No signs of leadership struggle after Deng's death

By Gwynne Dyer

LONDON (JP): Lesser men like widely disliked Premier Li Peng were obliged to take the public blame for ordering the massacre of pro-democracy protesters on Tienanmen Square in 1989, but it was Deng Xiao-ping who actually gave the order. Now that he is dead, how long will it be before it all starts happening again?

Forever, say most observers, believing that the Chinese people have been bought off, distracted, or drugged into submission by the avalanche of consumer goods that has transformed so many people's lives in China since 1989.

At 10 percent growth per year, the Chinese economy has doubled in size since 1989, and per capita income is up by at least 50 percent. President Jiang Zemin, Deng's chosen successor, has had seven clear years to consolidate his own power, with the old man still in the background to run interference for him.

For the first time in 400 years, we are assured, there will not be a succession struggle after the old ruler dies. The Chinese Communists have got away with it, combining a vigorous capitalist economy with rigorous Party control of politics. The "cross-century cadres" will still be in power a decade from now.

Well, maybe. To believe this, you only have to believe that Chinese people are different from everybody else and have no desire to exercise more control over their own lives; that a Communist Party which has spent the past 40 years waging vicious internal feuds has now utterly changed its character; and that there will be no hitch or hiccup in the steady growth of employment and income in China over the next ten years.

The White Queen told Alice that she could believe six impossible things before breakfast. That is only three, but still....

Nobody is suggesting that a new leadership struggle is going to break out next month. As Hong Kong's best China-watcher, Willy Lam of the South China Morning Post, told me last year: "There is a near consensus amongst diplomats and China-watchers in Beijing that the first one to two years after Deng's death would in fact be quite stable. The leadership which Deng has anointed will likely be able to hold the fort for the near term, that means for up to 18 to 24 months."

Nobody seriously expects a simple repetition of the events on Tienanmen Square, either. Eight years on, people are much more cynical. Even students are more cautious, because they have much more to lose. But it is a plain fact that hardly anybody under the age of 40 believes in Communism, or even thinks that their leaders really believe in it. Yet if you don't accept Communist ideology, then by what right do these people hold power?

Not just power, either, but a near-monopoly of wealth. The corruption has grown so great that one Beijing insider estimated recently that at least a dozen senior Communist families are now in the billionaire class. These great and increasingly hereditary concentrations of wealth and power will be tolerated as long as everybody else is getting more prosperous too, but not if the economy stalls. Even temporarily.

The prospect of losing both wealth and power concentrates the mind wonderfully. People who rise to positions of wealth and power, especially in a Communist system, tend to make long-term strategic calculations about how to achieve and preserve those positions. So it would be astounding if many senior Communists were not thinking in terms of moving to a more flexible, more sustainable political system.

Other countries in East Asia have already blazed the path. In Japan, formal democratization after 1945 left the old "iron triangle" of politicians, industrialists and bureaucrats virtually untouched for four decades. There was free speech, a free press and free elections, but the same gang always won. The same strategy is now being successfully implemented in Taiwan and (so far, at least) in South Korea.

This is the line along which the Chinese Communist Party will split -- has already secretly split, in fact, as the dispute between disgraced former Premier Zhao Ziyang and hard-liners like Deng at the time of Tienanmen Square amply demonstrated.

Some senior cadres believe that stonewalling on democratization is the only way to preserve the privileges of the Communist elite. Others (Qiao Shi, the chairman of the National People's Congress, is the most readily identifiable) are convinced that political liberalization is a necessary safety valve and the best long-term guarantee of their power.

If the Chinese Communist Party were to dump its most embarrassing and blood-stained autocrats and hold free elections today -- even allowing other political parties to compete -- its money, its control of patronage, and its ability to corral the massive rural vote would give it an overwhelming victory. It was on just such a basis that Japan's Liberal Democratic Party kept a monopoly of power through 38 years of free elections.

When the intra-Party struggle really gets underway, 18 or 24 months from now, these rival strategies for survival will define the way that the factions line up. The odds are in favor of the 'reformers' winning, simply because they are on average younger, better educated, and richer.

If they win (without triggering an open civil war within the regime), then five years from now China could be a country that superficially meets most of the norms of an open, democratic society. The reality would be rather different, but free speech, a free press and the rule of law are not gains to be sneered at.

If they lose, then sooner or later it is back to Tienanmen Square. Except that next time, maybe it won't be just the government side that uses violence.

The writer is a London-based independent journalist and historian whose columns appear in 35 countries.