By BILL BISHOP
New York Times
New York Times
A newspaper in China featured the new general secretary of the Communist Party, Xi Jinping, left, with his predecessor, Hu Jintao. (Lee Jin-Man/Associated Press)
China has entered the Xi Jinping era. The transition to Mr. Xi from Hu Jintao appears to have been messy, given both the Bo Xilai scandal and the machinations of former leader Jiang Zemin, but Mr. Hu no longer has any formal party positions and the handover was, at least on paper, the cleanest in the history of the People’s Republic of China. It was also the first to occur in the Internet age, so we may have just been more aware of the plotting, scheming and infighting.
Mr. Xi has a different style from his predecessors, as you can see (Chinese, with English translation) from his remarks last Thursday when the new Politburo Standing Committee met domestic and international media. The first impression he gave is that he is a much more likable, almost retail, politician than his predecessor.
There has been much speculation about who is a reformer, conservative or hard-liner and what the policy preferences of the new leadership will be. In “China Reveals Its New Leaders: Habemus Papam,” the Economist reminds readers how little we actually know about these men, while Scott Kennedy of Indiana University provides important perspective in “China’s New Leadership: Economic Reform Yes, Political Reform No.”
Some of the disappointment about the new group is that the two most likely advocates of serious political reform, Li Yuanchao and Wang Yang, didn’t make it to the PBSC. But you’d have to be beyond optimistic to believe the Chinese Communist Party’s top leadership is at all serious about democratization. That is not on the cards no matter who is in the Politburo. There’s not a Gorbachev among them. We’ll see a range of reforms to improve how this system works…If you’re skeptical they can make this system work better, they’re going to try and prove everyone wrong. Either they’ll succeed, or there will be a political meltdown.
One senior banker told a conference on Friday that Mr. Xi may unveil an economic reform plan in late 2013. Wang Xiangwei, editor in chief of Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post and someone with strong connections to Beijing, believes Westerners underestimate Mr. Xi’s plans for reforms, saying that he might be the strong reformer that China needs. I expect that Mr. Xi will be a hard-line, nationalist reformer.
Xi Jinping (Vincent Yu/Associated Press)
MR. XI APPEARS TO BE STARTING HIS RULE by signaling a possible crackdown on corruption. Chinese officials have made lots of anti-corruption noise over the last few years, even as graft has spread like a cancer through society, but Mr. Xi’s anti-corruption rhetoric is more dire and aggressive. By making such a big deal of it so early in his term, he risks quickly destroying any good will and credibility if he does not show results, though more high-profile corruption cases could be equally damaging. There are some who would argue that any crackdown might be too late as the system may now be so rotten that a serious crackdown on venality would destroy it.
Mr. Xi inherits a challenging foreign policy environment. The Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute with Japan continues and the risks of a bad outcome are not insignificant, as Taylor Fravel of M.I.T.explained in an informative podcast last week. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations displayed an usual amount of cohesiveness on Sunday, when it called for talks with China on the South China Sea disputes even as an arms race is starting in the region as several of those countries try to counter China. China is also not happy about President Obama’s visit to Burma, to the point that censors ordered Chinese media to play down any news of the visit.
THE ECONOMY IS STILL IN A DIFFICULT SITUATION, though there are signs of stabilization and some bullishness for 2013, at least in Sunday’s $2.5 billion of upfront advertising sales for CCTV, China’s state TV network. The Shanghai Composite index did not welcome Mr. Xi’s ascension as it has dropped nearly 5 percent from the start of the 18th Party Congress and on Monday broke below 2,000 briefly before sharply rebounding to close up slightly.
At least when it comes to stock market reactions to their elections, Mr. Xi and Mr. Obama have something in common.
Bill Bishop publishes the daily Sinocism China Newsletter from Beijing. You can follow him on Twitter @niubi and Sina Weibo @billbishop.
China reveals its new leaders: Habemus Papam!
Source: Economist
Nov 15th 2012, 5:13 by T.P. | BEIJING
(Picture credit: AFP)
WITH ITS UNIQUE and mystifying blend of pageantry, ritual and secrecy, China’s ruling Communist Party Thursday morning revealed the identities of the seven officials it has chosen to lead the nation in the coming years.
Ending the tremendous suspense it has generated over the course of a politically tumultuous year, the party made public its newly selected Politburo Standing Committee by sending them striding, in order of seniority, across a red carpet and into the view of journalists and television cameras crowded into Beijing’s Great Hall of the People.
Leading the pack was Xi Jinping, 59, the party’s new general secretary. This much was no surprise. Since 2007, Mr Xi has been assiduously groomed and unambiguously tipped for the top job. The selection of the second-ranking figure, Li Keqiang, 57, was also widely expected.
But the makeup of the rest of this core group, and even its size, was the focus of intense factional infighting by contenders for top-level power, and the subject of fevered speculation by observers in China and around the world.
The other members of the standing committee are Zhang Dejiang, 65, a vice premier who this year also took on the job of Chongqing party boss (replacing the disgraced Bo Xilai, who fell in a spectacular political scandal); Yu Zhengsheng, 67, party boss of Shanghai; Liu Yunshan, 65, director of the party’s propaganda department; Wang Qishan, 64, a vice premier and former mayor of Beijing; and Zhang Gaoli, 65, party chief of the northern port city of Tianjin.
All the new members are men. The only woman in contention for a spot, Liu Yandong, was all along considered a dark-horse candidate and did not make the cut. The reduction from nine members to seven was expected, but far from certain until the announcement.
The new members are also heavily weighted towards the so-called “elitist” or “princeling” faction of the party. Only two of the seven members, Li Keqiang and Liu Yunshan, are identified with the party’s other main faction, which is seen as having a more populist bent.
These designations, however, are somewhat fuzzy and can only be taken as a rough guideline to the real contours of China’s top-level political landscape, and to the question of whether the new leadership tilts more towards conservatives or reformers. Factional lines are drawn not only over policy differences, but also on personal, regional, and patronage networks about which outsiders have only incomplete knowledge. But it does seem clear that Jiang Zemin, who left the top party job a decade ago, has managed to place many of his own protégés on the standing committee, and that the newly departed general secretary, Hu Jintao, came up with the shorter end of the stick.
What this new leadership group inherits is a country facing vast and daunting new challenges. Social and economic pressures are growing hand in hand. The global economic slowdown has been matched by declining growth in China. Public sentiment is ever more soured by growing inequality, persistent corruption, environmental degradation, and a sense that the party has lost touch with the lives of ordinary people.
In his speech introducing the new leadership, Mr Xi addressed these concerns directly, but with much the same sort of rhetoric the party has been using for years. In one important departure from recent practice, however Mr Xi was also named as head of the party’s powerful central military commission, also on November 15th. In the last leadership transition, Mr Jiang kept things a bit more muddled by waiting two years before relinquishing that job.
The announcement of new leaders came a day after the close of the party’s 18th National Congress, at which the outgoing Mr Hu gave his swansong address to the nation (in the form of a stultifying, jargon-laced 64-page speech). This autumn’s change of party leaders will be followed next March by the shifting of government positions. Mr Hu will retain his title as Chinese president until then, when Mr Xi is expected to take it over. At the same time, Li Keqiang is expected to take over from Wen Jiabao as premier.
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