A dissident looks at the Chinese Communist Party congress
Washington (AsiaNews) - The 18th Congress of the Communist Party (CCP) attracted almost as much world attention as the U.S. presidential election. Many think that these two events will decide the fate of mankind. Whether the U.S. can return to its former strength, is of course very important. Why is China also very important?
That is because China, as the last and largest Communist nation in the world, is standing at a turning point when it must carry out a complete change just as the former Soviet Union had to face twenty some years ago. China has the world's largest population, its GDP measures the second in the world, and its military strength ranks the world's third, which causes concern. When it is changed from the tyranny of the communist system into any other political system, it will produce revolutionary changes in the world's political and economic landscape.
China's semi-market economy has already developed to a stage that is not sustainable. It has two prospects. Either it has to change into a full market economy, or stay as a state-owned economy. In a full market situation, the economy will be able to continue to develop smoothly. In this scenario, the one-party dictatorship will collapse with the further liberalization of the economy. The other option is to expand the nominally state-owned economy, which in fact is the Communist Party-run economy. This second scenario is exactly what the Communist regime did in the last decade. It will for sure result in the inevitable decline of the economy. In addition to China's Gini coefficient having already exceeded the international warning level of 0.4 for dangerous levels of inequality, a bottom-up revolution is bound to break out in China. For the last two thousand years of Chinese history, all of the turnover of dynasties has been caused by the uneven distribution of wealth. That result is still a collapse of the one-party dictatorship.
A lot of people within the Communist Party are aware of this danger. Just as the average Chinese do, people inside the Communist Party look forward to the reform of the political system. It is the only way out for China. It is also the main reason that people eagerly paid attention to this Eighteenth Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. Some people within the new generation of collective leadership are publically releasing their determination to reform, or at least influencing public opinion. The outgoing Prime Minister Wen Jiabao is one of them. Others groups include the "New-right Wing" and the "Fraternity of the Yan'an-children". There are also scholars who belong to different factions. On the left, there are the self-claimed scholar Sima Nan and Professor Kong Qingdong, on the right there is the former banker Qin Xiao.
But not everyone is looking forward to the reform of the political system. That is because a real reform must be an adjustment of huge interests. Many rich and powerful people will lose their vested power and interests, while more poor people will receive benefits and protection of human rights. This political reform will receive the support of the poor and the resistance of the rich. In general, the number of poor people is large, yet they have no control. In China, the masses of people have almost no decision-making power. Even the thousands of representatives of the Communist Party meeting in Beijing now have only minimal decision-making power. The real decision-making power rests in the hands of the several hundred incumbent and former members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, or the oligarchy plus gerontocracy as often discussed by the others.
The Standing Committee of the Politburo of the Communist Party decides virtually every important matter. This is oligarchy. The old men of its last few generations such as Jiang Zemin, Zhu Rongji, Qiao Shi, Li Ruihuan, etc., all participate in deciding the political direction and candidates for highest authority. This is the gerontocracy talked of by the Chinese.
From the first day of this 18th Congress, one could tell that the situation is not good. The old people of the Communist Party held their heads up and squared their shoulders walking ahead. Their political report defined the tune to the successor oligarchs: neither should you take the old leftist road of Mao Zedong (nonsense because everyone knows that it is simply not possible); nor should you walk the evil road of the democratic countries. In other words, the giant ship Titanic should only rush along the established route towards the iceberg that is already on the horizon.
But the importance of the political report could be ignored, even though it received wide attention, and was pouring cold water over those who want to reform. Its real meaning was to announce no reform.
However, the political report may not be counted necessarily. The story will always have circumstances changing, and ups and downs. Especially, the guarantee in front of the tyrants may not be truthful. Many people put their hopes on the new generation of leaders and wish them to trash their promises after getting the real power. In the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev and Mikhail Gorbachev did so. In China, Deng Xiaoping and Hua Guofeng also did so. There were even more historic stories in ancient
China. For example, Empress Wu Zetian, who lived in the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD.), reformed the old system after she rose as a woman against fierce opposition to the throne and even founded a new dynasty.
I cherish the hope just like other people, but also make different preparations. Because the powerful democratic countries may not want to lose the cheap labor in China, it increases the difficulty for democratization in China and extends the suffering of nearly a quarter of mankind in this world.
*This article was published in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung on 13 november 2012 and distributed by the Wei Jingsheng Foundation.
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