MCLC: Beidaihe intrique

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Beidaihe intrigue
***********************************************************

Source: NYT (7/21/12):
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/22/world/asia/chinas-communist-elders-take-b
ackroom-intrigue-beachside.html

China’s Communist Elders Take Backroom Intrigue Beachside
By EDWARD WONG 

BEIDAIHE, China — Clutching a wooden cane and aided by an entourage of
young people, the old man in a black silk shirt and matching shorts
hobbled up the stairs to Kiessling, a decades-old Austrian restaurant not
far from the teeming beaches of this seaside resort. He sat on the balcony
and ordered ice cream. It was the best in town, he told his companions. At
least it had been in his youth.

“This man is a relative of Zhou Enlai,” the restaurant manager said in a
low voice to some foreign diners at a nearby table, referring to the
revered prime minister of China in the Mao era. “He’s come here before. He
stays in the neighborhood where the leaders live.”

In any other city, even Beijing, it would be unusual to casually run into
a relative of Mr. Zhou. But it is midsummer in Beidaihe, which means one
thing: Communist Party elders and their families are congregating here,
about 180 miles east of Beijing, to swim and dine and gossip — and to
shape the future of the world’s most populous nation.

It is palace intrigue by the sea. In their guarded villas, current and
past leaders will negotiate to try to place allies in the 25-member
Politburo and its elite Standing Committee, at the top of the party
hierarchy. The selections will be announced at the 18th Party Congress
this fall in Beijing, heralding what is expected to be only the second
orderly leadership transition in more than 60 years of Communist rule.

“This is where the factional struggles are settled and the decisions are
made,” said one resident, surnamed Li, who, like others interviewed for
this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicate
nature of Chinese politics. “At the meetings in the fall, everyone just
raises their hands.”

Beidaihe is a Chinese combination of the Jersey Shore and Martha’s
Vineyard, with a pinch of red fervor: the hilly streets and public beaches
are packed with shirtless Russians and Chinese families, while the party
elites remain hidden in their villas and on their private patches of sand.
A clock tower near Kiessling chimes “The East is Red,” a classic Mao
anthem.

The security presence has surged in recent weeks. Police officers in light
blue uniforms patrol on Suzuki motorcycles and stand on street corners
watching for jaywalkers. They have set up a checkpoint on the main road
leading into town.

The informal talks are expected to start late this month and run into
August, continuing a tradition that went into partial eclipse after
China’s top leader, President Hu Jintao, took over from Jiang Zemin in
2002, and ordered party and government offices to stop more formal
operations from the seaside during the summer palaver. But Mr. Jiang
reportedly chafed at that and continued hobnobbing here with his allies.
There was a notable conclave here in 2007 that Mr. Hu attended, to pave
the way for the 17th Party Congress, according to scholars and a State
Department cable disclosed by WikiLeaks.

In any case, politicking is inevitable when party elders show up to escape
the stifling heat and pollution of Beijing.

Westerners began building up Beidaihe as a summer retreat in the late 19th
century, as the Qing dynasty waned. When the People’s Liberation Army
entered in 1948, the resort had 719 villas, according to China Daily, a
state-run English-language newspaper.

Communist leaders began vacationing here. Mao was an avid swimmer and dove
eagerly into the waters of the Bohai Sea. He convened formal conclaves
here. His successor, Deng Xiaoping, made the meetings into annual events
(he also took swims, supposedly to counter rumors of his ailing health).

The most infamous event at Beidaihe involved Lin Biao, a Communist marshal
whom Mao accused of plotting a coup. On Sept. 13, 1971, after the coup
attempt was supposedly discovered, Mr. Lin fled his villa here with his
wife and a son and boarded a plane at the local airport. Their destination
was the Soviet Union, but the plane crashed in Mongolia, killing everyone
on board.

There are plots and counterplots this year, too. Negotiations here will be
complicated by the continuing scandal over Bo Xilai, the deposed Politburo
member who was most recently party chief of Chongqing. Some political
observers had expected that by now the party would have concluded the
investigation into Mr. Bo and his wife, who is suspected of killing a
British businessman. Several people with high-level party ties say that
Mr. Bo, who is being held in secret and without charges, is fighting back
against interrogators, and that party leaders are having a difficult time
deciding how to resolve his case.

During the negotiations, each current Standing Committee member should, at
least in theory, have considerable say in determining the successor to his
particular post. But party elders behind the scenes sometimes wield more
authority. Mr. Jiang, though retired and ailing last year, may carry the
greatest weight next to that of Mr. Hu. The heir apparent, Vice President
Xi Jinping, also plays a role.

“Consensus among these three — the former, current and incoming leaders —
is extremely important,” said Zhang Xiaojin, a political scientist at
Tsinghua University in Beijing.

A flurry of activity in recent months has laid the groundwork. In May,
more than 300 senior cadres were asked at a meeting to list the officials
they thought should make the Politburo Standing Committee, where all the
seats are in play except for the top two. Those are expected to go to Mr.
Xi and Li Keqiang, who is slated to take over as prime minister.

Polling of senior party members was also done before the 2007 congress.
Such surveys are intended as reference points only, though they have
become increasingly important. Talk is swirling in Beijing over the
results of the May polling. One member of the party elite said several
people associated with Mr. Hu’s political base did not do well. Two
insiders said one person who ranked high was Wang Qishan, a vice prime
minister who oversees the financial sector.

Party leaders are considering reducing the number of Standing Committee
seats to seven from nine, as was the case as recently as 2002, many
insiders say. Mr. Hu is believed to support the change, which is in part
aimed at curbing the entrenchment of interest groups at the top. That
could mean taking two portfolios — probably propaganda and one dubbed
“politics and law” that encompasses domestic security — and either adding
them to the duties of other leaders or downgrading them to the Politburo
level.

“With fewer people, they can concentrate power and increase their
efficiency,” said one official at a state news media organization.


But there are other possible motives. The rapid expansion of security
powers under Zhou Yongkang, the current Standing Committee member who
heads the politics and law committee and supported Mr. Bo, has alarmed
some party leaders, political analysts say. Since assuming the post in
2007, Mr. Zhou has capitalized on Mr. Hu’s focus on stability to build up
the security apparatus, whose budget this year is officially $111 billion,
$5 billion more than the military budget.

“The politics and law apparatus has grown too powerful,” an intelligence
official said. “A lot of us feel this way.”

A contraction of the Standing Committee could also hurt those vying for
seats who are not among the very top candidates, most notably Wang Yang,
the party chief of Guangdong Province, who cultivates a progressive image.

The size and structure of the leadership have been a matter of continuing
discussion. One analyst with ties to officials involved in party planning
said that at the May meeting, cadres were also asked to submit their views
on changing the composition of the party’s upper echelons, in a glimpse of
what may be called intraparty democracy. Though few changes were expected
anytime soon, “a lot of people had very different ideas,” he said.

Those debates are remote from the lives of most people in Beidaihe. Yet
talk of politics flows loosely here. At a beach reserved for local
officials, next to an almost-deserted patch of sand blocked off for party
leaders, a retired official in swim trunks pointed to the villas across
the road. He said the children of party leaders had made off with too much
money through corrupt practices in state industries.

Emblematic of the distance between officials and those they rule, he said,
is the fact that the party leaders vacationing here nowadays refuse to go
into the sea, which is brown from runoff. Ordinary people swim in those
waters, but the leaders take dips in swimming pools, including one built
recently that is filled with filtered seawater.

“What are they good for?” the retired official asked. “What did they
inherit from their fathers? They should have inherited the solidarity of
the revolution.”

Patrick Zuo and Clare Pennington contributed research from Beijing.