MCLC: Xi Jinping's leaked speech (1)

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: A. E. Clark <aec at raggedbanner.com>
Subject: Xi Jinping's leaked speech (1)
***********************************************************

I have posted thoughts about this, with a (predictable) literary angle, at
Ragged Banner.

Andrew

===========================================================

Source: Ragged Banner (n.d.):
http://www.raggedbanner.com/Editorials/XJP_Prospects.html

Xi Jinping on the Prospects for Political Reform: “From My Cold Dead
Hands.”
by A. E. Clark

Future historians wondering when the PRC entered its pre-revolutionary
phase may focus on a series of speeches that General Secretary Xi Jinping
delivered behind closed doors to the Communist Party elite soon after his
elevation to the highest leadership post. Their tenor was not encouraging,
early rumors indicated, to anyone hoping for an incremental transition to
the rule of law with wider scope for civil society and greater
accountability in government. But now that Gao Yu has provided a few
quotes in an essay 
<http://www.dw.de/%E7%94%B7%E5%84%BF%E4%B9%A0%E8%BF%91%E5%B9%B3/a-16549520>
 which Yaxue Cao has translated
<http://seeingredinchina.com/2013/01/26/beijing-observation-xi-jinping-the-
man-by-gao-yu/>, a grim picture emerges of a ruling class that is circling
the wagons, resolved to defend its privileges by force.

After warning that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union became confused
and feckless when it distanced itself from its authentic symbols of value
and tradition (among which he includes Stalin!), Xi Jinping discusses the
control of the military. It is a remarkable fact, perhaps not widely
enough known in the West, that the Chinese armed forces are technically
not under the control of the national government. They are explicitly and
directly under the control of the Communist Party. There have been calls
within China, by people who are by no means dissidents, to change this
arrangement.

From Cao’s translation of remarks attributed to Xi Jinping:

“Why must we stand firm on the Party’s leadership over the military?
Because that’s the lesson from the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the
Soviet Union where the military was depoliticized, separated from the
Party and nationalized, the party was disarmed. A few people tried to save
the Soviet Union; they seized Gorbachev, but within days it was turned
around again, because they didn’t have the instruments to exert power.
Yeltsin gave a speech standing on a tank, but the military made no
response, keeping so-called ‘neutrality.’ Finally, Gorbachev announced the
disbandment of the Soviet Communist Party in a blithe statement. A big
Party was gone just like that. Proportionally, the Soviet Communist Party
had more members than we do, but nobody was man enough to stand up and
resist.”

Readers of Hu Fayun’s Such Is This World will recall the climactic
conversation between Jiang Xiaoli, a hardnosed Party stalwart, and the
more mellow Liang Jinsheng. Jiang Xiaoli rips into Ru Yan:

“…She’d like to be a rebel; that’s fashionable now. In the more than ten
years since the Soviet Union fell apart and the huge changes occurred in
Eastern Europe, some people, especially opportunists inside the Party,
have been itching to make trouble. . .”
“If you want to talk about rebels,” Liang Jinsheng objected, “then how
many of our proletarian revolutionaries were once rebels—”
“No!” she cut him off, agitated. “Rebellion was OK only once, the first
time: then it was loyal officials contending for control of the State. The
next time, it’s just unfilial sons plotting rebellion.”

Later Jiang Xiaoli adds, more candidly, “This is not about right and
wrong; it’s about winning and losing.” And in words that eerily foreshadow
Xi Jinping’s two-pronged warning not to repudiate Communist traditions and
not to share control over the military, she concludes, “The vital thing is
not to let anyone dig up our ancestral grave or cut off our resources.”

January 28, 2013
Dobbs Ferry

The opinions expressed in this piece are mine alone, and should not be
imputed to authors published by Ragged Banner Press.