SINOGRAPH Who is hitting at Hu? By Francesco Sisci
BEIJING - About two weeks after the Urumqi riots, the largest such unrest in
China in decades, which killed almost 200 people according to official data,
many things remain unclear and many facts appear too coincidental.
The most striking element was that the beginning of the riots coincided with
the arrival of President Hu Jintao in Rome, Italy, for a state visit and the
Group of Eight summit. Hu took off from Beijing on July 5 at am and reached
Rome at 7:10pm (Beijing time, 1:10pm Rome time). At around 6pm, a crowd was
assembling in Urumqi's People's Square, and at around 8pm, the violent protests
started. The armed police, the wujing, intervened
at around 10pm and the riot went on through the night.
Certainly, the fact that China's top leader was in Italy, engrossed in meetings
with his hosts, made reactions and decisions in Urumqi more complicated. It was
during a balmy Italian afternoon and a tense Xinjiang night that the casualty
count and destruction rose.
It might have been just an accident - bad luck for Hu and China. However,
accidents are usually not taken into consideration in political analysis, while
people all over the world tend to ponder the possibility of plots and
conspiracies.
The possibility of a plot surrounding the Urumqi riots does not excuse the
mistakes and possible horrors of the Beijing government against the Uyghurs.
But if there was indeed a plot in Urumqi, then somebody did not notice it or
covered it up until it exploded on July 5.
Before going any further on this path we should take some steps back and look
at the beginning of the riots.
On June 16, 23-year-old Huang Jiangyuan, angry at being turned down for a job
at the Xuri Toy Factory in Guangdong province, posted an article on the
Internet forum www.sg169.com, which said: "Six Xinjiang boys raped two innocent
girls at the Xuri Toy Factory."
Ten days later, a group of Han people, the ethnic majority in China, attacked
the Uyghur workers at the toy factory, killing two Uyghurs and injuring over
100.
On June 28, Huang Zhangsha, 19, wrote on his online chat space, "Eight Xinjiang
people were beaten to death in the factory fight."
It took 10 days for Huang Jiangyuan's fake story to be believed, which led to
the Han expedition against the Uyghurs. It took also 10 days for the real
killing of Uyghurs to start the Urumqi fire.
Why was the reaction so slow in the two cases? Both instances indicate
preparation and organization. In fact, in the toy factory, it was not a sudden
rush of anger by a few disgruntled people, but some kind of large punitive
expedition that left over 100 injured. It took time to convince a large number
of people to join in and organize them for the assault.
Most likely, the same thing took place on a much larger scale in Urumqi. A
sudden, spontaneous, angry reaction could have taken place on June 27, the day
after the attack in the toy factory, when the first families learned of the
fate of their loved ones in Guangdong. Or it could have been on June 29 or 30,
after the story came out on the Internet - but why did it take a whole week for
people to take to the streets? Did the July 3 Friday prayer at the mosques play
a role in this? But then, why wait another day, until Sunday?
It is possible that somebody might have considered the trip to Italy. Hu would
be away for a few days, and the government would be in disarray until his
return. Then, either Hu would have to cut his trip short and lose face abroad,
or carry on with the meetings abroad, giving the riot organizers more time
because of the Chinese leadership’s slowness to respond.
In fact, in cases of serious incidents, the Communist Party politburo, China's
top decision-making body, must find a consensus; that is, it must make
unanimous decisions, and nobody has an excuse for going back on their
commitment. In April 2001, then-president Jiang Zemin cut short his trip to
Latin America because of the EP3 incident (a US surveillance plane landed on
Hainan Island after a crash with a Chinese fighter) and claimed he had not been
well informed while abroad.
Actually, the necessity for the presence of the party chief goes back to April
1989. Then, while party chief Zhao Ziyang traveled to North Korea, the
politburo gathered to agree on a People's Daily editorial speaking out against
the students' movement, which was then in full swing. Zhao in absentia agreed
to it.
However, after the publication, the editorial failed to intimidate the students
into going back to school, and instead further galvanized them and stirred more
trouble. When Zhao came back to Beijing, he claimed he had been misinformed. He
went back on his previous commitment and said he favored a retraction of the
editorial - something that put many politburo members on the spot. This episode
broke the party unity and contributed to the crackdown on the Tiananmen
movement on June 4 1989.
To avoid allegations of misinformation and retractions that could lead to
divisions and power struggles in the top leadership, important decisions need
to be made with everyone present. Therefore, Hu had to fly back to Beijing when
the severity of the riot became clear and tough decisions had to be made about
how to handle the situation.
It is a very cumbersome, murky decision-making process. Although it avoids the
concentration of power in the hands of one man (as was the case with Mao
Zedong), it still is less efficient than an open, democratic decision-making
process in which no consensus is necessary. With a democratic system, the
government, acting based on the popular mandate of an open election, can, when
facing an open opposition, promptly decide. Actually, the open opposition in
return for its legal status in the state renounces violent actions against the
government.
Before returning to this subject, it is important to ask several questions:
Didn't anybody see the riot coming? Were the preparations undetected? By June
28, when the story of the killing of Uyghurs in Guangdong had spread on the
web, it was clear that something serious had happened and that there had been a
racially motivated punitive expedition. Didn't anybody think of the
consequences in restive and volatile Xinjiang? Most importantly, since the riot
was most likely prepared and organized, didn't anybody see its preparations
before Hu's trip? Unless we believe the riot and demonstration were fully
spontaneous, we have to consider that in Beijing there was some serious
misjudgment of the situation or even some grave guilt in covering up the
preparations.
The longest-surviving Italian politician, seven-time prime minister Giulio
Andreotti, was a main player in over 60 years of political plots and
conspiracies, drawing from the long tradition of backstabbing that stretches
back to the Roman Empire and moved through all the papal feuds. Now 90, he is
still fond of saying that in politics, "Thinking badly is a sin, but one is
almost always right."
Italian politics can't have much less mischief than Chinese politics; so
therefore, according to Andreotti's ideas, one ought to think badly. In this
case, the bad and sinful thought is that somebody saw the riot coming and
didn't signal it. Why? Perhaps to undermine Hu. Why? Perhaps simply because
there was an opportunity, or the grand maneuvers of the 2012 Party Congress are
on their way. The Party Congress will decide the promotion of a whole new group
of officials, and party chief Hu will have the largest say in the selection
process.
Hu has an astonishing track record. He basically solved the Taiwan issue,
something that neither Mao nor Deng did; he braved the nastiest economic crisis
in 80 years, which is breaking the backs of all the Western economies; improved
ties with the US (of paramount strategic importance); successfully hosted the
Chinese Olympics; and improved popular support for the government. China's
gross domestic product is about to overtake that of Japan's, signaling some
form of crucial vindication for the Japanese invasion in the 1930s. Even
constant Western rebukes on human rights issues are losing steam. This record
gives him great force.
But dissenting voices in the party could point at what can be construed as the
flip side: How is the situation in Tibet? How is it in Xinjiang? Is it worse
than before? Did Hu lose or destabilize Tibet and Xinjiang while he was
distracted pursuing the dream of gaining Taiwan and America? Is Hu losing what
he has and controls - Tibet and Xinjiang - chasing something that he still
doesn't have and might never have - Taiwan and America? Of course for those
voices, the more flip sides the better. Then for Hu it is crucial to keep a lid
on Tibet and Xinjiang, by all means.
Actually, we have no clue what debates are going on in Zhongnanhai in Beijing,
the Chinese White House. And of course this is all flimsy and speculative. It
seems fiction - and perhaps it is. But perhaps we are right.
Besides the possible plotting and conspiracies, the Urumqi riot and its
consequences prove that structural reforms to the cumbersome decision-making
process are necessary. The consensus process is necessary now because the
decision-making process is secret, and the party has to avoid even more
secretive plotting among party officials.
There is "official" secrecy, sanctioned and regulated by the party, and
unofficial secrecy, officially forbidden by the party. There are many
restrictions imposed on Chinese senior politicians to limit their movements and
meetings to avoid possible plotting and make sure that all decisions are only
discussed at official meetings. The official secrecy is that the political
meetings are kept away from the public eye. A second type of secrecy is the
necessary maneuvering of the individual officials to advance their careers and
political agendas - dinners with friends, meetings with relatives and
secretaries, etcetera.
However, there is a very fine line here. What divides a normal dinner with chat
about current events from a political dinner? In countries with freedom of
association and an open political life, the lack of official secrecy makes very
secretive plotting mostly useless - and when there is a secret plotting, one
can assume there are evil intentions. "Political plotting" can be carried out
in a normal fashion (secretive, but without being conspiratorial). In a highly
regulated and officially secretive political environment, as in China, the
"necessary" plotting and maneuvering has to go further underground and be even
more conspiratorial than in more open societies.
Of course, unofficial secrecy is somewhat natural and any political system has
its fair share of backdoor horse-trading. In part, it is an imperial tradition:
plots accompanied every emperor in China. However, the Urumqi riot proves that
the issue must be addressed, and the solution can't be greater over-regulation,
which would spin into further backdoor trading. Instead, political debate needs
to be brought more into the open, and individual top politicians need to be
given more freedom, not less freedom. This can lead to a clearer picture of the
behavior of the single politician. In other words, larger democratization is
necessary to avoid and forestall the danger of new, more dangerous plotting.
Furthermore, urban protests - whether racial or not, and whether organized by
pro-independence movements, disgruntled workers, or intellectuals - are bound
to increase with urbanization. Local or national downturns leave thousands of
angry people in large cities with little to do but rebel. If this occurs in
small villages, the social and political impact is minimized, but in large
cities, it is maximized by the size of the city.
Downturns, occasions for discontent about any number of issues, are unavoidable
and actually increase with the size of the city. Then, we should be amazed that
there are so few riots in Chinese cities. Yet, no matter how few, there will be
still too many for a country whose political and economic growth is changing
the global balance of power, and that is thus bound to attract growing
attention, concern and envy from all quarters. In fact, with growing
urbanization, democratization is the way for the population to let off steam
and keep the overall social fabric stable.
The Chinese leadership already knows that. However, the pace of democratization
could be dictated by that of the explosion of urban protests - unless the party
can anticipate and preempt those protests. The problem is that the pace of
urbanization and social protest is not in line with the party timetable for
democratization. The party may wish for a slower pace, but the protests may
indicate that there is little time to lull about.
With or without an Urumqi plot from within the party or outside of it, the
issue of urbanization and democratization might be the biggest domestic
political issue the party will have to discuss at the next congress.
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