To judge by the reports in China's state-run news media, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took a bold step toward democracy at the just completed 17th National Congress, which approved a new leadership team to run the country.
Chinese President Hu Jintao (
In reality, of course, China's one-party system still owes more to Lenin than to Jefferson. It convenes congresses every five years to ratify leadership decisions on policy and personnel. The message is not change, but continuity.
After months of secretive negotiations, the nine members of the new Politburo Standing Committee, the country's top ruling body, were presented to the public for the first time on Monday morning. Their appointment was fait accompli, and the stiff, scripted ceremony to introduce them, which lasted barely 10 minutes, resembled a Communist coronation.
The CCP has run China for 58 years. Despite the dynamic, even reckless expansion that has become the norm for the nation's frothy economy, the party has become more entrenched, more predictable and more enamored of its rituals.
Decisions are made collectively by a small, often invisible elite. They tussle over the spoils of one-party rule. But they agree on the big issues facing the country. They want fast growth, a nonaligned foreign policy and political stability. If they are about to try something new, their secret is safe.
"China has a tyranny of the middle," said Frederick Teiwes, an expert on Chinese politics at the University of Sydney in Australia. "From the perspective of the leadership, things are going pretty well. They all want stability."
In his first five years as China's No. 1 leader, Hu argued repeatedly that the growth-above-all philosophy that began under Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) in the 1980s had side effects. Too many workers and peasants had failed to benefit from the long-lasting economic boom. The party should redistribute more to the least well off by providing better state-financed pensions, health care and education.
Hu has tried to rein in provincial authorities, who pay lip service to central government directives while managing local affairs their own way. He pushed to recentralize some decision-making, reduce wasteful state investment and slow the rampant expansion of polluting industries.
Some progress has been made. Agricultural taxes were eliminated. Tough directives to fight pollution and improve energy efficiency have been issued, if not fully put into use. His theory of governance, labeled "scientific view of development," was enshrined in the party's constitution on Sunday.
Yet most of those changes are incremental, enacted only after the full leadership reached a consensus. Far from distancing himself from his predecessors, Hu has repeatedly pledged to follow the dictums of Deng and former Chinese president Jiang Zemin (
And little in the proceedings of the congress foreshadowed a faster pace of change or a sharper break with tradition.
The new Politburo Standing Committee, like the old, consists of nine men. Even most of the new members are seen as beholden to Jiang, who at 81 has been fully retired for three years, as well as to Hu, now 64. The personnel shifts did not suggest that the president would have any new leverage to ram through an assertive agenda for change, even if he had one.
"Hu knows how he wants to nudge to system forward," said Ken Lieberthal of the University of Michigan. "But it is not clear that he intends to get tough. He is content to identify the broad elements and leave the implementation to others."
Hu will preside over the Standing Committee for a second, and presumably a final, five-year term. But he still needs to govern by building a consensus among his peers.
The three officials who retired from the Standing Committee at this congress, including Vice President Zeng Qinghong (曾慶紅), had all reached the party's preferred retirement age of 68. Party officials said the removal of Zeng, who arguably had the most sway after Hu himself, had complex causes and required intricate negotiations. But his departure does not appear to amount to a decisive breakthrough that will give Hu unfettered new powers, they say.
Wu Bangguo, a low-profile figure who heads the party-controlled legislature, kept his post. So did Prime Minister Wen Jiabao (溫家寶); Jia Qinglin (賈慶林), who oversees the party's outreach to other interest groups; and Li Changchun (李長春), the propaganda czar.
All of those men work collegially with Hu, but none of them would have received their initial promotions to the Standing Committee without the support of Jiang. Jia and Li may well have been pushed into retirement if Jiang had lost his influence, party officials said.
Two younger men elevated to the Standing Committee -- Xi Jinping (
But Hu's first choice as his successor, Li, now ranks one notch below Xi, the candidate viewed as more palatable to Jiang and Zeng. Party officials say that barring an upset, Xi likely will become China's No. 1 leader in 2012, while Li will replace Wen as prime minister.
The two other officials promoted to the new Standing Committee -- He Guoqiang (
Hu put his stamp more clearly on the ranks of the regular Politburo, the Central Committee and leadership positions in the provinces. That suggests his authority could increase over time and even, like Jiang's, follow him into retirement.
But for those who hoped for a faster pace of internal change or a taste of genuine democracy, it is unlikely that Hu is now either inclined -- or perhaps able -- to deliver.
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