The wars of the Chinese succession

Bruce Gilley Princeton University Project Syndicate

What political reforms will Hu Jintao make in China? That is the question to ask the 59-year old engineer who will take over as head of the world's biggest and longest-ruling communist party next month. While talk about the horse-trading surrounding Hu's accession to power -- and President Jiang Zemin's seeming desire not to leave the stage -- has dominated Chinese affairs since summer, more important to China's future is an appreciation of Hu's inheritance and what he will do with it.

Hu Jintao's career does not inspire optimism. A 1998 Xinhua report quoted him as saying that "A good leader should carry forward democracy." But Hu's idea of democracy doesn't appear to contain ideas about the direct election of top leaders or of guaranteed individual freedoms.

According to Wu Jiaxiang, a former staffer on the Communist Central Committee secretariat who worked on political reforms before being jailed for three years after the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre, Hu believes in rule by elites chosen through a rigorous examination and approval process. In internal speeches, Hu identified the grooming of cadres and improved party operations as the keys to political reform. Those ideals were reflected in a new law governing cadres passed in July 2002 that Hu personally announced. This elitist model appeals to Chinese intellectuals who desire refined rulers.

Hu wants nothing to do with increasing political participation or outside checks on communist party power. In various speeches, he warned against fiddling with the party's Leninist foundation. He advocates greater internal party democracy but rejects system- wide democracy. His top three aides in the Central Committee -- Ling Jihua, Zheng Xinli, and He Yiting -- are big advocates of "cadre hearing" reforms in which internal peer-review is used to evaluate government leaders.

Hu's behavior confirms his conservatism. Hu sanctioned a military crackdown in Tibet in March 1989, reversing a liberalizing policy introduced by former party General Secretary Hu Yaobang, and he was among the first provincial leaders to support the Tiananmen crackdown. Hu also holds strong anti- American views, even though his daughter is believed to carry a US passport. While the Central Party School that Hu has headed since 1993 is now more liberal and daring, Hu had little to do with that change, which was instigated by others and approved by Hu after seeking the advice of Jiang.

The issue of meaningful reform is almost certain to surface early on Hu's watch. Forces are building inside the party, as evidenced by a stream of surveys, journal articles, and academic debates, that may lead to a split on the issue of reform in Hu's first term. Such a split happened in the 1986-1989 period, contributing to party's initially confused reactions to the Tiananmen protests. Failure to move on the issue in his first five years may cause Hu to be supplanted, informally if not formally, by others willing to embrace change.

So, how will Hu respond? Will he, like Gorbachev, see the writing on the wall and lead the charge? Or will he be pushed aside by others willing to modernize China's political system more aggressively?

Hu's key rivals are Li Ruihuan, the liberal former mayor of Tianjin who will take over China's parliament next March, and Zeng Qinghong, Jiang's closest aid who now heads the party's Organization Department. Li has called for an expansion of competitive direct elections up to the provincial level as well as for new press freedoms. Zeng sees movement towards a more pluralistic political system as critical so that the party can continue ruling as a grand coalition of the country's main groups. In internal speeches, Zeng has said that China could consider holding nationwide elections as long as they do not threaten national unity, ethnic cohesion, or social stability.

Both Li and Zeng urge cadres to learn from America's democratic system. Zeng even maintains secretive but close ties to overseas pro-democracy groups and, some analysts believe, would reverse the official verdict on the 1989 Tiananmen protests and lift the ban on opposition parties and a free press if the opportunity were to arise.

So the key question for political reform concerns which man gains the upper hand. Zeng is a master manipulator who, given the chance, would run circles around the cautious Hu. In alliance with Li, they would form a formidable force, one likely to enjoy high-level support from senior party elders like Wan Li, Qiao Shi, and Tian Jiyun. They would also likely enjoy the backing of the as yet unspecified leader of the "fifth generation" due to replace Hu in 2012, someone likely to be a provincial-level leader with strong reform credentials.

Within the wider party, a powerful constituency is growing that would support Li and Zeng if they seized the banner of reform while Hu dithered. Almost unnoticed by the outside world, the last four years in China have seen a remarkable outpouring of writings on political reform from across the political spectrum. Ideas vary, but in general there is agreement on faster political liberalization and more civic freedoms.

Hu, then, may become a mere footnote in history, a bridge between the corrupt and divided state of Jiang Zemin and the democratizing leadership of Zeng Qinghong or some other reformer. Like Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, who ruled the USSR between 1982 to 1985, Hu may slip dimly into memory because he was unwilling to confront political reform head-on.

The writer's new book, China's Democratic Future, will be published next year.