China after the Communist Party's 16th congress

China after the Communist Party's 16th congress

Jusuf Wanandi, Co-founder, Member, Board of Trustees
Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Jakarta

The outcome of the 16th Congress of the Chinese Communist
Party (CCP) has to be understood in historical terms. As China
develops into a vibrant economy, there has been some opening
towards greater individual freedoms and liberties. This also may
have affected the Party and the leadership in general. The 16th
Congress is only an expression of those developments and
modernization, going back to the ideas of Deng Hsiao-Ping.

However, this does not mean that China has overcome its
problems. On the contrary, she still has enormous problems to
face, largely due to her huge population, the excesses during the
Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution under Chairman Mao
Tze-Tung whose aftermath is still being felt. But those
experiences are also a warning to the leaders and the Chinese
people to never return to those nightmares again.

The successes in modernization and development efforts have
created big new problems as well. Despite the remarkable economic
growth, there is significant unemployment. The challenges of
restructuring and reforms of the banking system and state-owned
enterprises (SOEs), paired with corruption and nepotism and
coupled with discrepancies of wealth, are indeed very real.

On top of its economic problems, China and the new leadership
have to face political problems that result from the successes in
economic development and the rise of a bigger middle class. She
also faces the problems of renewing the Communist Party so as to
be relevant in the future, people's participation in the rural
areas and urban centers, the rule of law, and control of the
bureaucracy and the party. But her achievements have also been
tremendous.

This has made the Chinese people and its leaders very proud
and confident about their achievements and future. Indeed, they
should be, because feeding and taking care of the basic human
needs of 1.3 billion people, more than a fifth of humankind, is a
tremendous and dramatic achievement. Now, the problem for the new
leadership is how to improve even further and to modernize China
to become a developed nation in another generation, 20 years or
more.

For East Asia, China's economic development has been the only
bright spot since the financial crisis in 1997. It has become a
competitor and challenge and at the same time a partner and an
opportunity for the economies of the region.

China has also become a prudent regional power, more
traditional and conservative, a pro status quo power and one
which is starting to link up with the region more intensely and
responsibly. Her engagements with regional institutions are real.
She is sometimes still too sensitive about her own interests but
is less strident about this than a few years ago.

There is a lesser burden from her history that is full of
defeats and shame caused by Western and Japanese colonial powers.
That is why she is now more comfortable in her bilateral
relations with the United States, although real problems are
still there, particularly the Taiwan issue and the future
development and ambition of China to become a great power on her
own right. That is also why China astutely proposed a free trade
agreement with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, in
order to cultivate and assure ASEAN's friendship.

With this background, the changes that have happened at the
16th CCP Congress could be better understood and appreciated. It
is not simply a matter of who is in and who is out, or whether
Jiang Zemin could maintain his influence with this new, fourth
generation leadership, and whether the new Chairman, Hu Jintao,
can consolidate his power or not.

It is obvious that Chairman Hu has been groomed since Jiang
was the Head of the Party, to replace him. So he is well prepared
and has established his relationship with the group he is leading
now.

Of course he needs time to consolidate his leadership. Since
he was also a former Head of the Party School, it could be
observed that he was willing to listen to new ideas and to future
problems, including a looming crisis and how to overcome it. He
is willing to discuss crisis management problems and those of
other countries, including Indonesia's.

Obviously, since China's problems and challenges are huge, the
new line up of the Party's leadership is both a compromise and a
consensus. It is a collective leadership.

Only if the leadership can stay united and the growth of the
economy can be sustained at seven percent to nine percent
annually, will the leadership have a fighting chance to modernize
and be abreast of the problems. They must recognize the damage
that could be caused by human follies and personal egos of the
leaders. They want to hear and get enough feedback, including on
political development problems.

Whether they are brave and at the same wise enough to overcome
the problems of change is of course the crucial problem. As has
been experienced by other countries in the region, political
change is more difficult to face and overcome than economic ones.

China's elite is in general quite satisfied with former
Chairman Jiang's achievements and will not likely rock the boat
easily. The nightmares of the great leap forward and the cultural
revolution are still so vivid and this will restrain the elite
from going overboard in opposing the new leadership.

In a sense, Jiang's "Three Represents" are pragmatic proposals
and are less of a philosophical or ideological proposition. It is
a pragmatic answer to new problems, namely of how to get more
support of the "productive forces" (namely the "entrepreneurs"
and the other professionals) to the economic and most probably
also the political development of a future China.

This is an effort to make the Party relevant to future
developments. The regional environment also has been much more
favorable to China, particularly her relationship with the U.S.
Therefore, she will not divert the attention and energies away
from her need to develop and modernize further.

For Southeast Asia and Indonesia, a stable, and modernizing
China will produce a positive environment, and will provide the
region also with an opportunity to develop and modernize at the
same time.

In that sense, the peaceful change of leadership in China, for
the first time in her modern history under the CCP, is a positive
development.