Li Peng: Rising influence?

In this first of several dispatches on the CCP's 15th Party Congress, which opens today (Sept. 12) in Beijing, our Asia correspondent Harvey Stockwin reports on the apparently rising influence of Prime Minister Li Peng.

HONG KONG (JP): A few weeks ago, one of the main questions hanging over the 15th Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Congress, due to start today in Beijing, was: Who will replace Li Peng as prime minister of China?

Now the more intriguing query arises: Could it be that Li Peng is in fact the most influential player in the emerging power struggle within the CCP, following the death of China's paramount leader Deng Xiaoping earlier this year?

The good news is that no one doubts that Li Peng and all other top office holders will abide by the two-term limit set by Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s, which was in part due to Deng's perception of the damage done by Mao Zedong staying in power too long.

The bad news remains that China's political culture still does not change -- power follows the man, rather than the title. In other words, while, for example, John Major quickly becomes a political nobody when he ceases to be prime minister, that would be a very difficult feat for Li Peng to accomplish, in the unlikely event that he even wanted complete retirement. The Chinese assumption would be that Li remains, or seeks to remain, a powerful figure, no matter what position he holds.

But Li Peng is not yet in the same position as Deng Xiaoping. Deng remained China's paramount leader long after he had retired from all state or party positions and held only the formal status of being the vice-chairman of China's Bridge Association, bridge being a card game for which Deng held a lifelong addiction.

Li cannot aspire to such preeminence, hence his alliance with Jiang Zemin, formally both the secretary-general of the CCP and president of the Chinese state. Jiang is also chairman of the CCP Military Affairs Commission. Deng had Jiang appointed to all three of these positions in the wake of the purging of former secretary-general Zhao Ziyang following the Beijing Massacre in 1989.

As a result of holding all these three positions, Jiang ranks first in protocol order of Chinese leaders, and in the standing committee of the CCP Politburo. Many outsiders blithely assume that this rank automatically makes Jiang the most powerful player in China's politics. But not all China-watchers are convinced that this is so.

So the question arises -- if Jiang is not the key power player, who is? Li Peng is an obvious candidate.

Li has had much more experience than Jiang in the central bureaucracy, for one thing. He held several positions in the government before being elevated to prime minister in 1988, when Zhao Ziyang agreed to concentrate on party affairs, following the sacking of Hu Yaobang as CCP secretary-general late in 1986.

Li was a key player in the momentous events of 1989 when China was swept by demonstrations in favor of reform. Zhao clearly favored a soft line whereas Li as clearly favored the tough approach, starting with the imposition of martial law in Beijing, and ending with the Beijing Massacre. During these events Jiang was a leading official in Shanghai.

The precise role played by Li in those events is not known. It may have been crucial given that Deng was already aging and ill in that period. Whatever the truth, Li was widely seen as a key architect of the CCP's hardline. While this damaged his image overseas to this day, within the party there were undoubtedly those who felt, and still feel, that Li had saved them from the same fate as that which befell the Soviet Union and the communist parties of Eastern Europe.

We simply do not know enough about the inner workings of the CCP to be able to assert that Li has been able to convert his hardline posture into widespread party-wide factional support. But there have been several recent signs that this may be so.

Li accompanied Jiang Zemin to Hong Kong for the ceremonies returning sovereignty to China. Li will probably return to Hong Kong to host the World Bank-IMF annual meeting to be held there later this month.

Li has been the only top Chinese official to go overseas in the run up to the 15th party congress. In late August he visited Malaysia and Singapore and made some important foreign policy statements.

Even more crucially, when Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto visited Beijing last week, Li Peng's role was heavily emphasized on television news, to the exclusion of other top Chinese leaders. Thus on Sept. 5 Hashimoto met Jiang Zemin, third-ranking CCP leader Qiao Shi, and Vice-Premier Zhu Rongji, who is widely expected to replace Li Peng as prime minister.

But the television news that day, after showing Hashimoto shaking hands with Jiang, concentrated on footage from the previous day, showing only Li negotiating with the Japanese leader.

In China, exposure in the severely controlled media often equates with a leader's standing in the CCP power elite. Given his increased exposure recently, it is small wonder that the previously dour Li has been cracking a smile more often of late. In other words, he hardly looks like a man who is losing a power struggle.

But another important indicator of Li Peng's rising influence has been the party jobs which he is alleged to be seeking after he steps down as prime minister next March.

The word "alleged" is carefully chosen. China's economy is becoming more open but China's politics are certainly not following in the economy's footsteps. Politics are as closed as ever, as one incident perfectly illustrates.

Recently, news agency reports went around the world reporting a speech delivered by Jiang Zemin. Nearly all of them omitted an important fact, helpfully recorded by the China Daily, that the speech had actually been delivered many months before, on January 29th.

Consider what this means. The inner workings of the CCP are so sealed off from Chinese, let alone foreign, eyes that an important speech can be held in abeyance, probably being altered or rewritten, while it remains an inner party secret. Both the ultimate release of the speech, plus its eventual contents, almost certainly reflect the ebb and flow of CCP factionalism and policy debates. But the outsider, Chinese or foreign, can no more know the precise nature of the factional jockeying than the actual words spoken by Jiang on January 29th. Outsider ignorance of what really happens within the inner sanctums of the CCP is monumental. All China-watching is guesswork.

In other words, Li Peng, or any other CCP office-seeker, will never come out and say: These are the posts I am seeking and this is why I am seeking them.

China-watchers have to rely on the occasional leak and a lot of conjecture. No other major nation in the world is as secretive as China about its politics.

That said, one widespread conjecture earlier this year was that Jiang Zemin would seek to use the 15th Party Congress to revise the party constitution and reinstate the post of party chairman, previously used under Chairman Mao and then by his designated successor Chairman Hua Guofeng.

The expectation was also that Li Peng and Qiao Shi, the second and third ranking CCP leaders, would both become party vice- chairmen under Chairman Jiang.

This was an interesting episode in post-Deng Xiaoping CCP politics. It was Deng, after all, who, at the CCP plenum held in February 1980, returned power to the CCP Central Secretariat. At that stage, Deng was busy undermining Chairman Hua, and seeking to diversify power-holding in the process. But Deng declined to take the top party, state and military positions himself, even when urged to do so.

Ten years later, however, Deng went back on this reform as he made sure that Jiang Zemin obtained those three positions. So the proposed revival of the CCP chairmanship was a sign of the CCP rejecting Deng's past reformist teaching, that no one person should have too much power in his hands as Mao did. But, in later life, by securing for Jiang the positions he had declined for himself, Deng laid the groundwork for the chairmanship to be reinstated, as the Li-Jiang factional alliance has sought to accrue greater power.

However the indications are that the proposal has fallen by the wayside. If so, this obviously suggests that while Jiang and Li felt strong enough to suggest the proposal, they have not been strong enough to carry it through. Alternatively, enough CCP members remember and care about Deng's reformist teaching to be able to block the maneuver.

But Jiang and Li did not give up, for their next proposal was, if anything, more ambitious. This was that Li should take over as chairman of the National People's Congress, China's equivalent of a parliament, from which position he would be easily able to sustain and enhance the influence he has gained as prime minister. But this means replacing the third-ranking CCP leader, the current NPC chairman, Qiao Shi.

Obviously, should the 15th Party Congress concur in this proposal, Li would retain his status as the second-ranking CCP leader. It is also suggested that the leader widely tipped to move up to prime minister, deputy premier Zhu Rongji, would move from fifth to third in protocol order.

If this is what actually takes place at the 15th congress, then it will certainly indicate that the Li-Jiang factional alliance is in the ascendant.

But there are indications that they are not having things all their own way. It was expected that the top leadership would sort out key personnel changes at the seaside resort of Beidaihe, during late July and August, as has been done in the past. They did not do so, and, as far as can be seen, an expanded Politburo meeting in the first week of September, which included the still- influential elderly cadres, likewise failed to finalize the post- congress line-up. Instead the final decisions were evidently left to a four day plenum of the full CCP Central Committee which concluded on September 9th.

So far, the self-confident appearances of Li Peng on the nightly television news are the only clear-cut signs that the outgoing prime minister is obtaining the future status and influence that he obviously seeks.

Windows A: If this is what actually takes place at the 15th congress, then it will certainly indicate that the Li-Jiang factional alliance is in the ascendant.

Windows B: So far, the self-confident appearances of Li Peng on the nightly television news are the only clear-cut signs that the outgoing prime minister is obtaining the future status and influence that he obviously seeks.