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The reformist road, trod with care

Asia Times

BEIJING - From now, the peak of winter, to then, early autumn, the time of the 16th Congress, the 80-year-old but still buoyant Chinese Communist Party will tread carefully. It has just one objective in mind: to produce the correctly balanced political alchemy that will hold the fourth generation of leaders in power for about five or 10 years. There are many rumors about the choice of people but it is certain that whoever will be selected for the new 23-strong Politburo, or for the almost 400-strong Central Committee, will pursue the reformist road.

Since the times of Mao Zedong the party has been swinging left and right, but there is one general rule of thumb: the new party leaders will boost their power with a big concession to the right. At the beginning of his revolutionary career and after taking power in China in 1949, Mao distributed the land to the farmers, against the best advice of his more militant comrades, and so did Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s. Reform has since become the hallmark of power legitimacy, and in 1997 President Jiang Zemin enshrined this golden rule in the party constitution, which elevated Deng's theory to the heights of guiding principle for the Chinese future, de facto surpassing Mao's thoughts.

A big push to the right can thus be expected after the Congress, yet two conditions must be accomplished: no confrontation with the United States and no challenges to the social environment. These two conditions must be considered carefully.

After the 15th Congress in 1997, the party decided on a line of wider political tolerance that would usher in a moment of greater political dialogue and thus sow the seeds of democratization. The Congress's good intentions were, however, smashed by two separate but concurrent incidents in early 1999: Premier Zhu Rongji's failure to get the US to ink a commitment to China's entry in the World Trade Organization, and the Falungong protests.

On April 25, 1999, Zhu had just come back from the US. America had refused to sign the offer that China was taking for its accession in the WTO. Some senior US official admitted at the time that the offer was largely all that America had been asking for, but as Zhu was offering it on a silver plate, many Americans thought they could squeeze even better conditions from China, and thus they turned it down.

In fact, Zhu's offer had been a political gamble. Jiang and Zhu were forcing the hand of their people in China to try to muster US support for their domestic policies. The American failure to see this hand and the misinterpretation of Zhu's offer left the Chinese leadership open to anti-American attacks, ie, Zhu should not try to lean on the Americans who left him and China out in the cold. The Chinese interpretation of what had happened was not that the US had simply blundered by misunderstanding what was going on. Many Chinese officials thought it was a US plot to put Zhu on the spot and weaken China. After that, a pro-American policy in China became more difficult to achieve. The nightmare of a tough confrontation with America took shape once more, and with it China became more defensive.

The external difficulty combined with the new domestic threats. The Falungong had been staging demonstrations all through 1998. Many journalists had been harassed for their anti-Falungong opinion, but the official reply to their claims was: do not stir up trouble with the Falungong (bie gen tamen re mafan). In other words, the prevailing view in the government was to let the Falungong go undisturbed. The party did not want a crackdown, it wanted to avoid a massive social confrontation, and it wanted to open up a social dialogue and thus let the Falungong go undisturbed.

This pattern was broken on April 25, with the large demonstration around Zhongnanhai, the Chinese leadership compound. Yet even after that there was no immediate decision. It took the party three months to decide to ban the Falungong. In all that time the party collected evidence against the organization but it also tried to build bridges. The offer to the Falungong was: you stop demonstrating in Tiananmen Square and we won't ban your organization. The offer may seem minimal in the West where all rights are entrenched and have a long history, but it was actually quite generous in a country where protesters were routinely marched to prison.

Even after the ban the leaders tried to keep some room for dialogue open. They did label the Falungong a cult, and arrested its leaders, but did not impose harsh punishment on ordinary followers detained in Tiananmen Square. But things turned for the worse on Chinese New Year 2001, when a group of Falungong followers torched themselves in the Square. The order then became "zero tolerance" for the cult and those who were caught demonstrating were no longer merely sent home but were incarcerated in re-education camps.

This behavior seems in Western eyes intolerant, but in the party's logic it is different. The party will become tolerant in a gradual manner, provided that overall national stability is maintained.

The threat of continuous demonstrations in the Square was perceived as an open challenge to party rule, and thus to the core of stability. No party leader can open up society by sacrificing stability and order (zhi, as the opposite of luan, chaos), which since ancient times is the most treasured value of Chinese society. Now a few years later, at the 16th Congress the party will be faced with the same challenge. It wants to open up society and become more tolerant. The leaders are clear that this is the path to overall modernization.

Democracy would give a lot of face to China and its leaders, who traditionally are very face-conscious. The leaders, present and (even more) future, know that liberalization is necessary for economic development on which they depend as a form of legitimization to power. However, if the choice has to be between order and chaos, then they'll be clear about their pick. (2002-01-03 Asia Times)

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