Beijing prizes loyalty over skill
in reshuffle By Willy Lam
China has reshuffled the party and
administrative leaderships of a dozen-odd
provinces and directly-administered cities in the
wake of the 18th Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
Congress. The traits and political orientations of
the new regional chiefs reflect the authorities'
priorities about seeking gradual change while
guaranteeing stability. At the same time, ample
opportunities have been afforded to a handful of
sixth-generation leaders - a reference to rising
stars born in the 1960s - to build up their
national stature and reformist credentials.
Beijing's preference for continuity is
reflected in the fact that leadership changes in
several provinces and major cities simply have
involved internal promotions. For example, the
just-named party secretaries of Shanghai, Jilin,
Shaanxi and Zhejiang, respectively, Han Zheng,
Wang Rulin, Zhao Zhengyong and Xia
Baolong, are former
governors or mayors of the same jurisdictions.
The newly-appointed governors or
governors-designate of Guizhou, Zhejiang, Shaanxi,
Shanxi and Jilin, respectively, Chen Min'er, Li
Qiang, Lou Qinjian, Li Xiaopeng and Bayin Chaolu,
also had worked in senior positions in the same
provinces. It is significant that party
secretaries Wang, 59, and Xia, 60, as well as
governor-designate Li Qiang, aged 53, had worked
as secretaries of the political-legal committees
that run the police and judicial apparatus of
their provinces.
The law-and-order
experience of Shaanxi's Zhao, age 61, is even more
considerable. He is a former police chief of Anhui
Province as well as the chief of the
political-legal committees of Anhui and Shaanxi.
This testifies to the importance that Beijing
attaches to "social management," a euphemism for
stifling dissent and minimizing challenges to the
regime.
The top leadership's preoccupation
with stability also is evidenced by the fact that
the regional reshuffles have largely followed late
patriarch Deng Xiaoping's famous "principle of the
five lakes and four seas". This is a reference to
a rough balance of factions, administrative
specialties and places of origin among the
country's senior cadres. For example, Guangdong's
new Party Secretary Hu Chunhua and Jilin's Bayin
Chaolu are members of the Communist Youth League
(CYL) Faction headed by President Hu Jintao. Han
Zheng, aged 58, who spent the bulk of his career
in Shanghai, has close links with both the CYL
Faction and the Shanghai Faction led by
ex-president Jiang Zemin. Moreover, Han's
replacement as Shanghai Mayor, Executive Vice
Mayor Yang Xiong, age 59, is also a veteran
Shanghai cadre.
The appointments of Han
and Yang as the two top officials of Shanghai have
continued the tradition of "Shanghai-nese running
Shanghai". Li Xiaopeng, who is the eldest son of
former premier Li Peng, is among the few
fifth-generation "princelings" who are deemed to
have potential for further advancement. The latest
appointments also feature proteges of General
Secretary Xi Jinping and Premier-in-waiting Li
Keqiang. For example, Guizhou Governor-designate
Chen Min'er, age 62, was Director of Zhejiang's
Propaganda Department when Xi was party secretary
of the coastal province from 2004 to 2007.
Finally, Fujian's new Party Secretary You Quan,
age 58, a long-time State Council bureaucrat, is
deemed a protege of Li Keqiang's.
Relatively few of the new faces have a
reformist track record. Nor do they appear to be
charismatic leaders or what the Chinese media used
to call "cadres with personality" (gexing
ganbu). Their elevation seems to be based on
the long-standing principle that, as General
Secretary Xi has reiterated, cadres "should have
both moral rectitude and professional competence,
with priority given to moral rectitude".
In the Chinese context, "moral rectitude"
is shorthand for unthinkingly toeing the party
line. It is not surprising that the first speeches
made by several regional chiefs upon assuming
their new offices consisted of a declaration of
fealty to the central party leadership
(zhongyang). Thus, Zhejiang Party Secretary
Xia vowed to "closely rally behind the
zhongyang with comrade Xi Jinping as
general secretary, and to resolutely fulfill the
responsibilities that the zhongyang has
entrusted me." Similarly, the new party boss of
Inner Mongolia Wang Jun pledged he would "in the
areas of thought, politics and action stay at a
high level of unison with the zhongyang
with comrade Xi Jinping as general secretary".
Most of the new appointees are veteran
party apparatchiks with dubious professional
competence, particularly in areas such as finance,
management or information technology-related
innovation. Take, for example, Tianjin's party
boss Sun Chunlan, the former Fujian Party
Secretary who is one of only two female members of
the Politburo. The specialty of the 62-year-old
Sun, who began her career as a laborer in a watch
factory in Liaoning, is running "mass
organizations".
Before her transfer to
Fujian, Sun had headed the provincial branch of
the All China Women's Federation and the All China
Federation of Trade Unions. Questions, thus, have
arisen as to whether she is the best leader for
metropolis of Tianjin, which prides itself as
China's new hub for finance and high technology.
Among the newly promoted regional chiefs,
Shaanxi's governor-in-waiting Lou seems to have
the best professional qualifications. A computer
expert with a PhD in engineering, Lou served for
11 years as a deputy minister in the Ministry of
Information Industry and the Ministry of Industry
and Information Technology before becoming vice
governor of Shaanxi in 2010. In the past two
years, Lou was credited with having lured a record
number of high-tech multinationals into the
landlocked province.
Most attention,
however, has been focused on two sixth-generation
stalwarts, Hu Chunhua and Sun Zhengcai, who were
inducted into the Politburo at the 18th Party
Congress. There is speculation in the Hong Kong
media that Hu (who is not related to Hu Jintao)
might succeed Xi Jinping as general secretary and
that Sun would replace Li Keqiang as premier 10
years down the road. Judging by professional
qualifications alone, Sun, who has taken the hot
seat of Chongqing, seems to have the edge over Hu,
who is a specialist in party affairs. A renowned
agronomist and former deputy chief of the Beijing
Institute of Agriculture Sciences, Sun served for
three years as minister of agriculture before
becoming Jilin party secretary in 2009. According
to the new CCP Organization Department Director
Zhao Leji, Sun was, apart from being "steadfast in
politics and rich in leadership experience,"
"familiar with party affairs and economic work."
Zhao also praised Sun for having "broad
perspectives" on a wide range of issues of
governance.
Hu Chunhua, who took over from
the reformist Politburo member Wang Yang as
Guangdong party secretary in mid-December, is a
veteran party functionary with scant exposure to
areas such as finance, foreign trade or high
technology. Having spent 19 years in Tibet and
three years in Inner Mongolia, Hu has ample
experience dealing with tough law-and-order
situations, including defusing the anti-Beijing
plots of Tibetan and Mongolian separatists.
It is doubtful, however, whether the
fast-rising star can satisfactorily accomplish the
task, first set by predecessor Wang, of turning
the Pearl River Delta from "world factory" into a
global innovation hub. It is perhaps significant
that upon taking over his Guangdong job, Hu hewed
to the CCP tradition of giving top priority to
establishing a trustworthy and combat-ready corps
of cadres rather than reforming institutions and
systems of governance. "We must put together a
[ruling] team that is united, capable, influential
and full of combative [spirit]," the Hubei-born Hu
told local officials.
It is unique to
China that almost all members of its top ruling
council, the CCP Politburo Standing Committee
(PBSC), since the end of the Cultural Revolution
are former party secretaries of provinces,
autonomous regions or directly administered
cities. Amongst the seven newly-appointed PBSC
members, only Liu Yunshan, who is in charge of the
CCP Secretariat, has never been a provincial party
boss.
As the mass-circulation Global Times
put it in a commentary, provincial party
secretaries constitute an elite "talent pool" for
the CCP's highest echelon. "It is the requirement
of the Chinese system that the provincial party
secretary must have the ability to handle the full
range of [political] situations," the paper said,
"They need to have a large 'magnetic field," a
sense of authority and ability to project personal
warmth. They must also have a very high level of
expertise and perceptiveness".
There seems
little doubt that all the newly elevated party
secretaries - and to a considerable extent,
governors - have passed muster in terms of
tackling tough political challenges as well as
abiding by Beijing's instructions. The jury is
still out, however, on the equally pivotal issue
of whether they can break new ground in reform as
General Secretary Xi pledged to do during his trip
to Shenzhen in early December.
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Willy Wo-Lap Lam,
PhD, 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
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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