There are many theories as to why Bo Xilai (薄熙來) was removed from his post as Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chongqing committee secretary in southwest China.
The first is that this kind of thing is quite normal in China whenever a new team of top leaders is preparing to take the helm of the CCP. Under such circumstances, the party often goes through factional struggles, while the central leadership consolidates its control by clamping down on provincial leaders that have gotten out of line.
In this respect, the Bo incident can be compared to the way former Beijing mayor and Politburo member Chen Xitong (陳希同) and former Shanghai party secretary Chen Liangyu (陳良宇), also a Politburo member, were dealt with by former president Jiang Zemin (江澤民) and President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) prior to the party’s 15th and 17th national congresses respectively.
However, Bo is famous for two particular acts during his tenure as Chongqing party boss — encouraging the singing of “red” traditional communist songs and tackling organized crime. These have made him a hero for Maoist academics and a lot of ordinary people across China, and the “quotations of Bo Xilai” have spread far and wide. In other words, the Bo incident is not just a matter of sorting out a troublesome city leader, as was the case with Chen Xitong and Chen Liangyu.
The second theory is that the Bo incident is what Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) was referring to when he made remarks about preventing a recurrence of the Cultural Revolution shortly before Bo’s dismissal, or that it is a struggle between the so-called populists and leftists on the one hand and the rich and powerful capitalists who depend on Western-directed globalization on the other.
However, it should be noted that Chongqing under Bo’s leadership was the No. 1 city in China for attracting foreign investment and that the proportion of the city’s total production generated by privately owned businesses soared from 25 percent to 60 percent during the same period. Chongqing Mayor Huang Qifan (黃奇帆) is on record as saying that he was following the model set by former US president Ronald Reagan and former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. In other words, Chongqing’s leaders during Bo’s tenure have clearly not been leftist opponents of neoliberalism.
The third viewpoint is that the Bo incident marks a struggle between the CCP’s Communist Youth League (CYL) faction and the Jiang faction, along with the so-called “princelings” — the sons and daughters of senior leaders. However, it should not be forgotten that Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping (習近平), who is expected to take over as president later this year, is also a “princeling.”
Although it was Jiang’s support that allowed Xi to overtake Li Keqiang (李克強), who was originally Hu and Wen’s preferred choice in the contest for the top party post, recent events indicate that Xi is now aligned with Hu and Wen.
The fourth explanation is that, with two people vying for a place on the Politburo Standing Committee, Bo lost out and CCP Guangdong Provincial Committee Secretary Wang Yang (汪洋) got the job. According to this theory, Wang’s “Guangdong model” has trumped Bo’s “Chongqing model,” ensuring that Wen’s style of democratic reform will be the mainstream from now on.
It is true that Wen strongly supported Wang’s resolution to the unrest in Guangdong’s Wukan (烏坎) village through the direct election of new village officials. However, most of the CCP’s top leaders probably find Wang’s suggestion that reform must start with the ruling party and the people’s government no less worrying than Bo’s enthusiasm for “red” songs and his clampdown on crime and corruption.
Someone recently said that many parts of China are rather inaccessible, so direct elections are not suitable. This expresses what these leaders are -thinking. Just as it was sacking Bo, the National People’s Congress approved amendments to the Criminal Procedure Law (刑事訴訟法) that restrict civil rights even more severely than before.
Yet another view is that the Bo incident is just the start and it is likely to be followed by further and more dramatic power struggles at the top of the CCP.
It is of course true that there are continuous power struggles within the party, but it should also be considered that China’s domestic and foreign environment, as well as its political, military, economic and social circumstances, are all particularly tense at the moment, and it is uncertain whether the nation’s economy will experience a hard or soft landing.
Under such conditions, the country’s leaders are certain to prioritize the maintenance of stability above all else, so if they engage in power struggles, they are likely to do so in only a very circumspect way.
That is where Bo made the mistake that got him sacked, and it was in the interest of stability and continuity that the person dispatched to take his place, Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang (張德江), was not a member of the CYL faction, but, like Bo, belongs to the Jiang faction.
Although theories about factional struggles, be it neo-Maoists versus rich and powerful capitalists, the CYL faction versus the princelings, or whatever, are all full of holes, each one offers quite a convincing partial explanation. To say that these theories are all wrong, but also all right, sounds highly illogical, but that is the way things are in China.
Bo, in particular, is a typical example of how a leader who has a lot of power is likely to have a lot of success, but also big failures. Bo is a princeling — the son of Bo Yibo (薄一波) one of Communist China’s founding fathers. He is reported to have been a red guard at the start of the Cultural Revolution, while his father was a victim of it. Then he, too, became a victim of the upheaval as he was locked up and sent to the very bottom of the social ladder.
Once the Cultural Revolution was over, Bi Xilai was rehabilitated and served as mayor of Dalian (大連) and governor of Liaoning Province. In these positions, as a princeling, Bo Xilai followed a capitalist path and allegedly worked closely with organized crime and Japanese corporations. After the State Council sent him to Chongqing, he popularized “red” songs and cracked down on organized crime with one hand, while pushing through economic reforms with the other.
In other words, a cursory review of Bo Xilai’s history shows him to be both left and right wing, one of the rich and powerful princelings and a Maoist savior. Bo Xilai’s remarkable character was molded by the incomparable tragedy that was the Cultural Revolution. He is an outstandingly determined and talented leader whose only concern in whatever he does is the end, not the means used to achieve it, and who has no ethical bottom line. A lot of people are relieved to see such a man denied entry to China’s central leadership, but the affair is far from over.
China’s bitter history gives powerful and ambitious people the space and strength to engage in power struggles. While reform and opening up have created a rising China, they have also fostered an extremely exploitative and corrupt form of capitalism, under which the downtrodden masses hanker after the sacred values of the revolution.
It is ironic that Bo Xilai, a moral nihilist with strong Hitleresque tendencies, should be seen by Maoists, populists, nationalists, leftist academics and a broad swathe of the public as having the appeal of a messiah.
What we need to realize is that China’s problems cannot be properly understood through a simplistic focus on factions, power struggles and political lines. On the contrary, factions, power struggles and political lines are mere props and shadows under the pressures of enormous structural hardship.
If China is to be reborn, the pangs of labor have probably only just begun.
Lin Cho-shui is a former Democratic Progressive Party legislator.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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