TOM PLATE WRITES IN THE SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST - Watch this
man carefully. For at least until Nov. 8, when who follows Barack Obama will be
revealed, 2016’s most fascinating leader-figure will be Xi Jinping.
Although ensconced as president three years ago (with all grandiose
title trimmings attached), and immediately outward-bound as China’s glove-trotting
salesman-in-chief - opening doors, closing deals, scaring the West witless - this
Beijing-born son of a Chinese icon remains a totally enigmatic figure. In the
U.S. particularly, the avuncular face of China has seemed frustratingly hard to
read.
Even in America’s best-informed circles, there is little consensus
as to who Xi is. To optimists, especially hopeful economists, he is the keeper of
the common-sense flame of Deng Xiaoping, the genius leader who undoubtedly saved
Communism politically by all but abandoning it economically. As Harvard
professor Ezra F. Vogel put it in his masterpiece Deng Xiaoping: “Deng guided the transformation of China into a
country scarcely recognizable from the one he had inherited in 1978.”
On this reading, the 62-year-old Xi remains the committed Beijing-based
gang Deng-er. But to pessimists, Xi seems more the post-modern Mao man, grumpily
chafing over the sins of materialism (now such the topic in the halls of the Central
Party School, the ideological-education
wing of the Communist Party, of which Xi is the general secretary) and the
breakdown of Party discipline. In some
U.S. circles, he is seen as using the current anti-corruption campaign to gin
up some kind of loyal Chinese Tea Party. The fear is not only that this
true-red Communist will concoct a cultural devolution and trigger a back-to-basics
Chinese dynasty; but also push East Asia into a tributary-traditional,
Beijing-reliant geopolitical system.
Respected Columbia University Prof. Andrew Nathan offers
pessimism: “I fear that Xi is creating great danger for China. By undercutting
the institutionalized system that Deng built, he hangs the survival of the
regime on his ability to bear an enormous workload, make the right decisions,
and not make big mistakes. He is trying to bottle up a growing diversity of
social and intellectual forces that are bound to grow stronger. He may be
breaking down, rather than building up, the consensus within the political
leadership and among economic and intellectual elites over China’s path of
development…. As he departs from
Deng Xiaoping’s path, he risks undermining the regime’s adaptability and
resilience.”
Such polar-opposite portraits lack key nuance, especially
in dealing with one of the most complex systems in political history. As an eminent
source of mine sees it: “It
is true that Xi has concentrated power to an extent not seen in a long time. But
at the core is a life-and-death struggle to re-establish the moral authority of
the Communist Party. The reasons for his doing it are not as your
Columbia professor thinks but much deeper.”
Xi will always try
to take the long view about his China, as if the main monk of a new, emerging Chinese
Confucianism. A few months ago he wrote, remarkably: ““Future China will
be under a group of people with the right view, right mindfulness and positive
energy. The real crisis is not of economic or financial, but it is the crisis
of morality and spirituality. The more blessed one is, the more energy one has.
Be friends with the wise ones, move with those who are kind. Always have the
people in mind with boundless great love.” (Translation)
Such warm daintiness words might well strike the Western eye
as okay for a spiritual pope but not a secular one -- not to mention an avowed
Communist atheist whose government demonstrably does not love the irreverent
blogger or treacherous tweeter, much less the upstart Uighur. Yet Xi’s massive
anti-corruption campaign, headed by the very capable Wang Qishan, at times does
have the feeling of a spiritual cleansing (or am I wrong - just a commonplace political
purge?).
Xi became China’s maximum leader through not so much Party connection
as policy competence. Highly regarded, he was put in overall charge of 2008 Olympics
preparations, and back in the mid-nineties had been Beijing’s man hovering over
the re-acquisition of Hong Kong to ensure it would not be bungled. To his Party
partisans, he seemed the always-reliable deliveryman. One man very impressed by
Xi was the late Singapore master Lee Kuan Yew: “I would put him in the Nelson
Mandela class of persons. A person with enormous emotional stability who does
not allow his personal misfortunes or sufferings affect his judgment.”
At the same time, Xi’s climb to the top has made enemies of immense
intensity (a nervous-making story all but hidden from the mainland and world
media), with attendant threats that have ballooned the size of his security
contingent. In addition to the anti-corruption drive, Xi has pushed for a restructuring
of the vast PLA military to nail down Party control over a sector that
sometimes careered toward the semi-sovereign. This revamp is a heavy lift.
Xi certainly deserves no Nobel Peace Prize simply for
sweet-thoughts in Confucian-like prose (while rather less poetically beefing up
regional ocean reefs). But there is one area of achievement that does merit a
look from the Norwegian Nobel Committee: he and Taiwan’s leader Ma Jung-yeou as
joint candidates for the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize for their cross-strait de-tensioning.
Xi may be no saint, but Ma is no Communist: In Singapore recently this
political odd couple put on a most welcome public display of diplomacy in the
first such cross-strait meeting at that high a level since 1947. Absurd to
propose Xi and Ma for the Nobel, you say? I might agree if someone can just explain
why it’s any more absurd than the 2009 Nobel Peace award to Obama … just nine months
after he took office. That was ridiculous. The Xi-Ma idea is not and has some charm.
TOM PLATE IS LMU’S
DISTINGUISHED SCHOLAR OF ASIAN AND PACIFIC STUDIES AND THE FOUNDER OF ASIA
MEDIA INTERNATIONAL
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