretary, in effect the
chief executive of LianJiang County, Fujian province, on
the southeast coast, published a weblog, or blog, on the
official People's Daily's website in Beijing. Huang
related a corruption case involving a business deal that
went sour. His predecessors had signed a real estate
agreement with a developer. The two sides then got
embroiled in a long-running dispute. Huang claimed that
the developer bribed his party colleagues, who then
repaid the favor with illegal concessions.
Understandably, obstructing other people's path
to wealth and power is dangerous. Just how dangerous is
it in the socialist paradise on earth? Huang said he had
worn a bullet proof vest for the past six years,
understandably afraid of deadly reprisal.
Huang's sensational blog goes to show how dark
the sky is over, well, at least that part of China. If
the top man in the county wears a flak jacket, a
bullet-proof vest, to protect himself against
assassination for blowing the whistle, imagine the
difficulty common folks have in expressing their
grievances. Naturally, the story has drawn a lot of
sympathy from China's netizens and, of course, flak from
the local party apparatus.
In a reply dated
August 15 to the People's Daily, the Communist Party
Committee of Fuzhou, capital city of Fujian province,
delivered its own account - vastly different from
Huang's version, needless to say - of the commercial
dispute. It skirted the ugly issue of whether corruption
had taken place. The official response went on to
discredit Huang as someone who "with a malignantly
bloated self-importance, has committed an extremely
erroneous act". The best part of the counter offensive
is in the last paragraph. Huang's superiors, in keeping
with the time-honored party tradition of taking no
prisoners, depict Huang as an enemy of the state and the
party as denying the offender any chance of retreat or
surrender.
Party call to arms against enemy
Huang "Huang's action is a serious political
event that will result in providing fodder for the
hostile forces in the West, Taiwan and cause social
unrest," the Communist Party of Fuzhou said. The party
committee concludes the barrage with a call to arms:
"All leading officials in Fuzhou City must conform with
the Party Committee and defeat sabotage attempts by
hostile forces in the West, Taiwan, overseas democracy
activists and Falungong members."
There, in one
fell swoop, Huang has been cast into the camp of
"anti-China forces" bent on disrupting the stability of
the commercially bustling and economically expanding
Fujian province. In fact, the most surprising thing
about this public display of a power struggle inside the
tightly disciplined party is that Huang's letter got
published at all, keeping in mind that the Internet
forums in China are closely monitored by police who
never fail to filter out such words and phrases as
"democracy", "freedom" and "dictatorship". That it took
the People's Daily only three short days - hardly enough
time to investigate and check on the Kevlar jacket
aspect - to post the blog on the web is pregnant with
political significance and intrigue. Only one
explanation is probable: some very important person in
the Communist Party Central Committee gave the green
light.
There is no knowing at present who this
very important communist is, or why he let the story
run. In any event, a mini-crisis has been unleashed for
President Hu Jintao, who also holds the more important
post of general secretary of the CCP. On the one hand,
Hu cannot afford to sweep it under the rug and pretend
nothing has happened - not after the provincial party
mandarins responded by calling the incident a "serious
political struggle", a thinly veiled attack on the
People's Daily, the official mouthpiece of the Communist
Party Central Committee.
By taking on the
People's Daily, Fujian province is making a statement
against the central authority, flinging down the
gauntlet, as it were. Failing to suppress local
challenges will be viewed as a weakness. On the other
hand, reformist President Hu will be seen as
anti-corruption if he backs the Fujian province, and he
will lose all the remaining moral support from the
silent majority. Further, it would be an equally
difficult decision to try to remove the entire bunch of
a provincial leadership, assuming Hu possesses the power
to do so. That in itself is a big question mark.
Yet, the Chinese word "crisis" has two parts:
danger and opportunity. The rare incident of a party
official publishing a weblog criticizing his own party
can well be the start of a campaign to get rid of Hu's
opponents ahead of the upcoming Forth Plenary Session of
the Communist Party's 16th Congress scheduled for late
September. Some media outlets already are allowing the
publication of criticism of corruption and malfeasance
of anti-Hu forces - presumably those loyal to former
president Jiang Zemin who currently is the powerful
chairman of the party's Central Military Commission. The
move to publish criticism may well be an effort to
discredit the anti-reformist movement.
This is a
time-tested tradition, too. For those unfamiliar with
contemporary Chinese history, the Cultural Revolution
started in a similar fashion. Mao Zedong was unhappy
with the different views of some of his colleagues, whom
he termed "capitalist roaders". What he did was to find
a "breakthrough point". As it happened, a young student
published a wall poster sharply criticizing the
Communist Party committee of his university. Mao then
cast his vote of support for the student - against a
branch of his own party organization.
Such
tactics are common, even pedestrian, but effective in
testing opponents' strength and exploring their
weaknesses and, at the same time, enabling one to see
which side fellow Politburo members will take. If it
doesn't work, it will be the little guy's neck on the
line. If it succeeds, the invisible VIP behind the
People's Daily will come out and ride on the waves to
crush the clueless enemies.
Li YongYan
is an analyst of Chinese business, economics and
politics.
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