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Rocky road ahead for China's Hu
By Willy Wo-Lap Lam
(CNN) -- While Vice-President Hu Jintao will assume China's top job -- Chinese Communist Party (CCP) general secretary -- at the 16th Congress, he has to move fast to consolidate power and build up a national stature. The handover of power to the younger generation will be messy at this congress because out-going party chief and president Jiang Zemin is expected to remain very much the power behind the throne. Party sources said that in the new Politburo to be endorsed at the congress, affiliates of the so-called Jiang or Shanghai Faction will take up half of its 20-odd seats. More importantly, at least three out of seven members of the Politburo Standing Committee (PSC), China's ruling council, are deemed Jiang's associates or cronies. Jiang proteges considered well positioned to be inducted to the PSC include party affairs specialist Zeng Qinghong, Vice-Premier Wu Bangguo, and Politburo members Huang Ju and Jia Qinglin. However, only around two affiliates of Hu's own Communist Youth League (CYL) Faction are expected to make it to the Politburo or major organs such as the party Secretariat. Man of action?The 59-year-old new party supremo is not known as a man of action. Since becoming PSC member in 1992, Hu has cast himself as a mere student and assistant to Jiang. While for Hu, survival prior to the 16th Congress may have consisted in being meek and humble, survival from next week onwards may mean aggressive steps to consolidate his power -- and legitimacy. Firstly, the new leader has to broaden his base beyond the CYL Clique. Once headed by Hu as well as the late party general secretary Hu Yaobang, the league is considered the CCP's moderate-to-liberal offshoot. Hu must build bridges to factions on both the left and right of the political spectrum. "Rightists" in the Chinese context refer to liberals who want to adopt Western models in both economic and political reform. Once headed by the late party chief Zhao Ziyang, the rightists have suffered under the ironclad tactics of the conservative Jiang. "Leftists," on the other hand, refer to quasi-Maoists who are opposed to economic liberalization, as well as the fast-growing bloc of nationalists who want China to be more aggressive in foreign policy. It will be easy for Hu to win over the rightists because of the natural affiliation between the CYL faction and the liberals. However, the new party chief also has indirect connections with the leftists -- mainly through party elder Song Ping, his first mentor. Song is deemed close to the godfather of the quasi-Maoists, Deng Liqun. Obviously, Hu cannot sacrifice his reformist image through becoming identified with the followers of Song or Deng. 'New blood'Yet to widen his base, it may be necessary for Hu to at least win the tacit support of leftists in areas that will not affect the country's overall direction of reform. Perhaps more importantly, Hu must win over the "new classes" of private businessmen, professionals, and returnees from abroad. After all, the new classes will constitute the "new blood" of the party after the Congress. One way that Hu can endear himself to the new classes is to reassure the thousand upon thousand of nouveau riche "red capitalists" that they will not face discrimination because of their dubious political status. Since Premier Zhu Rongji launched the campaign in early summer against tax evasion by the super-rich, a host of famous businessmen and professionals including agri-business entrepreneur Yang Bing and former movie queen Liu Xiaoqing have been detained by police. Hu can secure their support by promising a new deal for private entrepreneurs and professionals. One easy way is to appoint several relatively honest businessmen to top party and government posts. Perhaps more importantly, Hu, together with colleagues such as the likely new premier, Wen Jiabao, must quickly establish a reputation as reformers who are able to move faster than predecessors such as Jiang or the conservative Li Peng. Bolder reformsGiven that after China's accession to the World Trade Organization, the country is quite well set on to a path of market reforms, it is in the area of political reform that the new Hu team can best distinguish itself. There is widespread expectation that a Fourth Generation leadership under Hu and Wen might pursue bolder reform measures. After all, official think tanks including the Central Party School (CPS) and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences have in the past two years sponsored studies on avant-garde subjects ranging from socialist democratic parties in Europe to the "federal model" for China. And Jiang's decision to recruit members of the new classes has been interpreted as the first step toward turning the CCP into a quanmin dang ("party for all the people") -- and toward political pluralization. At the 16th Congress, the CCP will commit itself to at least two areas of political reform: promoting "democracy within the system" and grassroots-level democracy. Given that the party has 66 million members -- including the bulk of China's elite -- the goal of political reform may be advanced if there is at least more transparency and consultation within the party. For example, surveys conducted by the CPS have shown that a high proportion of rank-and-file cadres think too much power is concentrated in the hands of the party boss of a province and city. Moreover, moderate and liberal cadres want a higher degree of choice in internal party elections, such as when delegates to a party congress cast their ballots to pick members of the ruling Central Committee. Power-sharingAt the 16th Congress, for example, the 2010 delegates will be given a shortlist of Central Committee candidates by party authorities -- and the candidates outnumber the actual seats available by no more than 5 percent. Fourth Generation leaders such as Hu, Wen and Zeng are also thought to be sympathetic to the idea that there should be more power-sharing among the party secretary, the entire party committee, as well as the commission for disciplinary inspection, which is in charge of fighting corruption. In 1979, late patriarch Deng Xiaoping introduced elections at the village level, which have since been popularized throughout the country. Pleas by intellectuals, including experts working in the think tanks of Jiang, that such elections be enlarged and upgraded to township or county levels, however, have been repeatedly shelved. Hu can quickly stake a claim to being a serious reformer if he could approve more experimentations with township-level elections in the coming year or two. However, doubts have been raised regarding Hu's qualifications as "reformer-in-chief" in view of the fact that during his meteoric rise up the hierarchy, he was perceived as an obedient implementer of policy rather than a visionary thinker. Contrary to popular perception, while Hu had enjoyed the patronage of party elders including Song Ping and Hu Yaobang, the latter did not regard Hu as a bold, bush-whacking reformer. And they took care of Hu's career mostly because he was obedient, reliable, non-opportunistic, and willing to "eat bitterness in tough environments" by readily agreeing to serve in poor provinces such as Guizhou or Tibet. Indeed, when patriarch Deng decided in 1992 to promote the then-49 Hu to the PSC, he saw in Hu a young man who was "both red and expert" -- faithful to the party yet knowledgeable about science and technology. And in Deng's eyes, Hu had the advantage of not having any connections to Jiang's Shanghai Faction. Hu was lucky in 1992. This year, the Tsinghua graduate seems again to be lucky: despite speculation that Jiang would remain party chief for a few more years, the 76-year-old politician is bidding farewell to the Politburo. However, from November onwards, Hu will have to count on more than luck and felicitous coincidences to pull him through the daunting task of running such a difficult and complex country as China.
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