MCLC: MacFarquhar on fear at the top

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Rowena He <rowenahe at gmail.com>
Subject: MacFarquhar on fear at the top
***********************************************************

Source: NYT (5.20/12):
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/21/opinion/in-china-fear-at-the-top.html

In China, Fear at the Top
By RODERICK MacFARQUHAR

IN the heyday of the Soviet era, Communist leaders were described by the
dissident Yugoslav theorist Milovan Djilas as the “New Class,” whose power
lay not in ownership of wealth but in control of it: all the property of
the state was at their beck and call. There was the apocryphal but
appropriate story of Brezhnev’s showing his humble mother around his
historic office, his magnificent collection of foreign luxury cars and his
palatial dacha with its superb meals, and asking for her impressions — to
which she replied: “It’s wonderful, Leonid, but what happens if the
Bolsheviks come back?”

But if even a fraction of the stories about the wealth and lifestyles of
China’s “princelings” — the descendants of Mao’s revolutionary generation
— are to be believed, China’s New Class wants not only control, but also
ownership. Few of China’s netizens are likely to believe that Bo Xilai,
the Politburo member and party boss of the mega-city of Chongqing who was
ousted in March on corruption charges, was an aberration.

Why has ownership of wealth become so important for the Chinese elite? And
why have so many Chinese leaders sent their children abroad for education?
One answer surely is that they lack confidence about China’s future.

This may seem strange, given that the Chinese have propelled their country
into the top ranks of global economic powerhouses over the past 30 years.
There are those who predict a hard landing for an overheated economy —
where growth has already slowed — but the acquisition of wealth is better
understood not just as an economic cushion, or as pure greed, but as a
political hedge.

China’s Communist leaders cling to Deng Xiaoping’s belief that their
continuance in power will depend on economic progress. But even in China,
a mandate based on competence can crumble in hard times. So globalizing
one’s assets — transferring money and educating one’s children overseas —
makes sense as a hedge against risk. (At least $120 billion has been
illegally transferred abroad since the mid-1990s, according to one
official estimate.)

Mao and his colleagues had a self-confidence born of many factors: triumph
in civil war; a well-organized party apparatus; a Marxist-Leninist
ideological framework, the road map to a socialist future; and the bulwark
of the victorious People’s Liberation Army. Today, more than 60 years
after the civil war, only the P.L.A. looks somewhat the same, and the
self-confidence is fraying.

The denunciations of party leaders and officials by the Red Guards during
the Cultural Revolution undermined the party’s authority and legitimacy.
The party’s insecurity was accentuated by Deng’s rejection (in practice)
of Marxism-Leninism. The cloak of ideological legitimacy was abandoned in
the race for growth.

Today, the party’s 80 million members are still powerful, but most join
the party for career advancement, not idealism. Every day, there are some
500 protests, demonstrations or riots against corrupt or dictatorial local
party authorities, often put down by force. The harsh treatment that
prompted the blind human-rights advocate Chen Guangcheng to seek American
protection is only one of the most notorious cases. The volatile society
unleashed against the state by Mao almost 50 years ago bubbles like a
caldron. Stories about the wealth amassed by relatives of party leaders
like Mr. Bo, who have used their family connections to take control of
vast sectors of the economy, will persuade even loyal citizens that the
rot reaches to the very top.

The Bo affair is not just about massive corruption but also succession.
Mr. Bo had developed a high-profile “Chongqing model” characterized by
crime busting, Maoist singalongs, cheap housing and other welfare
provisions. It was a populist, and popular, attempt by a charismatic
“princeling,” son of a revolutionary hero, to assert his natural right to
ascend to the nine-member Politburo Standing Committee at the 18th Chinese
Communist Party Congress later this year. Among the rumors circulating in
China is that, once on the committee, Mr. Bo would have tried to replace
the party’s incoming general secretary and president agreed to by the
outgoing leadership: Xi Jinping.

Mao, who died in 1976, hand-picked his successor. Deng, who died in 1997,
blessed Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao to follow him. Mr. Hu, not being a
revolutionary hero like Mao or the godfather of economic reform like Deng,
did not have the prestige to appoint his successor. The low-key Mr. Xi, a
princeling like Mr. Bo, emerged as a result of jostling behind closed
doors. Lacking institutional legitimacy and a laying of hands by an elder,
he might have looked an easy target to an ambitious Mr. Bo.

In the months ahead, party leaders will use every propaganda tool to
dissipate the damage inflicted on leadership unity, party discipline and
national “harmony” by the Bo debacle. They might divert criticism from Bo
by depicting his allegedly murderous wife as China’s Lady Macbeth. But
members of China’s New Class will still worry that the revelations about
elite corruption have exposed them to the danger of the Bolsheviks coming
back.

Roderick MacFarquhar
<http://www.gov.harvard.edu/people/faculty/roderick-macfarquhar>, a
professor of government at Harvard, is a co-author of “Mao’s Last
Revolution.”