Most intellectuals in China today are not the same as those radicals in 1989 who clamored for the adoption of a Western style political system, but instead fully recognize there is no prospect for China to copy a Western path. A “Jasmine revolution” could only drive China into chaos.

Most Chinese intellectuals and the majority of Chinese society don’t expect a Western style government at the current stage of development, but want stronger supervision on power through political reform.

China’s development needs a new authoritarianism. The government has a firm foundation, and the new authoritarian politics should be strongly adapted to the times and have greater flexibility. They must better respond to social demands and institutional changes.

In the past 10 years, some have become rather frustrated by the stagnant process of reform. Some are calling for a second “southern tour” with the purpose to urge China to seek the direction of future reform, political reform in particular.

I entirely understand the public demand for this, but I am more hopeful to see institutional innovation created by the forthcoming 18th CPC National Congress, which will enhance the new authoritarianism and provide a stronger driving force for a democratic construction.

A Caixin editorial painted a less optimistic picture, declaring Deng’s reform movement “dead” and attempting to reposition the aim of reform in today’s China:

Reform’s objectives, targets, approaches and pathways have changed over the past 20 years. And today we have a fresh impetus for change: Reform is needed to prevent powerful interest groups from taking advantage and prospering by means of market distortion.

We can no longer expect a lone hero to ride to the rescue. A single tour by a dynamic leader cannot be expected to forge a new consensus by one of even several city tours. Rather, a consensus for action must come from party leaders that’s based on sound political judgment, genuine concern for society, and an accurate reading of the people’s will.

China is at a crossroads. Party leaders are being tested, and all of us are being challenged. There is broad agreement in society about the many problems China faces. There is also renewed determination to push for more reform, and supporters of this initiative are gathering strength.

But the urge for ongoing reform is running way ahead of action. We need the opposite. Like Deng on his tour, an exceptional leader must take a stand with a vision that’s ahead of the times, not behind, and lead China’s forward.

See also recent CDT coverage of Deng Xiaoping’s legacy.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: authoritarianism, democracy, Deng Xiaoping, political reform, southern tour
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What a course it has been, as the record speaks for itself. Since 1978, China’s economy has grown more than 100-fold, while per capita GDP has risen roughly 80 times (not adjusted for inflation or exchange rate differences). It has far exceeded Deng’s expectation of reaching a per capita GDP of $4,000 by mid-21st century–a milestone that was achieved forty years ahead of schedule. China’s steel output is now north of 600 million tons, an incredible feat considering that the Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s mobilized nearly 100 million Chinese only to end up with 11 million tons of steel.

I recount this snapshot of history on the anniversary of the southern tour not for its own sake, but because I believe it is instructive for observing China today. As China proceeds through a political transition, culminating in the new 18th Party Congress this fall, there are echoes of 1992. The Jasmine Revolution, Arab Spring, Wukan violence, increasing civil disobedience, and pluralism on social media, are new manifestations of peaceful evolution, as Hu Jintao’s culture essay elliptically warned against. The unusually public campaigns for political office–primarily construed as a two-way contest between Bo Xilai and Wang Yang–appear to be fundamentally about a referendum on the direction of reforms.

…

The political status quo in 2012, unlike the early 1990s, isn’t resigned to narrow ideological trench warfare. Rather, it is about monied elites who are largely concerned with enriching themselves and those in their circles, exacerbating inequality in a country that has yet to create a broad-based middle class. But just as China requires the equivalent of an LBJ-like “great society” transformation, forces are arrayed against it, leading to wayward and dispirited reforms.

What’s more, the great helmsman Deng Xiaoping is no longer around to right the course. A new political consensus will have to be forged by a new cohort of leaders. Whether they can coalesce around a social agenda as ambitious and transformative as Deng’s and inject energy into flagging reforms are ever more pertinent questions. They will get an opportunity come this fall–to complete Deng’s unfinished business of heralding sociopolitical change for the sake of nation building.

Minxin Pei of Claremont McKenna College, on the other hand, wonders why China bothers to remember Deng’s southern tour given the irony that pro-market economic reform in China does not exist. From The Financial Times:

Evidence of the demise of economic reform is easy to spot. The Chinese state has reasserted its control over the economy. Big state-owned enterprises dominate nearly all the critical sectors, such as banking, finance, transport, energy, natural resources and heavy industry. The private sector, a victim of persistent official discrimination, is in full retreat. Critical prices, such as interest rates and land, are officially controlled and severely distorted. Foreign businesses, once welcomed with open arms, are getting squeezed with protectionist measures. The overall orientation of the Chinese economy has veered so much off the reformist path that foreign business leaders who have long been supportive of China are now voicing their bitter disappointments, some publicly. China’s main western trading partners do not need to read scholarly analysis to know that there is no pulse in its reform. All they need to do is to listen to their business community, check their trade statistics with China, and take a look at Chinese economic policy.

A China Daily commentary by Chi Fulin of the Hainan-based China Institute of Reform and Development also notes the need for reform:

Deng’s confirmation of reforms aimed at facilitating the establishment of a socialist market economy released a vitality that has propelled the fast and long-term development of the country. Deng’s remarks enabled the country to embark on a socialist market economic road and it has taken the perfection of such a market as its supreme target.

The reform and opening-up policy has enabled some regions and some people to get rich earlier than others, which has led to powerful groups with vested interests. To maintain their established interests, these groups have become a barrier to further reforms, which has resulted in the interests of some middle and low-income people being marginalized, fermenting social discontent.

China should wholeheartedly endeavor to overcome this barrier so that it can realize Deng’s vision of common prosperity . This will help the fast-growing nation release its huge consumption potential and lay a solid foundation for its sustainable and rapid development in the years ahead.

China’s economic and social development now requires a social transformation and reforms targeted at equality and sustainable development. To facilitate this, the country should embrace a consumption-driven, green and market-regulated development model, prioritize increasing people’s wealth and push for government transformation. To this end, China should push forward overall reforms of its economic and social institutions as well as governance changes during the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-15) period. While giving the market a full role in the distribution of resources, the country should step up the establishment of a public service system and a service-oriented government. A systematic foundation should also be laid for the expansion of domestic demand and the establishment of social justice and sustainable development.

See also a Global Times editorial discussing Deng Xiaoping and the need for a steady and unified course of political reform.

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Post tags: CCP 5th generation, Deng Xiaoping, economic reform, ideology, leadership transition, political reform, southern tour
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A lengthy summary of the Tsinghua University report was published in the January 9 edition of China Youth Daily, and was quickly posted to a number of major Chinese web portals, including People’s Daily Online. But within hours, links to the article were disabled.

By mid-day the link to the China Youth Daily version at People’s Daily Online called up a warning page that read: “The page you are looking for does not exist. You will be automatically re-directed to the People’s Daily Online homepage in 5 seconds.” A similar warning from the popular Netease web portal read: “We’re sorry, the page you are visiting does not exist or has already been deleted.”

For several hours, users on the popular social media platform Sina Weibo shared a link to a cached version of the China Youth Daily report at Baidu.com, as well as news that the article had been deleted from sites like Netease. By day’s end the Baidu version had been pulled down as well. The page now linked only to the electronic edition of China Youth Daily, where an unreadable image of the original newspaper page could be found but the text to the right only read: “This article has been deleted.”

CMP also translates the China Daily summary of the report.

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Post tags: Internet censorship, political reform
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“It’s in China’s interest for Myanmar to end its isolation,” said Zhao Daojiong, an international economist at Peking University. “An isolated Myanmar is an unstable Myanmar. It’s in China’s interest that Myanmar internationalize and stabilize ….”

Zhu Feng, international relations scholar at Peking University, …said he believes international media often plays up power struggles between the United States and China that don’t really exist.

“I don’t think Myanmar is of great significance strategically to China,” said Zhu. “It’s not bad in the eyes of China for Clinton to visit, for Myanmar to be more open, and it could be in the interests of China ….”

Zhu said there are fears that Burma will open too fast and violently, with something like a color revolution that fueled the Arab Spring. That kind of instability on China’s borders would inevitably create consternation here.

See also Reuters’ catalogue of Burma’s promised reforms and earlier coverage of Burma on CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Arab Spring, Burma, Hillary Clinton, Myanmar, political reform, United States, Zhu Feng
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Mr Mao lamented China’s backsliding on economic reforms and its recent surge of political repression.

He dismissed the country’s incoming leaders as being beholden to the current ones and for being focused only on protecting the Communist Party regime.

And he said officials and wealth have fused together into formidable vested interests that resist reform.

But he is nevertheless convinced that the country is on the brink of democratic change. ”I don’t know how it will happen but I feel confident,” he said. ”We will witness reform in the next five to 10 years.”

Read more about Mao Yushi’s essay about Mao Zedong which sparked such controversy:
* “Forces of Darkness” Bring Down Nationalist Chinese Website
* Boundlessly Loyal to the Great Monster
* Mao’s Legacy Still Divides China

Read all of CDT’s coverage of Mao Yushi.

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Post tags: leftist, Mao Yushi, Mao Zedong, political reform
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The ability of candidates to whip up online sentiment for political change appears to be what most worries the authorities. One state security officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to comment publicly, said regulatory authorities were considering measures to curb microblogging sites partly because of the potential for political networking.

Indeed, Global Times, an offshoot of the Communist Party’s official newspaper, People’s Daily, warned in a May editorial that “the independent candidates could destroy the current system by soliciting votes on the Internet.” And propaganda authorities have intervened to suppress news of independent candidates, most recently with a Sept. 26 order from Beijing officials not to mention them, according to an editor for a party-run publication, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is not allowed to comment to foreign reporters.

See also previous CDT coverage of independent candidacies in China and the use of social media as a campaign platform, including two who recently won elections in Foshan and the failed attempt by a celebrity to contest a People’s Congress election in Beijing.

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Post tags: democracy, elections, Global Times, independent candidacies, microblogs, political reform, social media
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Ever since the Communist Party came to power in 1949, forceful, unifying figures have dominated the political arena and the PLA. The first was Mao Zedong, who used his unparalleled charisma and political genius to pit rivals against one another, to create a cult of personality and to exert ruthless control over the country’s political system. After Mao came Deng Xiaoping, whose photo should be plastered above Tiananmen Square instead of his predecessor’s, as he used his vast political savvy and dominance of the party and military to wrench China from the abyss of the Cultural Revolution and set in place the most breathtaking economic development in modern history.

Lacking a unifying figure like Deng or Mao, China’s leadership today is a mostly faceless group of longtime party engineers who have scaled the ranks not by fighting in wars or developing political and economic ideologies but rather by cultivating higher-ranking bureaucrats and divulging as little as possible about their ideas and plans. The current Chinese president, Hu Jintao, epitomizes the cipher-as-strategy approach. Before assuming power in 2004, Hu had said so little on any topic of importance that both conservatives and liberals in China claimed him as one of their own. Since then, Hu has displayed minimal public emotion and avoids even the most scripted interactions with the media and most party outsiders. Hu’s presumed successor, who will assume power in 2012–13, is Vice President Xi Jinping; though he has slightly more charisma than the wooden Hu, he will not remind anyone of Mao or Deng. When Xi has displayed any public sentiment, it has been a sour, aggrieved nationalism that resonates with many Chinese elites who believe their nation’s time has come yet chafe at the continued power of the United States in China’s backyard. “There are a few foreigners, with full bellies, who have nothing better to do than try to point fingers at our country,” Xi complained, in one of his few public speeches, during a visit to Mexico in 2009.

As China’s leadership fragments, many American officials and think-tank experts who once condemned Deng for overseeing the brutal crackdown in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, have begun to look back fondly on his time. Their position is that although Deng was not a democrat, in many ways it was easier to understand, and work with, the motivations and actions of a Chinese leadership dominated by one man rather than by a collective dictatorship. What they fear most about China is the absence of a genuine autocrat.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Deng Xiaoping, economic reform, political reform, PRC history
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Li Fan, of the private thinktank the World and China Institute, estimates there are tens of thousands of “citizen candidates” this time.

“Firstly, people’s civic and rights awareness has been enhanced,” he said. “Secondly, the relationship between the state and government is worse than before. People dealing with issues like rights protection, layoffs and housing don’t have other methods … thirdly, Weibo [China's Twitter-like microblog service] plays an important role.

“In 2006 media were not allowed to report [on independent candidates]. This year there is social media, providing a platform for people to communicate thoughts, exchange ideas and support each other.”

Would-be representatives are posting messages on Weibo, uploading videos, even producing campaign T-shirts. Zheng and her friends have natty red sashes and a large banner that says: “Honoured to take part in the election for the people’s congress.”

But their zeal has been matched by official attempts to impede them. Despite Friday’s detentions, Beijing is considered one of the more tolerant areas. Authorities in other places have used technicalities to disqualify would-be candidates, have threatened nominators and have harassed those seeking to stand.

Read more about the independent candidacies, including “Independent Candidate Yu Nan’s Candidacy Revoked for No Reason,” via CDT.

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Post tags: democracy, independent candidacies, local power, political reform, sinaweibo, social media
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The local congresses — the lowest rung in China’s government structure, equivalent to neighborhood commissions — are relatively powerless bodies in the complex system that the party maintains as a formal display of grass-roots participation. Until now, they have been filled almost entirely with candidates from the party, or people endorsed by it.

But the unprecedented number of candidates stepping forward without the party’s backing for elections that begin this fall marks a potential watershed in China’s political evolution, testing the leadership’s professed commitment to allowing democracy to develop from the bottom up.

[...] A few candidates who were not affiliated with the Communist Party have run in past elections for local congresses, but they received virtually no media coverage and few votes. This time around, however, the independent candidates — academics, students, journalists, bloggers, lawyers and farmers — are attracting widespread publicity and mounting serious campaigns, using social media and live Internet broadcasts.

The Communist Party seems to be grappling to find a coherent response. “Some are cheering from the sidelines,” said Elizabeth Economy, a China expert with the Council on Foreign Relations. “There are certainly others who view this as very threatening.”

The wide swath of candidates running, Economy said, “shows the breadth of interest in real reform.” But on the question of whether the party will allow the independents to prevail, or whether they could affect the system from inside if they did, she and other analysts sounded far more cautious.

CDT has translated a number of statements by and articles about the independent candidates, including the microblog posts of candidate Yu Ren in Lanzhou, who was one of the few to make it to the preliminary round and be recognized as an official candidate for election.

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Post tags: democracy, independent candidacies, political reform
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As the hour-long interview neared its end, I asked the former Soviet president about change in China, the world’s largest Communist state. Gorbachev takes the long view of history but is sure reform there is inevitable. Any suggestion that he should have followed China by starting with economic rather than political reform is wrong, he says.

“In the Soviet Union nothing would have happened if we had done that. The people were cut out, totally isolated from decision-making. Our country was at a different stage of development from China and for us to solve problems we had to involve people.”

“Do you think the Chinese will be able to avoid the same hard choices at some point in time? There will be a moment when they will have to decide on political change and they are already nearing that point.”

Comparisons with China also arise in an interview in Der Spiegel, with reference to the suppression of independence movements in Tbilisi and Vilnius:

SPIEGEL: Your leadership vacillated between harshness and indecision.

Gorbachev: It was said that Chinese harshness was unacceptable, while not shooting was a sign of weakness. Both are nonsense. You have to seek dialogue until the end.

SPIEGEL: Why didn’t you use the Chinese approach with your perestroika: tough communist leadership but capitalist economic reforms?

Gorbachev: Each country is different. China is a good example, but reforms have to be advanced in different ways.

Sources:

Mikhail Gorbachev: I should have abandoned the Communist party earlier – The Guardian
SPIEGEL Interview with Mikhail Gorbachev ‘They Were Truly Idiots’ – Spiegel Online

© samuel wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: capitalism, economic reform, Gorbachev, political reform, Soviet Union
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