Last week the Party wrapped up its 18th Congress and announced who gets to be part of the management team for the next five years. There were a lot of questions and what-ifs revolving around what exactly the outcome would be since the guys at the top are notoriously reclusive. In the end though there was only one real surprise: that Hu Jintao broke tradition and handed over control of the military immediately, rather than hanging on to the post for a few more years as his predecessors had done.
The world is applauding China for completing a relatively peaceful leadership transition. Aside from the whole Bo situation, mostly everything has gone according to plan. Even the new management is just as dry as the last bunch. But this is actually what causes concern for me, the fact that the new crop does not include the ‘reformers’ the country really needs.
Rocking the boat is frowned upon, to say the least, in Chinese politics. Consistency and predictability are highly valued. So when it comes time to make the most important leadership the country has ever faced, one can rest assured the country won’t do anything anywhere close radical. Bo Xilai and Company obviously did not get this message.
Look at some of the things that consistency and not rocking the boat resulted in over the past ten years: an out of whack property market, still-bloated SOEs, continuation of the One Child Policy, a yet to be truly reformed banking system, rampant official corruption and a major wealth gap among other things.
I’m not saying that the powers that be need to start addressing these problems head-on tomorrow, although that would be kind of neat. They should though at least bring some of the minds to the table that could come up with the creative solutions necessary to these problems. The strongest person named to the new Standing Committee is Wang Qishan, who was crucial to the early success of CICC, China’s first investment bank (it was a joint venture with Morgan Stanley). Wang has been charged with the task of trying to root out corruption, which is a noble and quite necessary, but his rank on the Standing Committee is 6th out of 7. In China ranks and titles mean everything, so his influence has the possibility of being diminished by the others on the committee. Then again, he did wear a blue tie when everybody else wore red, so he definitely knows how to zig when the others zag.
Bottom line is that it’s going to take more than a new round of musical chairs from a bunch of generic career bureaucrats to effectively address the serious problems facing the country.
America is always concerned with "reformers", it's rather pathetic. Leave each country to its own and dont expect everyone to be like you ("reformers"). The time will come when it is right for China to change.
America is always concerned with "corrupt Communists teetering on a brink," it's rather pathetic. Leave each country to its own and dont expect everyone to be like you ("Capitalists who kick ass and don't fake their 10-Ks"). The time will come when it is right for China to change.
Waiting for Brady to turn this into a b-school discussion.
Hell, I came in here hoping for an M7 discussion.
Yawn. Boring writeup. Hu Jintao and all the other cronies will still have a heavy hand in the inner workings of the Politburo. Get out of town with that nonsense.
tsk, tsk, tsk...OP's pie tastes so sour~
If China is not reforming there wouldn't have had capitalism at all. They have a much more complex issue than we do now and did when we were rapidly growing many decades ago. China have 1.3 billion people and you can't make quick "reforms" without major disruption and potential disastrous outcomes.
How they chooses to reform is their own right and they know best, not us. We need to stop applying our one size fits all political model onto everyone else. Shit just don't work this way.
I am interested to see how China will transform its export-driven growth model to a consumer-based model. Any failure to do so will really contest the legitimacy of the party because the economic prosperity is probably the only reason why Chinese ppl are not too upset about their current freedom rights.
Yes, ultimately the government and its leaders will choose to go about their business however they want to. But it is my right to express my opinion about it. Is it okay for me to assume Callus is not an American and start criticizing him because he shouldn't be talking about a foreign country's government?
At no point did I advocate a specific course of action. My only point was that more of the same from the top will not effectively address the issues the country is facing.
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