Communist China at 60

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

by Biodun Iginla and Xian Wan, BBC News and The Economist

(Disclosure: The BBC's Biodun Iginla is 60 years old--born on January 1, 1949) Today's celebrations ignore history and the Party's uncertain future.

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Today 187,000 people will parade through Beijing to mark the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, but the great proletariat will not be allowed to attend. Tiananmen Square has been cordoned off for days. Beijing's ruling elites have banned pigeons and the Chinese Air Force will even shoo away the clouds to ensure a picture-perfect parade. The Communist Party will march in isolation, in a show of strength but not confidence, divorced from the people it governs.
This isn't the people's democracy that Mao ZedongMao Zedong sold to a war-torn country in 1949, although it's largely in keeping with the way he governed. Mao's reign of murder, persecution, paranoia and famine left between 30 and 60 million people dead. When countries the world over congratulate the Chinese government on its anniversary—the Empire State building in New York is even lighting up with the red and yellow hues of the Chinese flag—they are paying a kind of tribute to Mao's ascendance and the dictatorship he bequeathed to 1.3 billion Chinese citizens.
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Associated Press Hu JintaoHu Jintao
In the run-up to today's celebrations, China's leaders and their state-run propaganda have ignored this history and focused instead on the country's economic gains. Here there really is something to celebrate. After Deng XiaopingDeng Xiaoping—himself a victim of Mao's purges—opened up China to the outside world and adopted supply-side measures to free the talents of individual Chinese, the country has averaged almost 10% growth annually. The economic opportunities that the Chinese enjoy today flow from that decision, not from Mao's victory over the Nationalist army during the civil war.
The Communist Party's self-imposed dilemma since Deng has been how to continue and expand this economic prosperity while maintaining its grip on political power. This has resulted in fits of further liberalization followed by crackdowns. At the 50th anniversary of the People's Republic, legal reform was under way; the Internet was informing millions of Chinese about the outside world; and businesspeople were anticipating the opening required by China's decision to join the World Trade Organization.
Today those trends have slowed and some are in reverse, especially in the political sphere under President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen JiabaoWen Jiabao. Party apparatchiks are reasserting their control over the judiciary, instructing judges to follow the Party first, then the people and the law. The Party has also reasserted its control over information by clamping down on the Internet and expanding state-run media.
Beijing has halted the reform of state-owned banks—a critical part of economic reform—and instead used them as ATMs to pump money into state-owned enterprises during the recent economic downturn. Arbitrary seizures of property and people, along with a vague and restrictive competition law passed in 2007, have made the business climate opaque and uncertain.Chinese economist Wu Jinglian, who helped guide China's transition to a market economy decades ago, is now warning about the reversal of reform.
For all of its attempts at control, Party leaders understand their lack of popular legitimacy and the unrest it often inspires. In 2007, China reported 80,000 "mass incidents," which officials define as protests of five or more people. That number has almost certainly risen. Uprisings in China's far-flung ethnic provinces, Tibet and Xinjiang, also reflect an unwillingness to let local people influence their own destiny. At the same time, Chinese nationalism is on the rise among China's fenqing, or angry youth. Many in that generation take pride in the country's accomplishments without recalling the horrors of Mao's rule.
Mao would not recognize today's modern Chinese economy, but he would recognize the Party that runs it. Until China's leaders can trust their own people to attend a parade—and pass judgment from the ballot box—the so-called people's revolution will remain unrealized.
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Posted by BiodunIginla at 8:49 PM Labels: bbc news. xian wan biodun iginla, China

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