It goes without
saying that the Epoch Times is no friend of the Chinese regime and has been a
thorn for years though only at a safe distance.
In the end, it
is all about leadership and their imagination.
For that reason I wish them well.
The good news is
that the country is largely run by a class of technocrats who often get things
right, at least more often than not.
What is missing is democratic sensitivity as a natural release for the
striving of the commons. This will
inevitably lead to serious confrontation and the need to allow free political
expression which has begun to show.
This article
exposes the serious Achilles heel that is becoming stronger in the communist
party. Factions are divvying up power
and influence and have already impacted national policy for over ten
years. It is disturbing that the effort
to suppress this tendency has involved military meddling.
I also suspect that China is fast approaching its Gorbachev moment
The
Chinese Communist Party Has No Way Forward
November 20, 2013
The Chinese Communist
Party’s new leadership just had its best opportunity to extricate the Party
from crisis and provide a sure basis for governing China.
At the Third Plenum of
the Chinese Communist Party’s 18th Central Committee, which ended on Nov. 12,
Party head Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang put forth a raft of new reform
policies, but history will show these initiatives are too timid to meet the
demands of the time.
Xi Jinping and Li
Keqiang first needed to seize the power once owned by the faction of Jiang
Zemin and transfer it to themselves, and then they needed to put the policy of
the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on a basis that could command consensus. They
made progress on the first task, but failed in the second, indicating they are
not capable of solving the fundamental problem facing the Party.
After Bo Xilai’s former
right-hand man Wang Lijun fled on Feb. 6, 2012, to seek asylum at the U.S.
Consulate in Chengdu, the war within the CCP between the faction loyal to
former Party head Jiang Zemin and the Party’s official leadership broke out
into the open.
Xi Jinping and Li
Keqiang needed to eliminate the institutional basis of the power Jiang Zemin
had wielded behind the scenes for the past decade. Before Jiang Zemin retired,
he had changed the function of the Politburo Standing Committee from a body
that advised the head of the CCP to one that had a claim to rule in its own
right. In doing so, he put shackles on his successor, Hu Jintao, and Hu
Jintao’s premier, Wen Jiabao.
At the Third Plenum, the
Central Committee approved, unanimously of course, the establishment of a State
Security Committee and a Further Reform Leading Group, to be led by Xi and Li. These
new bodies officially dissolved the power Jiang had conferred on the Politburo
Standing Committee.
Root of the Crisis
Among the long list of
reforms published after the Third Plenum ended, one sees again and again the
CCP attempting to deal with the consequences of persecuting the traditional
spiritual practice of Falun Gong without addressing the persecution itself.
Jiang Zemin launched the
campaign to eradicate the practice of Falun Gong on July 20, 1999, seeking to
put an end to individuals doing the discipline’s meditative exercises and
living according to its principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.
In a letter Jiang
circulated to the Politburo on the night of April 25, 1999, he had complained
that the sheer number of Falun Gong practitioners and the attractiveness of
Falun Gong’s teachings to the Chinese people were a threat to the CCP.
In 1999, 100 million
Chinese were practicing Falun Gong. The campaign of torture and brainwashing
Jiang unleashed on these peaceful and law-abiding citizens directly affected
hundreds of millions of people, when the practitioners’ family members are
included.
The great harm Jiang has
done—and the refusal of him or his faction to be held accountable for that harm
— is the root of the CCP’s current crisis.
Judicial Reform
After Jiang Zemin
started the persecution of Falun Gong, he created a legal vacuum. The efforts
that had been made to bring the rule of law to China were shattered in order to
remove all barriers to the campaign against Falun Gong.
Then, the CCP began using the legal methods developed for use
against Falun Gong against the public at large,
creating widespread anger and turmoil.
The key to Jiang’s
remaking of the legal system was the role played by the Political and Legal
Affairs Committee (PLAC), which drove forward the persecution of Falun Gong
while holding authority over all parts of the legal system.
Xi Jinping has already
taken several steps to rein in the power of the PLAC. The new reforms continue
the effort to weaken the PLAC by severing its tie to local courts and
procuratorates—the offices responsible for investigating and prosecuting
crimes. These institutions will now be directly governed by the central Party
leadership while the Supreme Court will be in charge of their funding and
personnel.
In order to help fund
the persecution of Falun Gong, Jiang Zemin put control of lucrative state-owned
enterprises in the hands of cronies. Xi Jinping and Li
Keqiang will now look to wrest control out of their hands.
[ this is actually describing a profound evil that compares to the
Nazi genocide – arclein ]
Recently, Jiang Jiemin,
the former president of the giant China Natural Petroleum Corporation (CNPC)
and confident of Zhou Yongkang, a key player in the Jiang Zemin faction, was
removed from his post. The CNPC is said to have been divided into three
companies.
Among the reforms are
measures involving land use in rural areas, where the persecution of Falun Gong
is again implicated in creating difficult problems. The persecution consumes
astronomical amounts of money, and the local governments are saddled with these
costs. With the costs of corruption added on, the local governments are deeply
in debt.
Unrestrained by the
central authorities, local governments began to realize enormous profits by
seizing land with violence. This has helped create a real estate bubble and at
the same time ignited civil protests all across China. This situation has
forced Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang to draft reforms putting restrictions on the
local governments, especially on their finances.
Moral Foundation
When Deng Xiaoping
presented his reforms to the Third Plenum of the 11th Central Committee in
1978, he started by redressing the victims of the Cultural Revolution and
correcting miscarriages of justice. With these limited moral resources, Deng
was able to push his reforms forward and ensure the CCP could reign for the
past 35 years.
A key reform requires
consensus within the group. To implement it, one needs moral authority and the
trust of the people. Today’s CCP falls short on these points.
The CCP’s ideology of
Marxism is bankrupt, and communism has become a joke. Yet there is no other
belief tying the CCP together. The officials and Party members focus on
nothing but corruption and promotion. The Party has tons of factions and no
consensus.
In particular, Jiang
Zemin’s faction, haunted by the fear of being held accountable for the
persecution of Falun Gong, is doing everything it can to hinder Xi Jinping and
Li Keqiang from enacting reform. Behind the scenes, Jiang’s faction and Xi
are struggling bitterly for power, and Jiang’s fingerprints are on a number of
incidents that have embarrassed or distracted Xi Jinping.
[ this explains the recent spate of saber rattling observed in
naval activity and Indian border incidents – arclein ]
The one resource left to
the CCP to gain popular support is to appeal to patriotism—the kind of
patriotism based on inciting hatred. Loving China means hating the United
States or Japan. Building up such patriotism means tearing down relations with
other countries. In an age of globalization, such a strategy will inevitably
recoil back on China.
At the same time, for
today’s CCP officials to appeal to patriotism is a farce. Many representatives
of the Chinese regime’s national legislature and elite advisory body—the
National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative
Conference—hold dual citizenship. China’s wealthy have been emigrating, and
top officials have sent their wives, children, and money overseas, while
themselves keeping a foreign passport. In this situation, the appeal to
patriotism is worse than meaningless.
Prior to the Third
Plenum, the top Party officials reiterated the importance of the policy of “two
will-nots”: The Party will not correct the mistakes made in the first 30 years
(1949–1979) and will not acknowledge the mistakes made in the second 30 years
(1979–2009).
The CCP has ruled for
over 60 years. It has killed 80 million Chinese and persecuted hundreds of
millions. The persecution of tens of millions of Falun Gong practitioners is
still ongoing. The “two will-nots” abandons the idea of exposing and
criticizing Jiang Zemins’s evil crimes.
By again asserting the
policy of “two will-nots,” Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang have deprived themselves
of the opportunity to place the transfer of power on a moral basis. Any reform
without a moral foundation is bound to fail.
Turning Point
The Third Plenum of the
18th Central Committee will inadvertently become a turning point in history. In
an attempt to solve the problem of faction in the Party, the Party’s leaders
have abandoned the possibility of exposing and criticizing the evil the CCP has
done.
In denying the
fundamental problems the Party faces, the way forward for the Party becomes so
narrow as to be a dead end. The political situation will have to take a new
turn.
The consequences will
surface soon. The reforms just launched will soon run aground, and conflicts
will begin to swirl around them. The factions in the CCP, along with the
central and local governments, will fall into chaotic battles. Chinese society
will disintegrate, and the CCP will begin to dissolve. When the superficial
reforms fail, the real social reforms will begin.
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