Opinion The here and Mao
Xi Jinping retrieves an obsolete prescription for a much changed party.
Chinese television viewers were treated to a rare but entertaining political spectacle at the end of September. Under the watchful gaze of the Communist Party of China (CPC) chief,Xi Jinping,the provincial party boss of Hebei province,the provincial governors and three other top local officials confessed their mistakes and criticised each others shortcomings on camera. The provincial party boss,after denouncing his colleagues penchant for trying to get things done in haste,admitted that he had the same flaws and made decisions relying solely on his gut. The executive vice governor,seemingly encouraged by the atmosphere of tolerance and openness,pointed at the governor and chided him for wasteful spending and imperviousness to criticisms. Obviously aware that he had to demonstrate remorse,the governor quickly confessed that he was indeed a victim of profligacy and arrogance.
Uninformed observers might be forgiven for mistaking such a scene as choreographed group confession. But this special session of criticism and self-criticism,which lasted two full days (with Xi in attendance),was part of the CPCs campaign of mass line education which happens to be a slogan favoured by the late dictator,Mao Zedong,who practically invented the concept of criticism and self-criticism. Since its launch in early September,roughly two-thirds of the provincial governments have held such group sessions. In a country where few officials publicly admit mistakes,collective confessions of political and personal failings by the ruling elites are both unusual and revealing.
However,providing high-level amateur political entertainment is not the objective of the new Chinese leader,who has invested enormous political capital in this initiative. After taking office last November,Xi has repeatedly warned the partys elites that they have grown too lazy,too insulated from the people and lived too lavishly. If it was not purged of its inner rot,Xi admonished,the CPC could follow the communist party of the former Soviet Union into historys dustbin Chinese officials are now required to see a two-hour documentary on the collapse of the former Soviet Union,recently produced by the CPCs propaganda department.
Preventing such a calamity for the party requires strong political medicine. Xi has already initiated a well-publicised crackdown on official corruption. But killing flies and tigers (his colourful phrase for sending low-level and senior officials to jails and execution chambers) is apparently insufficient in driving his message home. The partys top lieutenants must be made to feel the political heat personally. As a result,the CPC is now conducting a national campaign to cleanse itself through criticism and self-criticism.
While we should wish Xi good luck in his latest effort to save the CPC,we also need to be cognisant of some odd,if not discouraging,aspects of his campaign. The most striking thing about the mass line education Chinas ruling elites have to undergo at the moment is that it clearly reminds us of the Maoist era,during which CPC officials were routinely subjected to frequent campaigns of criticism and self-criticism. It was a way of ensuring that they did not veer away too much from the partys social base which,in those days,consisted primarily of workers and peasants.
Strictly speaking,there is nothing wrong with resurrecting a Maoist tool if it is going to work. However,the trouble with the CPC today is that even ostensibly bitter medicine such as a dose of Maoism is unlikely to cure its institutional maladies. To start with,the partys social base is worryingly narrow. When Mao died in 1976,roughly 70 per cent of its members were peasants and workers toiling on the farms and in the factories. Today,70 per cent of the CPC membership consists of government officials. In other words,the CPC has been transformed from a mass political party to a bureaucratic ruling party in the last three decades. In this context,pursuing a mass line really means rallying the bureaucrats,not the masses. As long as the majority of the Chinese people are not invited to participate in helping the party cleanse itself,clever party officials will easily turn Xis campaign into a meaningless political ritual.
Indeed,mobilising ordinary people seems to be the last thing on the new leaderships mind. Despite the use of populist rhetoric such as mass line and democratic political life in this campaign,Beijing has not allowed ordinary people to voice their criticisms of the partys ways. On the contrary,government officials recently tightened their control over the media and the internet. Several influential bloggers were arrested. Prominent liberal academics have been silenced (some have been fired from their teaching positions in state-run universities). In this respect,the current CPC leadership seems to be attempting the impossible: borrowing a Maoist populist tactic without actually resorting to Maoist populism.
The seeming contradiction in the CPCs political strategy raises the question of whether its new leadership is going to succeed in its historic mission of perpetrating one-party rule in a society where tolerance of one-party rule is decreasing. Ideally,one would expect Beijings new rulers to come up with more forward-looking and innovative reforms and initiatives to revive the partys sagging legitimacy. Sadly,they can do no better than reach back into the Maoist past and retrieve an obsolete prescription that is unlikely to rid the party of its political sclerosis.
The writer is a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College,US,and non-resident senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the US express@expressindia.com
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