Someone asked me a year ago, when it was revealed that Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping (習近平), one of the elitist core of “princelings” — children of senior Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials — was going to be the next Chinese leader, what I thought of the situation.
I said to him then that dark days were soon to be upon us. I also qualified this by saying that the dark days would eventually end. The recent arrest of Chinese artist-activist Ai Weiwei (艾未未), I believe, serves as an excellent footnote to this.
When I said that dark days were upon us, I was thinking of the nature of the princelings as a political force.
Many people within that group, individuals such as Xi and his colleague former Chinese minister of commerce Bo Xilai (薄熙來), grew up in powerful families.
Even now, they exude an air of arrogance, an assumption of their own superiority, and take their own right to rule as given.
The fall from grace that their families went through during the Cultural Revolution only served to toughen them up, teaching them the pitfalls of having scruples.
If one is looking for a characterization of the type of person to which I refer, one needs look no further than I am a Hoodlum, Whom Should I Fear?, a novel written by Chinese author Wang Shuo (王朔). As soon as these people get into power, we will see the stuff of which they are made.
They will brook no opposing views, nor will they care about what the international community has to say about the manner in which they choose to suppress dissent.
Ai has a large following on Twitter. He is an artist with an international profile.
There was no way his arrest was going to go under the radar in China or abroad and the authorities in Beijing would certainly have known this. They arrested him nonetheless.
This kind of behavior is what one expects from the princelings.
Amid a perceived threat that the “Jasmine Revolutions” could spread to China, authorities ordered wave upon wave of crackdowns, and far from causing them to soften their tactics, objections from abroad have had little effect except to encourage authorities to tighten the screws further.
This does not bode well for anyone who would stand up against the system. I foresee dark times ahead when Xi becomes China’s leader.
However, it is often said that all things, having reached an extreme, turn back and proceed once more to the center. The strong-arm tactics the princeling elite have employed since gaining complete power has exposed them on three sides.
First, Chinese society has never really been all that well-disposed to them, and the attempt to promote themselves to the third echelon in the central leadership in the mid-1980s was met with fierce opposition.
If the powers that be continue with their current repressive policies, there will be a popular revolt, as China’s transformation is certain to lead to a major crisis.
Second, the arrogance of the princelings will likely irk another political force within the CCP — the more populist tuanpai group, officials who worked their way up through the party ranks from relatively humble beginnings.
Even though they -eventually found themselves sidelined through the machinations of Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), they are still a force to be reckoned with and, if they join with public forces, could mount a serious challenge to the princelings.
Third, the princelings as a group are not completely cohesive and members advocating restraint may make themselves heard if policies turn out to be unpopular.
These people were brought up within an atmosphere of court intrigue, so they are well versed in the politics of in-fighting.
The existence of these three possibilities leads me to believe that if they get into power, the princelings will take us, to the best of their ability, into a dark era of highly repressive rule, although I am quite sure the situation will not last very long.
This repression is sure to exacerbate the many internal contradictions that already exist within the country and will hasten the advent of social unrest.
Within this lies the seeds of their downfall. This is why I qualified my initial prediction with the assertion that the dark days are sure to end.
There is no way that Ai’s arrest was the result of miscalculated enthusiasm on the part of local police: It could only have been ordered at the highest level. I see it as heralding the start of a period of political suppression, the first inklings of the dark days ahead.
Wang Dan is a visiting professor at National Cheng Kung University.
TRANSLATED BY PAUL COOPER
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