Asserting Jiang Zemin's primacy

In this fourth article of a series on China's Future without Deng, our Asia correspondent Harvey Stockwin looks at the pattern of uniformity which has threaded through Deng's memorial meeting and the current session of China's parliament.

HONG KONG (JP): As China's equivalent of a Parliament starts its annual two-week session in Beijing, the death of paramount leader Deng Xiaoping continues to dominate the horizon of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) politics. The stress is on sustaining Deng's reformist vision, but one key reform, which China badly needs, is still rejected.

The Chinese People's Political Consultative Congress (CPPCC), the less powerful of the two parliamentary institutions, chaired by the fourth-ranking person in the CCP hierarchy Li Ruihuan, began its session on Feb. 27.

The more powerful National Peoples Congress (NPC), chaired by the third-ranking person in the CCP elite, Qiao Shi, began its session March 1 with a lengthy address by the second-ranking person Prime Minister Li Peng.

For anyone used to the often boisterous, perennially argumentative, and generally unpredictable ways of many parliamentary institutions -- the frequent fisticuffs and occasional hair-pulling in the Taiwan parliamentary institutions comes most readily to mind -- China's version of a parliament would come as a shock. Spontaneous behavior is frowned upon. Interruptions are very very rare. The authorities go to considerable lengths to orchestrate proceedings in advance. They then make sure that everyone sticks to the script.

Television coverage accentuates the rubber stamp image. As with the memorial meeting for Deng Xiaoping on Feb. 25, so with the CPPCC and NPC sessions, the coverage overwhelmingly consists of one or two leaders speaking at length, while the camera pans slowly across the silent memorial audience, or the equally silent CPPCC and NPC membership. No one chats with his neighbor, as might happen elsewhere. No one, except the extremely elderly, dares to doze. Sometimes, when a speech is distributed in advance, the members relieve the probable boredom by following every word of the script with pens poised, just in case there is any departure from the script. There seldom is. But when it does happen the pens move in unison.

There has been some slight (very slight) diminution of the NPC rubber stamp image in the last few sessions. In one or two recent votes, total unanimity was conspicuously missing. One appointee to higher office received a surprising large minority of dissenting votes, which was interesting since the appointee was a protege of President Jiang Zemin.

But this year, if the opening sessions are anything to go by, extra careful efforts will be made to present once again a facade of total and complete unity.

China-watchers, including this Jakarta Post correspondent, have to involve themselves in watching all this monotony just in case something happens.

For example, as part of that facade of unity, the same phrases reappear with monotonous regularity. When a key phrase fails to appear in a speech China-watchers make notes and even deductions.

Thus one of the key phrases in the initial post-Deng period is to proclaim that the party is solidly united behind the third generation CCP leadership with President Jiang Zemin at the core.

Jiang Zemin is of course the first ranked person in the CCP hierarchy and he holds the three key positions of state President, CCP Secretary-General, and chairman of the CCP Central Military Commission (CMC). Deng Xiaoping, in today's CCP terminology, was the core of the second generation while Mao Zedong was the core of the first generation leadership.

In the immediate wake of Deng's death, Hong Kong newspapers made much of the fact that both Li Ruihuan and Qiao Shi, plus several high-ranking People's Liberation Army (PLA) generals left out this key phrase in their comments on Deng. This was interpreted as a slight to Jiang, and an early sign that he could not yet count on the firm support of the military leadership.

These deductions were a classic case of shooting too far, too fast, too soon, a failing which is fairly common among China- watching tribe. Since there is a terrible paucity of real information about the inner workings of China's politics, many succumb to the temptation to overreach in drawing conclusions from what little information there is.

In fact when he addressed the CPPCC, prior to calling for a brief silence in Deng's memory, Li Ruihuan made the ritual reference to Jiang at the core. Qiao Shi did the same when he addressed the opening session of the NPC. Prime Minister was slightly more effusive than Qiao as he supported Jiang during his long report to the NPC at the same session.

Also on March 1 the four generals who are vice-chairmen of the CMC under Jiang likewise each asserted that "The PLA will unswervingly obey the orders of the (CCP) Central Committee with Jiang Zemin at its core".

So why all the repetition? Perhaps the question to ask is -- why does Jiang Zemin have to insist that everyone reassures him that he is in charge? why do the top CCP cadres provide that reassurance?

Reading Chinese statements backwards is an old and proven China-watching technique. This usage of this phrase thus suggests that Jiang Zemin knows full well that he cannot take longevity in his present posts for granted.

The party leaders know full well that, just as it was unacceptable to raise major policy differences while Deng lay dying, so it is unacceptable to indulge in the CCP's penchant for divisive factionalism so soon after Deng's death. Or at the very least, any factional struggle that is proceeding must be kept from the eyes of foreigners. But the mere fact that the key phrases are repeated does not mean that there is unity, merely that the various potential contestants are taking their time before launching a campaign.

Another ritual phrase in current circulation, as part of the utterly uniform way in which Deng has been mourned, is to say that the party and its leadership will continue to uphold the policy of reform which was Deng's great achievement. So far no one has itemized which precise reforms they have in mind.

But when Deng initiated China's belated "opening up to the outside world" he never considered that opening up the inner workings of CCP politics --either to the Chinese people or to foreigners -- was a reform requirement. Open and frank debate on the many critical issues with which China is confronted is simply taboo. On the key question of maintaining political secrecy, all Deng's successors -- whatever their personal factional differences -- are almost certainly in complete and total agreement.