Olho mágico: Um líder intrigante / Peephole: The puzzling leader

Being midway through his first term as supreme leader of China, Xi Jinping became itself an object of study and question, as is another form of a "new normal", especially after having driven a break radical with the ancient Chinese leadership and the "lost decade" of Hu Jintao. But the governance Xi Jinping is also a "case study" by the depth and scope of what the Chinese leader designated as a priority in terms of policy orientation, with the fight against corruption to stand out clearly visible. [...]

Published in Ponto Final, May 15 2015

And the text original in English with web links:

Being now halfway into his first mandate as China’s supremo, Xi Jinping has become the object of many probes—another form of “new normal”—, mainly because of his apparent clean break with the previous leadership—the so-called “lost decade” of Hu Jintao—as well as the depth and reach of everything he has undertaken or designated as a priority in terms of policy-making, among which the fight against corruption stands a distant first. Assertiveness at home and abroad has become his trademark and his self-confident and earthily personal style has made his ultimate goal to salvage the perennial rule of the Communist Party of China (CPC) very convincing for many.

In a recent “educated poll” run by Foreign Affairs flashily entitled “Will China Crumble? ,” some 32 experts and scholars from various sectors and background were asked whether or not they agreed with the assertion that “The current Chinese regime will not survive the next decade without major reform” and quite surprisingly 19 of them disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement, 6 stayed neutral and only 7 agreed or strongly agreed. Despite the relative vagueness and ambiguity of the question—are we talking exclusively about political reform? Does it necessarily mean a breakthrough towards liberal democracy? Is it “reform” versus “revolution?—this is a clear indication that beyond the two major dangers of soul-searching anti-graft purges and declining economic growth—the backbone of the Party’s legitimacy—there is a significant level of confidence regarding the ability of the Party-state under Xi’s helmsmanship to overcome the seemingly inconsistence of having economic reforms without ultimately engaging into far-reaching political reforms. In the enduring contest between the idea of “authoritarian resilience” coined by Andrew Nathan in the early 2000s and the one of inescapable “collapse” because of inherent internal contradictions popularized by Gordon Chang, Pei Minxin or more recently David Shambaugh, resilience appears to have the upper hand. Yet, all these experts do not see China as an alternative model to liberal democracy and none for sure agree with Daniel Bell’s latest claim that “Chinese-style political meritocracy can help to remedy the key flaws of electoral democracy”.

The resolve of Xi’s action has thus translated into a perceived renewed capacity of the Chinese state to deliver on its promise of modernity, but Xi the “Born Red” leader is still pretty much a puzzle, despite his impeccable princeling credentials and being the most “advertised” Chinese ruler since Mao Zedong—several books of his selected works have already been published, including a “Study China” (xuexi zhongguo) smartphone App providing his complete writings, favorite poems and travel agenda, and “Xi Dada”, “Big Uncle Xi” as he was nicknamed by the state news agency, can be found on stickers, pins, as a statuette and even comics and animated cartoons. Many an observers have highlighted that this could amount to a revamped form of cult of the personality, and yet Xi Jinping is portrayed as being genuinely “accessible” to the people—in one of these cartoons, the presidential Chinese dream becomes the one of winning the World Cup! Despite the many references to the Maoist era and the heavy crackdown on civil society and any form of dissenting view—more so if it is suspected to be under a “Western influence”—most of the reforms in the economic and social realms appear to be guided by pragmatism. If the wish for a Chinese rejuvenation or renaissance, as argued by Willy Wo-Lap Lam in his Chinese Politics in the Era of Xi Jinping, is hard to refute and has been part of the political master narrative since the humiliation of the First Opium War, other ulterior motives are less ascertained.

In a somewhat traditional neo-authoritarianism perspective, the concentration of power in the hands of a single enlightened leader is made necessary to keep stirring the boat in the right direction, and clearly the cape to avoid at all cost is the one that has presided over the demise of the Soviet Communist Party, precisely because of a lack of confidence and resolution—obviously quite an obsessive thought. For Willy Lam, the excessive monopolization of power that forces even Premier Li Keqiang to play second fiddle, the ad hoc creation of leading groups and committees that somehow circumvent the collegial power of the Politburo Standing Committee, the lack of promotion of the so-called 7^th generation of leaders, together with the admiration that Mr Xi holds for Vladimir Putin and his 15 years of uninterrupted exercise of power in Russia are an indication that the design might go beyond the salvation of the CPC and suggest a wish for Mr Xi to stay in power at least up to 2027. For a liberal thinker like Wu Jiaxiang, this tight grip over power and the fending off of rival factions and vested interests within the party correspond to a consolidating stage that necessarily precedes further reforms. The puzzle remains though: depending on the tightness of the grip, one always risks choking off the potential for innovation and reform.

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.

Olho mágico: Dar sentido aos valores essenciais / Peephole: Giving meaning to core values

Ocasionalmente, a questão dos valores de uma dada sociedade inspira uma renovada reflexão e análise. Num ambiente democrático consolidado, é necessária habitualmente uma mudança profunda que toque a própria natureza da comunidade – por exemplo, a construção europeia ou questões relacionadas com a imigração – ou um evento traumático – o 11 de Setembro nos Estados Unidos ou o ataque contra o Charlie Hebdo em França – para que os valores, normalmente tidos por adquiridos, sejam novamente alvo de escrutínio: qual o verdadeiro significado desses valores? Mantêm-se válidos? Se mudaram, em que aspectos foram revistos? São essas mudanças desejáveis? Se não, o que é necessário para reafirmar os valores centrais da vida social?

Há debates de todos os géneros que fazem as manchetes e, ao fim de algum tempo, sucede uma espécie de síntese e a comunidade – Estado incluído – pode prosseguir com o seu sentido de pertença e integração revigorado. Se as autoridades públicas com frequência lideram na organização destas discussões, fazem-no ainda assim em “reacção” a uma transformação profunda ou a estímulo pungente. O que sucede então com o Governo chinês e o seu esforço incansável para promover “os valores socialistas essenciais”? Estes valores estão em risco ou há uma revolução silenciosa a acontecer? O que pretend dizer Lin Jianhua, o novo presidente da Universidade de Pequim, quando declara no seu discurso de tomada de posse, a 15 de Fevereiro, que os ideais individuais de professores e alunos devem ser consistentes com os “valores socialistas essenciais”, ao mesmo tempo que afirma que a universidade não deve vez alguma “abandonar a dignidade e a independência académica” e que esta deve zelar por “um ambiente académico que inspire ideias novas e criativas”?

A ideia de “valores socialistas essenciais” não é nova remonta a Outubro de 2006, quando o 16º Congresso do Partido Comunista Chinês propôs especificamente a construção de um sistema de valores socialista numa das suas reuniões plenárias. Hu Jintao, então Presidente e secretário-geral do partido, reiterou o mesmo propósito urgente poucos meses mais tarde, mas o Congresso que se seguiu acabaria por não conseguir produzir qualquer corpo coerente de princípios. Assim, a tarefa foi deixada ao Congresso seguinte, o 18º e que acolheu Xi Jinping como novo líder da China. Sem dúvida, existia a expectativa de que esses “valores essenciais” fossem novamente proclamados. Como esclarecidamente assinala Deng Yuwen, um académico independente chinês e antigo editor da “Study Times”, publicação académica da Escola do Partido Central, “havia uma necessidade de integração e reconhecimento social do regime” e o partido claramente sentiu “o risco na falta de um sistema principal de valores na sociedade”. De forma simples, após 30 anos de desenvolvimento económico, o socialismo de características chinesas exigiu dos seus promotores que premissem o botão de reconfigurações para reavivarem ideias básicas extraviadas na incessante e gloriosa ânsia de enriquecer, como Deng Xiaoping um dia apregoou alegremente. Para Deng Yuwen, a ausência de um sistema de valores convincente na China tem efectiva grande responsabilidade pela “actual prevalência da corrupção, pela decadência mental, pela ausência de fé, pela popularidade de todos os tipos de pornografia e por uma série de outros vergonhosos fenómenos”.

Enunciados de forma simples no final de 2013, e reproduzidos em todos os canais de propaganda do partido, estes “valores em 12 palavras” (a versão original chinesa é “em 24 caracteres”) são: prosperidade, democracia, civilidade e harmonia, a nível nacional; liberdade, igualdade, justiça e primado da lei, ao nível da sociedade; e patriotismo, dedicação, integridade e amizade, ao nível dos cidadãos. De forma bastante curiosa no que diz respeito a “valores socialistas essenciais”, as palavras “socialista” e “socialismo” já nem sequer aparecem. E assim, obviamente, é por completo abandonada a dimensão “internacional” do socialismo, enquanto o patriotismo deve ser cultivado pelos indivíduos. Estranhamente, a dedicação é elogiada mas não a cooperação, sendo que é suposto estes valores corrigirem os excessos do capitalismo. Claro que os especialistas da filosofia chinesa podem argumentar que alguns desses valores derivam mais obviamente da tradição confucionista do que do dogma socialista: a “harmonia” pode referir a harmonia na família, na nação, entre nações e com a natureza, reintroduzindo-se por esta via a dimensão “internacional”; e, da mesma forma, a “honestidade” pode corresponder à cooperação, como na honestidade e confiança que colocamos nas nossas relações com os outros.

Do meu ponto de vista, estes valores não são genuinamente “socialistas” e a maioria deles encaixar-se-ia perfeitamente num curso de educação cívica de qualquer democracia burguesa ocidental consolidada. Porém, apenas alguns meses antes de proclamar estes valores como essenciais, o partido emitiu também o relatório sobre “sete coisas das quais não se deve falar”, limpando a esfera pública de qualquer referência a valores universais, liberdade de expressão, sociedade civil, direitos civis, erros históricos do Partido Comunista Chinês, compadrio capitalista e independência judicial. Se as influências ocidentais são vistas como perigosas, por quê fazer delas “essências socialistas”? Recordando o presidente da Universidade de Pequim, é preciso lembramo-nos que Lin Jianhua foi durante dois anos e meio presidente da Universidade de Chongqing (2010-2013), numa altura em que, como afirma um colega sinólogo, essa instituição em particular era “um íman para académicos ‘de esquerda’”, aqueles que o antigo membro do politburo caído em desgraça Bo Xilai costumava atrair. Se os valores promovidos por Xi Jinping são “essenciais”, mantêm-se certamente esbatidos, se não contraditórios, tanto na intenção como no significado. E, se não reduzidos a três ou quatro valores cardeais, pelo menos deviam ser alvo de alguma priorização ou hierarquia.

Published in Match Point, 18 February 2015

And the original in English:

Every now and then, the question of values in a given society inflames renewed soul-searching probing. In a well-established democratic environment, it usually takes a far-reaching change touching upon the very nature of a community — i.e. the European construction or issues pertaining to immigration— or a traumatic event — September 11 in the United Sates or the attack against Charlie Hebdo in France — for values, usually considered as something given, to be scrutinized once more: what is the true meaning of these values? Are they still valid? If they have changed, in what respects have they been amended? Are these changes desirable? If not, what does it take to reassert the central values of a polity?

Debates of all sorts soon grab the headlines and after a while, some kind of synthesis emerges and the community — state included — can go on with a reinvigorated sense of bonding and belonging. If public authorities often take the lead in organizing the discussions, they nevertheless do so in “reaction” to a profound transformation and/or harrowing stimulus. What is happening then to the Chinese government and its relentless focus on the promotion of “core socialist values”? Are values under a sudden threat or is there a silent revolution at work? What does Lin Jianhua, the new president of Peking University mean when he declares during his inauguration speech on February 15th that the individual ideals of teachers and students should be consistent with the “core socialist values", while stating at the same time that a university should never “abandon academic independence and dignity’’ and safeguard “an academic environment [that] can inspire creative and innovative ideas”?

The idea of “core socialist values” is not new and dates back to October 2006, when the Sixteenth Party Congress specifically suggested building a socialist core value system during one of its plenary meeting. Hu Jintao, the then President and General secretary of the Communist Party of China, reiterated that urge a few months later, but then the following Congress was not able to produce any coherent body of tenets. So the task was left for the next Congress, the 18th one that ushered in Xi Jinping as the new ruler of China. No doubt, the longing for these “core values” to be proclaimed again did exist. As insightfully remarked by Deng Yuwen, an independent Chinese scholar and former editor of Study Times, a Central Party School's journal: “there was a need for social integration and recognition of the regime” and the Party clearly saw “the harm in the lack of mainstream values in society.” Simply put, after thirty years of economic development, Socialism with Chinese characteristics required its promoters to hit the reset button, to revive basic ideas that had gone ashtray with the almost non-stop glorious drive to get richer, as Deng Xiaoping had once trumpeted cheerfully. For Deng Yuwen, the lack of a convincing value system in China does indeed bear a huge responsibility in “the current spread of corruption, mental decadence, absence of faith, the popularity of all kinds of pornography and a series of other ugly phenomena.”

Simply enunciated at the end of 2013, and as reproduced in all the propaganda channels of the Party, these “values in 12 words” (the Chinese original says “in 24 characters”) are: prosperity, democracy, civility, and harmony at the national level; freedom, equality, justice and the rule of law at the level of the society; and patriotism, dedication, integrity, and friendship at the citizen’s level. Interestingly enough for “socialist core values”, the word “socialist” or “socialism” does not even appear anymore. And then, obviously, the “international” dimension of socialism has been abandoned altogether, whereas patriotism has to be cultivated by individuals. Strangely, dedication is praised but not cooperation, whereas these values are supposed to correct the excesses of capitalism. But then Chinese philosophy specialists can argue that some of these values are more obviously derived from the Confucian tradition, rather than any socialist dogma: “harmony” could refer to the harmony within the family, the nation, between nations, and with nature, and thus an “international” dimension would be reintroduced; and “honesty” could likewise equate with cooperation, as in the honesty and trust we place in our dealings with others.


From my own perspective, these values are simply not genuinely “socialist” and most of them would perfectly fit in a civic education course given in a long-established Western bourgeois democracy. However, just a few months before making these values core ones, the Party also issued the “seven speak-nots” report, cleansing the public sphere from any reference to universal values, freedom of speech, civil society, civil rights, the historical errors of the Communist Party of China, crony capitalism and judicial independence. If Western influences are seen as dangerous, why make some of them “core socialist” ones? Going back to the new president of Peking University, one has to remember that Lin Jianhua spent two years and a half as the president of Chongqing University (2010-2013), at a time, as one fellow sinologist puts it, when that particular establishment “was a magnet for ‘red’ academics”, the ones disgraced politburo member Bo Xilai used to attract. If the values promoted by Xi are “core”, for sure they still remain pretty blurred if not contradictory in both intent and meaning, and if not trim down to a cardinal three or four, at least they should be given some sense of priority and hierarchy.