HONG KONG - It was a
quiet political earthquake, though political aftershocks
are still being felt and will continue to rumble through
and quite possibly transform the political landscape.
China's "phantom regent" and very real military
commander-in-chief Jiang Zemin finally stepped down last
month, yielding to moderate reformer Hu Jintao (now
president, party chief and military commander) and his
ally Premier Wen Jiabao. Jiang, however, had been the
patron and protector of the powerful Shanghai Clique,
with its vested interests and opposition to vital
economic reforms, such as the need to cool the galloping
Chinese economy and curb unnecessary investments.
And what of Jiang's proteges, some of them quite
influential and stubborn about implementing Hu's
reforms, the senior people who got their start years ago
on the east coast near Shanghai and Shandong province?
Many of them now seem to be turning their backs on their
old boss, ever survivors and weather vanes, adapting to
the new political scene.
This is evident from
the list of delegates who accompanied Premier Wen on his
recent visit to Russia and Kyrgyzstan. It included at
least 11 ministerial officials, such as Vice Premier Wu
Yi, Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing, Minister of
Communications Zhang Chunxian - a staunch ally of Jiang
- and Minister of Commerce Bo Xilai. In sharp contrast,
there were only three such officials accompanying Wen on
his visit in May to the European Union, one of China's
most important economic and political partners.
China experts explain that in May, most of the
economic cooling-off policies initiated by Wen were met
with strong opposition from some central and local
officials, who deemed these measures a big threat to
their vested interests in encouraging investment and
headlong growth. Both President Hu and Premier Wen then
admitted that the enforcement of the economic
cooling-off efforts were hindered in certain areas
despite the orders from the central government.
Now, however, the Hu-Wen camp has apparently
gained the upper hand. Winner take all. For those
previously under the patronage of Jiang, to politely and
wordlessly surrender and submit to Hu, to stop impeding
economic restructuring is the wisest course of action.
Many Jiang allies ignored damning audit
report Some of the ground-shifting by some in the
Jiang faction was even more thinly veiled. In June, Li
Jinhua, auditor general of the Chinese National Audit
Office (CNAO), released the 2003 audit report stating
the misdeeds of some central governmental organs and
state-run enterprises. Most of the accused had long been
regarded as the domains of Jiang Zemin, such as the
education, banking and communication sectors, and many
of those implicated simply remained silent, declining to
rebut or refute the charges, while some of Jiang's
proteges refuted the allegations point by point.
All of a sudden, those who had been cited and
censured in the report - those who had been silent or
defiant - began to pledge support for the national
auditing work; their awakening came in late September
after Jiang finally bowed out. According to reports by
state-run media on September 23, Communications Minister
Zhang Chunxian - one of Jiang's big supporters - wrote
the top auditor a thank-you letter, pledging support to
the national audit office's supervision over his
ministry and vowing to improve internal management and
strictly comply with the rules. Zhang's grandiloquence
on the virtues of the audit was soon followed by other
formerly pro-Jiang departments and enterprises,
including the Education Ministry, the State Grid
Corporation of China and the Industrial and Commercial
Bank of China, one of the major national banks.
But just a couple of months ago, the crusading
auditor general was not sitting pretty; neither was he
comfortable nor confident. On July 19, a joint opinion
poll conducted by the official Xinhua News Agency and
China Youth Daily, a popular journal among young
Chinese, showed that some 76% of those surveyed
expressed considerable concern over the safety of top
auditor Li Jinhua, saying they feared he might suffer
retaliation from those whose work and ethics he had
criticized.
Obviously, there are good reasons
for worry. On June 23 the CNAO headed by Li had unfurled
its sweeping, specific and devastating report of a
problematic and ethically challenged bureaucracy. Five
days later, Premier Wen voiced support for the work of
CNAO, while all the departments that were severely
criticized in the report reserved their judgments until
very recently. They included the ministries of finance,
civil affairs and agriculture, as well as the
state-owned assets supervision and administration
commission and the national development and reform
commission, to name but a few, according to the official
Xinhua-sponsored Oriental Outlook journal.
"Their reluctance to make their stance clear is
understandable to some extent. As a rule, it is riskier
to be the first speaker ... Choosing to remain silent
may protect their departments, but it takes a heavy toll
on the image of the whole government," according to Dr
Xin Ming of the Chinese Communist Party Central School,
where the ruling party's most promising future leaders
are further educated and groomed.
The big
question: Which way does the wind blow?
Nowadays, the fence-sitting bureaucracy prevails
in the country's political arena: always make sure which
way the wind is blowing before you follow. For instance,
the usually quiet and noncommittal Vice Premier Huang Ju
inspected the Construction Bank of China Stockholding
Inc, established on September 21 shortly after the party
meeting when Jiang stepped down; his visit highlighted
the importance of reforming state-owned commercial banks
into stock companies.
The reform of state-owned
banks is a major component of the macro-control
portfolio doggedly pushed by Premier Wen, a steadfast
ally of reformist President Hu. Yet, the macro-control
policies had encountered huge resistance from
conservative central and local authorities led by the
Shanghai Clique of Jiang Zemin, until recently China's
military strongman and the backroom regent. Now that
resistance is dissipating, to say the least.
A
ringmaster of the Shanghai Clique, master of the
political weather vane, Vice Premier Huang, has suddenly
made a U-turn after Jiang Zemin relinquished the post of
chairman of the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) Central
Military Committee, and now attempts to seek favor with
the premier in order to maintain his position through
the 17th CCP National Congress, a major political
conference to convene in 2007.
Even governments
at local levels sensed which way the political winds
were blowing and turned their political antenna the same
way. Three days after the fourth plenum of the 16th CCP
National Congress closed on September 19, the CCP
Committee of South China's Guangdong province issued a
circular calling for the administration to be "more
scientific, democratic and systematic" (read: pro-Hu
Jintao and his reformist principles), as spelled out at
last month's momentous convention. By contrast, a
late-August conference of the CCP Guangdong Committee
concluded that the province was under threat of
"westernization and splittism" (read: anti-Hu and Wen
code words.) Westernization and splittism, virtually
anathema to good communists, were interpreted by
analysts as assailing the intra-party democratic reform
spearheaded by Hu and Wen.
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