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The end of ideology in China

ILLUSTRATION: MOUNTAIN PEOPLE

China's ruling oligarchy is faced with multiple problems as they prepare for the party's 16th National Congress next month. The most obvious is whether President Jiang Zemin (江澤民) will relinquish his three posts of state president, party general secretary and chairman of military commission. The way the party is gearing to sanctify his "ideology" of "Three Represents" would suggest that, whatever he decides, he would still wield immense power directly or indirectly. The "Three Represents" is a wooly concept essentially designed to abolish ideology. Under this the party supposedly is everybody's favorite uncle, representing "advanced productive forces, advanced culture and the fundamental interests of all the people." In other words, China is now free of all social and economic contradictions.

It is now the end of ideology for China, but with the party's power monopoly intact. The party regards itself as the authentic and representative voice of all the people. Hence there is no longer any need to focus on the workers and peasants, for whom the revolution was made. Indeed, they are now part of the amorphous category "of all the people." They have been abolished as the party's favored people. The party is now open to all, including capitalists. They even qualify now as model "workers." The world has gone topsy-turvy in China, with yesterday's villains becoming today's heroes.

Why is this happening? Basically, the party has lost the plot. It has become a victim of its own propaganda. According to this, China is making rapid economic strides with everyone gaining from it. But this is not true of China's 800 million or more rural population. They did gain initially from the abolition of communal farming in the 80s. But since then the farming sector has been neglected, with much of the new investment and technology going into the industrial/urban economy. Even there, the closure of state enterprises (still in progress) has worsened the employment situation.

For China's peasants, though, the situation is getting worse. A large number of rural youth are seeking jobs in the cities under the most inhospitable conditions. According to one such rural worker, quoted in The Australian newspaper, " I've left twice to try and get work [in the city]; everyone's doing it. But I just got ripped off ... there are always some fees I'm supposed to pay, for food, for finding the job, for sleeping or washing or social security ? ." In other words, these itinerant workers have to negotiate their way through a thicket of multi-layered corruption to even survive. No wonder, a good number are always on the move in search of a living.

The estimates of this floating rural population vary anywhere between 200 million to 300 million people. Statistics in China, official or unofficial, are highly malleable. But, whether at the low or high level figure, the seriousness of the situation is obvious. And for those left behind to do farming, things are very hard. In an article in The Australian, its China correspondent says that despite government claims to the contrary, farmers have been getting poorer. A 71-year-old farmer reportedly said that, after handing over 75kg of his rice to the local government and paying other taxes of all sorts, there was nothing left really to keep going.

Like so many others in China, this farmer can't fathom where all the money has gone. The farmer, Zhu Gengwu, bemoaned, "If any of us ask any questions or refuse to pay, they [local government officials] come around and take the furniture or the food, just help themselves." And he ends with a helpless bravado: "I've been a communist; I fought for the communists. But I've had enough of them. They're just corrupt, the system is corrupt. It makes life hard for everyone, especially us peasants."

Highlighting problems in the agricultural sector, Liu Binyan and Perry Link wrote some time ago in the New York Review of Books: "China supports the world's largest national population on only 7 percent of the world's arable land, but it is losing that arable land at an annual rate of 0.5 percent to erosion, construction of buildings and roads and the encroachment of deserts. China now [in 1998] has two thirds of the arable land it had four decades ago, and 2.3 times as many people." Still, the rape of the land and the exploitation of the peasantry is continuing.

Even the much-touted urban boom, according to He Qinglian (何清漣) -- who now lives in exile -- in her book China's Pitfall, is an exercise in plunder. It has been "a process in which power-holders and their hangers-on plundered public wealth. The primary target of their plunder was state property that had been accumulated from 40 years of the people's sweat, and their primary means of plunder was political power."

In this respect there are remarkable similarities with Russia under former president Boris Yeltsin. In China, though, it is happening under its communist regime -- supposedly the guardian of the interests of workers and peasants.

China is effectively being ruled as a partnership between the party and the country's new robber-baron class. A small clique is becoming very rich by diverting resources for its own private good. For example, it is calculated that since 1992, the outflow of capital to private foreign accounts, maintained by China's rich and powerful, has equalled the inflow.

Similarly, vast sums have been diverted to engage in speculation, especially in real estate -- partly accounting for the banking crisis of "non-performing" loans. The banking sector's bad loans are estimated anywhere between 25 percent and 60 percent. Because the people are kept in the dark about the black hole in their savings, China has so far escaped a run on its banks. Technically, though, its banks are bankrupt.

It is this alliance of the party and the "underworld" that is sought to be sanctified under Jiang's "Three Represents." Anyone of importance has his or her fingers in the till. No wonder, the ruling oligarchy -- with its "princelings" deeply involved -- is keen to legitimize this exercise. But the reality is otherwise and bound to create a catastrophe sooner or later.

Sushil Seth is a freelance writer based in Sydney.
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