Bo
exit shows China's true
colors By Benjamin A Shobert
Bo Xilai's exit as the Secretary of the
Chongqing Municipal Committee of the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP) has left everyone with an
interest in China's ongoing development scratching
their heads over what to make of his sudden and
forced departure. Confusion inside and outside of
China has continued up until this Wednesday as
various China-watchers eager to fit Bo's departure
into their pre-existing views on China have
offered their own interpretations.
The
basic facts are not in dispute: during the March
15th National People's Congress, Bo's removal was
made public. As a personality, few dispute that Bo
was one of China's most visible
and well-known politicians.
Bo's popularity owed much to the success of what
has been called the Chongqing Model. This pushed
for stronger state-involvement in the economy
while also making social services and broader
questions about social inequalities a more central
part of the local government's initiatives. Bo
also touched on a sensitive part of China's
political legacy when he elevated the spirit of
Mao by encouraging and leading the public singing
of so-called "Red Songs". Most recently, he had
been put in a compromised position by the
defection and subsequent arrest of his top
lieutenant Wang Lijun after Wang's attempt to take
refuge in the US Consulate in Chengdu, capital of
Sichuan province bordering with Chongqing.
Taken together, three interpretations
about what to make of Bo's departure appear to be
most common.
The first is that he was too
charismatic a political figure who raised the
specter of a personality cult that China's
leadership was in no position to deal with.
Threatened by Bo, they took him out of the
national limelight. Second, that Bo's sacking was
made necessary because the CCP power center wants
to send a message both inside and outside the
country about its view of the Chongqing Model.
Third and last, that Bo's purge of Wang Lijun was
an attempt to stifle a corruption case that would
have implicated Bo's family. Caught in the middle
of this scheme, Bo was sacked. Most long-time
China watchers are quick to point out that the
real truth may well be a combination of each of
these factors, as well as matters not yet made
public.
What is perhaps equally
interesting is to reflect on what American and
European interest in Bo Xilai's ousting has to say
about the questions, concerns and insecurities the
West harbors towards China. Amidst an American
election pregnant with personality and bombastic
rhetoric, the more hidden nature of China's
politics leaves many Westerners confused on what
to make of this situation, yet eager to understand
more.
In this respect, much of what is
driving American interpretations on the Bo Xilai
story is an attempt to better understand which
direction China's political and economic reform
are going. Largely due to America's current
economic insecurity, US-Sino relations have
entered a rocky state not seen since the Bill
Clinton Administration renewed China's Most
Favored Nation (MFN) status. Hidden behind almost
every current debate over China's role in the
American economy is a deeper question related to
uncertainty by American policy-makers about where
China's political and economic reforms are going
to take it.
Consequently, Beijing's
decision in the midst of its stimulus plan to
codify long-standing domestic sourcing practices
through its Indigenous Innovation policy and to
make an effort to apply these specifically to
high-profile industries in the clean-tech and life
sciences sectors left many in Washington certain
that China's economic reforms had come to a halt.
Yet, when Beijing presented its most
recent Foreign Direct Investment catalog at the
end of 2011, the overwhelming direction signaled
by those industries the central government would
now allow FDI into was one of openness, not
closure. The net of these confusing signals has
meant that many in Washington are quick to leap on
events like Bo's exit as proof that one or another
form of economic reform is the genuine intention
of China's leadership. Because Washington has
linked economic reforms with China becoming more
of a democratic form of government, the trajectory
of Beijing's economic reforms are deemed essential
to understand.
The politics behind Bo
Xilai's departure may be entirely personality
driven; however, within the United States, many
are also eager to believe that his being sacked
points towards China's signal to those outside its
borders that the country is going away from the
Chongqing model towards what has been commonly
referred to as to Guangdong Model. The latter
emphasizes even more expansive economic and - in
what many believe is much more important - much
greater political reforms through greater
transparency and openness in government. Patrick
Chovanec, a highly thought of Western
China-watcher who teaches at Tsinghua University,
wrote in the aftermath of Bo's departure, "The
temptation is to say it's a victory for the
liberal reform camp (as we've frequently heard
say) Bo's end spells the end of the Chongqing
Model. I'm not sure."
If outsiders should
not interpret Bo Xilai's exit as a sign of which
direction the country's economic and political
reforms are going to take, then perhaps it is
worth absorbing what this all has to say about the
broader discontinuities within CCP. It is common -
in particular among those on Capital Hill - to
hear the CCP referred to as if it is one
monolithic entity. The collectivism found at the
core of socialist and communist political
philosophy is projected onto China's ruling body,
a simple extrapolation that overlooks the many
fractures and dissenting voices that do exist
within the party itself. Simply because US-Sino
relations are at such a crucial and sensitive
juncture, it is worth taking away from Bo's forced
departure the realization that many voices within
the party are pushing for different policies than
those Beijing ultimately settles on. Smart
American policy-makers will want to manage Western
engagement with China so voices of dissent and
more reform-minded politicians are not easily
ostracized from the country's political process.
Perhaps more than anything else,
interpreting what the Bo Xilai incident has to say
about the insecurity of China's ruling party is
critical for Western policy-makers and politicians
to understand. Amid America's own collective
insecurities over China's rise, it has become
common to view the country's leadership as being
unable to do wrong. Whatever issues Western minds
may have with Beijing's policies, the results they
have been able to create for their country are
difficult to argue with; however, beneath the
surface lies a much deeper set of discontinuities,
problems and ticking time bombs that China must
properly manage.
What China's leadership
has been able to accomplish over the past 20 years
is amazing. If someone were to take the economic
results Beijing has delivered and transplant these
outcomes into Western Africa, the developed West
would hail the results as transformative in the
best of ways. Yet, because China today now appears
to present a strategic, ideological and political
challenge to long-held and deeply cherished
Western ideas, the results it has achieved are
viewed with more cynicism and suspicion than is
merited.
Even with these amazing
achievements firmly in hand, Beijing knows that
much of the country remains stuck in agrarian
poverty, that access to basic social services like
healthcare remains incomplete and of widely
varying quality, and that complaints over
government policies is an always percolating
problem that could easily derail the progress
Beijing has achieved thus far. These realizations,
coupled to broader uncertainty over whether China
can accumulate enough social and material capital
to make it through its upcoming aging demographic
storm, have left the country's leaders deeply
committed to stability and additional economic
growth.
With this in mind, outsiders eager
to interpret Bo's exit should recognize that his
departure casts additional light on how, even in
the midst of Beijing's amazing economic growth,
the country's leaders remain deeply aware of how
easily one of the many other parts of the country
could spiral out of control. Yes, Bo chose to
touch one of those live wires when he turned the
Chinese people's attention to collectivist anthems
that harkened back to Mao and raised the specter
of China's always-present populist past. Yes, by
doing so he intentionally elevated his public and
political personality in ways that undermine the
country's political norms. Yes, his particular
brand of reform may not be the direction that the
central government wants to take.
But,
perhaps more than anything else, what Western eyes
need to see when they look at Bo's forced
departure is the deep and unresolved insecurities,
even after decades of successful economic results,
that colors the fabric of the country's politics.
This realization should be front and center when
American policy makers and politicians craft
strategies for engaging China. She is a mighty and
powerful nation, but China is also nowhere near
ready to play the role as leader or villain that
too many in Washington seem to want to force upon
the country and its leaders.
America's
more fractious and divisive political culture may
make compromise and progress more difficult to
attain than in China, but it also makes
differences easier to spot and dissent easier to
incorporate. In this way, China's model remains
fundamentally more fragile and insecure than
America's, a realization Bo Xilai's exit again
reminds us.
Benjamin A Shobert
is the Managing Director of Rubicon Strategy
Group, a consulting firm specialized in strategy
analysis for companies looking to enter emerging
economies. He is the author of the upcoming
book Blame China and can be followed atwww.CrossTheRubiconBlog.com.
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