Thanks to Linkedin, I sometimes get to read articles about management in general and human relations at work, in particular, that I would otherwise simply brush aside for lack of substance and meaning. Many a time, scholars who specialise in the management of people in a working setting are failed businessmen, lack the broadness of mind to embrace economics, miss the point of power politics and are too short in scientific rigour to engage in psychology. When they focus on cross-cultural interactions, it often gets worse: culture gets reified and learning how to communicate gets truncated into imperfect lists of dos and don’ts.
Linkedin describes itself as a “business-oriented social networking service”, so it cannot really be blamed for endlessly publishing postings, papers and quotes about what to expect from a manager. Clearly, this is a network for people who think of themselves as decision-makers, and are always eager to grab a new opportunity—“losers find excuses, winners find solutions” reads one, “you create your own opportunity” reads another.Yet, listening to the new team of secretaries in Macao addressing for the first time the legislature in the past few weeks has made me reconsider a classic dilemma that scholars in the field of human resources never fail to examine and cross-examine: the one of leadership versus management. The artificiality of the boundary between one and the other is obvious, and depending on the scale of the operation, it is often impossible to make a distinction. The head of a small organization usually has to be a leader as well as a manager as there is no way things can be delegated. Also, competing characteristics can be complementary even though the idea that one set of features cannot exist without the other is fallacious: a so-called manager can continue to operate even though the leader has no vision and an institution can continue to strive even though the vision of its leader is completely distorted—absurd visions being only bearable as long as they are not instantly lethal, especially when it comes to public administration.
In the case of Macao, I would argue that what inspired the clean slate approach of a brand new government last December after 15 years of more or less the same was having too many insulated managers and no leader. Contrary to what I believed for a long time, the absence of leadership was more consequential than essential: the burdening legacy of the previous leadership appears to have acted almost right from the start as some kind of tantalizing, paralyzing and lurking influence. Social disgruntlement coupled with a looming economic recession and a wider political shift in the mainland precipitated the need for change.Because of Easter and Qingming, the addresses by the secretaries have been dragging far too long. So as to give an even greater sense of efficiency – the one virtue that had been lacking in Chui I – everything should have been wrapped up in a week or so instead of starting March 23 and finishing April 16! Yet, with maybe the notable exception of Sonia Chan who has yet to prove herself, the secretaries have displayed a remarkable sense of commitment in restituting the daily operations of their portfolio together with the challenges—being true managers—and a commendable capacity to project their work and priorities into the future—being true leaders. They have done so with an amount of resoluteness and power of conviction not often seen in this polity. Sometimes even with humour, as when Alexis Tam Chon Weng retorted to legislator Fong Chi Keong who had quoted the most famous poem of Qu Yuan (“The way ahead is long, and I do not see any ending, yet high and low I’ll search with determination”) that he hoped he would not have to drown himself if he failed to implement his “Glorious five years’” policy! With an additional promise of accountability, let’s hope that they will be able to now work as a team to confront the many vested interests that have marred the city far too long.
Published in Macau Daily Times, April 17 2015
Friday, April 17, 2015
Wednesday, April 15, 2015
Olho mágico: Verdificação / Peephole: Greenisation
A 24 de Março, o Politburo do Partido Comunista da China (PCC) abraçou oficialmente, e pela primeira vez, o conceito de “verdificação” (绿色化). Com um empurrão decidido, e sem que nada o fizesse anunciar, os escalões mais elevados da estrutura orgânica do Partido, entronizaram a necessidade de adicionar uma “cultura de conservação” às “quatro novas modernizações” (a industrialização, a urbanização, a informatização e a modernização da agricultura), política que constituiu o alfa e omega do PCC tal como foi definido pelo 18º Congresso do Partido em 2012. A medida constitui uma decisão de monta, ainda que a ausência de pormenores mais pragmáticos e de políticas concretas tenham contribuído para que passasse quase despercebida. [...]
For the rest, see Ponto Final, April 15 2015 & Ponto Final, April 19 2015
My original text in English:
On March 24th, the Politburo of the Communist Party of China (CPC) espoused the concept of “greenisation” (绿色化) for the first time ever. In a powerful push, at the highest echelon of Party politics, all of a sudden, the need to develop a “conservation culture” is being embedded in the “new four modernisations” (industrialisation, urbanisation, informatisation and modernisation of the agriculture), the alpha and omega of the CPC as defined by the 18th Party Congress of 2012. This is no small feat even though we are still short of pragmatic details and policy-making, and yet it has gone fairly unnoticed.
The very fact that greenisation appears to be meant to cut through the “new four modernisations” should have raised a few eyebrows.
First of all because these revamped magic four are a direct reference to Deng Xiaoping’s own “four modernisations” that launched the “opening up and reform” era back in November 1978. They are thus symbolically powerful and meaningful. For the present leadership, both the ambition and the imperative are of the same magnitude as it was at the end of the 1970s: the survival of China’s model depends on its ability to adapt and several indicators have already shown that the economic drivers of the past three reformist decades are dwindling, hence the need for a vast overhaul that will put both (shrinking) human resources and capital investment (with diminishing returns) to a better use.
Secondly, the crucial need to develop a “conservation culture” is supposed to infuse a new momentum to some of the priorities already defined and appears to be taking overall precedence: the greenisation of China is to be the one of its “production, economy and lifestyles” as a whole. “Green development” implies to go beyond the mere “promotion of sustainable development” as one of the eight tasks for the “deepening of economic reform” as defined by the Third Plenum of the Congress in November 2013. And “green development” is not only being embedded in the general program that ambitions to fix the engine of growth, stabilise the economy and better the quality of life of the citizens, but is also seen as being “part of national soft power and a new advantage in international competition”.
Finally, a decision made by the Politburo itself regarding a shift of that nature should not be downplayed, especially because Xi Jinping’s “strong leadership” style follows a pattern we could ourselves characterise as a shrivelled version of democratic centralism. Mr Xi’s interpretation of Lenin’s “freedom of discussion, unity of action” is quite restrictive and, as already noted by several perceptive observers of Chinese politics, in the two crucial areas of security and economic reforms the Politburo itself is dominated by two “super organs” created in late 2013 and both of them are chaired by President Xi himself: the Central National Security Commission and the Central Leading Group for Comprehensively Deepening Reforms.
The seriousness of China’s environmental upheavals is now widely acknowledged, both inside and outside of the country, and is proving to be quite challenging as well as extremely sensitive. The success of Chai Qing’s “Under the Dome” documentary at the time of the convening of the National People’s Congress is more than telling. This often very personal 103-minute video detailing the appalling air pollution problem faced by China produced by a renowned investigative journalist and financed out of her own purse had been seen 100 million times in just 48 hours before it was removed from the popular video-hosting website Youku. No doubt that this Ted-talk style report nourished by dreary statistics à la Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and jaw-dropping interviews with admittedly powerless local officials might have proved a (too) perfect enthusing illustration of Premier that Li Keqiang’s own characterisation of pollution as being “a blight on people's lives”.
A World Bank study indicates that the overall cost of China’s degraded environment corresponds to 9% of its Gross Domestic Product, and a recent Tsinghua University study concludes that tiny particulate pollutants were linked to 670,000 premature deaths from strokes, lung cancer, coronary heart disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in 2012 alone! ! No wonder then that the reforming of the “ecological systems” in China appeared in the first sentence of the broad-sweeping economic reform plan of November 2013 issued during the Third Plenum! In one of the few studies that have looked precisely and comprehensively into the substance of all the reforms publicised by the new leadership, Daniel Rosen goes to great lengths in showing that indeed the authorities have been busy making these announcements a reality by setting in motion “populist campaigns against polluting facilities, energy and coal policy reforms, a revamped environmental protection law and [stepping-up] regulatory activism”. But, partly thanks to often self-imposed greater transparency in actual reporting, the fact remains that the situation has worsened, that extremely polluting coal remains king and environmental protection comes a distant second behind the constraints to deliver GDP growth and economic performance, especially at local level.
Since January 1st 2015, China is equipped with regulatory standards widely recognized as being both extremely progressive and stringent. And yet, watchful observers Bo Zhang and Cong Cao warn us in the journal Nature that the brand new Environmental Protection Law could easily be confronted by four kinds of adverse “gaps”: first, being outclassed by other pieces of specific legislation dealing with agriculture, forestry, grassland and water; second, being “hampered by the fragmented and overlapping structure of environmental governance”; third, being crippled by the lack of acknowledgment of “citizens’ basic right to an environment fit for life”; and fourth, because enforcement could easily be contravened “by a lack of capacity and by conflicts of interest”. In conclusion, they argue that this very promising law thus now “requires robust implementation mechanisms, accountability regimes and institutional arrangements”, and they concur with Alex Wang from the University of California (Los Angeles) that environmental protection needs to be raised to “a level of priority previously reserved only for the most important party-state mandates, such as economic growth, social stability, and the one-child policy.” Could the “greenisation” concept vouched by the Politburo be it?
For the rest, see Ponto Final, April 15 2015 & Ponto Final, April 19 2015
My original text in English:
On March 24th, the Politburo of the Communist Party of China (CPC) espoused the concept of “greenisation” (绿色化) for the first time ever. In a powerful push, at the highest echelon of Party politics, all of a sudden, the need to develop a “conservation culture” is being embedded in the “new four modernisations” (industrialisation, urbanisation, informatisation and modernisation of the agriculture), the alpha and omega of the CPC as defined by the 18th Party Congress of 2012. This is no small feat even though we are still short of pragmatic details and policy-making, and yet it has gone fairly unnoticed.
The very fact that greenisation appears to be meant to cut through the “new four modernisations” should have raised a few eyebrows.
First of all because these revamped magic four are a direct reference to Deng Xiaoping’s own “four modernisations” that launched the “opening up and reform” era back in November 1978. They are thus symbolically powerful and meaningful. For the present leadership, both the ambition and the imperative are of the same magnitude as it was at the end of the 1970s: the survival of China’s model depends on its ability to adapt and several indicators have already shown that the economic drivers of the past three reformist decades are dwindling, hence the need for a vast overhaul that will put both (shrinking) human resources and capital investment (with diminishing returns) to a better use.
Secondly, the crucial need to develop a “conservation culture” is supposed to infuse a new momentum to some of the priorities already defined and appears to be taking overall precedence: the greenisation of China is to be the one of its “production, economy and lifestyles” as a whole. “Green development” implies to go beyond the mere “promotion of sustainable development” as one of the eight tasks for the “deepening of economic reform” as defined by the Third Plenum of the Congress in November 2013. And “green development” is not only being embedded in the general program that ambitions to fix the engine of growth, stabilise the economy and better the quality of life of the citizens, but is also seen as being “part of national soft power and a new advantage in international competition”.
Finally, a decision made by the Politburo itself regarding a shift of that nature should not be downplayed, especially because Xi Jinping’s “strong leadership” style follows a pattern we could ourselves characterise as a shrivelled version of democratic centralism. Mr Xi’s interpretation of Lenin’s “freedom of discussion, unity of action” is quite restrictive and, as already noted by several perceptive observers of Chinese politics, in the two crucial areas of security and economic reforms the Politburo itself is dominated by two “super organs” created in late 2013 and both of them are chaired by President Xi himself: the Central National Security Commission and the Central Leading Group for Comprehensively Deepening Reforms.
The seriousness of China’s environmental upheavals is now widely acknowledged, both inside and outside of the country, and is proving to be quite challenging as well as extremely sensitive. The success of Chai Qing’s “Under the Dome” documentary at the time of the convening of the National People’s Congress is more than telling. This often very personal 103-minute video detailing the appalling air pollution problem faced by China produced by a renowned investigative journalist and financed out of her own purse had been seen 100 million times in just 48 hours before it was removed from the popular video-hosting website Youku. No doubt that this Ted-talk style report nourished by dreary statistics à la Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and jaw-dropping interviews with admittedly powerless local officials might have proved a (too) perfect enthusing illustration of Premier that Li Keqiang’s own characterisation of pollution as being “a blight on people's lives”.
A World Bank study indicates that the overall cost of China’s degraded environment corresponds to 9% of its Gross Domestic Product, and a recent Tsinghua University study concludes that tiny particulate pollutants were linked to 670,000 premature deaths from strokes, lung cancer, coronary heart disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in 2012 alone! ! No wonder then that the reforming of the “ecological systems” in China appeared in the first sentence of the broad-sweeping economic reform plan of November 2013 issued during the Third Plenum! In one of the few studies that have looked precisely and comprehensively into the substance of all the reforms publicised by the new leadership, Daniel Rosen goes to great lengths in showing that indeed the authorities have been busy making these announcements a reality by setting in motion “populist campaigns against polluting facilities, energy and coal policy reforms, a revamped environmental protection law and [stepping-up] regulatory activism”. But, partly thanks to often self-imposed greater transparency in actual reporting, the fact remains that the situation has worsened, that extremely polluting coal remains king and environmental protection comes a distant second behind the constraints to deliver GDP growth and economic performance, especially at local level.
Since January 1st 2015, China is equipped with regulatory standards widely recognized as being both extremely progressive and stringent. And yet, watchful observers Bo Zhang and Cong Cao warn us in the journal Nature that the brand new Environmental Protection Law could easily be confronted by four kinds of adverse “gaps”: first, being outclassed by other pieces of specific legislation dealing with agriculture, forestry, grassland and water; second, being “hampered by the fragmented and overlapping structure of environmental governance”; third, being crippled by the lack of acknowledgment of “citizens’ basic right to an environment fit for life”; and fourth, because enforcement could easily be contravened “by a lack of capacity and by conflicts of interest”. In conclusion, they argue that this very promising law thus now “requires robust implementation mechanisms, accountability regimes and institutional arrangements”, and they concur with Alex Wang from the University of California (Los Angeles) that environmental protection needs to be raised to “a level of priority previously reserved only for the most important party-state mandates, such as economic growth, social stability, and the one-child policy.” Could the “greenisation” concept vouched by the Politburo be it?
Friday, April 03, 2015
Kapok: Going back to politics
Politics in many a modern polity seems to have become taboo; a notion somewhat perceived as coming from the past, when ideologies reigned and ultimately proved to be the inspiration for some of the deadliest man-made catastrophes of the twentieth century. Religions are today being used as political repertoire by some organizations for which “–ism” soon become “–ist”, but far from speculating on the specific workings of better tomorrows and more egalitarian polities, radical political movements inspired by twisted reinterpretation of religion are “merely” contesting an existing political order and thus protest more than they propose. Clearly, it is a mistake to allow radicals exclusive recourse to politics.
In Macao, politics has often been reduced to politicking — the last vivid memory we have of radicalism dates back to 1966. Since the handover, most of the promises made by our executive-led government have provided perfect illustrations for the expression “vanishing in thin air”. Simply looking at policy addresses, the buzzword for the economy up to 2003 had been “restructuring”, and starting as early as November 2003, less than two years after the liberalization of gambling, this was replaced by the sacred requirement for “diversification”. In 2015, we are still dominated by the imperative to diversify, only this time under a period of “adjustment” corresponding to a “new normal” with an ultimate objective of “sustainable development”, and this no longer for the sole benefit of Macao but China. Mind you, we belong to a wider community and syphoning hundreds of billions of renminbi (the people’s money) for more than a decade had to come at a price, especially when the new head of state regards the fight against corruption as a question of survival.
Talking about “diversification”, the economist Albano Martins recently reminded us that total earnings from the MICE industry for a whole year equated to the revenues of “three hours of gambling”! No wonder Lionel Leong is betting on the development of traditional medicine in Hengqin as the way to go: not in Macao and not now!
In many democracies, promises made during electoral campaigns get buried when confronted by the reality of governing in an ever more interdependent global environment. Let’s be honest, quite a significant number of pledges made while on the campaign trail are rather theatrical: a former French president, Jacques Chirac, once said that promises were only binding for those who listen to them, and he got elected twice! Yet, issues get debated, alternatives envisioned and if a government defaults too much on its commitments, it ultimately gets sacked. In August last year while running unopposed for a new mandate, the last point on Mr Chui’s program was to further democratic development in Macao. Of course, this is only second to “sunshine policies” (meaning transparent and without corruption) and “scientific governance” (meaning based on rationality, due processes and benchmarking).
The greatest achievements in democratic development in Macao has been the suppression of the electoral registration card in order to fight electoral corruption, and the addition of a few seats in both the Legislative Assembly and the Chief Executive Election committee in order to improve representation of the people. Even mitigated by more popular forms of consultation, I sincerely doubt that these have proven successful, on either account.
Now, the newly appointed secretary for Administration and Justice, Sonia Chan, is promising to make the “indirectly elected” seats at the Assembly more competitive, the consultative committees of all hues more diverse and to establish a renewed form of municipal organization. What is at stake, and this is precisely why we have a brand new government, is to partially get rid of “vested interests”, the one thing that has crippled the healthy development of Macao for the past 15 years. But, beyond the letter of the Basic Law, why be scared of entrusting these revamped entities with political power? Just as legal changes are often not a matter of public opinion, as perfectly pointed out by Leonel Alves, grooming a new generation of leaders requires they be entrusted with authority.
Published in Macau Daily Times, April 3 2015
In Macao, politics has often been reduced to politicking — the last vivid memory we have of radicalism dates back to 1966. Since the handover, most of the promises made by our executive-led government have provided perfect illustrations for the expression “vanishing in thin air”. Simply looking at policy addresses, the buzzword for the economy up to 2003 had been “restructuring”, and starting as early as November 2003, less than two years after the liberalization of gambling, this was replaced by the sacred requirement for “diversification”. In 2015, we are still dominated by the imperative to diversify, only this time under a period of “adjustment” corresponding to a “new normal” with an ultimate objective of “sustainable development”, and this no longer for the sole benefit of Macao but China. Mind you, we belong to a wider community and syphoning hundreds of billions of renminbi (the people’s money) for more than a decade had to come at a price, especially when the new head of state regards the fight against corruption as a question of survival.
Talking about “diversification”, the economist Albano Martins recently reminded us that total earnings from the MICE industry for a whole year equated to the revenues of “three hours of gambling”! No wonder Lionel Leong is betting on the development of traditional medicine in Hengqin as the way to go: not in Macao and not now!
In many democracies, promises made during electoral campaigns get buried when confronted by the reality of governing in an ever more interdependent global environment. Let’s be honest, quite a significant number of pledges made while on the campaign trail are rather theatrical: a former French president, Jacques Chirac, once said that promises were only binding for those who listen to them, and he got elected twice! Yet, issues get debated, alternatives envisioned and if a government defaults too much on its commitments, it ultimately gets sacked. In August last year while running unopposed for a new mandate, the last point on Mr Chui’s program was to further democratic development in Macao. Of course, this is only second to “sunshine policies” (meaning transparent and without corruption) and “scientific governance” (meaning based on rationality, due processes and benchmarking).
The greatest achievements in democratic development in Macao has been the suppression of the electoral registration card in order to fight electoral corruption, and the addition of a few seats in both the Legislative Assembly and the Chief Executive Election committee in order to improve representation of the people. Even mitigated by more popular forms of consultation, I sincerely doubt that these have proven successful, on either account.
Now, the newly appointed secretary for Administration and Justice, Sonia Chan, is promising to make the “indirectly elected” seats at the Assembly more competitive, the consultative committees of all hues more diverse and to establish a renewed form of municipal organization. What is at stake, and this is precisely why we have a brand new government, is to partially get rid of “vested interests”, the one thing that has crippled the healthy development of Macao for the past 15 years. But, beyond the letter of the Basic Law, why be scared of entrusting these revamped entities with political power? Just as legal changes are often not a matter of public opinion, as perfectly pointed out by Leonel Alves, grooming a new generation of leaders requires they be entrusted with authority.
Published in Macau Daily Times, April 3 2015
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
Olho mágico: Ser um defensor da teoria do colapso / Peephole: Being a collapsist
Na véspera da reunião da Assembleia Popular Nacional, em Março, a publicação de um artigo de opinião por um dos mais reputados especialistas em China contemporânea dos Estados Unidos, que previa o desmoronamento do poder comunista, criou uma convulsão em muitos círculos de observadores da China. Estava em causa o ‘timing’, naturalmente, já que antecedeu a ocasião em que o regime exibe a sua determinação e força e o artigo criava assim uma espécie de quiasmo cognitivo, tal como o meio de difusão: o Wall Street Journal (WSJ) é um diário com autoridade e construiu uma reputação de excelência no que diz respeito aos assuntos da China, e não apenas no sector financeiro. [...]
For the rest, see Ponto Final, March 27 2015
My original text in English:
On the eve of the convening of the National People’s Congress in March, the publication of an op-ed penned by one of the United States’ most prominent specialists of contemporary China and predicting the crumbling of communist rule in the near future created quite a stir among the many circles of China watchers. Timing was of the essence, of course, as this was prior to an occasion for the regime to showcase its determination and prowess and the article was thus somehow creating a cognitive chasm, and so was the channel: The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) is indeed an authoritative daily and has built a reputation of excellence when it comes to China matters, and not only in the financial sector.
Then the personality of the author added an extra layer of loudness in what was intended as an awakening call. David Shambaugh is a professor of political science at George Washington University, and benefits from a high degree of recognition both internationally and in China proper, and was even recently distinguished by a Chinese government think-tank as the second-most influential China expert in the United States. Moreover, Prof. Shambaugh is a regular invited guest to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Communist Party School in Beijing. One of his recent books, published in 2008, was indeed describing how the Party had taken “a number of ‘adaptive’ steps to legitimize, reinstitutionalize and save itself”, largely because of the lessons learnt from the demise of the Soviet Union and its neighboring lookalikes.
Indeed, Prof. Shambaugh does not belong to a well-established tradition of “collapsists” and he even warns in his WSJ’s essay that “predicting the demise of authoritarian regimes is a risky business.” Clearly, what he means by “risky” essentially involves the complete failure to observe and characterize an upcoming watershed—the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 or the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011—, to miss out on the obvious, even though he aptly recognizes that ever since “the regime’s near-death experience in Tiananmen Square in 1989, […] several seasoned Sinologists have risked their professional reputations by asserting that the collapse of CCP rule was inevitable.” The term “collapsist” is derived from the famous 2001 book by Gordon Chang, an American Lawyer, entitled The Coming Collapse of China, in which he argued that communist rule in China would disintegrate by 2011 because of state-sponsored economic inefficiencies and the incapacity of the regime to reform itself towards a more opened polity. Chang tried to convince his readership in 2011, at the occasion of a re-edition, that his prediction was wrong by only a year, but then he was again off the mark.
Prof. Shambaugh’s estimates are of course of a different nature and he purposely does not provide a precise time frame for what he calls “The Coming Chinese Crackup”. Yet, he delineates “five telling indications of the regime’s vulnerability and the party’s systemic weaknesses” that seem to have become ever more pressing since the rise to power of President Xi Jinping. First, there is the idea that the economic elites have lost confidence in the regime and “are ready to flee en masse if the system really begins to crumble.” Second, the government is believed to be insecure because of the multifaceted and severe crackdown that has affected civil society in its many guises — lawyers, journalists, scholars, bloggers, militants, etc. With confidence in oneself should comes tolerance of others. Third, the support of the regime is characterized as “simulated” or purely perfunctory, and thus slogans do not permeate the mind and heart of the cadres anymore. Fourth, the fight against corruption, even if Prof. Shambaugh’s fully acknowledges its unprecedented scope and depth, is a lost battle as it has to do with a systemic problem, and thus require the establishment of transparency mechanisms that suppose the institution of the rule of law. And finally fifth, the proposed economic reforms are failing to materialize to the full because their ambitious goals are challenging much too powerful and deeply entrenched interest groups.
In an interview given to the wonderful China matters blog of The New York Times, Sinosphere, Prof. Shambaugh further explains the motivations behind his article and somehow his disappointment at the reverse course observed after the fading away of Vice-president Zeng Qinghong in 2007. In fact, the stiffening of the regime does not date back to 2012, but rather to 2009, when what he calls the “Iron Quadrangle” — propaganda, internal security, the People’s Liberation Army and People’s Armed Police, state-owned enterprises — managed to convince President Hu Jintao that further crack down and control over society was a matter of survival for the Party.
There are of course limits — robust ones — to Prof. Shambaugh’s arguments. Geremie Barme, a great Australian observer of political culture in contemporary China, is absolutely right in remarking that “officials are always bored” and that “the leader’s works never sell” (I would add, willingly). He is equally right when he states “Xi's China is uglier, more repressive and narrow, yet it's more confident, more articulate and more focused than at any time since Mao Zedong.” Additionally, as remarked by an astute blogger well versed in Chinese politics, “the collapse of a political force does not necessarily mean the CCP’s collapse” and the Party is indeed “like an octopus with many arms, […] depending on its political objective at a given moment, it decides which arms must be tough and it keeps switching arms”. Yet, Prof. Shambaugh’s call resonate, and not because “the West” simply cannot see a political future beyond democracy, but rather because the systematic unforgiving repression of what is deemed “abnormal” or “dissenting” necessarily ends up as some form of new totalitarianism, and that, we know it collapses.
For the rest, see Ponto Final, March 27 2015
My original text in English:
On the eve of the convening of the National People’s Congress in March, the publication of an op-ed penned by one of the United States’ most prominent specialists of contemporary China and predicting the crumbling of communist rule in the near future created quite a stir among the many circles of China watchers. Timing was of the essence, of course, as this was prior to an occasion for the regime to showcase its determination and prowess and the article was thus somehow creating a cognitive chasm, and so was the channel: The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) is indeed an authoritative daily and has built a reputation of excellence when it comes to China matters, and not only in the financial sector.
Then the personality of the author added an extra layer of loudness in what was intended as an awakening call. David Shambaugh is a professor of political science at George Washington University, and benefits from a high degree of recognition both internationally and in China proper, and was even recently distinguished by a Chinese government think-tank as the second-most influential China expert in the United States. Moreover, Prof. Shambaugh is a regular invited guest to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Communist Party School in Beijing. One of his recent books, published in 2008, was indeed describing how the Party had taken “a number of ‘adaptive’ steps to legitimize, reinstitutionalize and save itself”, largely because of the lessons learnt from the demise of the Soviet Union and its neighboring lookalikes.
Indeed, Prof. Shambaugh does not belong to a well-established tradition of “collapsists” and he even warns in his WSJ’s essay that “predicting the demise of authoritarian regimes is a risky business.” Clearly, what he means by “risky” essentially involves the complete failure to observe and characterize an upcoming watershed—the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 or the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011—, to miss out on the obvious, even though he aptly recognizes that ever since “the regime’s near-death experience in Tiananmen Square in 1989, […] several seasoned Sinologists have risked their professional reputations by asserting that the collapse of CCP rule was inevitable.” The term “collapsist” is derived from the famous 2001 book by Gordon Chang, an American Lawyer, entitled The Coming Collapse of China, in which he argued that communist rule in China would disintegrate by 2011 because of state-sponsored economic inefficiencies and the incapacity of the regime to reform itself towards a more opened polity. Chang tried to convince his readership in 2011, at the occasion of a re-edition, that his prediction was wrong by only a year, but then he was again off the mark.
Prof. Shambaugh’s estimates are of course of a different nature and he purposely does not provide a precise time frame for what he calls “The Coming Chinese Crackup”. Yet, he delineates “five telling indications of the regime’s vulnerability and the party’s systemic weaknesses” that seem to have become ever more pressing since the rise to power of President Xi Jinping. First, there is the idea that the economic elites have lost confidence in the regime and “are ready to flee en masse if the system really begins to crumble.” Second, the government is believed to be insecure because of the multifaceted and severe crackdown that has affected civil society in its many guises — lawyers, journalists, scholars, bloggers, militants, etc. With confidence in oneself should comes tolerance of others. Third, the support of the regime is characterized as “simulated” or purely perfunctory, and thus slogans do not permeate the mind and heart of the cadres anymore. Fourth, the fight against corruption, even if Prof. Shambaugh’s fully acknowledges its unprecedented scope and depth, is a lost battle as it has to do with a systemic problem, and thus require the establishment of transparency mechanisms that suppose the institution of the rule of law. And finally fifth, the proposed economic reforms are failing to materialize to the full because their ambitious goals are challenging much too powerful and deeply entrenched interest groups.
In an interview given to the wonderful China matters blog of The New York Times, Sinosphere, Prof. Shambaugh further explains the motivations behind his article and somehow his disappointment at the reverse course observed after the fading away of Vice-president Zeng Qinghong in 2007. In fact, the stiffening of the regime does not date back to 2012, but rather to 2009, when what he calls the “Iron Quadrangle” — propaganda, internal security, the People’s Liberation Army and People’s Armed Police, state-owned enterprises — managed to convince President Hu Jintao that further crack down and control over society was a matter of survival for the Party.
There are of course limits — robust ones — to Prof. Shambaugh’s arguments. Geremie Barme, a great Australian observer of political culture in contemporary China, is absolutely right in remarking that “officials are always bored” and that “the leader’s works never sell” (I would add, willingly). He is equally right when he states “Xi's China is uglier, more repressive and narrow, yet it's more confident, more articulate and more focused than at any time since Mao Zedong.” Additionally, as remarked by an astute blogger well versed in Chinese politics, “the collapse of a political force does not necessarily mean the CCP’s collapse” and the Party is indeed “like an octopus with many arms, […] depending on its political objective at a given moment, it decides which arms must be tough and it keeps switching arms”. Yet, Prof. Shambaugh’s call resonate, and not because “the West” simply cannot see a political future beyond democracy, but rather because the systematic unforgiving repression of what is deemed “abnormal” or “dissenting” necessarily ends up as some form of new totalitarianism, and that, we know it collapses.
Friday, March 20, 2015
Kapok: Chui II and beyond
Now is the time when people like me get asked by journalists what to expect from the policy address to be delivered by the Chief Executive on March 23. Usually, this general policy speech and the subsequent details offered by the secretaries on their respective portfolios take place in November. The rationale of the timing has to do with the new session of the legislature having just started, in mid-October, and because the government’s budget for the coming fiscal year has to be discussed and voted upon. Mind you, Mr Chui did make an appearance in the Assembly last November to review the past year’s policies and “achievements”, and the budget for 2015 had already been passed on November 18 in plenary session with expected revenues of about MOP152 billion and spending of roughly MOP52 billion—of course, this will be revised and amended along the way. Yet, it is clear that despite the headlines about the sorry state of the economy — or “the new normal” — the government is going to spend “only” a third of its revenues. So why March? Easy: because of Chui II!
When this was announced in October by Mr Chui himself, I personally had great difficulties believing the stated logic: being sworn in in December for a new mandate, Mr Chui was arguing that he could only make announcements after that, and choosing a date late in March was a way to put the government’s work in line with the convening of the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference — a bit debatable if one truly believes in the “two systems”, but makes sense within the new patriotic environment we’re in. Mr Chui had already done the same back in March 2010, but then he was taking over from Edmund Ho. Looking back at 2004, Mr Ho did not shy away from the November custom, and thus it is true that Ho II looked a lot like Ho I, but only worse, and not simply because of the Ao Man Long scandal. But why March 2015? Mr Chui had ran unopposed and had just been “re-elected” by 95% of his small circle of supporters. At the time, speculation was rife regarding possible changes in government, but only Francis Tam, Florinda Chan and, maybe, Lau Si Io were thought to be on their way out. Moreover, competence had nothing to do with it — except in the case of Mr Lau, if the construction industry is to be trusted — and changes were somehow believed to be rather cosmetic, rather like musical chairs. On the side of the “opposition”, the picture looked gloomy: the New Macau Association (ANM) had lost one seat in the Assembly the year before, losing their historic position as the highest vote getter in such elections, and ANM’s young Turks had just been branded “enemies of the state” for organizing a supposedly “illegal” referendum with close to 9,000 people openly advocating universal suffrage to elect the Chief Executive…
Then came the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong, the open-speculations about a whole new government in Macao, the announcement of a total revamping of all but one senior official on December 2, and to crown it all the visit by Xi Jinping reminding Macao that diversification was not a slogan anymore and this for the sake of the whole country. Later on, newly appointed secretaries started to be more vocal, reaching out to a new range of stakeholders. Promises were made. Critical assessments were vented. Heads, at coordinator, deputy-director and director levels started to roll. Despite the gambling profit nosedive, social and community-connected issues finally topped the list of priorities. For me, there is no doubt that the massive demonstrations of May played a crucial role, especially because Macao is endowed with First World revenues and Third World services: in China, the authorities have read Tocqueville’s “L’Ancien régime et la revolution”! On the 23rd, we will hear about a more prospective 5-year vision and a more coherent and scientifically grounded form of governance. What will be missing though is a way for consultative bodies, special committees and the like, to become really meaningful.
Published in Macau Daily Times, March 20 2015
When this was announced in October by Mr Chui himself, I personally had great difficulties believing the stated logic: being sworn in in December for a new mandate, Mr Chui was arguing that he could only make announcements after that, and choosing a date late in March was a way to put the government’s work in line with the convening of the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference — a bit debatable if one truly believes in the “two systems”, but makes sense within the new patriotic environment we’re in. Mr Chui had already done the same back in March 2010, but then he was taking over from Edmund Ho. Looking back at 2004, Mr Ho did not shy away from the November custom, and thus it is true that Ho II looked a lot like Ho I, but only worse, and not simply because of the Ao Man Long scandal. But why March 2015? Mr Chui had ran unopposed and had just been “re-elected” by 95% of his small circle of supporters. At the time, speculation was rife regarding possible changes in government, but only Francis Tam, Florinda Chan and, maybe, Lau Si Io were thought to be on their way out. Moreover, competence had nothing to do with it — except in the case of Mr Lau, if the construction industry is to be trusted — and changes were somehow believed to be rather cosmetic, rather like musical chairs. On the side of the “opposition”, the picture looked gloomy: the New Macau Association (ANM) had lost one seat in the Assembly the year before, losing their historic position as the highest vote getter in such elections, and ANM’s young Turks had just been branded “enemies of the state” for organizing a supposedly “illegal” referendum with close to 9,000 people openly advocating universal suffrage to elect the Chief Executive…
Then came the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong, the open-speculations about a whole new government in Macao, the announcement of a total revamping of all but one senior official on December 2, and to crown it all the visit by Xi Jinping reminding Macao that diversification was not a slogan anymore and this for the sake of the whole country. Later on, newly appointed secretaries started to be more vocal, reaching out to a new range of stakeholders. Promises were made. Critical assessments were vented. Heads, at coordinator, deputy-director and director levels started to roll. Despite the gambling profit nosedive, social and community-connected issues finally topped the list of priorities. For me, there is no doubt that the massive demonstrations of May played a crucial role, especially because Macao is endowed with First World revenues and Third World services: in China, the authorities have read Tocqueville’s “L’Ancien régime et la revolution”! On the 23rd, we will hear about a more prospective 5-year vision and a more coherent and scientifically grounded form of governance. What will be missing though is a way for consultative bodies, special committees and the like, to become really meaningful.
Published in Macau Daily Times, March 20 2015
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