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2 SUN WUKONG Power in
China: Through a glass, darkly By Wu Zhong, China Editor
Electronic Industry in early 1980s.
Li Changchun and Luo Gan are also said to be very
close to Jiang.
So if Hu wants to
consolidate his position as the supreme leader, he
will have to appoint more of his own proteges to
the Politburo and its Standing Committee. Thus it
is said that Jia Qinglin will also have to step
down in the autumn. In fact, a rumor that emerged
shortly after Chen Liangyu was purged last September
had it
that Jia could soon fall victim to Hu's renewed
push against corruption.
Jia was deputy
party chief and then party chief of Fujian
province in 1985-96, including the time of the
notorious Yuanhua smuggling case. Former Yuanhua
boss Lai Changxing, the smuggling kingpin now
seeking asylum in Canada, openly admitted he knew
Jia's wife well. Whether Jia was personally
involved in the case remains unclear, but at least
he could be held accountable as the then No 1
leader of Fujian.
So it is almost certain
that several of the nine Politburo Standing
Committee members will step down at the 17th
Congress. Their places will be filled by new
faces, assuming there will still be nine members
in this power core. To ensure he always has a
majority, Hu of course could reduce the number of
members to five or seven. Or he could increase the
number to take in more of his proteges.
Similarly, several others in the 23-member
Politburo will certainly have to step down because
of age.
It can be assumed that not
everyone is willing to leave such a powerful post.
On the other hand, various factions within the
party will try their best to have their own people
sit at the power center. But for the unity of the
party, such factional activities are strictly
banned from going public. As a result, rumors are
rampant. Such rumors are deliberately fostered
either to express a wish or a hope, or to show
dissatisfaction or even anger. Often rumors are
spread to test reaction of other factions and the
general public.
After the purge of Chen,
it was widely speculated that Hu's anti-graft
campaign to purify the party would soon target
Huang Ju, Chen's predecessor in Shanghai, and Jia
Qingling for his suspected role in the Yuanhua
smuggling case. Then another rumor said Jiang had
summoned Hu to tell him that if Jia and Huang were
to go, then Wen Jiabao had to resign as well.
Shortly afterward, another rumor had it
that Wu Bangguo had expressed a desire to retire
and had suggested that all others older than
himself should also voluntarily step down, paving
the way for Hu to organize his own team. If Wu's
proposal were to be accepted, only Hu and Wen
would be eligible to stay for another five-year
term.
Then lately, it was reported that Hu
was being urged to cede the office of the
presidency to Zeng Qinghong for a better division
of power.
Political analysts in Beijing
tend to dismiss such rumors as premature as there
are still months to go before the Congress
convenes. In Chinese politics a single day can
make a big difference. However, the spread of such
rumors reflects the existence of factions within
the party. And analysts point out that as long as
factional activities remain underground, there is
no way to stop the spread of political rumors.
The Communist Party bans factional
activities for fear that party unity would be
jeopardized. Mao once said, "There are [other]
parties outside a party, and there are factions
within a party. It would be very strange that
there are no other parties outside a party and
there are no factions within a party." Now there
is a view that Mao launched the Cultural
Revolution (1966-76) with the aim of making public
the factional strife within the party, leading the
country into a decade of turmoil and chaos.
Following this line of thinking, some
political scientists in China and overseas have
proposed that the Communist Party legitimize
factions as a major step toward democratization.
In this way, the party's rule could be preserved
under a "one party, multi-factions" system similar
to that in postwar Japan before the 1990s.
As good as this idea may be, such a
dramatic political change is unlikely to take
place in the near future. One must not forget
about the role of the Chinese military in domestic
politics. According to the constitution and
long-established practice, the People's Liberation
Army (PLA) is firmly under the command of the
party.
In such circumstances, party
leaders would fear that legitimate factional
activities within the party will disorient the
military on the proper course to take. Worse,
factional activities may find their way into the
military, as most of the officers and many of the
soldiers are also party members, leading to a
split in the armed forces. The country could fall
apart and run into great chaos, and, without a
strongman like Mao, the situation would run out of
control.
From this point of view, any true
democratization within the Communist Party or in
the country can hardly make big progress unless
the PLA is turned into a professional army,
neutral in domestic politics. But it seems this is
unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future.
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