MCLC: Party governance and consensus

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Party governance and consensus
From: Elio Caia <caia.elio at gmail.com>
Source: Chronache Internazionali (12/2/15)
Party Governance and Consensus in China
Ideas and notes concerning the nature and consensus of the party that has been ruling the Asian super-power for seventy years, with mixed fortunes and stages
By Federico Picerni
Italian version: http://www.cronacheinternazionali.com/governo-del-partito-e-consenso-in-cina-9526
“I’m not interested in the CPC much,” Jiang admits, after telling me about his part in the Communist Youth League—the Chinese party’s youth wing. My curiosity, caused by his story, is obviously not satisfied with his attempt to rapidly change the topic, and therefore, I insist. “I’m not really interested in the work of the CPC,” he repeats, “but I really admire it. It is great. Ruling as big a country as ours is anything but an easy thing.”
This answer makes me frown. I would have expected an entirely different evaluation from Jiang, a young student of communication with over one year in Canada behind him. In the Beijing hostel’s bar where I met him, I had heard him telling a British tourist that “as long as the Communist party is in power, it would be hard for things to change.” Which is nothing compared to what he posted on Facebook, of which he became an eager user after escaping Chinese censorship, during Occupy Central protests in Hong Kong: as a “citizien of thedàlù” (the Chinese term for “mainland”, referring to the People’s Republic in opposition to Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao), he expressed “warm appreciation” for “compatriots” who are “firmly fighting for basic human rights and democracy.” But now Jiang insists that “making as big a country as ours work normally is indeed a difficult task. I admire it.” Months later, again on Facebook, Jiang published an enthusiastic post on the 70th anniversary of the end of the World War II, celebrated in China as the “victory in the War of Resistance against Japan,” in which he proclaimed himself to be “proud of being a Chinese citizen.” Leaving me with the strong feeling that I am missing something.
During my stay in China, it struck me how difficult it was to follow CPC-related events. The Party is surprisingly “elusive”. You can clearly feel its presence, of course, but apparently it is not as pressing as we may think in the West. Its operations, its activities, its modus operandi appear distant from every-day life. The People’s Daily, its official organ, is not sold in news-stands, full of trivial newspapers and magazines. Propaganda posters exalting the “core principles of socialism” are everywhere, but party slogans are hardly visible in big cities, excluding the “mass line” campaign launched by Xi Jinping in 2012 and the mantra of all military posts: “obey the orders of the party, be able to triumph in battle, carry out a noble style of work”.
Soon, I realize that much of this impression is due to the fact that foreigners are held as far as possible from party life, in order to avoid all sorts of contradictions that may arise: in this China, living its so-called boom, foreigners must be cuddled and accommodated as much as possible. Nevertheless, Party life today is more a routine than a moment for politicization. The congress of the CPC university branch, held while I was studying at Xi’an Jiaotong University, went by with no fanfare; in the past, however, events like this were occasions for celebration, and streets were full of red flags, parades, dances and songs. A friend, during a family dinner I was kindly invited to attend, knowing about my interest, suggests: “You could get some information on the activities of the party’s university branch and go see what they do”. His uncle, a professor in the same university (and party member), interjects: “We don’t hold many events any more”.
But the authority is definitely present. Shortly after Qiongding zhi xia, a documentary film on environment policies, better known in the West as Under the Dome, came out and was then blocked (or “harmonized”, as Chinese people sarcastically say), the University organized a debate on it. A group of friends and I went to a ticket desk in front of our cafeteria. The presence of a group of European students apparently removed all inhibitions from one of the young students working there, who launched invectives on censorship and those who “don’t want us to know”, and got nudged by the girl at his side. The look she gives him is more than revealing. Similarly, a nice man on his 30s, unemployed, who has decided to take me sightseeing around Shaoshan, Mao’s native village, strongly (but always politely) refuses to tell me what he thinks about the great helmsman until we are alone; perhaps, he only wanted to avoid attracting attention, as he disappoints me with the usual preset version of 70%-merits and 30%-mistakes.
This is why I am really astonished by Liao, who, while treating me to an excellent fish-based lunch in a crowded restaurant in the port city of Qingdao, doesn’t have any problems in asking me loudly my opinion about protests in Hong Kong, nor in admitting he found them “reasonable”. I met Liao in Qufu, Confucius’ native village; we were among the only three guests at the hostel there. He caught my interest from the very beginning; he gives himself quite aristocratic airs, has no trace of the discretion usually found in young Chinese people, at least superficially, and freely talks about his romantic experiences. He spent one year in France, studying law in Lille, and he has quite peculiar ideas on justice: for him, there is nothing wrong if a wealthy individual, convicted of a crime, uses his wealth to “legally” corrupt the judge and have his sentence reduced, or to “settle” accounts with the offended. After all, as far as I’m aware, didn’t Deng Xiaoping say that “getting rich is glorious”?
When I tell Liao I have visited Yan’an, the CPC headquarters during the Revolutionary Civil War, he turns up his nose, saying he has no interest in Mao-related places. “Aren’t you a young socialist?” I tease him, joking on how he had styled himself. “Mao was crazy”, Liao says, “he wasn’t the founder of socialism at all.” “And what do you think about Deng Xiaoping?” I ask. “He really knew what socialism should be like. At least, Deng studied in France, he saw the world. Mao was only a peasant.” I find his answer quite presumptuous, I don’t understand why a peasant should be considered inferior to an intellectual who studied abroad, but I go on: “In your opinion then, what should socialism be like?” He hesitates. “Anyway, it cannot be poverty and famine.” Liao also does not question the authority of the party.
Finally, a young loyalist I meet in Nanjing gives me an important element to think about. Hu is preparing for the entrance examination for a master’s degree in history, and does not want to miss the opportunity to show me around. I am glad about that, although his questions on Ming history cause me some problems. While we are climbing the steep road leading to the mausoleum of Sun Yat-sen, this man, thought of as the father of the nation, apparently inspires Hu. The Kuomintang, he explains, lost the war because it could not build an efficient administration, something the CPC was successful at with its double system, currently in force, according to which the government of each city and province is flanked by a party committee at the same level. The local party secretary is immediately above the mayor or governor in the official hierarchy. This system, partly altered by the Cultural Revolution, was restored and made official when economic reforms started, in the early 1980s. One party-rule, in Hu’s opinion, is an essential condition for the smooth governance of China, “all but an easy thing”, as Jiang also told me. Whether the party is Communist or nationalist, is not really important, as long as it makes things work. Or, more precisely, as long as it makes the economy work.
Such a pragmatic and cynical interpretation is at odds with what the Communist party sought to be in the past. Maria Antonietta Macciocchi, deputy for the Italian Communist Party from 1968 to 1972, visited China in 1970, during the Cultural Revolution, and published many conversations she had had there in an interesting report. She also conveys the words of some Communist activists in a Shanghai factory: “Put politics in command or economy in command? The revolt started on these issues. […] When this is understood, joining the party becomes a political and ideological militancy, and not only a purely organizational act.”
On the contrary, today the CPC wants to convey a patriotic and nationalist vision that can unite all Chinese people around the “Chinese dream” of “great national rejuvenation”. Ideology and politics are reduced to a minimum, in favor of pragmatism without adjectives, with no place for revolutionary theory and practice. The party is a structure for power, command, career, favors and relationships (the essential guānxi), but no place for political participation; on the contrary, it definitely looks like the main tool for de-ideologization and de-politicization.
At the same time, the Party’s social basis has changed. If the CPC was loyal to the traditional Marxist-Leninist role of “vanguard of the proletariat” until Mao’s death, things drastically changed when the new leading group, headed by Deng Xiaoping, initiated the new market economy-based development model. The current CPC Constitution states that: “The Communist Party of China is the vanguard both of the Chinese working class and of the Chinese people and the Chinese nation. It is the core of leadership for the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics and represents the development trend of China’s advanced productive forces, the orientation of China’s advanced culture and the fundamental interests of the overwhelming majority of the Chinese people.” In Chinese political terms, the “advanced productive forces” are the new social class of entrepreneurs, businessmen, company owners, who were allowed to join the party by Jiang Zemin (leader from 1990 to 2002), through the “Three-Represents” policy, at the time when China became a member of the WTO. Now the CPC acknowledges it wants to mainly represent the interests of native (and foreign) capitalists and of the newly-emerging so-called Chinese middle class, the main supporters of the current order, more for a need for stability than for ideology.
For these reasons, I find Western interpretations of the alleged role of China’s rising business bourgeoisie, as a vehicle for a “democratic change” in the country, to be superficial and ideologically-motivated, as it appears to have every intention of preserving the status quo.
Nevertheless, the CPC has learned the lesson from the USSR and the regimes of Eastern Europe: the reason why it has never changed its name, nor completely renegaded Mao, as my friend Liao reminds me, is that “it fears to disintegrate like the Soviet Union, so it doesn’t dare to do that much. Spiritual force is indeed a tremendous weapon.” For the sake of legitimacy, it absolutely needs to present itself as the founder of new China, and its leader towards prosperity, guardian of order against chaos, pillar of reforms and economic progress against uncertainty and regression. It reminds me of a warning that Mao made in 1967: “If we ever were to be overthrown and the bourgeoisie were to come back on the stage, it wouldn’t need to change any name, it could continue to call itself People’s Republic of China. The main question is understanding what class yields power: who can understand that this is the main question, does not get lost in names.”
These are clearly very weak pillars, strongly jeopardized by the slowing of the economic ride; the Chinese government declares it wants to alleviate them by promoting domestic consumption, to tame the huge social contradictions hidden by the economic “boom”. Corruption, growing unbridled during the ages of Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, is the other jeopardizing factor. A very daring and unprecedented policy has been carried out by Xi Jinping, which hasn’t spared even the party’s highest spheres, out of the necessity to strengthen or regain consensus, and to settle accounts within the leadership. At first, Xi had this policy go with the above-mentioned “mass line education campaign”, whose goal, i.e. strengthening the links between the party and the people’s masses, reflected the same need.
Whether the current “mass line” can actually convince the Chinese masses is still to be proven, and it is the challenge that China’s current leading group is facing. In Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, a nice taxi driver in his 50s, clearly enthusiastic about my interest in the picture of Mao he has in his car, with his popular aphorism: “Study well, improve day by day,” went incessantly listing Mao’s merits in “modernizing China”. Playing the part of the curious foreigner, I ask: “Wasn’t Deng Xiaoping the one who modernized China?” The taxi driver pauses for a moment, then explains: “During the Mao Zedong era, we were all on the same level” (he traces an imaginary straight line with his hand), “Deng Xiaoping allowed a small group to get rich” (he raises the hand) “but the majority of us are here” (he lowers the hand). And thus, the words of a nice taxi driver remind me that it’s still all to play for.
by denton.2 at osu.edu on December 12, 2015
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