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by Liang Jing While not daring to comment on the June Fourth incident, Southern Weekend ran a front page story in the political news section of its June 4 issue entitled “‘Remoulding millions of Chinese officials—direct training for key positions bypassing two levels of government.” This reported a major turning point taking place in China’s political system—the central government bypassing provincial government to carry out large-scale direct dialogue with important officials at the county level, and directly instructing and intervening in governance at the county level. [1] This shift started after the Beijing Olympics, when the Weng’an incident in Guizhou finally forced the central authorities to accept that the self-deceiving local governance and grass-roots electoral reform could no longer continue. If the Center didn’t take effective measures, the full-scale blow-up of the crisis of local governance would lead to the overturning of the regime. In fact, the crisis of local and grass-roots governance resulted directly from the repression of June Fourth. Grass-roots and local officials realised instantly that the central government had lost the moral authority to constrain the localities. Hence the attitude of grass-roots and local officials towards the peasantry deteriorated sharply from that moment and became more audacious in all kinds of corrupt practices. Another important turning point was the tax reform presided over by Zhu Rongji in 1994. The game of interests played between Zhu Rongji and the local governments transmitted the following information, all the Centre cared about was money, regardless of whether the local government were able to fulfill the most basic public functions, or even could pay employees their salaries in full. This hoodlum attitude brought about a unprecedented high-speed growth of central fiscal revenue on the one hand, but on the other “forced good girls to become whores”, sending local governments down a completely wrong road. “Creating income” by any means, they bullied the peasantry, exploited the workers, destroyed the environment, while the central government turned a blind eye, concerned only for GDP and tax revenue, regardless of the process. Ironically, the fiscal decentralisation and coastal opening-up strategy put in place by Zhao Ziyang provided unanticipated space for this debauchery. The Chinese economy quickly “rose” amid the vicious competition between local government, while it at the same time created a serious crisis in grass-roots and regional governance. In 2000, Li Changping directly addressed then Premier Zhu Rongji, saying that “the peasantry is really doing it tough, the rural areas are destitute and agriculture is in real crisis.” This so-called "three dimensional rural" [sannong] crisis was the inevitable outcome of the crisis in local governance. The emergence of unprecedented wealth was, however, an irresistible temptation not only to Chinese leaders and officials, but equally to international capital. When the world's largest authoritarian regime forged an alliance with the international capital centered in Wall Street, the sacred alliance formed from the two unchecked powers became a huge wheel which had lost the ability to brake, until it triggered the global financial tsunami. Ever since Jiang Zemin, China’s leaders have been psychologically quite aware that many egregious wrongs take place precisely at grass roots and regional levels, but they don’t want to—let alone dare—know the truth about them. The Centre’s message to local officials is, you can do bad things, but don’t let me or any foreigners see. Such a self-deceiving governance mentality produces an utterly incomprehensible system of intercepting petitions: on the one hand, Beijing hypocritically keeps up an office to receive those who come to air their grievances, while on the other encouraging local governments to use illicit means to intercept “petitioners” arriving in Beijing to do so, and to carry out appalling persecution of many of them. Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin bear inescapable responsibility for China’s grass-roots and regional governance crisis, but for the past seven years, Hu Jintao’s incompetence and rule by empty talk have allowed it to develop to a critical point. The new generation of leaders following the 17th National Party Congress have seen that if they don’t take action before Hu and Wen leave office, the situation may be difficult to clean up by the time that they succeed. I thus believe that the real promoters of this, the Centre’s biggest move to directly intervene in county-level governance since the Beijing Olympic Games, transcending provinces and regions, are the new generation leaders rather than Hu and Wen. Li Yuanchao, currently Director of the CCP’s Organization Bureau, is likely in my estimation to be the soul of this initiative. The unusual thing about this important move is that not only does it break the CCP’s tradition of sub-region governance, it reverts to the tradition of the imperial power directly interfacing the junxian [commanderies and counties]. [2] More importantly, when the Centre directly intervenes in county-level control, county officials are required to comprehensively report the truth, and express their thoughts truthfully rather than play the old tricks to deceive each other. It is difficult to judge whether this major turning point in local governance can remedy this situation and avoid a full-blown crisis of governance. The defects of local governance are long-standing, and the interests of officials are not only intertwined with local forces: their alliances with provincial and central powerful vested interests are long-standing. This turning point may therefore possibly trigger general conflict between the interests of bureaucratic capital and of the civilian population, producing an unmanageable situation. Another possibility is that under pressure from internal and external economic and political crises, the Centre’s centralisation of regional governance provides an opportunity to kidnap political reform using nationalism. The world may face a Mao Zedong imitator. If so, rather than a tragedy, it is more likely to be farce. After all, Chinese have learned a lot of things from their history of suffering. [1] Su Yongtong, “Zhongguo baiwan guanyuan ‘zai duanlian’” [China remoulds one million officials], Nanfang zhoumo, 4 June 2009 [苏永通： “中国百万官员“再锻造””， 南方周末，2009年6月 4日 http://www.nanfangdaily.com.cn/nfzm/200906040120.asp [2] [Trans.] The system of junxian [commanderies and counties] was introduced by the Emperor Qin Shihuang (221 BC), marking the formal end of feudalism based on powerful clans and leading in turn to the centralised bureaucracy od scholar officials licensed by the examination system and appointed by the Emperor. Translated by David Kelly China Research Centre University of Technology Sydney © Copyright 2009 by Boxun News Top of Page |
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