J-10
11-17-2007, 08:59 AM
http://www.lastampa.it/_web/cmstp/tmplrubriche/giornalisti/grubrica.asp?ID_blog=98&ID_articolo=84&ID_sezione=180&sezione
Multi Party System, the Chinese Way
15/11/2007
Political reforms for democracy are starting, yet the future might hold in store also more human rights' abuses
by francesco sisci
Only days after the end of the 17th Communist Party Congress, a political campaign is already in full swing. Party members are required to study the spirit of the Congress, that is, to understand what the leadership means by “scientific development”, the new term inserted into the Party Constitution at the Congress.
Party members explain “scientific development” with a shrug: It is simply a code word for the process of democratization started by the Party. However, others, like former veteran Party member Sidney Rittenberg, say it is a deeper concept, brushing up some of the most successful Maoist experiences during the war against the KMT and the Japanese.
Mao recommended Party members to be practical, to consider facts, real conditions without ideological conditioning. It was an effort indebted more to the empirical philosophy of the American thinker John Dewey than to Lenin’s dogmatic vagaries.
Then practice demanded of the Party to be sided with peasants against landlords, it pushed the Party to seize land and divide it up among poor farmers. At the end of the day, it was an efficient capitalist reform, similar to that supported by the Americans in Taiwan after the KMT fled from the winners in the mainland. Mao’s practice was not ideologically “communist”, as it did not pool all the land together in the people’s commune, as it did later.
Now a practical approach, the “scientific development” demands to consider the present requirements of the people. Most of them now do not want a piece of land to till. Their wishes have grown more complicated. People want a better, richer life, they want to leave the countryside for the glittering cities, they want more freedom. In a few words, the party feels that the people also want to move on to democracy.
However, in order to work, this democracy must be “with Chinese characteristics”, like the successful economic reforms that have changed the face of China and the world in these last couple of decades. After all, functioning democracies are very different from each other. The Japanese, the Americans, the British, the French have very different systems.
In a White paper on “the system of ruling parties in China”, that came out on November 15 China even underscores the role of the democratic parties, the ones that helped the CPC to gain power but were later marginalized. The White paper now argues their importance. It says that the CPC is the leading party but the democratic parties have to participate in the government. They are not opposition parties but their role appears greatly enhanced. Furthermore, the white paper pledges apply democracy and it explains there are two aspects to democracy: democratic elections and democratic consensus. In other words democracy should not divide but unite the people, a concept on which the party had already started speaking a few days earlier, as we shall see below.
In all these countries however one common point is their press freedom. The official Xinhua News Agency on November 8, 2007 promised a progress on this in its story: “China's road of free information flow cautious but resolute”[1].
These are far more than empty words and lip service to foreign concept. The process of democratization for China is a structural necessity to prevent and avoid future possible revolutions[2]. The lesson the Party learnt from Tiananmen events in 1989 is that in order to avoid violent riots the government must pre-vacate them. It is the old adage of many democracies: Reforms are the best vaccine to revolutions.
In other words, stability requires reforms, and reforms must also be political reforms. This starts from the Party: Li Yuanchao, the new chief of the crucial organization department of the Party, argued that “The history of the development of the Party proves time and again that the democracy in the Party is the life of the Party.”[3]
Li claims that the party must have freer internal debate, free thinking, and at the same time, this greater freedom will have to create greater unity within the Party. The concept seems absurd. The experience in many individualistic societies seem to prove that once you grant freedom of thought you end up with greater differences, and division, not less. However, the Party here commands that freedom of thought should be conducive to greater unity.
Actually, the same thought is also entertained by the Catholic Church, where free speech should help the unity of the Church not its division. And the same can be true of many mature western democracies with vibrant and free debates. Their freedom of speech does not go as far as to break the unity of interests within the democracy. The very free American press overall does not go as far as to work for the destruction of the American system, at most it wants is its reform. Free debate in the Party, and at a later stage in the society, should serve the same purpose, at least ideally.
For the Party and for China these ideas are a powerful drive for change that must work without breaking the internal balance of power. This needs also to take care of the interests of the old class of revolutionaries. These are legacies of the past, very important for many reasons, somehow embodied in the recurring issue of “princelings”, the sons and daughters of elderly senior party chiefs.
One of the features of the 17th Congress seems to be of the return of the “princelings”, some of them made it to the Politburo. But the phenomenon is very different from that of princelings scurrying the country in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. The princelings, then, were kids using their family connections to grab pieces of national estates for their own personal good.
The present generation of “princelings”, promoted to the Politburo and the central committee, rose through the party ranks choosing a life in the bureaucracy rather than in business. Even those in business are not judged all according to the same standard. The ones who use their connections to catch business opportunities in China using money lent at lenient conditions from Chinese banks, the free riders of economic reforms, are to be shunned and kept at distance (even though they are rarely punished). However, the ones using their connections to create new businesses between China and abroad, bringing investment, technology and know-how to China, are to be praised (although not publicly).
In other words, it seems that the Party will try to use their talents. This is overall important for undeniable reasons: retired, senior party leaders still hold a major, though dwindling, influence in China. They command it because they have granted many favors to many people in their careers. Chinese culture breeds a stronger sense of gratitude and obligation in all people, who in turn cannot help but lend a ear to their former mentors.
Political reforms are difficult and the Party needs greater unity and support from all quarters. Party chief Hu Jintao would have a more difficult life with his plans if he started against party veterans. He decided to respect them, and in return he obtained the full Party support. At this congress he was the first Party chief to be voted in unanimously since secret balloting was introduced at the 13th Party Congress in 1987. Hu himself did not receive all the ballots in his first mandate as Party general secretary in 2002.
This legacy can be considered roughly similar to the tradition of inheritance of property in capitalist countries. The son can receive in inheritance his father’s property. This custom stabilizes society that every father and son, with some assets, have a stake in the long-term stability of the country, guaranteeing their interests. Without the right of inheritance there would be no long-term investment, and no long-term accumulation of capital and resources.
But inheritance is a flaw in the free market, as it creates a class of people with privileged access to resources versus others without a similar access. This creates a distortion in the free enterprise, moving the economy, and it also creates a friction in the social fabric, pitching more or less fortunate people according to their inheritance.
This is partly corrected by the state with the introduction of inheritance taxes and by ethics, pushing rich people to donate their fortunes to charity foundations and not to their children.
In this historical moment in China, perhaps the role of princelings should be understood in a similar fashion. These people inherited part of their power, as in capitalist countries the junior Fords inherited the fortunes of senior Fords. This “inheritance” commits the older and younger generation in the long-term welfare (i.e. reforms) of the country.
This advantage can far outweigh the shortcoming of the unfairness of having those “heirs” in the political and economic arena. The unfairness of the “princelings” can be partially offset by setting “taxes” (i.e. higher performance thresholds) in their political careers, or ethics, imposing higher moral standards to the princelings.
The unity of the leading class in China and in any country is extremely important for the overall national stability. Short of major external shocks, and major splits in the ruling class, revolutions from the bottom just can’t succeed.
Mao, leading a major uprising in China in 1930’s against the KMT, would have failed without the “help” of the external shock of the Japanese invasion; meanwhile in 1989, without any external threat, the Tiananmen movement burst out of control because of the fierce power struggle between Party secretary Zhao Ziyang and other Party elders. In Chinese history thousands of rebellions were stamped out because they lacked “support” from shocks abroad or divisions in the national leadership. Internal division and external shock can be the formula to create the premises for a successful revolution.
The selective admittance of princelings in the party structure could then help to guarantee that the party leadership remains unified in a crucial moment of political transformation, avoiding, or making more difficult, political turmoil or revolution.
With political reforms on their way the Party will meet new, unprecedented challenges, and ironically this might lead, in the short term, to more human rights abuses, not less. Two, are the probable causes.
The first is that the greater transparency promised give a freer rein to reporters, especially domestic ones. Their news might uncover, and make public, more dirt of all kinds than previously imagined. The scandal of forced labor in the brick kilns can be just one of many examples that could follow. At the end, it may seem that there will be more human rights abuses than before, but actually, the result will be that we will learn more of human rights abuses, without an actual increase of their total number.
The second cause might be an actual increase of abuses because of a growing conflict between central and local governments. The usual past conflict was between Beijing and the provincial authorities. But this conflict has decreased because of recent developments, some of which are: Greater turnover of officials between Beijing and the provinces; economic growth spreading from the coastal provinces to the inland pooling together provincial interests; centralization of power in many state owned enterprises and spread of the national foothold of centralized private companies.
However, new clashes are occurring: Authorities between Beijing, the provincial capitals, on one side, and Xian, (translated as county or district) on the other. The over 2,000 districts in China are trying to affirm themselves. This phenomenon is no geopolitical threat, as it cannot cause the independence of a district. But at a micro level it can create many problems.
Some of these districts have a population of a few millions, lots of resources and quite a large economic muscle; some are under populated and poor, but all are keen on putting their hands on the promised bonanza of aid and support from the centre. In the next few years, Beijing will pour billions in the provinces to build basic health care system for everybody, to provide all the population with free basic education, plus roads, railways, bridges and other infrastructures.
Beijing will demand to see transparently how the money will be spent and for this it will unleash its official and unofficial reporters. But some of the local authorities might want to skim the central funds. In the ensuing conflict between local and central authorities there might be many occasions for the little people to suffer in between.
In this clash, some press freedom might be sacrificed too. Beijing will want to know and also make public some of these clashes, but it will also want to control the clashes and for this it will need not to let the related news grow out of proportion, whatever the “proportion” might be. This might in turn make everybody scream against the suppression of press freedom.
All of this could occur in the short and medium term, and the practical results should help Beijing to gauge the next steps of the process of democratization. These will also depend on the foreign climate. Wars, social and economic crisis could slow down or accelerate the pace of reforms. However, whatever the pace, it is hard to think of a dramatic U turn in the process. Chinese leadership loves long-term plans and once embarked in one it hates to turn them down, it would start a political in-fight that would cost them the post and possibly start a major political crisis. For this, one can bet on it: it will be political reforms at all cost – although neither the end-results are clear nor when they will be reached.
[1] See http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-11/08/content_7032967.html
[2] See http://www.atimes.com/atimes/others/revolution.html
[3] Li Yuanchao “Tuijin dangnei minzhu jianshe, zengqiang dangde tuanjie tongyi”, in People’s Daily November 1, 2007. It is also interesting that Li here in a way “rewrites” the Party history claiming that there were ups and downs in democracy in the Party. When democracy was greater the Party thrived, otherwise the Party suffered, he says. In saying that there was democracy Li says that democracy is not new, odd, dangerous but that estrangement from democracy is odd, it is a flaw that has to be redressed.
Multi Party System, the Chinese Way
15/11/2007
Political reforms for democracy are starting, yet the future might hold in store also more human rights' abuses
by francesco sisci
Only days after the end of the 17th Communist Party Congress, a political campaign is already in full swing. Party members are required to study the spirit of the Congress, that is, to understand what the leadership means by “scientific development”, the new term inserted into the Party Constitution at the Congress.
Party members explain “scientific development” with a shrug: It is simply a code word for the process of democratization started by the Party. However, others, like former veteran Party member Sidney Rittenberg, say it is a deeper concept, brushing up some of the most successful Maoist experiences during the war against the KMT and the Japanese.
Mao recommended Party members to be practical, to consider facts, real conditions without ideological conditioning. It was an effort indebted more to the empirical philosophy of the American thinker John Dewey than to Lenin’s dogmatic vagaries.
Then practice demanded of the Party to be sided with peasants against landlords, it pushed the Party to seize land and divide it up among poor farmers. At the end of the day, it was an efficient capitalist reform, similar to that supported by the Americans in Taiwan after the KMT fled from the winners in the mainland. Mao’s practice was not ideologically “communist”, as it did not pool all the land together in the people’s commune, as it did later.
Now a practical approach, the “scientific development” demands to consider the present requirements of the people. Most of them now do not want a piece of land to till. Their wishes have grown more complicated. People want a better, richer life, they want to leave the countryside for the glittering cities, they want more freedom. In a few words, the party feels that the people also want to move on to democracy.
However, in order to work, this democracy must be “with Chinese characteristics”, like the successful economic reforms that have changed the face of China and the world in these last couple of decades. After all, functioning democracies are very different from each other. The Japanese, the Americans, the British, the French have very different systems.
In a White paper on “the system of ruling parties in China”, that came out on November 15 China even underscores the role of the democratic parties, the ones that helped the CPC to gain power but were later marginalized. The White paper now argues their importance. It says that the CPC is the leading party but the democratic parties have to participate in the government. They are not opposition parties but their role appears greatly enhanced. Furthermore, the white paper pledges apply democracy and it explains there are two aspects to democracy: democratic elections and democratic consensus. In other words democracy should not divide but unite the people, a concept on which the party had already started speaking a few days earlier, as we shall see below.
In all these countries however one common point is their press freedom. The official Xinhua News Agency on November 8, 2007 promised a progress on this in its story: “China's road of free information flow cautious but resolute”[1].
These are far more than empty words and lip service to foreign concept. The process of democratization for China is a structural necessity to prevent and avoid future possible revolutions[2]. The lesson the Party learnt from Tiananmen events in 1989 is that in order to avoid violent riots the government must pre-vacate them. It is the old adage of many democracies: Reforms are the best vaccine to revolutions.
In other words, stability requires reforms, and reforms must also be political reforms. This starts from the Party: Li Yuanchao, the new chief of the crucial organization department of the Party, argued that “The history of the development of the Party proves time and again that the democracy in the Party is the life of the Party.”[3]
Li claims that the party must have freer internal debate, free thinking, and at the same time, this greater freedom will have to create greater unity within the Party. The concept seems absurd. The experience in many individualistic societies seem to prove that once you grant freedom of thought you end up with greater differences, and division, not less. However, the Party here commands that freedom of thought should be conducive to greater unity.
Actually, the same thought is also entertained by the Catholic Church, where free speech should help the unity of the Church not its division. And the same can be true of many mature western democracies with vibrant and free debates. Their freedom of speech does not go as far as to break the unity of interests within the democracy. The very free American press overall does not go as far as to work for the destruction of the American system, at most it wants is its reform. Free debate in the Party, and at a later stage in the society, should serve the same purpose, at least ideally.
For the Party and for China these ideas are a powerful drive for change that must work without breaking the internal balance of power. This needs also to take care of the interests of the old class of revolutionaries. These are legacies of the past, very important for many reasons, somehow embodied in the recurring issue of “princelings”, the sons and daughters of elderly senior party chiefs.
One of the features of the 17th Congress seems to be of the return of the “princelings”, some of them made it to the Politburo. But the phenomenon is very different from that of princelings scurrying the country in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. The princelings, then, were kids using their family connections to grab pieces of national estates for their own personal good.
The present generation of “princelings”, promoted to the Politburo and the central committee, rose through the party ranks choosing a life in the bureaucracy rather than in business. Even those in business are not judged all according to the same standard. The ones who use their connections to catch business opportunities in China using money lent at lenient conditions from Chinese banks, the free riders of economic reforms, are to be shunned and kept at distance (even though they are rarely punished). However, the ones using their connections to create new businesses between China and abroad, bringing investment, technology and know-how to China, are to be praised (although not publicly).
In other words, it seems that the Party will try to use their talents. This is overall important for undeniable reasons: retired, senior party leaders still hold a major, though dwindling, influence in China. They command it because they have granted many favors to many people in their careers. Chinese culture breeds a stronger sense of gratitude and obligation in all people, who in turn cannot help but lend a ear to their former mentors.
Political reforms are difficult and the Party needs greater unity and support from all quarters. Party chief Hu Jintao would have a more difficult life with his plans if he started against party veterans. He decided to respect them, and in return he obtained the full Party support. At this congress he was the first Party chief to be voted in unanimously since secret balloting was introduced at the 13th Party Congress in 1987. Hu himself did not receive all the ballots in his first mandate as Party general secretary in 2002.
This legacy can be considered roughly similar to the tradition of inheritance of property in capitalist countries. The son can receive in inheritance his father’s property. This custom stabilizes society that every father and son, with some assets, have a stake in the long-term stability of the country, guaranteeing their interests. Without the right of inheritance there would be no long-term investment, and no long-term accumulation of capital and resources.
But inheritance is a flaw in the free market, as it creates a class of people with privileged access to resources versus others without a similar access. This creates a distortion in the free enterprise, moving the economy, and it also creates a friction in the social fabric, pitching more or less fortunate people according to their inheritance.
This is partly corrected by the state with the introduction of inheritance taxes and by ethics, pushing rich people to donate their fortunes to charity foundations and not to their children.
In this historical moment in China, perhaps the role of princelings should be understood in a similar fashion. These people inherited part of their power, as in capitalist countries the junior Fords inherited the fortunes of senior Fords. This “inheritance” commits the older and younger generation in the long-term welfare (i.e. reforms) of the country.
This advantage can far outweigh the shortcoming of the unfairness of having those “heirs” in the political and economic arena. The unfairness of the “princelings” can be partially offset by setting “taxes” (i.e. higher performance thresholds) in their political careers, or ethics, imposing higher moral standards to the princelings.
The unity of the leading class in China and in any country is extremely important for the overall national stability. Short of major external shocks, and major splits in the ruling class, revolutions from the bottom just can’t succeed.
Mao, leading a major uprising in China in 1930’s against the KMT, would have failed without the “help” of the external shock of the Japanese invasion; meanwhile in 1989, without any external threat, the Tiananmen movement burst out of control because of the fierce power struggle between Party secretary Zhao Ziyang and other Party elders. In Chinese history thousands of rebellions were stamped out because they lacked “support” from shocks abroad or divisions in the national leadership. Internal division and external shock can be the formula to create the premises for a successful revolution.
The selective admittance of princelings in the party structure could then help to guarantee that the party leadership remains unified in a crucial moment of political transformation, avoiding, or making more difficult, political turmoil or revolution.
With political reforms on their way the Party will meet new, unprecedented challenges, and ironically this might lead, in the short term, to more human rights abuses, not less. Two, are the probable causes.
The first is that the greater transparency promised give a freer rein to reporters, especially domestic ones. Their news might uncover, and make public, more dirt of all kinds than previously imagined. The scandal of forced labor in the brick kilns can be just one of many examples that could follow. At the end, it may seem that there will be more human rights abuses than before, but actually, the result will be that we will learn more of human rights abuses, without an actual increase of their total number.
The second cause might be an actual increase of abuses because of a growing conflict between central and local governments. The usual past conflict was between Beijing and the provincial authorities. But this conflict has decreased because of recent developments, some of which are: Greater turnover of officials between Beijing and the provinces; economic growth spreading from the coastal provinces to the inland pooling together provincial interests; centralization of power in many state owned enterprises and spread of the national foothold of centralized private companies.
However, new clashes are occurring: Authorities between Beijing, the provincial capitals, on one side, and Xian, (translated as county or district) on the other. The over 2,000 districts in China are trying to affirm themselves. This phenomenon is no geopolitical threat, as it cannot cause the independence of a district. But at a micro level it can create many problems.
Some of these districts have a population of a few millions, lots of resources and quite a large economic muscle; some are under populated and poor, but all are keen on putting their hands on the promised bonanza of aid and support from the centre. In the next few years, Beijing will pour billions in the provinces to build basic health care system for everybody, to provide all the population with free basic education, plus roads, railways, bridges and other infrastructures.
Beijing will demand to see transparently how the money will be spent and for this it will unleash its official and unofficial reporters. But some of the local authorities might want to skim the central funds. In the ensuing conflict between local and central authorities there might be many occasions for the little people to suffer in between.
In this clash, some press freedom might be sacrificed too. Beijing will want to know and also make public some of these clashes, but it will also want to control the clashes and for this it will need not to let the related news grow out of proportion, whatever the “proportion” might be. This might in turn make everybody scream against the suppression of press freedom.
All of this could occur in the short and medium term, and the practical results should help Beijing to gauge the next steps of the process of democratization. These will also depend on the foreign climate. Wars, social and economic crisis could slow down or accelerate the pace of reforms. However, whatever the pace, it is hard to think of a dramatic U turn in the process. Chinese leadership loves long-term plans and once embarked in one it hates to turn them down, it would start a political in-fight that would cost them the post and possibly start a major political crisis. For this, one can bet on it: it will be political reforms at all cost – although neither the end-results are clear nor when they will be reached.
[1] See http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-11/08/content_7032967.html
[2] See http://www.atimes.com/atimes/others/revolution.html
[3] Li Yuanchao “Tuijin dangnei minzhu jianshe, zengqiang dangde tuanjie tongyi”, in People’s Daily November 1, 2007. It is also interesting that Li here in a way “rewrites” the Party history claiming that there were ups and downs in democracy in the Party. When democracy was greater the Party thrived, otherwise the Party suffered, he says. In saying that there was democracy Li says that democracy is not new, odd, dangerous but that estrangement from democracy is odd, it is a flaw that has to be redressed.