Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping's
"reappearance" last Saturday after an absence of
two weeks signaled that preparations for the 18th
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Congress, which is
slated for the second half of October, were on
track. Beijing is even awash with speculation that
the high-profile "princeling" (a reference to the
offspring of party elders) has been mapping out
moderate versions of political reform with the
help of forward-looking intellectuals such as Hu
Deping, the son of the late party chief Hu
Yaobang.
Xi reportedly told Hu, a former
vice director of the United Front Work Department,
"since the people are getting impatient with mere
talk about reform, we must raise high the banner
of reform, including political liberalization."
Xi, who is due to replace Hu Jintao as CCP general
secretary, added that the CCP should lose
no time in "seeking
changes and progress in the midst of stability".
Given that Xi has very seldom touched on
the sensitive issue of political change, his call
to arms, albeit hedged with qualifications, has
piqued the interest of the nation's
intelligentsia. Moreover, Premier Wen Jiabao,
who is perceived as the most liberal member of the
collective leadership, gave an impassioned plea
for speeding up political reform while visiting
prestigious Tsinghua University last week.
"Democracy, rule of law, equality and
justice as well as liberty and equality are ideals
and goals common to all mankind," said Wen, who is
due to retire from the Politburo next month. Wen,
aged 70, is the sole top-level cadre who has
advocated openly China adopting "universal values"
upheld in Western as well as Asian countries.
"Socialism is not possible without
democracy," Wen elaborated. "Without the
supervision of the people and without checks and
balances, any government and administration will
deteriorate ... Absolute power will engender
absolute corruption."
While it is not sure
what reforms Wen - and, in particular, Xi - may
contemplate after the watershed congress, it is
significant that at least some structural changes
in central party and government organs are in the
works. A consensus has been reached by the
outgoing Politburo Standing Committee (PSC) that
the size of this highest ruling council should be
cut from nine to seven members.
Barring
any last-minute changes, the new PSC is expected
to consist of the following (and their prospective
portfolios): Xi, aged 59 (general secretary and
president); Li Keqiang, age 57 (premier); Yu
Zhengsheng, aged 67 (chairman of the National
People's Congress); Zhang Dejiang, aged 65
(chairman of the Chinese People's Political
Consultative Conference); Li Yuanchao, aged 61
(head of the Party Secretariat and vice
president); Wang Qishan, aged 64 (executive vice
premier); and Wang Yang, aged 57 (secretary of the
Central Commission for Disciplinary Inspection, or
CCDI).
The seven-member configuration is
an effort by the leadership to return to the norm.
Since the Cultural Revolution, the PSC had
consisted of either five or seven members. It was
increased to nine members at the 16th CCP Congress
a decade ago. A seven-member PSC in theory will
make decision making more efficient.
Much
more important is the fact that from the 18th
Congress onwards, senior cadres responsible for
propaganda and law enforcement will only be
ordinary Politburo members. These two departments
are among the least popular among the populace.
The same is true for the PSC members
handling them, namely Li Changchun, who heads the
Leading Group on Ideology and Propaganda (LGID),
and Zhou Yongkang, who runs the Central
Political-Legal Commission (CPLC). The LGID is in
charge of, among other things, censorship of the
media and Internet, including fast-growing
social-media networks. The CPLC, which supervises
the police, secret police, prosecutor's offices
and the courts, is the party's prime weapon for
putting dissidents behind bars and muzzling the
estimated 150,000 annual cases of riots and
protests.
It may be misguided to think
that the apparent "downgrading" of these two
portfolios would necessarily mean that the
authorities would adopt a more liberal or tolerant
attitude toward censorship and combating
"anti-party" or "destabilizing" agents in society.
It is possible, however, that in the case of the
CPLC, the unprecedented empire-building of the law
enforcement apparatus might be checked. Under the
aggressive leadership of PSC member Zhou, the
budget for wei-wen ("preserving stability")
has surpassed that for the People's Liberation
Army two years in a row.
Much also depends
on the political orientation of the PSC members
under which the future heads of these two
establishments will work under. For example, it is
possible that the Politburo member running the
CPLC will report to the boss of the CCDI, which is
the nation's highest anti-corruption agency.
Wang Yang, a close ally of President Hu's
and current party secretary of Guangdong province,
has displayed a less draconian approach to
tackling dissent. This was demonstrated by the
Guangdong administration's conciliatory treatment
of the "rebellion" staged by the peasants of Wukan
Village late last year. Since the spring, the CPLC
has called on the nation's law enforcement
officials to use the "Wukan model" when handling
riots and protests.
As for the equally
crucial ideology and propaganda sector, it appears
that the future Politburo member who heads LGID
will report to the prospective vice president and
current Organization Department chief Li Yuanchao.
Compared to the aging Li Changchun, the younger Li
is deemed a moderate reformer. He has the
reputation of a relatively open-minded cadre from
his time in propaganda- and culture-related
departments from 1990 to 2000.
More
thorough structural rationalization is being put
forward for units under the State Council. The
State Council's 27 commissions and departments
could be pared down to just 18 units through a
series of mergers and takeovers. For example, the
Ministry of Science and Technology may be merged
with the Education Ministry to establish a
Ministry of Education and Science. Similarly, the
Ministries of Human Resources and Civil Affairs
could be combined to form a Ministry of Social
Work. The Ministry of Railways may be absorbed by
the Ministry of Communications and Transport.
Finally, the Ministry of Water Resources could be
subsumed under the Ministry of Agriculture.
This game plan tallies with the largely
unsuccessful efforts undertaken by Premier Wen and
Executive Vice Premier Li Keqiang in early 2008 to
streamline high-level governmental decision making
through the formation of several "super
ministries".
It must be noted, however,
that the retooling of party and State Council
organs belongs in the realm of administrative
restructuring, not political liberalization or
structural political reform. From signals that
have been emitted by official media, the chances
of General Secretary Hu unveiling major reform
initiatives in his much-anticipated Political
Report to the 18th Party Congress, which will set
the stage for the party's policies in the coming
five years, do not seem high.
For example,
Hu gave his annual speech on party affairs on July
23 to an assembly of top party, government and
military officials in Beijing. This talk was
billed as a precursor of his 18th Party Congress
Political Report.
"We must unswervingly
push forward reform and opening up the country."
Hu said "The party must never become ossified or
stagnant." The party chief then pledged that the
CCP leadership would "push ahead reform of the
political structure."
What he meant,
however, was merely "the organic synthesis of [the
principles of] CCP leadership, the people becoming
masters of the nation, and rule by law". These
hackneyed slogans pale beside the much fresher and
bolder statements made by Hu soon after he took
over power at the 16th Party Congress in 2002. In
2003, by contrast, the president attracted much
praise by enunciating the so-called "New Three
Principles of the People" - "Power must be used
for the people; profits must be sought for the
people; and [cadres'] feelings must be attached to
the people".
In the past decade, a modicum
of success has been attained in only one area of
political reform, "intra-party democracy"
(dangnei minzhu), which allowed more
opportunities for vouchsafed party cadres and
members to select their leaders. For example,
"competitive elections" (cha'e xuanju) - in
which candidates outnumber positions up for grabs
- was for the first time introduced when
grassroots party members earlier this year picked
the 2,270 deputies for the 18th Party Congress.
Candidates outnumbered the number of deputies by
13.4%.
As in the past, cha'e xuanju
will be practiced when congress delegates choose
Central Committee members next month, even if
surprises are expected. According to a recent
briefing by the Vice Director of the Organization
Department Wang Jingqing, the margin of
elimination at the 16th Party Congress was "more
than 10%". At the 17th Party Congress five years
ago, the proportion of jettisoned candidates was
"no less than 15%".
That not much headway
will be made this year seems evident from Wang's
murky statement that the margin of elimination at
the upcoming conclave would be "more than 15%".
Despite suggestions made by liberal cadres and
scholars, no cha'e xuanju will be
implemented when the new Central Committee members
chooses Politburo members at the 18th CCP
Congress.
So far, the harshest critique of
the Hu-Wen team's failure to grasp the nettle of
political reform has come from Deng Yuwen, a
senior editor of the party journal Study Times. In
an article that he wrote for Caixin assessing the
10 years of the Hu-Wen administration, Deng
faulted the leadership for "failing to implement
political reform and democratization". He added
that work in this area "lags behind people's
expectations by a considerably large margin".
Deng called political liberation "the most
important question facing China … and one that is
especially difficult to solve." The reformist
intellectual also called upon Beijing to start
universal suffrage elections up to the county
level .
Given that Studies Times is a
publication the Central Party School, which Vice
President Xi directs, there is some speculation
that the article has enjoyed the support of Hu's
probable successor. The piece, however, was
removed from the Caixin website after a few hours.
As in the case of the total lack of transparency
surrounding Xi's "disappearance" at such a
sensitive juncture, the party's leadership
preference for traditional black-box operations
does not seem to augur well for significant
reforms in the foreseeable future.
Dr
Willy Wo-Lap Lam is a Senior Fellow at The
Jamestown Foundation. He has worked in senior
editorial positions in international media
including Asiaweek newsmagazine, South China
Morning Post, and the Asia-Pacific Headquarters of
CNN. He is the author of five books on China,
including the recently published Chinese
Politics in the Hu Jintao Era: New Leaders, New
Challenges. Lam is an Adjunct Professor of
China studies at Akita International University,
Japan, and at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
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