COMMUNITY VOICES: on China’s New Leadership

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While the world watched closely as China convened its 18^th Party Congress in mid November, some Chinese Americans offered their view about the once-in-a-decade leadership change in China.

The meeting of the 18th Party Congress marked the transition to a new generation of leaders. With many of China’s new top officials being Western educated and increasingly aware of global issues, I think the next 10 years will see China as country which will continue opening up on intellectual fronts in addition to its economic pursuits.

Chinese students of all disciplines are incredibly in tune with international affairs- big-screen TVs in the campus cafeterias regularly show world news, especially that of England, EU countries, and the USA. The U.S. elections were a hot topic on campus last week. I heard the words “Obama” and “Romney” in passing conversations almost constantly. My Chinese friends were interested in my positions on Iran, U.S. economic stagnation, and even natural gas fracking. I have been asked about my feelings toward Obama and the Diaoyu Islands as casually as I am asked if I like eating Chinese food. I was surprised to find that amidst my own efforts to comprehend the intense politicking of my country’s elections as a voter living abroad, so many eyes and ears were turned to the action, awaiting a decision that will perceptibly affect their own lives.

As I speculate the meaning of China’s leadership change to China and the rest of the world, Chinese students are analyzing the role Obama’s second term will play in their own country, and are gauging American empathy towards their domestic issues. My classmates seemed to be as caught up in the drama of the U.S. elections as Americans themselves. With Western politics and culture permeating daily life, it is a relevant and acceptable topic to speculate upon.

Although my Chinese friends and acquaintances show substantial outward interest and knowledge, they are often at a loss for words when it comes to commenting on their own leadership change. Some people I have met are sure elite politics will remain the status quo, and inequality, corruption, and injustice will remain back-burner issues for a long time to come. This is underscored by the fact that this 18th Party Congress has maintained the veil of secrecy so characteristic of Chinese national politics, and that the paranoid measures the government has taken to ensure a smooth transition in Beijing reflects a leadership concerned with reinforcing its monopoly on power. Others I have spoken with simply have nothing to say and seem as unaffected by national politics as some Americans.

The aforementioned intellectual openness will be limited to a select few with the opportunity to access such knowledge. Furthermore, while China’s new leaders have been soaking up Western ideas abroad, I speculate that the translation of democratic values into Chinese policy will continue to be with Deng’s “Chinese characteristics” and will be subdued in conformity to Hu’s gradualist “Scientific Development” model, rather than in a political upheaval led by Xi, Li, or the populace itself.

It is evident that while Western students like me are attempting to break through language and cultural barriers to understand various aspects of Chinese society and politics, we are playing catch-up to the level that Chinese students understand Western countries. They know our politics, our history, and our culture. What’s more, they know our language. To deepen understanding and find common ground between the two great nations of the next decade, there will have to be a greater effort on the West’s part to truly understand China. Just as Washington politics do not reflect the consensus of the nation, simply observing and criticizing what is reported about the 18th Party Congress will not help us understand the role of China in the next decade.

Alexandria Liu, native of Baltimore, studying at Peking University

I don’t think there will be a fundamental change in the Party System due to the regime change or leadership transfer. Compared to the existing ruling leaders, the new leaders have more knowledge about the international world and more open to new ideas. High GDP growth will be one of the import, but not the only critical factor to promote the local government officials. They will not chase higher GDP growth at the cost of environment and cheap raw materials. They do realize the social unrest due to unfair distribution of wealth and ignorance of the laws by some of corrupted local government officials. So we will see some radical correction in the economic reform and reinforced crack-down on the government official corruption. They will try to redistribute the wealth which will face very strong resistance from the wealthy groups. It will not be an easy job trying to improve the living standard for the average citizens. Trying to increase the salary will hamper already dim manufacturing industry and weaken China’s product competitiveness. Upgrading the Industry is not a matter of overnight talking. It requires long-time investment of R&D. The real estate bubble has reached to the unprecedented size. If the bubble blows out, it will greatly cripple the financial standing for most of the city government who have been living heavily on the proceeds from the real estate boom to improve their infrastructure. The bubble burst will also burn away the wealth for their middle class who have invested most of their asset in housing, which will put a salt on the wound of sluggish domestic demand. The new leadership will face a lot of hurdles in next 5-10 years. If handled properly, China will be the #1 economic power around 2025.

Richard Huadong Yang (who was in China during the 18^thParty Congress), Waxhaw, NC

The new governors are young and have open minds to both the domestic and international world. They are close to the public and at the same time they have rich international experience. On one hand, they are well educated; and on the other hand, they have their career developed from the basic positions, so they know how the public think and what the public care about. They are not only the governors, policy makers, but also good listeners. They listen to the public’s voices and tend to get quick response. They know that China plays an important role in the international world. They will build China into a responsible big country and at the same time they keep independent and inviolable. They follow their predecessors to focus on economy development and international trades. I believe they will give the world a lot of nice surprise.

Gary Zhu, Alexandria, VA

Just as we have had our presidential election, China has just had its own once-in-a-decade leadership change. There is renewed hope that this new leadership, together with those waiting in the wing for the next Party Congress five years from now, will take China further down the road in terms of reform and liberalization. These seven new standing members of Political Bureau is a strong and pragmatic bunch. The U.S. should give them the benefit of the doubt and renew our vital relationship with China on a new footing.

 Haipei Shue, Potomac, MD

On the just closed 18th Chinese Communist Party (hereafter call CCP) Congress, Xi Jinping and other 6 officers were selected as the new leaders of the party. As a longtime political observer of China, I am willing to share my thinking on China: 

1. Corruption is the major concern in China. Without the publicly supervision, CCP cannot change the situation by itself, even if the top officers of CCP have called for more than 30 years to remove corruption in government and public fair. As known by so many people, most CCP top officers and their relatives amassed incredible wealth through exchange of their authorities. We will see the situation of corruption in China to be worse and worse.
2. China is losing it strong economic growing power. Do you still remember? What did Chine government do four years ago, when the global recession came? The central government of China invested 4,000 billion RMB, near 600 billion USD to bail out Chinese business. The local government also matched more than twice of central government’s investment. The huge bailout did prevent Chinese economy from felling down as most western countries did in the past four years. However, there were lots of serious side effects, which showed up since two year ago. You could harder hear “China Model” or “Beijing Model” again, which were always shown on western newspapers or magazines. Instead, more and more previous China Model supporters started worrying about the adverse effect to the global economy. New CCP leaders have to spend lots of extra work to keep the economic increase, even if it looks impossible to keep the increase rate at more than 7.5%.
3. The new selected standing committee is the result of the balance of CCP powerful families. Being totally difference from all democratic countries, China government selected their leaders through in a closed black box. No one knew when they will host their party congress until less than one month before the opening of the conference. No one knew how many standing committee members they would decide to run the country with 1.3 billion populations, before their first show in front of media. Before the last day, lots of negative news related to top officers was released. Most of them came from CCP internal resources, which tried to affect the final result of the selection of the standing committee. Normal people could not understand why the party wanted to run the party itself and the country in this way. Finally, everyone understood. Because those current top guys want to selected their trusted to protect their interests and families, which built lots of wealthy through corruptions, etc.
4. Political reform or die. As the chief of CCP, Xi Jinping is facing such serious challenge:

• How to keep the economic increase?
• How to share the economic interest of China?
• How to remove corruption from government and public life?
• How to rebuild a fair political system in China?

All those challenges have already developed as critical social problems, which are challenging the eligibility of the communist party government. Everyone knows that CCP will lose its control if they don’t process the political reform. However, we have not seen any signal from them for political reform. Honestly, I don’t believe CCP can make it at all. I believe China will completely change to a democratic county in less than ten years. People, Chinese people will make it by themselves.

Henry Li, Potomac, MD