MCLC: Wang Yang tests a new political approach

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Wang Yang test a new political approach
***********************************************************

Source: NYT (12/30/11):
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/31/world/asia/chinese-official-wang-yang-tes
ts-new-political-approach.html

A Chinese Official Tests a New Political Approach
By SHARON LaFRANIERE

BEIJING ‹ In a year of China under lockdown, when dissident writers have
received breathtaking prison sentences and the mere whisper of a ³Jasmine
Revolution² has spurred mass detentions, perhaps the riskiest thing a
Chinese politician could do is put his iron glove on the shelf.

Which makes Wang Yang¹s gamble this month in Wukan all the more
interesting.

Mr. Wang, the up-and-coming Communist Party secretary of the southern
Chinese province of Guangdong, faced a political turning point when 13,000
irate residents of Wukan evicted their leaders and barricaded themselves
in their coastal village for 13 days in a last-straw uprising against
local corruption.

Given a choice of storming the village with armed police officers or
conceding that the villagers¹ complaints had merit, Mr. Wang chose the
latter. And in a single morning, he defused a standoff that had drawn
unflattering worldwide news coverage.

The decision won him praise in the Communist Party¹s flagship newspaper,
People¹s Daily, which called it an act of ³political courage² in a tense
situation. Some analysts said it might have strengthened his already
strong prospects to land a seat on China¹s elite ruling body, the
nine-member Standing Committee of the party¹s Politburo, when a wave of
mandatory retirements vacates seven of the seats this coming year.

And it raised the hopes of those here who want someone liberal ‹ as
defined by China¹s restrictive definitions ‹ to push for political and
social reforms at the highest level of China¹s leadership.

³He seems to favor reform,² said Zhang Lifan, a historian formerly with
the government-run Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. ³At least Mr. Wang
realizes that maintaining stability with force and violence is both
economically and politically unsustainable, and came up with an
alternative that seems to work better.²

But as is amply shown by the travails of China¹s best-known quasi liberal,
Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, having a soft heart for the dispossessed gets a
politician only so far in a party where stability is the trump card.

³How high can a man jump?² asked Yan Lieshan, a senior editor of Southern
Weekly, a Guangzhou-based newspaper known for hard-hitting reporting. ³If
officials overstep the limits set by the central government, their
positions will become untenable.²

And in fact, while Mr. Wang has sometimes talked boldly about how power
should not be concentrated in a ³minority of elites,² many liberal-minded
analysts characterize his own initiatives in Guangdong as modest, at best.

³Wang Yang¹s problem is when you try to make reform happen inside the
system, if you go too fast you hurt the interests of others, and they will
gang up on you to eliminate you,² Mr. Zhang said.

Like President Hu Jintao, widely seen as his ally, Mr. Wang, 56, comes
from modest circumstances in Anhui, one of China¹s poorest provinces.
Forced to leave school at 17 to work in a food factory, he got his
political start in the early 1980s in Anhui¹s Communist Party Youth
League, serving under Mr. Hu, who led the organization. One political
insider said Wan Li, the Anhui party secretary who served as China¹s vice
premier through most of the 1980s, first noticed Mr. Wang in Anhui and
remained an influential backer.

After impressive stints in local, provincial and national jobs, Mr. Wang
gained two posts in 2007: membership on the 24-member Politburo and
appointment as party secretary of Guangdong, China¹s most populous
province and the government¹s minilaboratory for more progressive policies.

Almost immediately, he talked of ³thought emancipation² and the need to
pioneer changes ‹ and just as quickly hit head winds.

On the economic front, he tried to use administrative levers to replace
low-end, heavily polluting workshops and factories with high-tech,
value-added industries. That prompted fierce resistance from local
officials, who argued that deserting the factories that drove Guangdong¹s
export-based economy would be fiscal suicide.

Lin Jiang, an economics professor at Sun Yat-sen University, said Mr. Wang
tried to carry out a basically sound policy too hastily, costing him
crucial local support. Still, like other academics, Mr. Lin credits him
with reaching outside traditional circles for fresh points of view.

On the political front, Mr. Wang began a campaign for ³Happy Guangdong,²
derided by critics as empty sloganeering. But he also spoke more seriously
of officials¹ need to heed the ³sunken voices² of the masses. In June, he
declared that ³the economic rights of some of the grass roots have not
been protected and their political rights are not being realized.²

Solving those problems, he added, is more important than ³singing and
praising glories.² Many took that as a jab at Bo Xilai, the ambitious
party secretary of the Chongqing municipality who has pushed to revive
Maoist culture and is often portrayed as Mr. Wang¹s rival.

But Mr. Wang¹s apparent support for greater political openness has not
borne much fruit. Six months into his tenure, he considered making
Shenzhen, the commercial hub of more than 10 million that is considered
the birthplace of China¹s economic reforms, a showcase for political
change. The plan envisioned a gradual shift to the direct election of many
officials, a strengthening of local legislatures and a study of how the
party-controlled judiciary could be made independent.

None of that came to pass. ³The plan was really bold and probably too
radical,² said Xiao Bin, an economics professor at Sun Yat-sen University.
At a meeting in August 2008 in Shenzhen, he said, he warned Mr. Wang and
others that ³anything so comprehensive coming out of Shenzhen would send
shock waves around the country² ‹ and ultimately backfire.

Instead, Mr. Wang approved more mundane administrative reforms in a
relatively obscure district called Shunde, combining 41 government
departments and their parallel party structures into 16. Scholars say the
new structure is more efficient, with fewer party functionaries lacking
clear duties.

Mr. Wang also allowed Guangzhou, the provincial capital, to publish its
budget for the first time in October 2009. While a national law passed the
previous year allowed Chinese citizens to request such information, it
also gave officials wide latitude to withhold it to protect state secrets
or society¹s interests. Indeed, on the same day that Guangzhou posted
figures for 114 agencies online, Shanghai declared its budget a state
secret. So many people tried to view the Guangzhou budget that the Web
site¹s server crashed. After angry citizens complained that the city had
allocated more than $11 million to operate kindergartens for the children
of government workers, the city agreed to gradually reduce the subsidy.

Guangdong also made it easier for nongovernmental organizations like
charities and environmental groups to register as legal entities. As of
next July, organizations no longer will be required to find a ³responsible
supervisor² ‹ typically a government-run organization with a party
committee ‹ to sponsor their registration.

Provincial officials say the change that could aid the development of
civil society in a province where the number of nongovernmental
organizations already is rising more than three times as fast as the
national average.

If such loosening is unorthodox, it is nothing compared with the risks Mr.
Wang could face by taking a more tolerant approach to antigovernment
protests.

His peaceful settlement of Wukan¹s uprising earns praise in Beijing now.
But that could turn into accusations of soft-heartedness and strategic
miscalculation should his conciliatory approach lead to more and bolder
protests.

Even some of Guangdong¹s local party cadres do not seem fully onboard.
Consider the Dec. 19 outburst from Zheng Yanxiong, the party secretary of
the city whose territory includes Wukan, two days before Mr. Wang¹s
emissary settled the Wukan villagers¹ grievances.

³There¹s only one group of people who really experience added hardships
year after year. Who are they? Cadres, that¹s who. Me included,² Mr. Zheng
railed during a session with Chinese reporters
<http://v.ifeng.com/news/society/201112/27f67b63-5a2d-4ee3-8721-1537eb3debb
e.shtml>. ³Your powers decline every day, and you have fewer and fewer
methods at your disposal ‹ but your responsibility grows bigger and bigger
every day.²

³Ordinary people want more and more every day,² he continued. ³They grow
smarter every day, and they are harder and harder to control.

³Today¹s government officials are having a hard time.²

Jonathan Ansfield contributed reporting. Li Bibo, Mia Li and Shi Da
contributed research.