Bo Xilai, the populist former Chongqing chief recently purged from China's Politburo, was a dangerous, recidivistic force in Chinese politics. His fate, archaic execution notwithstanding, should be cheered.
Yes, his ouster reveals the dark side of the country's cloak-and-dagger leadership. Beyond Internet rumors, the public is still in the dark regarding his transgressions. Recitative, propagandistic chants about the "rule of law" are misleading. Upcoming investigations of corruption and the death of Neil Heywood, a British expat with close ties to his family, smack of skittish palace intrigue. The government's clampdown on microblog postings sympathetic to Bo, not to mention suddenly patchy Internet service, reinforces Western fantasies that China's power structure is fragile, fatally riven by factionalism, on the brink of civil war. In advance of a leadership transition later this year, the Party seems as brittle as ever.
Perhaps, but not likely. But Bo Xilai's brand of populism was a threat to the nation. He championed the interests of Everyman, but his modus operandi was steeped in Cultural Revolution hysteria. The flip side of massive investment in low-income housing was manipulation of economic insecurity. His anti-mafia zeal, heralded as a campaign against corruption, was a bid to monopolize power within the Party, exacerbating an accountability deficit that tarnishes credibility amongst both rich and poor. His "red song" campaigns, reactionary homages to the Cult of Mao that continue even now to chill both foreigners and mainlanders. To advance his own agenda, he tapped into a latent but enduring impulse to worship, and blindly follow, imperial god-kings, false leaders whose anti-rational policies lead to disaster.
When Deng Xiaoping rose to power, the Communists rejected cultish hagiography in favor of future focus. Deng was a quintessentially Chinese pragmatist; his maxims about "black or white cats" and "crossing rivers by feeling stones" resonate deeply. He imposed a scientific economic model -- central management of key resources, liberalization of non-strategic industries, gradual urbanization, solicitation of foreign investment, and mercantilist foreign policy -- that is still effective, albeit in need of reform. "Socialism with Chinese characteristics," warts and all, continues to work. According to the United Nations' International Fund for Agriculture Development, between 1978 and 2008, per capita income increased six times and the number of rural residents living in absolute poverty -- that is, on less than U.S. $1.50 per day -- decreased from 260 million to 16 million. China is creating a middle class that will reshape twenty-first-century industry and commerce. The Communist Party, despite its heavy hand, has street cred. Unless growth collapses, rather than simply decelerates, citizens will grudgingly support national leaders.
Pragmatism and incrementalism have become bulwarks against extremism. Chinese society has evolved since the misadventures of the Great Leap Forward, perhaps the most destructive and colossal misallocation of resources in human history, and the Cultural Revolution, Mao Zedong's megalomaniacal and ill-fated attempt to reshape the nation in his image. China's post-Revolution leftist lurches were historically anomalous, instigated as a dazed country emerged from 150 years of decay into an unfamiliar Western hegemony. Today, Beijing's power structure has returned to form. It dismisses breakthrough as destabilizing, inherently counter-productive. The body politic prizes consensual moderation and this instinct is now institutionally embedded in the Party's decision-making and leadership selection.
Make no mistake. The Communist Party is no white knight. Corruption is endemic. More than 150,000 "incidents" take place every year, most protesting a non-transparent decision-making apparatus that tramples on the constitution rights of citizens and looks that other way when provincial and local cadres confiscate land and property from unprotected individuals subject to epic eminent domain abuses. As it struggles, not always nobly, to both reinvent itself into an entity subject to institutional checks and balances and orchestrate a "rebalancing" between competing interests, the Party confronts a treacherous obstacle course.
Policy makers are not naive -- they also know that reform is not only fraught with danger but also imperative. Without it, labor mobility, already slowing as evidenced by rising wages, will stop. What does the Party need to do? There must be a massive reallocation of wealth from the cities to the countryside so peasants feel secure enough to leave villages and settle in urban areas. This will require two fundamental changes: reform of the hukou system, which keeps migrant workers from collecting the generous benefits only city residents receive; and land reform. Regarding the latter, genuine change would involve allowing farmers to buy, and cash in on, the farmland they do not yet own and relocate permanently to cities. Real reform on both fronts has barely begun, impeded by left-wing dogma and fears of upsetting a middle class whose tax bills would have to rise to fund restructuring.
In this challenging context, the last thing China and its people need is a rabble-rousing leader like Bo Xilai. Bo's 90s-era performance as Mayor of Dalian, a wealthy city in Shandong province, was impressive but, in recent years, his true colors have emerged. Modern China, struggling to integrate itself into global institutions sustained by accountable and responsive governance, has no place for his destructive narcissism.
What do the masses think? Unfortunately, independent public opinion surveys are not in the cards. And the government's paranoid reaction to on-line debate suggests that Mr. Bo has, at the very least, many supporters who regard him as an advocate of the little guy. However, I suspect most citizens (and officials) support his downfall. Chinese believe stability is the platform on which progress is constructed. Whenever I ask mainlanders to define "Chinese culture," they mention zhong yong, an avoidance of extremes, or the "middle way." The masses are suspicious of their government but the relationship between people and Party is co-dependent. But the former have no choice but to have "faith" in mandarins to maintain stability, to chart a gradual course of reform, one that requires a sensitive management of competing interests. China's cautiously optimistic body politic recognizes that lurches, to the right or left, are counter-productive and dangerous.
The Party, it must be hoped, acted before passions of Mr. Bo's acolytes became toxic.
The cultural context of this opinion piece is explored more fully in my forthcoming book, "What Chinese Want: Culture, Communism, and China's Modern Consumer," to be published by Palgrave Macmillan in May.
Nathan Gardels: Rule of Law Worries Behind Bo Xilai Purge
Nathan Gardels: Bo Xilai's Revelations Are Chinese "Glasnost"
John Wagner Givens: China's Next Top Model: Guangdong Beats Chongqing?
Eric X. Li: Bo Xilai and China's Future
Biggest story since TAM according to NPR? Give me a break, other top-tier politicians in China have had their heads chopped off in previous year. This one involving a leadership candidate is on par with John Edwards baby mama thing.
Would anyone say Edwards scandal during an election rocks US government's legitmacy, our collective sovereignty? Give me a break MSM, not everybody is so indoctrinated with your static "Red China" official narrative.
GuanXi, authoritarian way of doing things, intolerance of girl power and individual uniqueness are not because of the Party, but just a cultural baggage. Other societies that have significantly improved their records on corruption because they established an independent professionalized judiciary system. That is something that the Party in China cannot do.
This is one of the things that will drag China even though it wants to become a truly great power. China will be rich and powerful, if it hasn't already. But its power is made vulnerable by its own weaknesses.
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2012/04/12/the-framing-of-bo-xilai/
How is that article "realistic" than this one? Let me guess, it fits your world view that China is by default "evil" therefore any article you read that does not mention how evil China is must be false.
My own straw-pole of residents of that city were all pretty non-plussed by his efforts there.
Absolute Poverty declining from 260 million to less than 16 million is amazing in itself. Between 1978 and 2008, China's population expanded from a billion or so to about 1.55 billion. That means the absolute poverty rate has declined from 25% of the total population to about 1% of the population.
That is patently untrue.
No country in the history of the world has killed more millions of its own people than China, under the Chinese Communist Party. For every person the Party fed, it killed another. Those who survived the most colossal mass murder in history feel the Party "is great, and fed the people." Those whose were slaughtered have no say.
There are about 150,000+ reported incidents every year in China. The incidents are not being handled by slaughtering entire villages anymore.
The Chinese Communist leadership is more concerned with internal dissent from the Right and from religion than they are concerned with dissent from the left and labor unions. They are very aware of all the racial and cultural animosities among the peoples of China and strive to maintain harmony. Those hatreds could really lead to mass murder. The Taipang rebellion in the 19th century -- an internal religious war started by a fellow who convinced millions he was the legacy of the Christ -- led to more than 40 million deaths, so the Chinese Communists are very, very distrustful of well-meaning Christian missionaries and Fulan Gong.
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They are also very skeptical of Westerners arguing that democracy is what's needed. Democracy does not have an unblemished record: Germany elected Hitler and here in the USA, George W Bush was judicially appointed.
And yes, it is true hardly anybody goes to bed hungry in China nowadays. I grow up in China in the late 80s-90s when it was a luxury to eat meat, all I had was rice and vegetable most time of the year, where my parents was only able to afford to purchase meat during major holidays. But luckily I grow up during the economic reform and I can see the dramatic changes all around me at that time, buildings were going up, roads were being build, people had more money and more economic choices etc... and I can tell you for sure, most of the people are very grateful to the government for what they have achieve for the people.