China: Shoot him and take him
out By Tian Jing and Wang Chu
There is a precious photograph, a snapshot of
the seconds when paramount leader and reformer Deng
Xiaoping shook hands with Hu Jintao during the 14th
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) National Congress on an
unspecified day in October 1992. But it was not until
Deng's birth centennial celebration a couple of weeks
ago that the picture finally made its premier, after 12
years of secrecy. The problem: the photo was doctored to
highlight the two men - and virtually remove Hu's rival
Jiang Zemin from the background.
The idea
apparently was that Deng's luster would rub off on
now-President Hu and aid him in the struggle in which
some say he is the underdog. It also demonstrates the
length to which beleaguered reformist Hu and his
supporters will go in an effort to tip the balance in
the power struggle with China's former president, now
its powerful military chief, Jiang Zemin. At the CCP
plenum around September 15, the battle may well be
decided, and some observers say Jiang already is the
winner.
Yet the photo - clearly doctored - still
remains something of an enigma, for it has been made
over again and again, as illustrated in the following
comparison by Asia Times Online.
Careful optics
analysis shows that the photo published on August 19 in
Oriental Outlook, an official journal, should be the
original (see picture 1): then president Deng Xiaoping,
supported by his youngest daughter Deng Rong, came
forward, shaking Hu Jintao warmly by the hand. Behind
them stood some members of the 13th CCP Central
Politburo and its standing committee, among them Jiang
Zemin, and several senior representatives at the 14th
CCP National Congress.
That historic moment
implies that Deng as the supreme leader at the time had
intended to appoint Hu to succeed Jiang Zemin as China's
president. Now locked in a grueling power tussle with
the reform-minded Hu, Jiang - now the powerful
conservative commander-in-chief and a master of backroom
politics, was only part of the background for Hu's
sparkling emergence in this genuine photograph.
However, the original has gained much less
coverage than the modified version released by the
official mouthpiece, Xinhua News Agency, two weeks
earlier (see picture 2), in which the Politburo and the
Communist Party Congress lined up in the background is
replaced by a group of less important figures whose
images are blurred. The unskilled makeover trick can be
spotted without much difficulty, in view of the
asymmetry between the light in the background and that
in the front.
Still, another clipped positive
donated by Hu himself is on display in the grand
exhibition in commemoration of Deng Xiaoping (see
picture 3). But the entire background is completely
erased, perhaps to avoid the trouble of adding
irrelevant background images.
Wen Wei Po, a
daily newspaper based in Hong Kong, described the
cropped and edited version as a duo picture of Deng and
Hu in its report of the exhibition on August 11. In
their rummaging for the picture, Deng's family could not
find this photo, but finally picked it out of Hu's
personal collection, said Deng Nan, the second-born
daughter of Deng Xiaoping.
It can be presumed
that when Hu Jintao was asking for the picture taken
with Deng Xiaoping after the closing of the 14th CCP
National Congress, some authorities ordered the
background removed and the picture was handed over to Hu
in such a hurry that no other background was
substituted. It is ridiculous that Hu, already a member
of the Politburo's Standing Committee at the time, would
not have a genuine photo of his own. Even more so that
Xinhua News Agency and Oriental Outlook have published
two different versions of the same picture - with
different political context and weight.
In
China, photo makeover often has served a particular
political purpose. During the decade-long Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution launched in 1966 by the
country's founding father Mao Zedong, whichever leader
stepped down - or was purged - would be omitted from
propaganda photographs. But today,Jiang has managed to
hold on with his military claws as powerful chairman of
the CCP Central Military Commission, China's
commander-in-chief. Besides, many ex-Politburo or ex-CCP
Congress members now enjoy a secluded life, while still
having a say in political affairs. Then what does it
mean by leaving these heavyweights - in the background
but definitely in the picture in 1992 - out of the
recently published picture? The answer may be worth more
than a thousand words.
Jiang opposes
separation of power On one side of the power
struggle is Hu, also the chairman of the CCP. He has
been pushing hard for more democracy inside the party
and better governance by the ruling party. But the
reform road will be long and winding, for Hu is
confronted with stubborn resistance and pressure from
his predecessor Jiang.
In early 2004, China
Newsweek (Xin Wen Zhou Kan), an influential official
mouthpiece of mainland China, published a commentary
calling for power division or separation within the CCP
so as to rebuild democracy and discipline. Authored by
Wang Guixiu, a well-regarded professor in the CCP's
Central Party School where senior communist leaders are
further educated and groomed, the comment to some extent
spoke for Hu himself, who holds the position of
principal of the Central Party School.
In brief,
the proposal of "power division" calls for the standing
committee of the CCP National Congress to hold
policy-making power, while the much larger congress is
adjourned; it calls for executive committee to be
elected by the whole congress to carry out the policies
set forth and for a supervision committee to be elected
by the whole congress to oversee the executive
committee. In this way, policy-making, execution and
supervision are independent from and also subject to
each other in something like a system of checks and
balances.
However, the comment on political
reform was followed by a conservative backlash. At a
symposium on August 21 to study the theories of the Deng
Xiaoping, Li Changchun of the CCP Central Politburo
issued a warning against the alleged conspiracy of
Westernization and "splittism" by a few hostile Western
countries, meanwhile calling for unswerving faith in the
communist political ideology.
In South China's
Guangdong province, chief CCP officers convened on
August 23 to deliberate how to improve the CCP's
administration, a major concern of the reformist Hu. But
the convention also concluded that the province was
being challenged by a wave of Westernization and
splittism, apparently the sentiments of Jiang.
Four weeks ago, the PLA Daily, a mouthpiece of
the People's Liberation Army, pointed out that the
"Three Represents" theory contrived by Jiang must
dominate political indoctrination in the army to defeat
Westernization and splittism. The report emphasized that
the CCP's absolute command of the troops should be based
on the steadfast belief in the "Three Represents",
meaning the CCP represents the requirement to develop
advanced productive forces, an orientation towards
advanced culture, and the fundamental interests of the
overwhelming majority of the people in China.
Nebulous though they are, these remarks echo the
address of Jiang at the 16th CCP National Congress, and
appear indirectly to criticize Hu's quasi-democratic
separation of party powers as a move of Westernization
or splittism. The August volume of Journalistic Front, a
governmental journal, trumpeted an essay by the
propaganda officer of central China's Hebei province,
claiming that news broadcasting and party propaganda
work must be guided by the "Three Represents" theory so
as to screen and resist erroneous ideology, crushing the
foreign plot to Westernize and split China.
The
warning against Westernization and splittism, a cliche,
was once frequently chanted after the democracy movement
was violently crushed in Tiananmen Square in June 1989.
But the cliche seems to be have been almost forgotten,
only used to attack the independence-minded separatists
in the autonomous Xinjiang and Tibet regions, since Deng
Xiaoping paid an inspection tour around South China in
1992. Therefore, the recent reactivation of the two big
words has touched the nerves and political antennae of
many China observers.
When meeting with military
representatives in late July, Jiang delivered a "truth"
talk that stressed telling the truth and being pragmatic
in learning his "Three Represents" theory. Observers
believe that Jiang was attempting to make himself the
champion of the "Three Represents" theory, now written
into the country's constitution, and to magnify his
influence in the political arena. But this trick may be
outmoded, for Lin Biao, commander-in-chief back in the
1960s, successfully made himself a champion of "Mao
Zedong Thought", but still failed in his subsequent
assassination and usurpation plot.
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problem: the photo was doctored to
highlight the two men - and virtually remove Hu's rival
Jiang Zemin from the background. 
