Russell Leigh Moses
Wall Street Journal [China Real Time Report]
December 22, 2010
This year will likely go down in history as a year when the Chinese government showed its mastery of crisis management.
The leadership in Beijing sidestepped financial crisis, deftly handled rising labor costs and unrest in the workforce, and managed to adapt to a declining export market. Unstable commodity prices and supplies are still a problem; so, too, inflation. Still, every time an economic storm erupted, the Party danced between the downpours. Nothing seemed beyond the capacities of Communist Party officials to cope.
So, what does next year hold?
Here are 4 major trends to watch:
Democracy
Not much chance. There have been occasional outbreaks of top-down democracy-experiments in some safely secured districts, and statements that further moves towards better representation and election might well be needed. But nearly every move in the direction of democracy was done to secure Party rule. When local protests did break out, hardliners—which is to say, nearly everyone in the upper reaches of power—prevailed, drawing a line that few dared to step across (and those who did, paid for it).
Any and every democratic initiative will have to come from within Party ranks. Otherwise, checking the power of a hyper-successful Communist Party is of little interest to many cadres. Even reformers in the Party concede it is at the hub of policy-making and irreplaceable in the short-term. What is needed is a conceptual breakthrough, where Chinese democracy can be fashioned and connected with some example of local success in securing stability where there had been none.
Reform
More of the same—which is to say, a lot, so long as it serves to keep the Party intact and on top of the economy and polity. Democracy might be a dead letter here these days, but political rethinking is rampant in the Party ranks. Accountability and transparency lead the way though they are not seen by most cadres as first steps towards democracy, but viewed instead as hard and fast means to improve governance through administrative reform. Indeed, there is abundant evidence that reforming the Party from within by making it more efficient is viewed as the best way to stave off democratic initiatives in China.
So, we’re likely to see such contained reforms continue and expand, but they will remain as “administrative reform” within the Party, and not made into “political reform” extended to society, in which unsupervised participation from the bottom up would be encouraged.
Party-Military Relations
This past year saw the armed forces move further towards becoming a major player in Chinese policy-making. The military never went away as a force in politics, but its main role before was largely to prevent other interests from poaching on its expanding role in commerce and development.
Debts from the Party leadership to the armed forces became much deeper over the past year, as the military was once again called upon – first, to assist in relief and recovery from natural disasters and, second, to approve the choice of Xi Jinping as Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission. In recent weeks, we have seen the civilian leadership continue the bargain, presenting paeans to military heroes (in Chinese) and augmenting the military’s access to outside markets.
None of that is to imply a monolithic military. Outspoken figures calling for China to step up internationally are more vocal (in Chinese) but they remain a minority. There is also a robust debate among generals and admirals about force priorities—a messy business that produces rancor instead of consensus. And Party-military relations are replete with political gamesmanship, with various factions in both camps casting about for supporters.
But the trend to watch will be the military getting reined in, having to accept a diminution of its rediscovered political role. That move could backfire, though. Instead of going quiet, there will be officers who will look to jump start the lapsed conversation in China about political reform, hitting back at the core leadership that led the effort to restrict the military.
The Political Succession
Hold the champagne: Hu’s heir-apparent, Xi Jinping, does not lead a liberal wing of the Communist Party.
Neither he nor his allies are about to mess with what Beijing does best: cranking up economic growth and containing even vague challenges to Party authority. Leaders understand that, for the time-being, their legitimacy rests on keeping the economy expanding and society from exploding.
Elements in the Party are pushing for political restructuring, but a year of failed skirmishes with conservatives has taken its toll. Reformers are in retreat. The ascendant part of the Party is guided by the sharp-edged populism of Chongqing Party Secretary Bo Xilai and by the political cudgels (in Chinese) of Politburo Standing Committee member Zhou Yongkang. Both Bo and Zhou believe in the power of campaigns and crackdowns. The restructuring they and their associates press for is to be unrestrained in their efforts to mobilize supporters and punish opponents.
That Xi Jinping journeyed to Chonqqing recently and praised (in Chinese) Bo’s crusade for socialist values is a harbinger of politics to come in the New Year.
It won’t be the oft-promised and long-denied democratic reform but a more treacherous beginning to the political transition.
*Russell Leigh Moses is a Beijing-based analyst and professor who writes on Chinese politics. He is writing a book on the changing role of power in the Chinese political system.
