Political storm, dissent brew within China

Beginning with the sacking of Bo Xilai, former Party chief of southwest China's Chongqing province, Bo's dismissal has dented the Party's rigid efforts to portray leadership change as symbolic of Party unity. China's official Xinhua news agency provided a whiff of things while stressing upon the centrality of the CCP and charged, "...will not have any privileged Party members who can overshadow laws and Party discipline."

 

That there is severe strain within the Party ranks cannot be denied any longer, and the tussle to instil respective loyalists in the all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee is lucidly evident. The Xinhua agency was also quick to assert abidance by the "Party's political rules", with Hu Jintao as its general secretary. The frailty of China's power structure is mirrored in that while Xi Jinping is widely believed to succeed Hu Jintao in China's next generational leadership, it is speculated that Hu will continue as Chairman of the China's Central Military Commission (CMC) for at least another two years, before Xi takes over. In a similar precedent, Hu Jintao became Chairman of the CMC, only two years after he took over as China's President from Jiang Zemin, who continued as Chairman of the CMC, even though Hu Jintao had already taken over as China's President. Commonly referred to as the "two-centre dilemma", it is bound to cast a shadow during the 18th National Congress this autumn, thus posing a significant question, whether China's upcoming change in leadership will actually become a "generational shift" or simply remain confined to being a "change of term".

 

The Bo Xilai affair exposes the Party's inner struggles existent at the highest levels, given that Bo had managed to build a wide support base in the 32 million-strong Chongqing, wielded considerable influence within the People's Liberation Army, and was seen to be riding high on popularity and cashing in on the pro-Mao Zedong sentiment, or "neo-Maoism", to strengthen his candidature for the Politburo Standing Committee. The Party's central leadership considered this as an affront while anticipating the possibility of an alternative power centre to the mainstream leadership that could eventually threaten the CCP's unyielding hold on the state apparatus and Chinese society.

 

The second incident involved the controversial arrival of Chinese activist, Chen Guangcheng, at the US embassy in Beijing, following an astounding escape from the rural Shandong Province, where he had been held and tortured in house arrest for the past seven years. The case of Chen Guangcheng seeking refuge in the American embassy brings to light the inherent contradictions between hardliners and reformers in the Chinese leadership, given that despite initial resistance, Beijing now is prepared to allow Chen to accept a fellowship to study in the US.

 

The third episode in this series came in the form of revoking the press credentials of accredited foreign correspondent, Melissa Chan, a US citizen, working for the Al Jazeera network, thus forcing a shutdown of Al Jazeera's English-language bureau in Beijing. Not only have the Chinese authorities expressed "unhappiness with the general editorial content" on Al Jazeera, Beijing has failed to comment on the reasons for forcing out Chan and more importantly, has declined Al Jazeera's request to replace a correspondent in place of Chan.

 

Can harsh subjugation of any form of dissent, censorship of the media, become instrumental in emboldening advocates of change? In case of China, it could well impede its social transformation and economic restructuring emphasised time and again and likely to be carried forward by the incoming leadership.

 

 

Courtesy: The Sunday Guardian, 20 May 2012

 

http://www.sunday-guardian.com/analysis/political-storm-dissent-brew-within-china