Winds of change begin to blow

The jockeying for leadership and position in the next generation of the Chinese Communist Party leadership is coming out into the open, says F. J. KHERGAMVALA.

TWO RECENT developments point to the fact that the jockeying for leadership and position in the next generation of the Chinese Communist Party leadership has now come out into the open. The five-yearly Party Congress takes place in September 2002.

First, the Tiananmen Papers. The purpose, not timing, of the publication only in English, may be geared to provide the prologue to the more detailed Chinese version later. Next, the handling of the Falun Gong sect by the leadership. All these developments ought to be seen in the backdrop of the ongoing reformers versus conservatives battle in the Chinese leadership, and its top-down and bottom-up impact in academia, both faculty and students, labour, business, military etc.

The Party Congress next year will see this battle come to a head with the generational transition. The President, Mr. Jiang Zemin, who is also head of the party's Central Military Commission and party secretary, will exit as the day-to-day executive head, but indications are that he wants to retain control over the military and perhaps be designated as Chairman, in the manner of Mao Zedong. The man spoken of as heir-apparent is Mr. Hu Jintao, a former Party Secretary in Tibet, now in the Politburo Standing Committee. This is just the very top rung, which includes Mr. Jiang, Mr. Li Peng, head of the National Peoples Congress, and the Premier, Mr. Zhu Rongji, whose political trademark is that of an economic reformer. The runup to the 2002 Congress is a time for struggle right through the hierarchy.

Much of the informed comment on the Tiananmen Papers appears not in American papers because of a jaundice of bias, or in east Asia which has the jaundice of fear, but among European commentators. Two excellent pieces obliquely link the Tiananmen Papers to the jockeying for the future leadership. The publication of the Chinese editions will provide additional linkage.

The motivational critique in the book review on the `Papers' by Mr. Philip J. Cunningham, who covered the 1989 demonstrations for the BBC, needs to be analysed separately. But, certain comments about how the book is intended to impact on future changes are pertinent to his inference about the unnamed sources for the detail in the book. ``How can we understand the extraordinary access to detailed fly-on-the-wall conversations that took place in secure quarters a decade ago,'' asks Mr. Cunningham about the sourcing of some of the content. ``No audio-tapes, original document or even Xeroxed documents (photo-copies) were offered as corroborating evidence, yet the Papers are being hyped.''

The simplest explanation offered is, in this case, the messenger is more important than the message. ``The Tiananmen Papers hail from a name brand source.'' Mr. Cunningham says the credibility comes from the identity of the `leaker' (of non-documented material about conversations at the top level). He identifies one very likely source as Madame Deng Rong, daughter of the late Deng Xiaoping. Ms. Deng Rong is the lady who can be seen in almost every single uncropped picture of the post-85 years Deng as his caretaker, adviser, scheduler and finally the writer of the unauthorised biography, ``Deng Xiaoping: My Father'', where she first did business with the New York publishing world.

Exactly like the biography, the undocumented parts of the Papers uses paraphrased language minus quotes. The reason why she used no official sources nor even interviews with her own father in ``My Father'' was to bypass strict party regulations. This logic on sourcing leaks to Ms. Deng Rong is very powerful at least because of three reasons.

The Tiananmen Papers clearly show that some of the most serious discussions, especially the ones held to bypass the split decision of the five-man standing committee (on whether to use force to quell the riots) were among the elders, led by Deng Xiaoping. Most, if not all, such meetings were held at the Deng home. The book strongly suggests that initially Deng Xiaoping was not the most eager to use force but succumbed to reports manipulated by Mr. Li Peng who argued that the demonstrations were pointedly against him (Deng Xiaoping) and meant to bring him down. Ergo, Deng was reluctant but Mr. Li is the bad guy. Third, as is well known, and Ms. Deng Rong knows this, Deng Xiaoping is the strong pro- reformer, father of the Chinese economic openness, whereas Mr. Li Peng bears the label of a conservative. Thus, the motivational linkage of the Papers in the succession context is obvious. Ms. Isabel Hilton, reviewing the Papers for the Financial Times (FT), invites the readers' attention more directly to the book's motive. It is by now well known that the source for the entire book carries the pseudonym, Zhang Liang. Only the editors of the book, Mr. Andrew Nathan and Mr. Perry Link, and Prof. Orville Schell, all U.S. Sinologists, know the identity of Zhang and attach sufficient conviction to the content.

In his introduction, Zhang says his intention is to reinforce that wing of the Chinese Communist Party that is pro-reform, and which sees the failure of the leadership to revise the assessment of the Tiananmen affair as an obstacle to reform, says Ms. Hilton.

``It is a reasonable motive, and tallies with the equally reasonable judgment that in a one- party state, political struggles are fought out within the party.''

Interestingly, the Beijing Party leadership, in criticising the book, calls it a ``fabrication'', without either launching a real tirade or a lengthy crusade against it. Nor does it clarify if the entire thing is a fake, like the Hitler Diaries, or parts of it. But, that could be because China's leadership does not wish to begin a public debate about an episode on which it says it has said the last word. That the clamp-down was justified.

The Tiananmen demonstrations occasioned the declaration of martial law. This was the second time that year itself, 1989, that China clamped martial law. Not since 1949 had the country had martial law. In 1989, first it was Tibet after the riots in Lhasa, then because of Tiananmen. Yet, there is no mention of Tibet in the Tiananmen Papers. Why?

Ms. Hilton knows what most China-watchers know, that Mr. Hu Jintao, heir-apparent to Mr. Jiang, was the Party boss in Tibet in 1989. She makes the observation that we as the readers know that such an important connection was omitted, therefore what else is there that was left out during the compilation of a motivated publication? Consequently, how do we interpret the whole book? What is certainly clear is the omission of the Tibet aspect is meant to keep Mr. Hu Jintao in the clear.

On Monday, the Peoples's Daily said in a commentary that the Party had pledged itself to ``fight the war to the end'' against the Falun Gong. This clampdown is another setting for the Party leadership jockeying.

The individual battle lines are unclear. What is very clear is that the conservatives are determined to play up the harder line, in an effort to demonstrate that state security and Party supremacy are essential ingredients of social stability, more important that economic reform. Indeed, in a clever pro-Deng Xiaoping argument, that without social stability, bold economic reforms are impossible.

The Falun Gong is the biggest mass menace to the current system, according to the conservative-oriented attitude on this subject. Lest it be said that treatment of the sect is an issue of demarcation between the pro- reform group and the conservatives, that is not so. But, it is true that because of the history of Tiananmen, the `fax' involvement of foreign parties and China's mortal fear of mass demonstrations, the sect presents a very ready target.

Notable is the language employed in so far as the foreign linkage of Falun Gong, whose leader Mr. Li Hongzhi lives in New York, and the purported role of foreigners in Tiananmen. The Legal Daily described the Falun Gong as the ``running dogs of foreign anti- Chinese forces.''

China's primal fear at this stage is the rather determined effort by the Falun Gong to exploit the negative factor in China's very strong bid to win the privilege of hosting the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing. When Sydney was awarded the 2000 Games, Beijing lost out by two votes, attributed to the country's poor human rights and freedom record.

The greater the clampdown on the sect, the harder the Falun Gong applies Newton's Third Law of equal and opposite reaction, thus drawing global attention.

Those who are unable to hit the sect harder or unable to succeed are portrayed by their potential 2002 Party Congress rivals as weak on security. The stage is set for the jockeying, with the Falun Gong and the upcoming Chinese language edition of the Tiananmen Papers providing ground for its intensification.

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