Prolog: I envy those of you who are so talented in signing, playing instruments, and other skills. I want to contribute, but except rambling, I really don't have anything else to show. Bear with me friends, I can't help writing long articles. I originally planed to write many more pages, but decided to write a short one.
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The recently anointed secretary general of the Chinese Communist Party has been effectively running the country since last November. The fact that he is still only the vice president of China doesn’t seem to bother anyone in China, from the very top, the current and lame duck president, to the bottom, the people on the streets and in the farm fields, who may not even know or care to know the difference. The new leader will be officially installed very soon and endowed with all the powers to rule China for the next 10 years, if everything goes as planned.
But will everything go as planned? At least the CCP and the leaders believe in that. So far the Party has ruled China for over 60 years. There have been wars, succeeded and failed coups, and numerous other political and natural disasters since the communists took power. The plans sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t work, but the rule of the Party has never been seriously threatened. The fact that most of derailed succession plans failed to work happened in the first 30 years of the communist’s rule and in the last 30 years successions have been relatively peaceful and carried out as planned, seems to embolden the new leaders to continue this trend.
The new leader has shown that he is not shy about asserting his authority as soon as the party congress ended. He made a speech that invoked speculations and curiosities about his leadership style. He took no respite to embark on a tour of the south to demonstrate his determination to follow the guidelines set up by the patriarch of the “reform”. He seems to be taking a harder line in foreign affairs than his predecessors, in particular on the ongoing dispute with Japan over a few remote uninhabited islets in the Pacific Ocean. Domestically, in the wake of the ousting of a former member of the politburo about a year ago, he vowed to crack down on wide spread corruptions and signaled to make examples of some senior officials. As a good gesture, in just a few days after being elected as the head of the party, he issued orders on strengthening the discipline of all levels of party and government leaders to show that he is resolute and serious about righting the wrongs.
But thus far we have seen no real and concrete actions from him to earnestly to try to fix the country’s numerous problems. Maybe he is still waiting for his ascendance to the presidency to convert his words to deeds. However, history and the reality tell us that we should not expect much to happen and the new leader of the party and the nation to be any more different from the current leader. Both may be different in styles and temperament, but let us not forget that both joined the party decades ago and got to the top post amid numerous internal power struggles. The ones who emerge to the top, in addition to possessing exception political skills, must have exhibited the most ardent and unflinching loyalty to the communist ideologies. There may be differences among these people on practical matters, but there should be no doubt that all of them must believe in absolute rule of the CCP.
Indeed the new leader made that very clear. He will not be the one that ends the rule of the CCP. He will not be China’s Gorbachev. Instead, he let us believe that he will stick to the communist principals. We can speculate that this is a person who really thinks that despite the wide spread discontent of the people amid rampant corruptions of government officials at every level, China’s problems can be cured by enhancing, not reducing, the rule of the CCP. Even if in the deepest part of his heart there is a flickering belief of anything else, he probably has never revealed that to anyone. To outsiders, the party officials appear to be so far behind in the advancement of human civilization that it’s perplexing that they still have enormous support. Yet they are the ones that know the rules of the games and know the real situations in China and the fact that their ways of governing still work shows that progress in China is indeed at a pace that disappoints many of us who look at China from outside.
History is also on these party leaders side. Despite the problems, comparing to the other empires in Chinese history, the current regime (or empire) is far healthier than those of the past empires at the similar age. Many empires before lasted a long time after taking power, albeit being followed by rapid deterioration. Empires deteriorated, but rarely collapsed overnight. Some of the empires survived for many more decades after large scale civil wars. People didn’t rebel even if they had just one grain of rice left to feed themselves. People rebelled because their situations were worse than death. Currently there are many unhappy people, but as long as they are sufficiently fed, they will not rebel. The communist leaders know this really well. This is the primary reason that they are confident that they can fix China’s problems without making structural changes.
But persistent problems, if not fixed, could accumulate and accelerate the demise of an empire with some catalysts. These catalysts typically are something that the leaders cannot control. Foreign interference was certainly the most direct reason for regime changes in Chinese history. If you read history carefully, you will notice that almost half of the time China was actually ruled by foreigners, the nomads, the moguls, and most recently the Manchurians. These foreigners were all assimilated by the more advanced Chinese culture. But the fact that Chinese empires were invaded and replaced by these foreigners cannot be ignored, particularly for those who are currently in power. The communists know this very well, they took power with the help of Japanese invasion in World War II.
Thus we can fairly be certain that the new Chinese leader will mostly continue his predecessors’ policies. He will strengthen the rule of the party, although he will inevitably need to do a few things to sooth the anger among the people who have been left behind in the changes in recent years. His attention will be on domestic issues. China is a big country and the current problems have been delayed and postponed by the previous leaders to the point that they can be no longer avoided. The new leader would like to have the luxury to kick the can down the road again, but he can’t. He must deal with them. He may well choose to leave most of the problems to future generations, but he must do something to alleviate the pains.
With many serious domestic problems at hands, he will not be an effective leader to make China an influential power on the world stage. Probably disappointing to many people, China will continue to focus on improving the international environment for her efforts in stabilizing herself. There will be no war with Japan over those islands. The disputes will go on, may be for years but there will be no war. Both China and the US do not want direct armed conflicts. Both countries have domestic problems to deal with and the people of the United States are not ready to decisively extinguish the burgeoning of China’s military power. Japan is probably the country to gain the most from a war with China. But without the support by US, Japan will not go to war.
The island dispute is a good distraction to China’s domestic problems. This is why the official Chinese media are keeping the issue alive. But this is a dangerous game to play, not only at the risk of an accident that could spark a fight, but also any perceived weakness by the public may adversely impact the image of the government.
In the next decades, at least the decade of the newly elected leader, China will mostly stay the current course. Small changes to fix minor issues will be carried out. No structural changes can be expected. The CCP’s control will remain strong. To a large extend, the leaders will continue to focus on ensuring most of the people are sufficiently fed so that no large scale riots will break out. If such kind of riot ever happens, the leadership will not hesitate to use the most extreme measures to maintain control. The large scale demonstrations that swept China almost 24 years ago will not be possible. The leaders will deal with any such possibility with the utmost urgency and attention. China will continue to be the largest market of the west and continue to provide large number of engineers and other cheap labors to the rest of the world. Barring any exceptional events, there is little to expect that the situations will change dramatically.
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