In the lounge of a dormitory at Nanjing University in eastern China, a small cluster of students and faculty gathered yesterday morning to catch a glimpse of their newly minted leaders -- on CNN.
Chinese TV did broadcast live the moment when Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), newly selected Secretary-General of the Chinese Communist Party, led the eight other members of the Politburo Standing Committee onto a brightly festooned stage to greet the domestic and particularly the international press. But once the list of the nine men's names was finished so was the news broadcast and the station went back to an acrobatics show.
In a one-party system, there's no need to provide anything more than an announcement of the change of power. The news amounts to: "Here are your new leaders. Thanks for watching," said Cai Jiahe, a professor of international relations at the university. The CNN coverage, on the other hand, included the presentation of the Standing Committee line-up and about a half hour of additional reports and analysis beamed in from Hong Kong and Beijing.
"There won't be any analysis of these events on Chinese TV. We leave that for the Western media," one student said, only half joking.
The remarkably short announcement on Chinese TV, not more than 10 minutes long, contrasted not only with CNN's coverage, but was also a dud of an ending to the deafening buildup in the official media before the congress. Over the past several months the Chinese government has unleashed a relentless nation-wide propaganda campaign through its state-controlled media to heap praise on Jiang Zemin's (江澤民) "breakthrough" theory of the "three represents" and hailing the arrival of the 16th party congress as a momentous and glorious event for China.
Apparently, not many people were listening. Any mention of the "three represents" in private conversation draws only laughter among young Chinese, who are far more likely to be able to recite at least three jokes about the three represents than to be able to actually name them.
In the apolitical atmosphere of current-day China, the party congress simply does not have the power to excite.
"There's no point in watching it on TV or reading about it. We know who's going to be in power. It's all the same except with different faces," said a 25-year-old storekeeper. "Anyway, I trust that this new group will follow up on Jiang Zemin's policies," he added.
Such attitudes are common in the prosperous coastal regions and actually dovetail with the government's wish that the population would concentrate its efforts on economic development, as opposed to political reform. But they also reflect a widespread apathy toward politics endemic to China's one-party system where broad participation in politics is ruled out and where transfers of power are secretive affairs determined through behind-the-scenes deal-making. Most people in discussions among students and regular citizens here in Nanjing, though, express support for the new list of leaders if not complete satisfaction. None expressed outright opposition. Yet there are differing opinions and varying shades of discontent.
"It's good that we have some younger people in there now. Jiang and his cohorts are too old and have been around too long," said one student, expressing a widely held feeling that Jiang should relinquish more power than he appears willing to give up.
That even the timid suggestion that Jiang should loosen his grip on power cannot make it into China's media coverage of today's events shows the massive disconnect between the party and the people. There is still no space within China's media for an open discussion of the country's political future despite the fact that the three represents, as banal as the slogan sounds, are significant in that they shift the CCP's ideological stance to an unabashed embrace of the capitalist class. This slogan is the most open announcement that China is tossing out its tired pretence of being a socialist country.
"In the short term, the changes in the makeup of the standing committee will not greatly affect policy. But as the members solidify their power base, there may be large changes that most people cannot predict at this stage because of the nebulous nature of Chinese politics and because people don't really know the people in control," Cai said.
There will likely be deeper coverage of the power change in Chinese media in the upcoming weeks and some government-leaning analysis, but the government's 10-minute announcement of the new leadership demonstrates the negligible importance the CCP places in informing the public and fostering debate. This raises the specter that the government is mistaking apathy in the wealthy east for support and is flatly ignoring the opinions of people in the down-at-its-heels inland areas. That would hardly be a solid foundation for embarking on a new era of reform.
Max Woodworth is a freelance writer based in Nanjing, China.
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