Much of the world is watching Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) with concern. Not only has he been reconcentrating power in the hands of the Chinese government; many believe that his radical anti-corruption campaign is a fig leaf for a political purge. They worry that Xi is building a cult of personality, much like the one that surrounded Mao Zedong (毛澤東) and fueled the Cultural Revolution.
The truth is far less sinister. While it is true that Xi is, to some extent, amassing power, his motivation is the need to strengthen China — both its government and its economy. To succeed, he must bring a bureaucracy that has spun somewhat out of control back in line.
Over the past three decades, power in China has been decentralized considerably, with provincial and municipal governments receiving, in an incremental fashion, substantial autonomy to experiment and test reforms aimed at attracting foreign investment and spurring GDP growth. Moreover, they have been granted direct control over resources — such as land, finance, energy and raw materials — and local infrastructure development. As a result, subnational governments accounted for an average of 71 percent of total public expenditure from 2000 to 2014 — a far larger share than in the world’s largest federal countries. For example, US states’ share of public spending is 46 percent.
The goal was to spur overall economic growth by encouraging competition among regions. Local party bosses knew that their career paths depended on their municipalities’ economic performance. By working hard to spur growth, they have fueled China’s rise to become the world’s second-largest economy — and by some measures, the largest — and secured the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) legitimacy in the post-Mao era.
Decentralization has had its downsides. It has led to substantial waste, exemplified in local governments’ massive debts, and it has spurred large-scale corruption, with local officials striking special deals with businesses to provide tax breaks, cheap credit or land at below market prices.
In a country with stringent regulations and underdeveloped financial markets, private entrepreneurs face high barriers to starting and operating businesses. If illicit deals are what it takes to gain access to the resources and markets they needed, private firms have been more than willing to strike them, offering cash or other payments to officials who bent or broke rules on their behalf.
Such arrangements facilitated the entry of hundreds of thousands of growth-enhancing private firms into the market in the late 1990s. In an era when economic growth was the top priority, the corruption that fueled it was tacitly accepted, and even blithely condoned.
However, corruption has spun out of control, and now threatens both China’s stability and the CCP’s legitimacy. Over three decades of lax governance, some local authorities have formed political cliques that work together to protect their illicit gains and economic interests. Embezzlement and misappropriation of astronomical sums of public funds would have been impossible without accomplices to provide protection and help one another ascend the political ladder.
The stealth political networks became virtually impenetrable, with many officials, by default, becoming the central government’s rivals, fiercely defending their economic interests by safeguarding their official posts and perquisites. Unless it reined in the municipal satraps, the central government could essentially kiss its reform plans goodbye.
So Xi stopped turning a blind eye to corruption. He put some local government powers back into the hands of the central authorities and he launched his far-reaching anti-corruption campaign.
Over the past two years, officials from all China’s provinces — ranging from low-ranking department chiefs in ministries to senior provincial leaders — have been incarcerated. Geographical considerations have sometimes been taken into account, with the arrest of an official from a peripheral province followed by the arrest of one from a central municipality.
Rounding up a large number of senior officials and military officers who are perceived to be political rivals might look like a purge, but the fact is that all those who have been prosecuted and sentenced to prison terms were found guilty based on hard evidence. Present-day China, even with its imperfect judiciary, can no longer imprison officials purely on political grounds, as was the case under Mao.
Xi’s efforts to rein in China’s bureaucracy continues unabated. In the short term, economic activity could suffer, as local authorities delay decisions to avoid attracting too much attention to themselves. Once the system is cleaned up, China will be in a much stronger position to achieve sustainable and stable economic growth.
Those who fear “Cultural Revolution 2.0” need to understand that China is not the country it was 50 years ago. The soil for authoritarianism and a cult of personality has been plowed under by three decades of increasing openness and economic growth. No one understands this better than Xi.
Keyu Jin, a professor of economics at the London School of Economics, is a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader and a member of the Richemont Group Advisory Board.
Copyright:Project Syndicate
In the event of a war with China, Taiwan has some surprisingly tough defenses that could make it as difficult to tackle as a porcupine: A shoreline dotted with swamps, rocks and concrete barriers; conscription for all adult men; highways and airports that are built to double as hardened combat facilities. This porcupine has a soft underbelly, though, and the war in Iran is exposing it: energy. About 39,000 ships dock at Taiwan’s ports each year, more than the 30,000 that transit the Strait of Hormuz. About one-fifth of their inbound tonnage is coal, oil, refined fuels and liquefied natural gas (LNG),
On Monday, the day before Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) departed on her visit to China, the party released a promotional video titled “Only with peace can we ‘lie flat’” to highlight its desire to have peace across the Taiwan Strait. However, its use of the expression “lie flat” (tang ping, 躺平) drew sarcastic comments, with critics saying it sounded as if the party was “bowing down” to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Amid the controversy over the opposition parties blocking proposed defense budgets, Cheng departed for China after receiving an invitation from the CCP, with a meeting with
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) is leading a delegation to China through Sunday. She is expected to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing tomorrow. That date coincides with the anniversary of the signing of the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), which marked a cornerstone of Taiwan-US relations. Staging their meeting on this date makes it clear that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) intends to challenge the US and demonstrate its “authority” over Taiwan. Since the US severed official diplomatic relations with Taiwan in 1979, it has relied on the TRA as a legal basis for all
To counter the CCP’s escalating threats, Taiwan must build a national consensus and demonstrate the capability and the will to fight. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) often leans on a seductive mantra to soften its threats, such as “Chinese do not kill Chinese.” The slogan is designed to frame territorial conquest (annexation) as a domestic family matter. A look at the historical ledger reveals a different truth. For the CCP, being labeled “family” has never been a guarantee of safety; it has been the primary prerequisite for state-sanctioned slaughter. From the forced starvation of 150,000 civilians at the Siege of Changchun
RSS