As Xi Jinping Reforms China, Expect Power Consolidation, Not Democracy – Businessweek
Chinese President Xi Jinping is all about reform. That’s “reform” as in “kicking butt.” The main take-away from the Third Plenary Session of the Communist Party’s 18th Central Committee is that Xi has consolidated power remarkably quickly and is eager to use it. Some parts of his agenda impress outsiders, such as further relaxing the one-child policy and closing reeducation labor camps. Such steps defuse popular anger toward the regime. Other Xi initiatives are decidedly less appealing, like the vow to “utilize and standardize Internet supervision,” which is code language for censorship. But whether liked or disliked outside China, everything Xi intends to do is directed toward one goal: to consolidate the Communist Party’s central and permanent role as the leader of the nation.
Democracy is the yielding of power from the party to the people. That’s not what Xi wants. He wants to gather power inward on the theory that only a strong leader can govern a country in which the mountains are high and the emperor is far away. Getting local governments to toe the line “requires a lot of political brute force, and it’s something you can only achieve if you are extremely vigorous,” says Arthur Kroeber, Beijing-based managing director of economic research firm GK Dragonomics. Kroeber says Xi’s anticorruption campaign seems to warn, “Look, this is the way it’s going to be, and if you don’t like it, we have a lot of space in the jails for you.”
The theme of the third party plenum, held on Nov. 9-12, was “reform and opening up.” That’s a phrase consciously copied from an earlier third party plenum—the one in December 1978 at which Deng Xiaoping began to launch China into the global economy. Deng helped lift hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty, giving the world’s most populous nation what is now the world’s second-biggest economy. Xi wants to show his countrymen he’s determined to carry on Deng’s legacy, yet he draws inspiration from the man Deng repudiated: Chairman Mao Zedong. Xi’s father, Xi Zhongxun, fought alongside Mao. According to the official story, Mao saved him from execution, and the elder Xi repaid the favor by sheltering Mao and his troops at the end of the Long March retreat from the Nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek.
As a princeling, Xi is determined to demonstrate his ties to the founding generation. Intent on returning China to a purer past, he has presided over a crackdown on corruption that has netted senior party officials—even as members of his own extended family have become rich. He’s brought back the Maoist notion of a “mass line” that enforces ideological discipline by requiring officials to “listen to the people,” introspect, and cleanse themselves of any deviations from party doctrine. He isn’t making it easy for the people to speak, though; in September, China’s top court said Web users could face jail time if “defamatory” rumors they put online were read by more than 5,000 people or reposted more than 500 times.
Xi doesn’t trumpet his differences from his predecessors as an American would. Chinese leaders worry that the people will lose faith in the party if it seems to be swerving in different directions. (“Unswerving” is a big word in China.) So in its 60-point resolution, the Central Committee dutifully name-checks “Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory, the important thought of ‘Three Represents,’ and The Scientific Outlook on Development”—those last two being the slogans of past presidents Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, respectively. It’s as if Barack Obama obsessively paid tribute to President George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism.”
via As Xi Jinping Reforms China, Expect Power Consolidation, Not Democracy – Businessweek.
The party plenum: Everybody who loves Mr Xi, say yes | The Economist
COMMUNIST Party plenums are rituals of unchanging arcana. The closed-door, four-day conclave of some 370 senior party leaders that ended in Beijing on November 12th was a typical example, as usual summing up its decisions in a gnomic communiqué full of ambiguities. Yet a parsing of the document suggests President Xi Jinping (pictured above, centre) is tightening his grip on power, and with it his ability to achieve breakthroughs in economic and social reforms.
China’s state-controlled media have hailed the meeting, known as the third plenum of the 18th Central Committee, as “a new historical starting point”. Global Times, an English-language newspaper, said it was just as important as the most famous plenum in the party’s history, which brought Deng Xiaoping to power in 1978 and ushered in profound changes that turned China into the world’s second-largest economy. There is little in the communiqué to back such bullish assertions, but the summary of the proceedings offers hope that the pace of reform will pick up.
For the first time in such a document, the party has called for markets to play a “decisive” role in the allocation of resources. This has been glossed by official media as a step up from previous party language that described the role of market forces as merely “basic”. This new language, according to an academic quoted by Global Times, aroused much debate during preparations for the plenum. Semantics can be very important. The party’s decision in 1992 to create a “socialist market economy”, not just a socialist one, caused an upsurge of reformist zeal, including the privatisation or closure of tens of thousands of state-owned enterprises, as well as market-opening measures that paved the way for accession to the World Trade Organisation a decade later.
As expected, this week’s communiqué contained few indications of specific new policies. These will become clearer in a few days or weeks when the resolution is published, and after senior economic officials meet in December to decide on the country’s economic strategy for the year ahead. There was no mention of financial reforms to allow market forces to determine interest and exchange rates, which many economists view as crucial. On rural land reform, also closely watched, the document merely repeated language introduced at a plenum five years ago about the need to unify urban and rural property markets. Despite its reassuring words about the role of the market, it said the state sector should remain the “main body” of the economy, an odd concept, especially since China’s GDP is now largely generated by the private sector.
But at party plenums, repetition of familiar language is not necessarily a sign of inertia. The meeting in 1978 was laden with Mao-era rhetoric, but led to the ditching of Mao’s economic policies. More important were the signals it sent about Deng’s grip on power, including the return to central roles of many of Deng’s allies who had been purged by Mao. The just-concluded plenum announced two institutional changes that suggest Mr Xi has moved fast to consolidate his position.
The first of these is the setting up of a “state-security committee”. Details of this have not been revealed. It may be Mr Xi’s attempt to rein in a security apparatus that had become too powerful in recent years. Some of its functions are expected to mirror those of America’s National Security Council, which advises the president on foreign policy and tries to ensure that all government agencies are well co-ordinated. China’s new body is thought likely to include representatives from the army and police as well as ministries responsible for foreign and economic affairs. It would be a sign of Mr Xi’s growing power if he has at last persuaded the security forces to act more in concert with the rest of the bureaucracy.
The other notable change is the establishment of a “leading small group” to supervise reforms. Such groups count. They report to the Politburo and help to form and implement policy decisions. Again, no details have been given of the new body, but it could help to overcome bureaucratic rivalries that often stymie reforms. It may even be chaired by Mr Xi. The communiqué calls for “decisive results” by 2020 in unspecified “important areas” of reform.
Not surprisingly, given a fierce crackdown on political dissent in recent months, the document said little about political reform (although for the first time in the history of party plenums, Chinese television indulged in a show of glasnost by broadcasting scenes of group discussions, though participants’ voices could not be heard). The communiqué favourably mentions democracy 12 times, but plenum-watchers learned long ago that this particular count is best ignored.
via The party plenum: Everybody who loves Mr Xi, say yes | The Economist.
China Legal Reform Promises Cause for Cautious Optimism – China Real Time Report – WSJ
The initial communiqué that emanated from China’s major meeting of top Communist Party leaders on November 12th focused on economic reform and had little to say about the legal realm. That changed three days later when the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party released a 60-point “resolution” that announced two potentially significant legal reforms and provided more detail about additional reform targets.
While it’s only possible to gauge the transformation of rhetoric into action after the fact, I’m not alone in welcoming the new goals. I recently attended a long-planned meeting in Seattle of a group of specialists on Chinese law. The meeting began on November 14, and the mood was discouraged given the scarcity of references to legal institutions in the communiqué. By the next morning, however, the atmosphere shifted as details of the just-released resolution trickled in.
The resolution specifically mentions two potentially important reforms: abolition of the system of “re-education through labor” (in Chinese: laojiao) and a plan to move the courts and the procuracy (prosecutors) away from the influence of local governments.
Laojiao, initiated in 1957, is a system under which the police may send people to labor camps for up to four years without formal arrest or trial. Initially established to deal with recidivist petty criminals who would otherwise burden the courts, it has been extensively used to incarcerate “counter-revolutionary” dissidents, aggressive petitioners, members of the Falun Gong religious movement and other persons deemed to present unwelcome political challenges to CCP rule. It has long provoked criticism by Chinese legal scholars, other advocates of legal reform and members of the public.
via China Legal Reform Promises Cause for Cautious Optimism – China Real Time Report – WSJ.
China to ease decades-old one-child policy nationwide | Reuters
China will ease family planning restrictions nationwide, the government said on Friday, allowing millions of families to have two children in the country\’s most significant liberalization of its strict one-child policy in about three decades.
Couples in which one parent is an only child will now be able to have a second child, one of the highlights of a sweeping raft of reforms announced three days after the ruling Communist Party ended a meeting that mapped out policy for the next decade.
The plan to ease the policy was envisioned by the government about five years ago as officials worried that the strict controls were undermining economic growth and contributing to a rapidly ageing population the country had no hope of supporting financially.
A growing number of scholars had long urged the government to reform the policy, introduced in the late 1970s to prevent population growth spiraling out of control, but now regarded by many experts as outdated and harmful to the economy.
While the easing of the controls will not have a substantial demographic impact in the world\’s most populous nation, it could pave the way for the abolition of the policy.
\”The demographic significance is minimal but the political significance is substantial,\” said Wang Feng, a sociology professor at Fudan University specializing in China\’s demographics, before the announcement.
\”This is one of the most urgent policy changes that we\’ve been awaiting for years. What this will mean is a very speedy abolishment of the one-child policy.\”
In the 1980s, the government allowed rural families with a girl to have two children, Wang said. \”Ever since the \’80s, there\’s been nothing as clear as this,\” he said.
Wang Guangzhou, a demographer from top government think-tank, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, estimated the new policy would affect 30 million women of child-bearing age In a country which has nearly 1.4 billion people.
Although it is known internationally as the one-child policy, China\’s rules governing family planning are more complicated. Under current rules, urban couples are permitted a second child if both parents do not have siblings and rural couples are allowed to have two children if their first-born is a girl.
There are numerous other exceptions as well, including looser rules for ethnic minorities and allowing parents who are themselves only children to have two children at most.
Any couple violating the policy has to pay a large fine.
The one-child policy covers 63 per cent of the country\’s population and Beijing says it has averted 400 million births since 1980.
Many analysts say the one-child policy has shrunk China\’s labor pool, hurting economic growth. For the first time in decades the working age population fell in 2012, and China could be the first country in the world to get old before it gets rich.
\”It\’s not a huge reform, there have been small adjustments all along,\” said Liang Zhongtang, a demographer from the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.
\”I am just worried that they will make no further adjustments for a very long time after they\’ve made this one.\”
Tian Xueyuan, a retired family planning scholar who helped draft the original one-child policy, told Reuters the rules were only meant to last about 25 years.
\”They could have implemented this policy several years ago,\” he said.
Numerous studies have shown the detrimental effects of the one-child policy. China\’s labor force, at about 930 million, will start declining in 2025 at a rate of about 10 million a year, projections show. Meanwhile, its elderly population will hit 360 million by 2030, from about 200 million today.
A skewed gender ratio is another consequence.
Like most Asian nations, China has a traditional bias for sons. Many families abort female fetuses or abandon baby girls to ensure their only child is a son. About 118 boys are born for every 100 girls, against a global average of 103-107 boys per 100 girls.
Family planning officials have been known to compel women to have abortions to meet birth-rate targets.
Still, the adjustment is likely to be popular.
Zhang Yuanyuan, who has a one-year-old son, said she had already decided to have one more child before the new policy and was willing to pay the fine.
\”We are very, very happy about this new policy,\” Zhang told Reuters.
via China to ease decades-old one-child policy nationwide | Reuters.
New Chinese Agency to ‘Manage’ Social Unrest | StratRisks
Source: RFA
The ruling Chinese Communist Party on Tuesday said it would establish an agency to “manage” growing social unrest, as part of a set of reforms largely focusing on the economy.
The new “state security committee” will tackle social instability and unify other agencies in charge of increasing security challenges, both foreign and domestic, the party’s Central Committee said in a statement after a four-day plenary meeting in the nation’s capital ended Tuesday.
State news agency Xinhua said the committee would “improve the system of national security and the country’s national security strategy” so as to “effectively prevent and end social disputes and improve public security”.
But it gave no further details of how the new plan, which was announced amid a raft of economic reforms, would be implemented.
China’s nationwide “stability maintenance” system, which now costs more to run than its People’s Liberation Army (PLA), tracks the movements and activities of anyone engaged in political or rights activism across the country.
Under this system, activists and outspoken intellectuals are routinely put under house arrest or other forms of surveillance at politically sensitive times.
However, analysts said that the agency was likely a bid by China’s new leadership under President Xi Jinping to curb the powers of the Political and Legal Affairs Commission, which administers the “stability maintenance” budget and has been slammed for behaving like a law unto itself.
“I think they have suddenly decreed the creation of this state security committee because the political and legal affairs committees have got such a bad name now,” said Chen Ziming, a former student leader of the 1989 Tiananmen pro-democracy movement who is now based in the United States. “Maybe they want to give it a makeover.”
“Also, they want to boost their overseas contacts,” he said. “It’s not just anti-terrorism; it has to do with many aspects of internal security and diplomatic relations.”
“All of those will be strengthened via this new agency,” he said.
New curbs
Shenzhen-based independent commentator Zhu Jianguo said the new committee would likely herald further attempts by the government to stamp out activism and curb online freedom of expression.
“This is exactly what everybody was afraid would happen,” Zhu said. “It will set new curbs and limitations on freedom of speech and thought.”
“If these reforms were genuine, they would be encouraging freedom of thought and expanding opportunities for public supervision [of government],” he said.
He said there had been no signal from China’s leadership that any reforms of the political system were in the pipeline.
“This is very far from any reform of the political system,” he said.
Cheng Li, a fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington and an expert on Chinese politics, said Xi’s administration had taken inspiration from the U.S.’ National Security Council, and was aiming to place more power in the hands of president.
“The official line is to better coordinate the very different domains: the intelligence, military, foreign policy, public security and also national defense,” Cheng told Reuters.
“This gives tremendous power to the presidency,” he said.
Sensitive session
Authorities in Beijing detained or dispersed hundreds of petitioners who tried to voice grievances against the government during the plenary session of the party’s Central Committee.
Police appeared to be on full alert after detaining or intercepting more than 300 former PLA officers last week.
The requisitioning of rural land for lucrative property deals by cash-hungry local governments also triggers thousands of “mass incidents” across China every year.
Many result in violent suppression, the detention of the main organizers, and intense pressure on the local population to comply with the government’s wishes.
Reported by Qiao Long for RFA’s Mandarin Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.
via New Chinese Agency to ‘Manage’ Social Unrest | StratRisks.
Supporters of China’s disgraced Bo Xilai set up political party | Reuters
Did you know that there are “eight government-sanctioned non-Communist parties, whose role is technically to advise rather than serve as a functioning opposition.”
“Supporters of China\’s disgraced senior politician Bo Xilai, who has been jailed for corruption, have set up a political party, two separate sources said, in a direct challenge to the ruling Communist Party\’s de facto ban on new political groups.
The Zhi Xian Party, literally \”the constitution is the supreme authority\” party, was formed on November 6, three days before the opening of a key conclave of top Communist Party leaders to discuss much-needed economic reforms, the sources said.
It named Bo as \”chairman for life\”, Wang Zheng, one of the party\’s founders and an associate professor of international trade at the Beijing Institute of Economics and Management, told Reuters by telephone.
\”This is not illegal under Chinese law. It is legal and reasonable,\” Wang said.
A second source, who asked not to be identified but who has direct knowledge of the party\’s founding, confirmed the news.
Calls to the Communist Party\’s propaganda department seeking comment went unanswered.
The party announced its establishment by sending letters to the Communist Party, China\’s eight other political parties, parliament and the top advisory body to parliament, Wang said, adding that no ceremony was held.
It also sent a letter to Bo via the warden of his prison informing him that he would be their \”chairman for life\”, she said. It was not immediately clear if Bo would agree.
The party was set up because it \”fully agrees with Mr Bo Xilai\’s common prosperity\” policy, according to a party document seen by Reuters, a reference to Bo\’s leftist egalitarian policies that won him so many supporters.
Asked if party members included Communists, government officials or People\’s Liberation Army officers, Wang said she could not discuss the matter to protect them because it was politically \”sensitive\”.
China\’s constitution guarantees freedom of association, along with freedom of speech and assembly, but all are banned in practice. The constitution does not explicitly allow or ban the establishment of political parties.
Bo, once a rising star in China\’s leadership circles who had cultivated a following through his populist, quasi-Maoist policies, was jailed for life in September on charges of corruption and abuse of power after a dramatic fall from grace that shook the Communist Party.
History suggests the Communist Party will not look kindly on the establishment of this new party, even more so because its titular head is a former member of its own top ranks.
China\’s Communist rulers have held an iron grip on power since the 1949 revolution, though they allow the existence of eight government-sanctioned non-Communist parties, whose role is technically to advise rather than serve as a functioning opposition.
The Communist Party views the founding of opposition parties as subversion.”
via Supporters of China’s disgraced Bo Xilai set up political party | Reuters.
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