MCLC: divide and rule

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: sean macdonald <smacdon2005 at gmail.com>
Subject: divide and rule
***********************************************************

Source: Asia Times (11/19/13):
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/CHIN-01-191113.html

SINOGRAPH Xi divides and rules
China's leaders have anticipated the strongest opposition to their planned
concentration of powers that will come from vested interests at the local
level. That is why the judiciary, controlled by Beijing, has been given
freer rein and a string of corruption trials can be expected to showcase
President Xi Jinping's use of age-old divide and rule   tactics.
By Francesco Sisci

BEIJING - After the Plenum that concentrated powers in the hands of
China's top leadership and especially President Xi Jinping, the big
questions concern how effective these powers will be how much power will
go to the central leadership group tasked with designing and implementing
reforms and how effective the National Security Council, in charge of
external and internal security matters, will be.

Most of the opposition is likely to come from localities, which have the
most to lose in this program of concentration of power in Beijing. For
this reason, the new role of the judiciary, which according to the Plenum
communique will be "authoritative" (quanwei), is significant.

This does not mean that the judiciary will be independent from the top
leadership of the Party. The Party will give freer rein to judges and
prosecutors at the provincial level in going after cases of corruption,
which so far have mostly concentrated on theunhealthy ties between local
administrations and state-owned enterprises (SOEs).

This element shows that Xi is bracing for a long and protracted internal
struggle against his reforms. He is preparing to fight it with arrests and
trials that should gain him the support of the people, who will be happy
to see corrupt officials in jail, and root out or weaken all those who
would want to go against the new course.

Here there are very practical issues to tackle. Disgraced Chongqing leader
Bo Xilai was able to establish his control over the southern city through
ruthless control of the judiciary. Officials, businessmen, and common
people who opposed his will were branded as gangsters and put in jail or
executed. 

No intervention from Beijing could save them. This was mainly because the
judiciary at provincial level has been under the local party chief. Now
this is going to change: the provincial judiciary will answer to Beijing's
Supreme Court and the top leadership, and local ties will be looser. It
will thus be harder for another Bo Xilai to rise.

Moreover, people do no trust local officials. Many tell stories of village
chiefs denounced to the county courts but shielded by local judges. Trust
in the system is low at the local level, but most people still believe
Beijing can redress all wrongs - and for this reason they travel to the
capital with their grievances.

Reform of the judiciary should create greater distance between
prosecutors, judges, and local administrators, and thus should better
serve the needs of the people. This element is an extremely important
first step for political reforms. While the Party still holds the ultimate
power in Beijing, in order to strengthen its hold, it has to divide power
at the local level. The reform of the judiciary creates the first real
division of power between local administrators and the courts.

This division adds to the greater role granted to the market, which
deprives SOEs of many of their privileges. Next, and in order to expand
and improve its rule in an increasingly complex society and world, Beijing
has decided to let go of some of the levers it holds over the economy and
use a policy of divide and rule at the provincial level.

In other words, the top leadership is trying to trade its internal
divisions among warring factions of vested interests for a seminal
external division of powers.

These words should not be misunderstood: China does not have the Western
tripartite division of powers, but the leadership understands that
internal factional divisions block reforms and effective exercise of
central authority, whereas a devolution of power to the local level and in
non-strategic sectors supports the clout of the central leader.

Here, there is nothing new under the sun. The rulers of the Roman Empire
knew the principle of efficiency of authority and thus spoke of divide et
impera, or divide and rule. Later, King Louis XIV of France in the 17th
century granted more authority to a newly established local bureaucracy
(possibly inspired by Jesuit translations of the Chinese classics and
accounts of China's situation) and bestowed more rights to a burgeoning
bourgeoisie in order to concentrate powers in his person and take it away
from a sprawling and arrogant class of aristocrats.

The principle of careful division of powers below and concentration of
authority on the top was how the British managed to rule the immense
territory of the Indian empire with only a few thousands officials.

Xi is thus rediscovering an old principle of wielding power: you can't
control everything, but to exercise effective control you have to divide
your subjects. In this historical moment, the central government increases
it control by slowly strangling and changing the vested interests through
a mix of concentration of power, division, and crafty use of the
judiciary. 

Francesco Sisci is a columnist for the Italian daily Il Sole 24 Ore. His
e-mail is fsisci at gmail.com