SINOGRAPH US shames China's leadership
change By Francesco Sisci
BEIJING - It should be the best-guarded
secret in China, and perhaps because of this it is
the most talked about story in the country at the
moment: who will be named to sit at the top of
China's political pyramid during the next party
congress due to open on November 8?
Many
events are described as historic but few deserve
this definition as much as the forthcoming
congress. This will set the tone not only for the
next 10 years, due to be lead by the duo of Xi
Jinping (next president), Li Keqiang (next prime
minister), but also for following two decades, as
decisions will most likely be made also about who
will lead the country in the decade after 2022.
Reportedly, top decision makers are
discussing the possibility of
Hu Chunhua, born in 1963,
entering the standing committee. He may or may not
get the post, but the fact that negotiations of
this kind are taking place shows that the congress
is considering very long-term options for the
country which will be about men but also about
policies.
Moreover, rumors are swirling
over the extent that leaders of Jiang Zemin's
generation are involved in this process, and how
much upcoming president Xi is part of it. In any
case, notwithstanding anybody else's involvement,
present President Hu Jintao remains objectively
central in this activity.
This is
basically all that can be said with certainty
about this huge event.
In America, the
grand superpower, there is open competition for
its top position, with long electoral campaigns
throughout the country that are followed by media
all over the world and fiery debates broadcast
live worldwide.
In China, superpower
number two there are some some remarkable and
less-heard features to leadership changes and
furtive action to name top leaders. This involves
members of the Standing Committee of the Politburo
engaging in secret deals and shifty horse-trading
in the dark corridors and stealthy passages of its
modern forbidden city, Zhongnanhai (the Chinese
leaders' residence).
This difference
appears to paint China in a bad light.
America, through its open electoral
campaign, projects global influence. The whole
world can watch and admire the open, democratic
political process. The global audience is split in
rooting for this or that candidate, Barack Obama
or Mitt Romney - but everybody is rooting for
America. President Obama, for instance, was and is
a total global phenomenon; it is politics but also
modern entertainment involving someone who is more
than a rock star or a movie actor.
Conversely, nobody in the world knows what
is going on in China. Observers can't help but
wonder how this country functions and how it will
ever project power and influence when its most
important process, the choice of its leaders,
remains totally hidden.
Here the growing
swirl of contradictory rumors helps only to
confirm the first impression: how can a country
that wants to have more influence hide its most
important element, its top politics, from its own
people and the world? By totally hiding it, as it
does, China undercuts its aims: who in the world
will be rooting for China when nobody knows even
who is about to rule the country?
On this
backdrop, all kinds of name-dropping in Beijing
gossip and conjecture from Hong Kong remain just
that. In 2002, at the 16th Party Congress,
reporters were taken by surprise by two
last-minute changes: Jiang Zemin remained chairman
of the Military Commission yet not part of the
Politburo, and the Standing Committee was expanded
from seven people to nine.
Both former
Shanghai party chief Chen Liangyu, purged in 2006
for graft, and former Chongqing party chief Bo
Xilai, purged this year, were Politburo members
full of information. Yet neither of them expected
to be toppled and arrested. If even insiders don't
really know what is going on in Zhongnanhai, how
can we, total outsiders, hope to shed any light on
the possibly devious machinations of China's top
politicians? This congress is more important than
the 16th, and it comes after the largest political
scandal since fall of Lin Biao in 1971. It could
then be full of surprises.
Moreover, just
following the names could be deceptive. Many
observers try to interpret the success or failure
of a leader by charting how his support group is
faring: with Jiang there was the Shanghai gang,
with Hu Jintao now there are his Youth League
buddies. However, this can be misleading. There
are no clear and open divides in affiliation; most
people straddle many loyalties as it helps their
careers, and total loyalty to only one man is a
very risky proposition. At this crucial moment it
is not always clear how each of them will side.
Betrayals, changing sides, and shifting
positions are the hallmark of politics all over
the world, and China is not immune to this. But in
China, this occurs under wraps, and we may think
that according to the charts X should be loyal to
Y, but maybe X has cut a deal with Z. This is true
all the time, and it could be even truer now, as
the Bo Xilai affair shook Chinese politics to its
core. Many of Bo's former supporters must have run
for their lives, and thus may have cut new deals
with the winners. Therefore, a simple head count
according to assumed, charted loyalty in the next
Politburo could be incorrect.
Having said
that, there are some elements to which we could
pay attention to a have a better indication of the
direction China might take in the future. The
first element is whether the Standing Committee of
the Politburo will shrink to seven people or
remain at nine. Although many leaks point to
seven, nine could still be an option, and it could
have different significance depending on the
composition of the group.
The questions
are: Will there be a woman? Will there be a
representative of the next generation of leaders,
the one that will rise to power in 2022? Will
there be a military representative? The military
was moved out of the Standing Committee in 2002
and got its own "standing committee" in the
Central Military Commission, which has almost
equal stature to the party organization. Isn't it
time to bring the rifle closer under the party? Or
are there other plans? Is Hu going to stay on as
chairman of the Military Commission? Even the
meaning of him staying or going could change
according to the overall political chemistry.
With so many elements up in the air, if
all of them were to be aired clearly the party
congress would draw global attention, interest and
even support. Possibly this could be greater than
the show about the duelists sparring to be the
next US president. But this is not the case, and,
despite the huge curiosity surrounding it, the
congress remains the preserve of compulsive
readers of esoteric tea leaves, as this modest
scribbler remains.
Francesco
Sisci is a columnist for the Italian daily Il
Sole 24 Ore and can be reached at
fsisci@gmail.com
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