MCLC: Bo Xilai's downfall exposes divisions

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Bo Xilai's downfall exposes divisions
***********************************************************

Source: NYT (4/6/12):
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/07/world/asia/bo-xilais-ouster-exposes-chine
se-fault-lines.html

A Populist¹s Downfall Exposes Ideological Divisions in China¹s Ruling Party
By MICHAEL WINES

BEIJING ‹ Some Chinese leaders clearly hope that this year will mark
another milestone in China¹s rise under authoritarian rule: the first time
that a whole new slate of leaders is chosen largely by consensus among the
political elite, not handpicked by a powerful strongman.

That selection will in all likelihood still take place when the 18th
Communist Party Congress meets this fall. But with the dismissal and
investigation last month of Bo Xilai, the party secretary of metropolitan
Chongqing, the notions of stability and consensus in China¹s secretive
political system have taken a big and possibly lasting hit.

Mr. Bo¹s spectacular fall from grace
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/20/world/asia/bo-xilai-accused-of-interferi
ng-with-corruption-case.html?pagewanted=all>, hastened by his police
chief¹s arrival at an American consulate
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/09/world/asia/speculation-grows-over-fate-o
f-crime-fighting-chinese-official.html> in February with a sheaf of
incriminating documents, is being dissected in varying ways even before it
is complete: a titanic power struggle between Mr. Bo¹s neo-Maoist left and
the more liberal and market-oriented right; infighting among ruling
cliques; a seizing of the moment by Mr. Bo¹s many highly motivated
political enemies.

Any or all of those characterizations may be true. There is wide agreement
among outsiders that Mr. Bo¹s downfall points to perhaps the most serious
division in the party elite since the leadership upheavals during the 1989
Tiananmen Square protests.

But to many, neither Mr. Bo nor the explanation of his collapse is so
clear-cut. They see a collision between a Communist Party that prizes
stability and secrecy in choosing its leaders, and a new kind of leader
who set his own political agenda and thrived on public adulation.

In a Western system, Mr. Bo might be called a populist. In China, where
lockstep unity is a foundation of the party¹s claim on power, he was a
fearsome unknown.

³The concern was not that Bo would change the delicate balance of power,
but that he would lead the party completely out of control,² said Cheng
Li, an expert on China¹s elite at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
³It¹s more than a power struggle. It¹s a corresponding interest to
maintain the legitimacy of the Communist Party ‹ to survive.²

Wu Si, a liberal intellectual and editor based in Beijing, said in an
interview: ³What in actuality are the rules of transferring power at the
highest levels now? It¹s not clear.²

³But Bo Xilai seemed to be heading down a new road,² Mr. Wu said.

Mr. Bo is mostly identified as the charismatic darling of China¹s new
left, the intellectuals and policy wonks who argue that China should use
state power to assure social equality and enforce a culture of moral
purity and nationalism. Mr. Bo¹s policies in Chongqing, from the mass
singing of Mao-era songs to his pitiless anticorruption campaign, were
conceived with the help of leftist theorists at the government-run Chinese
Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing.

But Mr. Bo was also adaptable. As mayor of Dalian in the 1990s, he sought
to remake the northeastern coastal megalopolis into a new Singapore. To
waves of favorable publicity, his government rewarded citizens who
reported rude taxi drivers and fined those who uttered unpleasantries like
³nao you bing,² or, roughly, ³numbskull.²

In Dalian, and in Chongqing, he could pursue liberal causes as easily as
leftist ones. He proposed experimenting with direct elections in local
townships, courted foreign investment, mounted aggressive tree-planting
and pollution cleanup campaigns and built low-income housing.

Only Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, who has cultivated an image as the caring
grandfather figure of the national leadership, rivaled Mr. Bo¹s
popularity. But while the modest Mr. Wen was always careful to show his
loyalty to the party¹s central command, Mr. Bo often seemed to appeal to
the disenfranchised masses who longed for someone to shake things up.

³Bo Xilai was differentiating himself from other leaders in a very
conspicuous way,² Susan Shirk, a scholar of the Chinese elite at the
University of California at San Diego, said in a recent interview. ³His
style of politicking was antithetical and threatening to a political
oligarchy that was trying to keep the competition among themselves hidden
from the general public.²

Mr. Bo¹s ambition and abrasive style made some enemies in the elite,
notably Mr. Wen. His posting in 2007 to Chongqing, deep in China¹s
interior, was seen by some as an effort to sideline him. Instead, it
became the base for his campaign to join the Politburo¹s Standing
Committee, the nine-member body at the peak of the Communist hierarchy
whose membership will turn over this fall.

In a governing elite that makes big choices by consensus, experts say, Mr.
Bo might well have vaulted onto the Standing Committee with the support of
sympathizers, had Chongqing¹s police chief, Wang Lijun, not fled to the
American Consulate in Chengdu, in nearby Sichuan Province.

Mr. Wang carried papers that he said implicated Mr. Bo¹s family in a
criminal inquiry of the death of a British businessman, Neil Heywood, an
acquaintance of the Bo family. Mr. Bo and Mr. Wang are now said to be
confined in Beijing while party officials investigate those and other
claims.

To incumbent leaders who worried about Mr. Bo¹s destabilizing impact, ³the
Wang Lijun case was just a godsend,² said Huang Jing, an expert on elite
politics and director of the Center on Asia and Globalization at the
National University of Singapore.

³It opened up a big hole, and the Bo Xilai camp, I believe, simply
collapsed.²

Shorn of their standard-bearer, China¹s leftists seem in at least
temporary retreat. Censors this week shut down several Web sites
supporting Mr. Bo for one month, including the well-known Utopia, which
caters to the far left. Simultaneously, a weekly legal affairs magazine
published an interview
<http://www.legalweekly.cn/content.jsp?id=171628&lm=%E6%96%87%E5%8C%96> in
which one of Utopia¹s founders claimed it had been ³hijacked² by
extremists who promoted Mr. Bo¹s experiments in Chongqing.

More broadly, China¹s leadership has moved swiftly to paper over any sign
of discord. Communist Party journals have showcased exhortations to
promote stability and ignore malicious rumors ‹ a clear reaction to false
reports of an impending coup
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/world/asia/china-shuts-down-web-sites-af
ter-coup-rumors.html> that spread online last week.

The newspaper The People¹s Liberation Army Daily minced no words.
³Historical experience shows that whenever the party and country faces
major issues, and whenever reform and development reach a crucial
juncture, struggle in the ideological arena becomes even more intense and
complex,² it said. ³We must pay close attention to the impact of the
Internet, mobile phones and other new media on the thinking of officers
and troops.²

Enforced by the leadership, China¹s rigid status quo is returning in full
force. Which is not precisely what China¹s reformers were hoping for.

³On first look, I think it¹s a good thing,² said Mr. Wu, the liberal
intellectual, of the impact of Mr. Bo¹s ouster on party politics. ³But on
second look, I think, not necessarily.²

Sharon LaFraniere and Jonathan Ansfield contributed reporting. Li Bibo
contributed research.