China's Leadership 2012
Will Hutton looks ahead to next week's CCP congress, at which a likely successor to Hu Jintao may be named. Note the date of the potential accession - 2012.
Hutton is sceptical as ever about the legitimacy of the process, remarking that alongside the environment and corruption (those tasked with stemming graft are themselves corrupt), China's massive foreign currency deficit and over reliance on exports will surely have economic repercussions too. The key remark is this:
The story of this week's party congress is how far Hu will be able to manoeuvre between the conservatives, who want to call a halt to even the smallest of reforms for fear it will lead to loss of political control, and the Dengist reformers, who know the Chinese economic and political establishment has got to subject itself to more scrutiny and the rule of law or the game is up.
But one wonders how realistic this analysis is. Surely the majority of current CCP members are thinking in terms of immediate personal gain rather than imaginatively considering the medium-term future of China. The comments are also well worth reading, with the comparisons with the USSR under Gorbachev roundly dismissed.
Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | Will China's next leader be its Gorbachev?
...as every member of this week's congress knows, their choice has an additional and particular resonance.
They are choosing the fifth generation of Communist party leaders after the 1949 revolution. These are no longer leaders legitimised by revolution or who have the same sense of communist mission. They are managers and administrators who want to make the system work. In the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev's readiness to question communism was intertwined with his membership of the Soviet Union's fifth generation of leaders. He did not champion perestroika and glasnost alone; much of the nomenklatura had decided that the Soviet economic and social model was dysfunctional, corrupt and endemically inefficient and had to change.
Will one of Hu Jintao's two 'Lis', as the frontrunners to succeed him, Li Keqiang and Li Yuanchao, are popularly known, feel the same way as they walk out in front of the cameras in the Great Hall of the People on Friday? Will one prove to be China's Gorbachev?
