Start
of the Hu era as Jiang steps down By Li YongYan
BEIJING - The
rumors that have been washing in and around Beijing have
proved to be true, ending the season's biggest political
suspense - it was almost an anti-climax. It is
official now: at the close of the Fourth Plenary Session
of the Chinese Communist Party's 16th Congress on
Sunday, Jiang Zeming, 78, stepped down as the chairman
of the party's powerful Central Military Commission. CCP
chairman and national President Hu Jintao, 61, has
formally taken over and become the commander-in-chief of
the People's Liberation Army in addition to his other
jobs.
The announcement reads like a typical
Chinese obituary: only nice things are said about the
departing Jiang. But nobody pays the slightest attention
to the glowing words that fail to conceal the fact that
an era has ended. While tons of print will start pouring
out about Jiang, his life and his political legacy, it
is time to begin looking into the new era, now that Hu
is finally the most powerful man in China.
Most
analyses and comments will focus on what he will bring
to the most populous country in the world. For example,
will he carry on with Jiang's conservative policies that
holds communist one-party rule as the sacred creed and
maintain "stability at all costs"? Will Hu yield to
growing pressure from the increasingly wide wealth and
justice gap inside China, and introduce some political
reforms that curb his party's absolute power and permit
more freedom to the people? Or will he be capable of
some bigger surprises?
It is unlikely that Hu
will be Jiang Act II, because he is not like Jiang.
While Jiang is pompous and conceited, Hu has been
modest, self-effacing, even awkward at times, and
appears to be wise enough to know that he is not the
sun. In style, Hu refuses to consecrate himself as
holier than the rest of the human race. Furthermore, it
doesn't seem to bother him when "collective leadership"
is stressed instead of his logical, and numerical,
status as fourth-generation top leader. Even Jiang's
resignation makes a pointed reference to Hu's position:
while Jiang was the "core" of the third-generation
leadership, the party congress only called on the CCP to
"close ranks around the new leadership with Hu as the
general secretary".
Communist semantics
notwithstanding, the real issue is not what Hu will do
or not do, but whether he will undo something
really big: his own Communist Party.
It is a
daunting job, but it is doable - and something like it
has been achieved before.
Nazism and Soviet
communism were both powerful at one time, yet they ended
up at the dustbin of history. But they lost out in
different ways.
Nazism was defeated by outside
military forces, whereas Soviet-bloc communism devoured
itself. Both the former Soviet Union and the Eastern
European bloc got rid of communism for good when the
ruling Communist parties in the respective countries
stepped down without foreign intervention or popular
uprising. In other words, communism dies when it has
grown so powerful that its only enemy is itself and it
collapses under its own weight. Its organizational
structure guarantees that the only one who can do
anything about it is its paramount leader.
Generally, as battle-hardened founders of the
communist regimes exit the stage, the new leaders falter
because the shoes they must fill are too large. These
younger general secretaries have not participated in the
bloody fight for the power, which is a deficiency that
denies them a sense of proprietary rights to absolute
power. Moreover, they are brought up in an era when
information flow permits exposure to outside opinion -
mostly negative and harshly critical - of their
predecessors. They cannot honestly believe they are on
the right side of history. So as their faith begins to
weaken, their hands shake when it comes to using force
to maintain their rule.
While the founders had
no qualms about killing a few thousand more - they had
done it and seen it done all the time during the
revolution years - their successors are more inhibited
by morality. Despite communist indoctrination on class
struggle between life and death, they have difficulty
cleansing themselves of an inherent respect for life and
justice. They know it is wrong to kill people just
because they disagree with you. Despite the iron-handed
oppression by their predecessors, pressure is mounting
both at home and abroad for abolishing totalitarianism
and returning power to the people.
Amid growing
demands for democracy, the new crop of communist leaders
realizes that their power, awesome and absolute as it
is, has no legitimacy. The ruled have never agreed to
the communism dictating how they should live their
lives. The common people have had more than enough of
human-rights abuse and they are tired of corrupt
officials. As a result, the government has a huge
problem justifying itself. The inevitable question is,
"Why am I here?" Troubled by this self-doubt, they find
it harder, with each passing day, to cope with
differences. What to do when their power is challenged,
decisions questioned and policies criticized? Calling
out the field army on armored personnel carriers as did
Deng Xiaoping in the Tiananmen massacre in 1989 would
probably give them a heart attack first.
With
Jiang out of the way, Hu also is no longer able to pass
the buck - and the blame. He must face the choice:
either establish his authority the hard and usual way,
or risk bringing the sky crashing down on him if the
center can no longer hold. Perversely, rule is most
stable when the ruler is the most savage. That is
because absent election-based legitimacy, authority and
respect grow not out of overwhelming victories over
enemies but from merciless crackdowns on one's own
comrades. Loyalty only comes from fear. Mao Zedong
brought about a series of massive disasters to China but
his power only grew stronger. He bullied everybody into
submission by treating many of his comrades much more
harshly than his enemies on the battlegrounds. For
example, his prisoners of war, including Japanese war
criminals, served considerably shorter sentences than
his former colleagues-turned-political-enemies. Deng,
too, imprisoned Mao's widow until her death to avenge
his own purge by the Gang of Four.
Jiang Zemin
cut his teeth on struggle and instilled fear through
breaking the so-called Beijing Gang and incarcerating
the capital's party secretary Chen Xitong and others. If
Hu wants to assert the authority that his three titles
declare that he has, he will have to follow the examples
before him and make an example of somebody as well -
preferably from Jiang's camp - and start collecting
enemies as Jiang has done.
Of course, there is
another way to avoid going down in history as another
faceless, mediocre, contemptible communist who does
himself and his country no good: doing China a favor and
dismantling the Chinese Communist Party. To overcome
opposition from within his own ranks, he can always call
upon the ever-creative, ever-adaptable Propaganda
Department to come up with such justifications as
glasnost (transparency, openness in Russian): I
am doing all this for the sole purpose of saving the
party from itself.
There are already signs that
Hu is deviating from Jiang's road: he isn't harping
incessantly about Jiang's partyspeak; he is seen as the
force behind the call for "democracy within the party".
Hu advocates thrift in government projects; he avoids
spending the summer at the Beidaihe beach resort; he
brings his own men into the Central Military Commission
to strengthen his control over in the military. And
already there are newspaper commentaries critical of the
past leadership's "lack of care for the people" - a
reference to Jiang - and praising the "new leadership
with the humane touch".
Of course, it is too
early to hold one's breath for Hu's success. But people
make history by doing great things. Sometimes history is
also made when someone undoes something very big and
very important. Mikhail Gorbachev remained faceless
until he put into effect the policies that eventually
dethroned the Soviet Communist Party. Right now, Hu
Jingtao is standing at a similar, crucial juncture, an
intersection of history; the traffic lights are
flashing, forcing him to give a signal, choose a
direction and move ahead.
Li YongYan
is an observer of Chinese politics, economics and
society.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online
Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
suspense - it was almost an anti-climax. It is
official now: at the close of the Fourth Plenary Session
of the Chinese Communist Party's 16th Congress on
Sunday, Jiang Zeming, 78, stepped down as the chairman
of the party's powerful Central Military Commission. CCP
chairman and national President Hu Jintao, 61, has
formally taken over and become the commander-in-chief of
the People's Liberation Army in addition to his other
jobs. 
