M.D. Nalapat
Manipal, India — Four years before Chinese
President Hu Jintao took over as both head of state and, more importantly in
China, head of the Communist Party, this observer of his country had deduced
that he was on a steady ascent to full power. Even in 1998 it was clear that
the mild-mannered, ever-courteous lifelong Party member was a deadly player on
the chessboard of power.
Over the preceding years he had avoided
much entanglement with the reigning hierarchies in the only parts of China that
President Jiang Zemin was interested in, the high-growth centers along the
coast and Beijing. Instead, he used the anti-corruption machinery of the state
and Party to prise away those who were less than completely loyal to Deng Xiaoping's
personal choice to replace Jiang in 2002.
Barring a handful of provinces, by 1999 Hu
had put into position individuals that he could relate to and that were far
removed from the glitzy and immensely wealthy Jiang cohort. Over the next
couple of years, he interacted extensively with senior military and civilian
cadres, almost always leaving the impression of a thoughtful individual whose
objective was to ensure the continuation of China's ascent begun under Mao and
Deng.
Very little of this came out even in the
Chinese media, and in the Jiang-obsessed Western press there was almost zero
mention of the Heir Apparent. Not that this bothered Hu. He knew that what
counted was not a Kissingerian celebrity status but IOUs on the inside, and of
these he had accumulated a copious amount. Silently, almost secretly, Hu
ensured that the ruling hierarchy in that huge part of China ignored by Jiang
looked upon him as a deliverer from the neglect of the past decade, even while
the military accepted his patriotic credentials and an ability to stand apart
from Western needs and perceptions -- even oppose them -- that Jiang Zemin
never seriously attempted
As the time came for the handover of the
baton from Jiang to Hu, the international media speculated that the new general
secretary would have to remain content with just that job, leaving the titles
of head of state and chairman of the Central Military Commission to Jiang.
When Hu took over as both Party and state
chief, commentators spoke of how the continuation of Jiang in the CMC was
evidence that it was Jiang Zemin who was still in charge, even though the older
man had "generously permitted the younger to grab the spotlight." For
now. It was regarded as only a matter of time before Jiang's men would elbow out
Hu's backers from the top slots.
Five years after such a forecast was first
made, and despite no facts on the ground indicating that this was correct, even
right before the Party Congress there was intense international media
speculation about Hu getting marginalized by his predecessor, especially in the
matter of his own successor.
The reality is that Hu is very much in
command, and has been since 2002. Even at that point in time, he could have
taken over the CMC chairmanship as well, but allowed Jiang to occupy the office
for a while longer in order to save face. Indeed, he sanctioned a massive
office complex for Jiang in Beijing that is the most over-furnished but
under-worked in the city's VIP district.
It is this very Chinese regard for
"face" that has obscured the immense shift that has taken place in
China, from the West-centric, business-oriented crowd around Jiang to the
technocrats and specialists around Hu. The shift in China has been as profound
as that which took place in Russia when Boris Yeltsin was replaced by Vladimir
Putin, but because it has happened away from the media -- and involves
individuals who, unlike the Jiang set, dislike interacting with the
international media -- the shift in power in China has been as little
understood as that in Russia was until a couple of years ago
Not that the international media or pundits
can be blamed for missing out on the significance of the transition from
"Westernizer" Jiang to "Asian (mainly Chinese) nationalist"
Hu. After all, very few of those close to the current Chinese president travel
abroad with anything approaching the frequency of the visits made by the Jiang
cohort. According to the new team, stays in Paris and London are for tourists,
not serious people, who are instead concentrating on Africa, South America and
in those parts of Asia which foreign and economic policy errors, not to mention
the racist immigration policies of the European Union, have prised loose from
the West.
Unlike Jiang, who shouted aloud but seldom
brought out the stick, Hu Jintao has made China a formidable competitor for
U.S.-EU influence across the globe, providing the same geopolitical option for,
among several others, Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmedinejad that the fall of the
USSR temporarily took away in 1991.
Across the world, Hu's China is emerging as
a formidable competitor to the brief unipolar status of the United States,
aware that the low prices of Chinese goods make them politically impossible to
replace, no matter how shrill the rhetoric of the Peter Mandelsons. If inflation
is low in the United States and the European Union, a lot of the credit goes to
the Chinese worker, who is waiting to experience the benefits of a better
lifestyle that Hu and his team have promised him.
And it is here that China's president will
be challenged. Not within his own Party, which has for years accepted him as
the only Top Gun in the system, but among the people of China, who are battling
with a miserable health care system, expensive education for their children and
low-income jobs despite all the hype about China rising.
-(Professor M.D. Nalapat is
vice-chair of the Manipal Advanced Research Group, UNESCO Peace Chair, and
professor of geopolitics at Manipal University.)
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