Philip Wen
The Sydney Morning Herald
November 18, 2013
After just a year in charge, Xi Jinping has shored up power with such speed and authority that he is already being touted as China’s most powerful leader since Deng Xiaoping.
Early doubts over whether the new President could manage an ideologically divided Communist Party have swiftly subsided. Now the question being asked is whether his ambitious reform blueprint can come to fruition and match the party’s own triumphant propaganda of a historic turning point.
The initial headlines focused on some of the more concrete promises among 60 policy objectives contained in the party decision released last week: the loosening of the one-child policy, the abolition of labour camps and the creation of a state security committee that will likely hand Mr Xi even greater control of the pervasive domestic security apparatus.
But the language on tougher challenges, such as more property rights for farmers, a fairer judiciary and a reduced role for monopolistic state-owned enterprises, has been considerably less decisive.
The issues are intertwined. Too often, China’s farming class has had its land appropriated by the state, which in turn flips it to developers for an easy profit and economic growth. Landowners can petition for years to seek redress, but rather than a transparent judicial system to hear their cases, they are more likely to find themselves detained if they get too vocal.
Provincial government officials are marked by their bosses not only by how much GDP growth they’re bringing in, but by keeping dissent from petitioners to a minimum. (Both measures are now mooted to change).
The messages on state-owned enterprises, which render many sectors inefficient and tie up vital financial resources, have been particularly conflicting. This is the area where there is still much to play for and where vested interests are strongest and most resistant to change.
But Mr Xi has also shown his willingness to take on all comers with his anti-corruption drive extending to PetroChina, possibly the most powerful of China’s state-owned behemoths. The urgency in Mr Xi’s push for change is more reactive than it seems. As he acknowledged on Friday, China faces a multitude of social and economic problems.
Most troubling for the government, as Mr Xi again pointed out, is the way people are sharing their dissatisfaction and dissent online through social messaging platforms such as Weibo.
But it is the way he has managed this issue that most contradicts the progressive tone of his reform masterplan. While he paid homage to Deng’s 1992 southern tour by taking a similar trip of his own soon after coming to power, much of his first year has been characterised by a harsher than usual crackdown on rights activists, political debate and online rumours.
This ”neo-authoritarian”, politically left, economically right model of leadership has many observers worrying that rather than Deng, it would eventually prove more apt to compare Mr Xi to an iconic leader with an altogether different legacy, Mao Zedong.
