New Chinese leadership focuses on economy

The Korea Herald, Asia News Network, Seoul

While the world anxiously watches the development of a new war in the Middle East, the new leadership in China, represented by President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, has quietly taken up day-to-day business, primarily of keeping up the nation's economic momentum. One conspicuous sign of change, according to reports from Beijing, is a public campaign to spruce up the capital city that will play host for the Summer Olympics in five years.

The long-anticipated leadership change in the neighboring country, which took shape through the just-ended session of the National People's Congress, comes less than a month after the inauguration of a new administration in Seoul. Fresh efforts to elevate relations between the two countries seem to be in order for the two governments that now both have younger leaders.

The process with which the two nations replaced their respective leaderships shows a striking difference, however. Koreans chose their president in a direct popular vote in a democratic system which they fashioned through a long, hard struggle. In China, on the other hand, the "elitist politics" established by the late patriarch Deng Xiaoping worked again in the shift to the Fourth Generation leadership.

Two 60-year-old technocrats, groomed by their seniors for years, were enthroned, and the Third Generation stalwarts Jiang Zemin, Zhu Rongji and Li Peng receded to the backdrop as if they were making a voluntary exit. In an intriguing power-sharing scheme, Jiang retains significant influence as head of the People's Liberation Army.

The outside world is curious whether the new leaders, for all their heavy economic tasks, are ready to decide whether to reactivate political reform, which has virtually been stalled since the Tiananmen Square incident of 1989. Jiang and his colleagues may resist any swift liberalization moves but, for the new leaders, initiatives for democratic reforms would give them political legitimacy and popular support, which will be as important as economic success.

Fears of uncontrollable socioeconomic chaos, which was the rationale behind the suppression in 1989, must still loom large in the minds of Chinese leaders as well as many intellectuals and businesspeople. Yet a growing portion of the 1.3 billion population is learning what happened across the Taiwan Straits and in South Korea over the years. As the standard of living improves, desires for participatory politics must grow in coming days, beyond the current level of participation in the party and government organizations limited mostly to entrepreneurs and professionals.

As a leading power of the world community, particularly as a member of the World Trade Organization, China cannot afford to be complacent about its reputation in terms of human rights. A police-state image has been reinforced among Koreans as they watched the People's Armed Police crack down on North Korean refugees in Northeast China and Beijing. The repression of the Falungong followers has invited strong protests from the United States, Canada and Europe -- where the human rights issue has been a major cause for diplomatic tension with China.

President Hu and Prime Minister Wen must know that government initiatives to introduce social and political reforms are always more effective, and easier, than buckling under pressure from the bottom. The two men do not have the charismatic leadership displayed by Deng or even Jiang, and their continued dependence on security forces to maintain existing systems is feared to face upheavals many times the proportion of Tiananmen.

And there are the problems of corruption, the widening gap between the urban rich and the rural poor, and the large number of unemployed migrants to cities. The rich backgrounds of both Hu and Wen as bureaucrats in tackling this malaise of China will hopefully lead to a visible outcome. We may as well advise its new leaders, from Korea's own experience, that corruption is very much related to the degree of political openness and transparency and that development of the rural community is also intertwined with the process of democratization.

The economies of Korea and China are both supplementary and competitive, and interdependence will continue to grow in the years ahead. The old expression of a "lips and teeth" relationship has become a reality over the rather short time since the re-establishment of diplomatic ties in 1992. An early summit-level contact is desired between the two governments to widen the existing avenues of cooperation and to search for ways to increase friendship.