In a matter of weeks, China's new party leadership will formally take over the reins of power and attempt to keep the world's most populous country on a course of continued economic growth, stability and accumulation of prestige in international affairs. It should be a matter of global concern then that we know so little about the nine men who've been assigned this monumental task. Who are these men? What are their backgrounds? What are their attitudes toward national security? Are they near-psychopathic demagogues of the Mao type? Or rather pragmatists in the style of Deng Xiaoping?
Andrew Nathan and Bruce Gilley's new book China's New Rulers: The Secret Files is perhaps the only widely available resource to fill the knowledge gap about China's incoming leadership. But casual readers should be cautioned that this is a reference book on contemporary Chinese politics that is at points impossibly dense and is throughout quite boring. What doesn't help this book is that its subjects -- China's nine top-dog technocrats -- can't hold a candle to Mao, Deng or even Jiang Zemin in terms of struggling tooth and nail to reach the pinnacle of power. They were all groomed over the past two decades, having been placed on the high-speed track to success within the Communist Party by powerful, elder patrons in need of loyal and capable underlings. That is how, without having accomplished anything of note except for remaining uncontroversial, Hu Jintao (
China's New Rulers is a translation complemented by the two co-authors' extensive additions and comments of a Chinese book titled "Disidai" (
But reading this book now, one should keep in mind that it was written before the 16th Party Congress in November when the final decisions on the new regime were finalized and the book's confident predictions -- written in a tone of predestination -- were in some cases incorrect. The book, for example, assumes there would be seven members on the Standing Committee, which is the highest communist party body, whereas the actual number revealed at the party congress was nine. There is also a fair amount of blatant cheerleading for Li Ruihuan (
These glaring blunders are understandable, even forgivable, considering the secretive nature of transfers of power in China, but they should nonetheless serve to caution against predicting the future in a country with a closed political system such as China's.
Its mistakes aside, China's New Rulers contains a wealth of interesting material that provides a blueprint, though somewhat vague, of China's political future.
Along with lengthy bios of the leaders, there are sections detailing their personal statements on political reform, democracy, free press, and domestic as well as international affairs. These comments are especially revealing and, unfortunately, they show that Taiwan shouldn't pin its hopes on the new leadership to extend any olive branches its way.
For all their expertise in managing the country's affairs, when it comes to relations with Taiwan and the US, the Fourth Generation is likely to be as difficult as the last. Consider Zeng Qinghong's (
The Fourth Generation holds similarly warped views of the Sino-US relationship, which they discuss almost in the manner of conspiracy theorists convinced of a devious Pentagon plot to contain and destroy China.
Students of Chinese politics will find this book of enormous value for the light it sheds on the internal struggles during the Jiang years, the divergent views exposed within the Communist Party on the future of China and the comprehensive run-down on what was the most harmonious and meritocratic transfer of power in the country's history.
By bringing the new rulers' private comments and confidential materials out into the open, China's New Rulers may actually do the leadership a favor by briefing the world about whom they will be dealing with for at least the next five years and probably the next 10 years. But for the book to have that use, people will have to finish reading it first and for nine out of 10 readers that's an unlikely possibility.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist