Leader Signals Overhauls; November Growth Boosted by Infrastructure Spending.
Jeremy Page
The Wall Street Journal
December 9, 2012
China’s new leader, Xi Jinping, appeared to signal a commitment to further liberalizing the economy, and establishing a more accessible public image, when he made his first official visit as Communist Party chief to Shenzhen, the southern city that was an incubator for market reforms over three decades ago.
Mr. Xi’s weekend visit was seen by many observers as a conscious emulation of a trip there in 1992 by Deng Xiaoping, then China’s paramount leader, which reaffirmed his commitment to private enterprise despite opposition from Party conservatives after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. Some analysts also saw Mr. Xi’s visit as a tribute to his own father, Xi Zhongxun, a revolutionary hero who later championed the establishment of China’s first “special economic zone”—offering tax and other perks to foreign investors—in Shenzhen in 1980.
Footage broadcast by the Hong Kong-based Phoenix television channel showed Mr. Xi presenting a wreath at a statue of Mr. Deng in Shenzhen, and then strolling through crowds and talking with four former officials who had accompanied Mr. Deng on his trip in 1992.
“The decision the Party’s central leadership made about opening up and reform was correct. Hereafter, we will still go down this correct road,” Mr. Xi was shown telling a small crowd. “We must unswervingly take the road of enriching the nation, enriching the people, but we must also open it up even further.”
Mr. Xi didn’t provide details of how or when the new seven-man Party leadership, which took power last month, might attempt to further liberalize the economy in the face of resistance from state industry giants that dominate many key sectors.
Official figures released Sunday suggested China’s leaders had shied away from reform and relied principally on boosting investment in infrastructure, especially subway spending, to improve the country’s economic outlook in November and the coming quarters.
Mr. Xi’s visit was nonetheless seen as a positive signal to those who argue that China needs to dismantle state sector monopolies, empower private business and invest more in social welfare in order to shift from an export-oriented growth model to one driven by domestic consumption.
When Mr. Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, became Party chief in 2002, his first official visit was to the revolutionary base of Xibaipo, where he made a speech urging Party officials to recall the words of Chairman Mao Zedong.
Mr. Xi also used his trip to enhance his image as a relatively accessible and personable leader compared with Mr. Hu, who often appeared awkward in public and failed to establish a rapport with ordinary people in China or overseas during his decade in power.
In one departure from previous practice, Mr. Xi traveled around Shenzhen in a minibus without tinted windows, and with a minimal police escort and little disruption to local traffic, according to accounts and photographs on various Hong Kong and mainland Chinese news sites.
Mr. Xi had chaired a meeting Tuesday of the new Politburo—the Party’s top 25 leaders—which produced a list of instructions for Chinese officials on ways to scale down formalities and privileges, including ensuring that official motorcades didn’t disrupt normal traffic.
Mr. Xi’s adherence to those guidelines won him praise among many users of China’s Twitter-like microblogging services, which are relatively hard to censor and have become a popular forum for political discussion—often highly critical of the Party—in the last three years.
Shenzhen’s traffic police said on its official microblog that it was the first time it hadn’t closed any roads during a visit by a senior official. In another departure, China’s main state media organs provided minimal coverage of the trip, but photographs of Mr. Xi smiling and waving from his minibus were circulated widely among Chinese microbloggers.
Analysts say Mr. Xi appears to be using his first few weeks in power to revamp the image of the Party leadership, especially among young, urban Internet users, many of whom are becoming increasingly cynical—and outspoken—about official corruption and abuse of power.
Since taking power, Mr. Xi has highlighted corruption as a particular threat to the Party’s future, and at least a dozen mid-ranking officials have been detained and placed under investigation—several of them after lurid allegations about their private lives appeared online.
One of the latest cases was reported Sunday by the state-run Xinhua news agency, which said a former police chief of Wusu city in the northwestern region of Xinjiang had been placed under investigation after online allegations that he had hired two mistresses who were sisters to work for local police.
Many experts on Chinese politics and law caution that the Party has launched similarly high-profile anticorruption drives before, yet remains wary of introducing the systemic changes—such as forcing officials to declare their financial assets—that might address the root causes of corruption.
Some experts, however, detect a change of attitude among the new leaders, noting that Mr. Xi isn’t the only one to have adopted a more informal, straight-talking approach in official meetings.
Jiang Ming’an, a law professor at Peking University who attended the meeting, said Mr. Wang opened the meeting without many formalities, telling participants: “You can talk openly and directly; don’t worry too much. We’ve also seen the criticism online, but we have confidence.”Wang Qishan, who has the anticorruption portfolio on the new seven-man Politburo Standing Committee—the top leadership body–impressed some Chinese academics when he chaired a meeting late last month to discuss ways to tackle official graft.
Prof. Jiang said the recent spate of corruption cases appeared to stem from the public remarks from Mr. Xi and Mr. Wang. He added that Beijing might have given directions to local governments to handle corruption allegations quickly as there had often been delays in the past in responding to cases exposed online.
He and other experts noted that most of the recent cases had been exposed online, but said that Internet whistleblowers were no substitute in the long term for legal reforms.
“Resolve and enthusiasm is encouraging but what China needs more is establishing a system that can build a long-term mechanism to fight corruption,” said Du Zhizhou, executive director of the Institute of Anti-Corruption Research at Beihang University in Beijing.
