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2 SINOGRAPH Hu's legacy - the good, bad and
ugly By Francesco Sisci
As the 10 years of Chinese President Hu
Jintao's tenure are coming to a close, it is time
to draw initial conclusions about what he did in
this time. Debate over his legacy fiercely rages
in China, and the debate is becoming even fiercer
as freedom of expression in the country has grown,
and thus criticism formerly impossible to express
can now be made without major consequences.
Moreover, Hu stepped on many illustrious
toes in recent months when he decided to demote Bo
Xilai, formerly a political rising star and party
secretary in the sprawling city of Chongqing.
Thus, freedom plus a crowd of new enemies create a
wonderful combination to taint Hu's political
legacy.
Yet, it is true that in Hu's 10
years there have not been the kind of
systemic changes we saw
during the previous 10 years of Jiang Zemin as
president, and more than 12 as Party general
secretary. Then Jiang oversaw a dramatic reform of
state-owned enterprises (SOEs), which became freer
of the trappings of the state bureaucracy and more
able to behave like normal companies. The very
success of those reforms created the greater part
of the legacy of Hu's time.
SOEs behaved
like monopolies, squeezing private companies out
of the market, and this trend was multiplied by
policies implemented following the 2008 financial
crisis. SOEs took the lion's share of the money
that was liberally issued by state banks, inflated
asset values, misused large amounts of cash, and
drove private companies, which had been pulling
China's fast growth for 30 years, almost out of
the market.
The role and power of SOEs and
private companies is the main issue that will be
tackled in the Party Congress next October and by
the new power structure.
However, before
thinking of the future, let's look at what Hu
achieved and did in his 10 years.
Taiwan: Since the Communists
took power in 1949, ties have never been closer.
Economic exchanges are so pervasive that the
island might collapse without the economic support
of the mainland. Most importantly, Ma Ying-jiu's
reelection earlier this year as president of
Taiwan offers the possibility to start political
talks on reunification.
Zheng Bijian, Hu's
former aide from the Central Party School, was in
Taiwan last year for confidential talks on the
issue. Actual talks could begin as early as next
year. Hu has thus, de facto, managed to reunify
with Taiwan, a feat that escaped even Mao, the
leader who made China "stand up".
Political reforms: The issue
of democracy has beleaguered the Party for
decades. The Communist Party of China (CCP) was
for democracy in the 1940s, when the Party felt it
was weaker than the ruling nationalists of the
Kuomintang and thought that elections could
provide a good framework for the CCP's growth and
survival. It changed its mind after it took power
in 1949, but the issue of democracy never
vanished.
It popped up during the Cultural
Revolution, to incense the Red Guards' young and
susceptible minds, and it resurfaced after Deng
Xiaoping launched his reforms under the name of
"the fourth modernization". This time it is Prime
Minister Wen Jiabao who has been speaking of it.
We still do not know what is or will be the
content of future political reforms but certainly
the road of democratization is open - also because
in the long-term, reunification with Taiwan will
happen only within the framework of a democratic
China.
Freedom/democratization:
Under Hu's tenure, China saw an
Internet-information revolution that has created a
space for public opinion in China different and
distinct from what the Party may want, and it has
seen a huge burst of freedom of expression and
opinion.
Western history tells us that the
existence of an exuberant debate conducted in a
civil manner lays the groundwork for fostering
democratization. Hu may not have fully planned for
this, but certainly he followed the trend and
didn't obstruct it. He tried to channel it.
Thousands of government workers are "managing" the
Internet, but they are not killing it. In this
way, the party has come to realize that a modern
"management" of public opinion can work better for
the party than old-fashioned rigid control.
Therefore this new freedom of expression
has actually bolstered, not undermined, Party
rule: most people express views overall in favor
of the government, although critical of this or
that policy. The party, that is, is seen as the
modernizer, the force guiding change - although
channeling it - and thus increases its popularity.
Ideology: Hu's era was
marked by two slogans: harmonious society
(hexie shehui) and scientific development
(kexue fazhan). They referred to the two
separate ideological traditions making modern
China. The first harked back to the Confucian
tradition and de facto reneged on the idea of
class struggle of the Cultural Revolution, arguing
that rich and poor should find a way to live
together without fighting each other.
The
second hinted at the Marxist tenet of scientific
materialism and advocated the concept that
development must proceed with proper research and
planning. Most importantly, these ideas tried to
provide China with the basis of a new ideological
backbone that used traditional Confucianism and
Marxism but also moved beyond them. These elements
are important as in both Mao's and Deng's times,
China almost lost its roots and morals, which were
based on the values of the imperial system and the
revolutionary period, and fell into an ethical
void with no principles.
Thus Hu tried to
rebuild Chinese ideals and morals on new
foundations based on the old traditions. This
effort is just beginning, but it has important
consequences for China's economic development. In
the economy, enterprises will have to obey the
rules and take care of the weak. The country will
have to support what works "scientifically" and
practically, not just what is good for this or
that leader. On the background of these
achievements, Deng Yuwen published an essay in
August, setting out 10 "grave problems": [1]
Grave Problem 1: No
breakthroughs in economic restructuring and
constructing a consumer-driven economy.
Though China's economy is now the world's
second largest, it is both distorted in structure
and of low quality. Vulnerable to fluctuations of
the external economic environment, the current
development model is an obstacle to long-term
prosperity. China has to shift from the current
model that overly stresses investment and exports
and high-resource consumption to a high-tech,
consumer-driven economy as well as solve the inner
rebalancing problem of the economy.
However, restrained by vested interest
groups including regional governments, little has
been done in this regard. In particular, following
the global financial crisis, priority shifted from
reform and restructuring to merely maintaining
growth.
Grave Problem 2:
Failure to nurture and grow a middle class.
The history of modern states indicates
that the middle class is the cornerstone of social
stability and prosperity. But certain conditions
need to be created to help a middle class grow:
the middle class should be the mainstay of class
structure, and the government needs to work to
ensure the growth of the middle class through
adjusting policies concerning income, housing and
social security.
In the past decade,
benefiting from the economic boom, the sheer
number of middle class people in China increased.
However, the growth rate lags far behind general
economic growth rates, as a result of the lack of
any mechanism to nurture the middle class. As
regards income distribution, reform has stagnated,
resulting in an ever-increasing gap between rich
and poor. The road leading towards the middle
class is becoming even bumpier for low-income
households. High housing prices have eroded
people's spending power, putting middle-class the
living standards beyond their reach. Bearish stock
markets have sucked in people's savings yet denied
them the chance of getting returns on investment.
These are just some areas where the government
should have done better.
Grave
Problem 3: The rural-urban gap has
increased.
The residence permit system
used to be the main tool used to rein in urban
migration, in particular, the migration of
farmers. In the past decade, despite increasing
migration, the residence permit system remains
tied to public services, and influences local
government tax incomes and regional economic
growth, therefore there is little incentive for
reform.
Some small cities have loosened
their controls, but barriers remain high, and
migrant workers still have great difficulties
adapting to cities and obtaining new urban
identities. The delay of residence permit reform
has also radicalized conflicts between the
countryside and cities, exacerbated government
land sales and worsened the situation of landless
farmers. Farmers' interests are trampled on, and
the traditional urban resident-farmer two-element
structure has evolved into a triangular structure
of urban workers, rural workers and farmers.
Grave Problem 4: Population
policy lags behind reality.
The population
is aging at an accelerated rate. Giving birth is a
basic human right, but in the past decade the
state has continued its rigid one-child policy,
which not only contributes to the aging of the
population and a depletion of the demographic
dividend, but also affects the country's economic
growth, retirement benefits, causing grievances to
many families that have lost their only children,
exacerbating the imbalanced sex ratio at birth, as
well as other social problems. Birth-regulation
policies trample on countless people's rights on a
daily basis.
Grave Problem
5: The bureaucratization and
profit-incentivization of educational and
scientific research institutions shows no
indication of being ameliorated and it continues
to stifle creativity.
Education and
scientific research is the foundation of a
country. In the past decade, even though major
progress has been made, quantity instead of
quality is given priority. Few great scientists
have emerged and original results are scarce. All
these impair the realization of the goal of
constructing an innovative country. The
bureaucratization of the educational system has
became more entrenched. The guiding philosophy of
education is tilted more and more towards
profit-generation, as universities and scientific
research institutes alike are evaluated on the
basis of the number of published papers, which has
taken a toll on people's spirit and capacity of
innovation.
Grave Problem 6: Environmental pollution
continues to worsen. There has been no improvement in
environmental protection. "Coarse economic
development" is often marked by the high
environmental cost that one pays for economic
growth. Over the past decade, large numbers of
energy-intensive, highly polluting projects have
been launched, leading to further damage of our
shared homeland and further diminishing the
quality of life. Welfare and life itself is
threatened by pollution. In addition, conflicts
and confrontations are becoming more frequent and
more intense, putting the concept of creating an
"ecological civilization" sorely to the test.
Grave Problem 7: The
government has failed to establish a stable energy
supply system.
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