Here’s news that’s really news, but perhaps
won’t be treated as such by some.
On January 16, major Communist Party media
outlets ran
a front-page story that referred to an all-day meeting in which Standing
Committee members listed to reports by various Party and government bodies.[1]
Xi also gave a speech—described as “an important speech” [重要讲话], but that’s to be expected, because what Xi says is crucial.
In some ways, the story is standard stuff.
For nearly the past
half decade, this has been the political season here in China when the work
reports of higher-echelon institutions are issued internally within the Party
and government apparatus to review various accomplishments and shortcomings. A
good deal of the material distributed seeks applause; some of it is
self-critical and looks for suggestions and directions. These reports are
informational, in that they convey what the Chinese leadership is thinking
about and aiming to do—what matters to central-level officials.[2]
The precise parameters of policy-making won’t be clear for a while, and it will
take weeks for these findings to be disseminated; they’ll remain for outsiders largely
opaque at best.
But because the language of China’s politics is
always carefully constructed, even the general statements made at major meetings
like this one are revealing.
For example, there’s this formulation of
Party aims:
First of
all, persist in the Party's leadership, focus on centralizing and unifying the
leadership of the Party Central Committee. The whole Party needs to firmly secure
political awareness, comprehension of the overall situation, maintain and
sustain a core consciousness, and safeguard the central authority and
centralized leadership of the Party Central Committee as the highest political
principle and see this fundamental political rule carried out. [坚持党的领导首先是坚持党中央集中统一领导。全党要牢固树立政治意识、大局意识、核心意识、看齐意识，把维护党中央权威和集中统一领导作为最高政治原则和根本政治规矩来执行]
This is largely political
boilerplate—important in one sense because of its continuity and consistency.
But when Xi and his like-minded comrades[3]
use terms such as “persist”, “focus”, “firmly secure”, “maintain and sustain”,
and “safeguard”, they are referring to jobs not yet done, goals that are still unmet.
That's a problem.
Here's another.
The standard narrative about Xi Jinping is
that, politically speaking, he is all set and secure and supreme. But if Xi has
so much power and authority, why does the institution he chairs release
statements that largely resemble those written by his predecessors? Given that
Xi’s agenda is so different, shouldn’t Xi have been able to alter the phrasing
in ways that wouldn’t reiterate what his predecessors had put forth?
Those might seem difficult questions to
answer, but they’re not really.
The narrative about Xi being more powerful
than anyone since Mao is nonsense.
That’s in large part because this isn’t the
China of the past century, but the present one. The problems are different;
leaders have learned some lessons and forgotten others; and the society is both
more alert and far more diverse.
Xi and his allies have major challenges. They
want to centralize policy-making; bring back and reinsert ideology in a major
way; and exert authority over the economy while connecting to the society. And,
judging from the focus of the meeting, they’re having difficulty keeping
everyone on the same page.
They understand that there’s resistance
beyond Beijing. Many local officials support Xi’s overall vision of change, but
there are signs of discomfort among some. They want to decentralize authority; view
ideology as a diversion from daily tasks; and wish for innovation and
entrepreneurship to win out over Beijing’s emphasis on state-owned enterprises.
Some may not be well pleased (though others appear firmly in Xi's camp*).
Xi and his comrades rightly see getting
command and control over policy-making as crucial—or as their communiqué puts
it, “situations have all sides, the center is the important thing.” [事在四方，要在中央][4]
So far, the center is holding, dominated by
Xi and his fellow hardliners, many of them quite brilliant. But that they seem
to feel the need to remind others of their aims means they aren’t dominating
everything yet.
[1] The National People's Congress, the State Council, the Party’s
Political Consultative Committee, the People's Supreme Court and the Supreme
People's Procuratorate, and the Secretariat of the Central Committee. [听取全国人大常委会、国务院、全国政协、最高人民法院、最高人民检察院党组工作汇报 听取中央书记处工作报告] In short, all the heavy hitters.
[2] As
opposed to the many and sundry analysts who want to tell Beijing what it should
be focusing on, and therefore must be aiming to do. An example of such
misplaced projection over the past few years is how China must be engaged in
deep financial reform that would emulate other nations because that’s what
those observers believe Beijing needs.
[3] “Like-minded” on many issues, but by no means
all. Xi didn’t select these people; the Central Committee did. Xi is a hardline
conservative aiming to reform the Party through rectification and
centralization. That doesn’t mean everyone is in lockstep with him or those
views.
[4] The quote used
in the statement is drawn from Han Feizi. A fuller—and probably more
revealing--version appears in a translation of Han’s writings by Burton Watson
(Columbia University Press, 2003) on page 35: “Government reaches to the four
quarters, but its source is in the center. The sage holds to the source and the
four quarters come to serve him. In emptiness he awaits them, and they
spontaneously do what is needed.”
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