SUN WUKONG No holiday for China's renegade regions
By Wu Zhong, China Editor
HONG KONG - In an apparent move to safeguard the authority of the central
government, the State Council - China's cabinet - last Wednesday issued an
urgent circular ordering regional governments to strictly carry out its
regulations on public holidays and not to reinstate the "Golden Week" holiday
around Labor Day on May 1.
Although it named no names, the State Council's toughly-worded circular was
primarily targeted at the Guangdong provincial government. Guangdong had
unilaterally announced a day earlier that people in the southern province could
take seven days for the
holiday as their spending would help spur domestic consumption.
With Guangdong, China's richest province, taking the lead, many other provinces
and municipalities, such as Chongqing, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Hunan, Henan and
Xinjiang, also immediately announced they would seek the central government's
permission to restore the holiday. Some even said they would just go ahead with
their plans like Guangdong without seeking Beijing's approval. This was what
prompted the State Council's urgent ban.
At first glance, this may seem a trivial skirmish between the central and
regional governments. But Beijing apparently saw Guangdong's move as an
explicit challenge to its authority. In Beijing's eyes, any acquiescence to
Guangdong's plan could have paved the way for further decentralization of
power, which it views as intolerable.
Centralization is traditionally the core of Chinese political culture. In
history, whenever the centralized power collapsed, the Middle Kingdom would
fall apart into warring states. In this regard, the period of the Three
Kingdoms is but just a brief chapter in Chinese history. This is why, in
history and reality, China's power center will always take every effort
possible to carefully safeguard its authority.
But a market economy in nature favors decentralization. In its drive to turn
its formerly socialist command economy into a market-oriented one, over the
past three decades of reform and opening up Beijing has had to let the regions
have a bigger say on their local economic affairs. As a result, regionalism has
grown. But Beijing will never allow its policies towards national, particularly
political, affairs to be challenged, despite the fact that some of its policies
have been distorted or circumvented by the regional authorities.
For Beijing, Labor Day is a national public holiday, so how many days are to be
taken off is a national affair to be decided on by the center. This why the
State Council said in the circular that all regions must "strictly carry out"
its regulations on public holidays and "not make any changes on their own
initiative".
Feeling the heat from Beijing's reprimand, Guangdong provincial government on
Wednesday evening immediately issued an emergency notice canceling its
arrangements for Golden Week. Quietly, previous notices about the long holiday
were dropped from all the Guangdong government's websites. "No comment," said
Guangdong officials when asked by reporters if they had sought Beijing's
approval before announcing the arrangement.
After the Asian financial crisis in 1997, the State Council under then premier
Zhu Rongji established the Golden Week policy to boost domestic consumption to
offset the negative impact on the country's exports. In 1999, the cabinet
formally decided to introduce three Golden Week holidays: around Lunar New
Year, May 1 Labor Day and October 1 National Day. The first Golden Week holiday
started in 2000 on National Day and proved quite effective at stimulating
tourism and other related industries.
However, after several years, the public began to complain about problems such
as traffic jams, accidents and crowded tourist spots during the week-long
holidays. A few years ago, the calls grew louder and some of the Golden Week
holidays were scrapped and replaced with one-day holidays.
At the end of 2007, the State Council decided to cancel the Golden Week holiday
on May 1, shortening it to a three-day (including a weekend) public holiday. To
compensate for this, three traditional Chinese festivals - the Qingming, Duanwu
and Middle-Autumn (Moon) festivals - were made statuary public holidays. Last
year was the first year spent in China without the May 1 Golden Week.
Another reason for Beijing's prompt action could be concerns that backing down
to Guangdong's plan could be seen as an acknowledgement that its original
decision to cancel the holiday was wrong. It is rare and difficult for China's
power center to admit it has done anything wrong. A quick change of a decision
could give the public the impression that it cannot keep its policy constant,
and this could hurt its public image.
But it is equally rare for Beijing to publicly veto a provincial government's
decision. Therefore, the State Council's urgent circular, a slap on the face of
the Guangdong provincial government, shows how upset it was with such an
explicit challenge to its authority.
Before Guangdong announced its initiative, some central government departments
were already planning to propose to the State Council that the May 1 holiday be
reinstated to boost domestic consumption amid the global financial crisis. Even
on the day that the State Council issued the urgent circular, secretary general
of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) Han Yongzheng said at
a meeting that his commission had already sent a proposal to the State Council
to extend the May 1 holiday and that the cabinet was considering it, according
to China Business News.
The State Council's Development Research Center had made a similar proposal,
saying "long-holiday consumption proves effective in economic stimulus".
All signs suggest that the State Council itself was pondering whether the May 1
Golden Week should be reinstated before Guangdong took its surprise move. Now
with the urgent circular, the lid seems to have been put on the issue.
This has by no means silenced public controversy over the issue. A day after
the State Council issued the circular, a signed commentary on the website of
the Beijing-based Guangming Daily, a national newspaper targeting
intellectuals, advocated the decentralization of decisions on public holidays.
As there are different opinions regarding the restoration of the annual
vacation, it said, the decision-making on this should be decentralized. Why not
just let the regions make their own decisions according to their local
circumstances, the commentary asked.
There is something in the view that Beijing should consider giving regions more
autonomy regarding certain affairs. China is a huge country and the pace of
economic and social development varies in different regions. But in practice,
if Beijing goes too far in decentralization, regional protectionism will run
wild, as a popular saying nowadays has it that "wherever decision-making is too
highly centralized there is no vitality, wherever decision-making is
decentralized there is chaos".
China needs a new structure of government in which regions have greater
autonomy to decide on certain affairs, while the central authority is not
jeopardized. This calls for political reform, and how to implement it will
require great political wisdom.
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