Minxin Pei
The Indian Express
December 18, 2012
A month later, China’s new leader courts a new image while avoiding political change.
Those unfamiliar with how one-party regimes work may be forgiven for thinking that self-appointed leaders can do away with the need to market themselves to the public, an exercise otherwise known as branding. The reality, of course, is different. Top leaders in such regimes may not be elected by popular vote, but they are, nevertheless, compelled to gain a modicum of public support in order to govern. In democracies, leaders gain public support before they get elected; in autocracies, rulers try to do so after they are appointed. Xi Jinping, the newly installed general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC), apparently knows this well. Based on his performance in the month since his inauguration, most China watchers would concede that his initial branding exercise appears to have been a success.
Obviously, Xi has a low bar to cross since his predecessors are now uniformly viewed in China as having squandered a decade of opportunities for reform and left behind a legacy of high inequality, uncontrolled corruption, deteriorating economic dynamism, and rising social tensions. Frankly, expectations were not high on the eve of Xi’s formal inauguration. Perhaps sensing such political malaise, Xi may have decided that projecting a new image to differentiate himself from his predecessors right after his rise to the top will be a smart political strategy.
But first he had to take care of the necessary business of consolidating power. It is worth noting that the first substantive political event Xi attended was an expanded meeting of the Central Military Commission, which commands the People’s Liberation Army. As the only CPC leader who gained the two most important positions — of party chief and commander-in-chief — simultaneously (neither Mao Zedong nor Deng Xiaoping managed this feat), Xi quickly established his authority by appointing five new generals, including the commander of China’s nuclear forces.
The branding exercise, in comparison, is far trickier. The most challenging aspect of political branding in Xi’s case is that he will have to perform a delicate balancing act: distancing himself from Hu Jintao, his predecessor, without antagonising him; demonstrating commitment to reform without raising unrealistic and dangerous expectations that he would sanction democratic change.
Although the branding is in its early stage, the rough contours of Xi’s strategy are quite visible. Basically, the branding campaign has three themes: nationalism, populism, and rejuvenation of economic reform.
To strengthen his credentials as a leader that will continue to champion Chinese nationalism, Xi took the new Politburo standing committee, the seven-man group that constitutes China’s top decision-making body, to the national history museum, a symbol of Chinese nationalism. During the visit, Xi called for a “national revival”, which has since become the shortened mission statement of his new administration.
The second theme of the branding campaign is a new form of populism. Within two weeks of Xi’s rise to the top, the CPC issued a ban on flower displays and red carpets at official functions, citing such expenses as lavish and wasteful. Xi himself visited AIDS/ HIV patients and shook their hands, all duly captured on camera. He then did something unheard of in China — instead of blocking traffic and traveling in a cocooned official envoy, he reportedly rode in unmarked official cars on congested Chinese streets when he visited the national history museum and the southern city of Shenzhen.
Rejuvenating Chinese economic reform appears to be the third theme of his campaign. Unlike Hu, who visited an impoverished inland province where the Communist Party established its guerrilla base in the 1940s to underscore his loyalty to the original ideals of communism, Xi chose to visit a private internet company in the booming coastal city of Shenzhen (which borders Hong Kong). During the visit, Xi laid flowers in front a bronze bust of the late leader Deng Xiaoping, whose visit to the same city 20 years ago ignited China’s post-Tiananmen economic revolution that saved the party’s rule. The political symbolism of Xi’s visit suggests that he wants China — and the rest of the world — to know that he is decidedly a different leader from Hu.
Such a message is certainly welcome. But branding and governing are two different things. Xi himself is also aware of the perils of too much branding and too little action. “Empty talk”, he warned, “will doom the nation”. The immediate governing challenge to Xi is what exact policies or reforms he will push to show that he is ready to take the risks shunned by his predecessors in order to revive China’s economic reform and growth. The political obstacles lying ahead are truly daunting. State-owned enterprises, which employ millions of party members, will have to be weaned off their privileged access to capital and other subsidies. Many of them must be privatised. Most will lose their monopolies. Local governments may have to be put on a fiscal diet and forced to live less profligately. Instead of enriching themselves, local officials may have to actually serve the Chinese people. Children and relatives of party officials will have to behave themselves as well. Instead of using their family connections to amass illicit wealth, they will have to compete against private entrepreneurs for business opportunities.
What this incomplete list of economic reforms suggests is that the real opposition to the great Chinese national revival lies within the political establishment itself. Such revival will unavoidably demand that the ruling elites give up the privileges they have taken for granted.
So it is curious that Xi’s branding campaign has left out one theme: political change. Clearly, this is a prudent thing for him to do. Calling for political reform at this stage could be political suicide because it will certainly rally the conservatives against his leadership. But the question will continue to dog Xi: can he truly revive China without changing its one-party political system?
The writer is a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College and a non-resident senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund, US
