MCLC: many urge Xi to liberalize

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: many urge Xi to liberalize
***********************************************************

Source: NYT (10/21/12):
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/22/world/asia/many-urge-chinas-next-leader-t
o-enact-reform.html

CHANGING OF THE GUARD
Many Urge Next Leader of China to Liberalize
By EDWARD WONG and JONATHAN ANSFIELD

BEIJING — After it was leaked that Xi Jinping, the man anointed to be the
next Communist Party chief of China, had met in private with a well-known
supporter of political liberalization, the capital’s elite began to buzz
about the import of the encounter.

Hu Deping, the son of a former leader, who went to Mr. Xi’s home in July,
has organized salons where the scions of powerful families have discussed
how to keep the party from becoming mired in corruption and losing the
trust of ordinary Chinese. People briefed on the meeting said Mr. Xi had
declared his support for steady reform.

“Hu Deping through certain channels sent out the message that he had been
meeting with Xi Jinping,” said Zhang Lifan, a historian who knows Mr. Hu.
“I think the two are trying to send a signal.”

As China’s critical once-a-decade leadership transition approaches in
November, Chinese officials, policy advisers and intellectuals are again
pushing for what they broadly call “reform” — a further opening up of the
economic and political system that the party has constructed through 63
years of authoritarian rule. With China’s economy slowing, the disconnect
between haves and have-nots building, and state-owned businesses exerting
even greater influence on policy, advocates for change say the status quo
appears increasingly sclerotic.

Much of the talk now over China’s future path centers on whether Mr. Xi,
the son of a revolutionary leader who helped oversee China’s post-Mao
economic transformation, can muster the confidence, ideological grounding
and power base to push through what reformers see as the policies needed
both to keep China vigorous and help overcome its growing inequities. Mr.
Xi, 59, has not revealed his plans and intentions — to rise to his level
in the party system, survival depends on holding cards close, analysts say.
But the messages he is hearing are becoming clearer: a number of prominent
people orbiting Mr. Xi are urging the party to adopt more liberal policies
to regain the legitimacy it enjoyed when it was a revolutionary force.

The harsh expulsion last month of Bo Xilai, who tried to woo
traditionalists and Maoists before he fell into disgrace, has also
encouraged liberals to call for party leaders to adopt systemic changes.
Hu Shuli, an influential Chinese journalist acquainted with Mr. Xi,
published an editorial this month in her magazine, Caixin
<http://english.caixin.com/2012-10-11/100445969.html>, under the headline
“Bo Xilai as a Catalyst for Political Reform.”

Those close to Mr. Xi who are urging reform go well beyond the usual
liberal intellectual voices. They include active and retired officials,
childhood friends from China’s “red nobility,” army generals
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/08/world/asia/chinas-military-seeks-more-sw
ay-worrying-communist-party.html> and even a half-sister, Xi Qianping. Mr.
Xi and his allies have dropped a few hints recently that Mr. Xi is at
least open to hearing new ideas.

One political theorist said Mr. Xi, with the backing of Jiang Zemin, the
former party chief, had overseen a team researching the Singapore model of
governing that allows more liberal economic policies and political voices
under one-party rule. Wu Si, the editor of a journal backed by liberal
party elders, said that he has heard encouraging reports that “practical
work on political system reform” could emerge after the transition.

Mr. Xi also recently issued an indirect warning about corrupt practices
that have soiled the party’s image, telling officials studying at the
Central Party School in Beijing that “time should not be spent on
networking and buying dinners.”

To push systematic changes in the next few years, however, Mr. Xi will
also need to assure the current party chief, Hu Jintao, that such a drive
will not tarnish Mr. Hu’s legacy, analysts say. On Oct. 16, Seeking Truth,
a party journal, ran a long essay that trumpeted a July speech by Mr. Hu
as setting the tone for reforms. “The conflicts that have arisen from
reforms can only be solved by deepening reform,” it said. The essay was
read out on China Central Television.

When Mr. Hu took power in 2002, there was much hope among liberals and
Westerners that he would push the kind of reforms being talked about once
again. But many analysts and political insiders are now calling the years
under him and Wen Jiabao, the prime minister, a “lost decade,” in which
China, for all its advancements, retrenched into a quasi-command economy,
ignored legal protections and expanded the state security apparatus.

Analysts say that Mr. Xi faces great political risks in taking on the
nation’s many vested interests and possibly repudiating Mr. Hu’s policies.
Moreover, the authority of the top office has become more diffuse with
each generation, and Mr. Xi would need to marshal powerful alliances to
push through changes. Another obstacle to change is the way that Mr. Xi’s
own circle has profited from the current system: Bloomberg News reported
in June that some members of Mr. Xi’s family had amassed fortunes totaling
at least several hundred million dollars.

The challenge before party leaders is summed up in a new paper from
Strategy and Reform, a research group that advises China’s main economic
development agency: “Of course, reform will bring much risk, but the risk
of not reforming is bigger. Choose the lesser of the two evils.”

The paper, which emphasizes changing China’s economic structure, suggests
creating a new committee that supersedes all government organs to push
more liberal economic policies. On political reforms, it urges the party
to be an “open and progressive central power” that allows individuals and
private companies significantly greater autonomy. The paper mentioned
Singapore as a model several times.

Liberal policy advisers have long pressed a reform agenda, including
expanding competition in state-dominated industries, elevating village
elections to the township level or higher, building a more independent
judiciary, giving ordinary people more land-use rights, and providing a
stronger social safety net to encourage greater domestic spending.

For all their exhortations, few who are pushing for such changes are
seeking an end to one-party rule. That is why Singapore, which has been a
point of reference for China’s reformers since the 1980s, has emerged
again among some of Mr. Xi’s advisers.

In the summer of 2010, the political theorist said, Mr. Xi had a
little-known meeting at the beach resort of Beidaihe with Lee Kuan Yew,
the former Singaporean prime minister who espouses flexible
authoritarianism. Before that, Mr. Lee met with Mr. Jiang, the former
party chief. At the time, Mr. Xi and Mr. Jiang came to an understanding
“to try to adopt the Singapore model down the road,” said the theorist,
who was asked to provide feedback for a project to study the issue.

Mr. Xi visited Singapore that November, and other top officials have
followed. Last year, Gen. Liu Yazhou, an advocate of party reform
<http://www.smh.com.au/world/china-must-reform-or-die-20100811-11zxd.html>,
 dispatched a team of military officers to live in Singapore and prepare a
study, which is expected to be presented to Mr. Xi after the transfer of
party posts in November. Bo Zhiyue, a scholar at the National University
of Singapore <http://www.nus.edu.sg/>, said the group’s mission was to
“find a solution for China after the 18th Party Congress.”

That will not be easy. In the period leading up to the congress, tensions
have emerged between Mr. Xi and Mr. Hu, the current party chief, over
setting the official policy direction for the future leadership; Mr. Xi’s
absence from public life for two weeks this autumn was in part related to
that, said two people who know Mr. Xi and, like him, are the “princeling”
children of senior party officials.

And even among his supporters, there are some who question whether any
adopted reform mantle would be more show than substance. “No matter
whether Xi actually reforms China or not,” said a member of a prominent
military family, “he has to entertain reforms, for the sake of the
reformists and the public.”

Jane Perlez contributed reporting. Mia Li contributed research.