China's Inevitable Changes - 0 views
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China's current economic model, and by extension its political and social model, is reaching its limits just as it had prior to Deng's administration.
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It is worth recalling just how extraordinary Deng's 1978 meeting was. Mao Zedong had died only two years earlier, taking with him what little remained of the old pillars of Communist Party legitimacy. China was a mess, ravaged by years of economic mismanagement and uncontrolled population growth and only beginning to recover from the trauma of the Cultural Revolution.
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Had the People's Republic fallen in 1978 or shortly thereafter, few would have been truly surprised. Of course, in those tense early post-Mao years hardly anyone could foresee just how rapid China's transformation would be.
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Nonetheless, battling enormous institutional constraints, Deng and his colleagues quickly set up new pillars of social, political and economic stability that guided China through the fall of the Soviet Union and into the 21st century.
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Jiang, emerging as a post-Tiananmen Square leader, was faced with a situation where the Party was rapidly losing its legitimacy and where state-owned enterprises were encumbering China's economic opening and reform.
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by the time he took on the additional role of president in 1993, the decline of the Japanese economy and the boom in the United States and the rest of Asia left an opening for China's economy to resurge.
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When Hu succeeded Jiang in 2002-2003, China's economic growth was seemingly unstoppable, perhaps even gaining steam from the Asian economic crisis.
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As Xi prepares his 10-year plan, China has reached the end of the economic supercycle set in motion by Deng. Public criticism of officials and thus of the Party is rampant, and China's military appears much more capable than it actually is, putting China is a potentially dangerous situation.
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Once again the United States is looking at China as a power perhaps to contain or at least constrain. China's neighbors seem eager for Washington's assistance to counterbalance Beijing's influence, and long-dormant Japan is awakening once again.
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Xi may not have to rebuild a fractured Party or state as Deng did, but in some ways he faces the same fundamental challenge: redirecting and redefining China.
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Deng emerged as China's paramount leader out of the struggles and chaos of the Gang of Four era and the Cultural Revolution. He redefined what China was and where China was going, not out of a desire to try something different or an infatuation with "Western" economic models but out of a fundamental need to change course.
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Reform, with "Chinese characteristics," is not about Westernizing the Chinese model. Rather, it is about reshaping the relationship between the Party, the economy and the people in a way that will maintain the centrality of the Party.
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while this will likely entail selectively scaling back the Party's power in certain areas, it does not mean the overall reduction of Party power.
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The consolidation of Party and political leadership was made clear in the formula. It is matched by the general secretary and president also holding the dual roles of chairman on the two parallel Central Military Commissions, one under the Party and the other under the state.
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Jiang's accession to the presidency formalized Party-government leadership, but consensus leadership constrained his power. Jiang may have technically held all the key posts of power, but other power brokers in the Politburo could counterbalance him.
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Ensuring the right web of connections often became more important than fulfilling the responsibilities of the Party or the state.
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The intertwining threads were just too complex. Rapid policy swings were impossible and factional battles that threatened the fabric of the state were effectively eliminated, but the cost was a decision-making process that was increasingly cumbersome and timid.
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Though China was corrupt, beset with a cumbersome regulatory environment and prone to violations of intellectual property rights, it was fairly predictable overall, unlike so many other developing economies.
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But when the foundation of China's economy began to shake after 2008, when China's very success drove up wages and prices as its biggest consumers faced serious economic problems of their own, China's consensus leadership proved unequal to the task.
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During China's rise, Beijing needed only minor adjustments to maintain stability and growth. But now that the country is in a far different set of circumstances, Beijing needs a major course correction. The problem is that consensus rarely allows for the often radical but necessary response. And for good reason: The success of radical change is not guaranteed. In fact, history suggests otherwise, as it did notably with the case of Mikhail Gorbachev and the Soviet Union.
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To overcome the limitations of consensus leadership, Xi apparently is trying to strengthen the role of president.
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He wants to redefine the presidency so that it is not merely the concomitant title for the Party leader but also a post with a real leadership role, similar to the presidencies of other major countries.
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This should add efficiency to the system (its stated goal), but it may also confer greater central oversight and control by cutting through the webs of vested interests that have taken hold in many of China's most powerful institutions.
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They will introduce more market and competitive mechanisms while giving Beijing greater control over the overall structure.
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Consolidation, efficiency, transparency, reform and restructuring are all words that possess dual meanings -- one regarding more efficient and more flexible systems, the other regarding systems that the center is better able to direct.
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to create a more nimble and adaptive government, Xi is seeking to harness the people in a slight reversal, using his role as president to rebuild the legitimacy of the Party
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But China is at a turning point, and without nimble leadership, a system as large and complex as China can move very rapidly down an unpredictable and uncontrollable path.
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"The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China will convene its Third Plenum meeting Nov. 9. During the three-day session, President Xi Jinping's administration will outline core reforms to guide its policymaking for the next decade. The Chinese government would have the world believe that Xi's will be the most momentous Third Plenary Session since December 1978, when former supreme leader Deng Xiaoping first put China on the path of economic reform and opening."