Mentre la Cina aspetta nuovi dirigenti, i liberisti guardano ad un capo provinciale di partito/Gli stretti legami con le forze arm

Mentre la Cina aspetta nuovi dirigenti, i liberisti guardano ad un capo provinciale di partito

 

–       Mentre il Congresso del PCC decide chi mettere al potere (ogni dieci anni), alcuni riformisti liberisti sperano che ottenga un posto nella direzione centrale Wang Yang (57), dal 2007 dirigente del PCC della provincia del Guandong (100 milioni di abitanti, centro dell’export in forte sviluppo, vicino a Hong Kong, che ha attirato milioni di immigrati dalle campagne).

 

o   Nel Guandong Deng Xiaoping promosse nei primi anni Ottanta un esperimento riuscito di libero mercato; Deng tornò nel 1992 per ricacciare simbolicamente indietro i conservatori del partito che minacciavano le sue riforme.

–       Wang, uno dei 25 membri del politburo è il candidato che dovrebbe bilanciare tecnocrati e conservatori, che si prevede prevarranno nel CC del Politburo del PCC, attualmente composto da 9 uomini e che sarà ristretto a 7.

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o   Due dei posti sono già occupati da Xi Jinping (futuro presidente cinese) e Li Keqiang (futuro primo ministro)

 

–       Pur essendo un camaleonte politico Wang è divenuto il portavoce dei liberisti, uno dei pochi capi carismatici cinesi, come prima l’ex rivale Bo-Xilai, capo di partito del Chongqing, Cina S-O, osannato dai nuovi sinistri, che vorrebbero il ritorno del populismo maoista e silurato con il pretesto di uno scandalo e un omicidio …

 

 

–       Nel dibattito sulla politica economica, Bo Xilai era per una distribuzione più equa della “torta”; Wang per aumentare la torta prima di distribuirla più equamente.

 

–       Non è probabile che Wang ascenda in questa occasione al CC, ma che ci arrivi con il prossimo giro di pensionamenti nel 2017; intanto potrebbe ottenere la carica di vice-premier.

 

 

 

–       Secondo alcuni analisti se Wang non entra nel CC sarà il segno del calo di influenza del presidente Hu Jintao e del premier Wen Jiabao, uno dei suoi maggiori sostenitori.

 

–       Potrebbe essere motivo di mancata ascesa la sua relativa giovane età, perché con tre mandati possibili accumulerebbe troppo potere.

 

 

–       È ben visto dall’intellighenzia urbana e dai contadini espropriati; molti però lo ritengono un pragmatico travestito da liberista.

 

 

–       Secondo persone dentro il partito le credenziali di Wang come riformatore sono esagerate,

ha più volte rinnegato le aspettative di cambiamento da lui stesso incoraggiate …

o   finite in nulla le proposte di trasformare la dipendenza del Guandong dall’export a basso costo un industrie innovative ecosostenibili. È ricorso a repressione e censura per ingraziarsi i leader del Nord che decideranno il suo futuro politico; ha attuato una politica anti-corruzione (populista).

 

–       Wang non è un liberista stile occidentale, non vuole elezioni libere; ma mentre l’apparato di partito persegue una rigida censura contro i media, egli sostiene verbalmente la liberalizzazione politica e le virtù dell’individualismo stile USA.

 

–       Wang ha attuato alcune riforme per la riduzione della burocrazia; ha alleggerito le restrizioni contro le Ong, si sono moltiplicati gruppi locali della società civile, ma le riforme sono attuate assieme ad ammonimenti.

 

–       I sostenitori dei diritti dei lavoratori nello Shenzen dicono di essere stati perseguitati dai funzionari locali …

Gli stretti legami con le forze armate del nuovo leader cinese potrebbero mettere alla prova gli Usa

–       Negli ultimi quattro mesi la Cina ha assunto in Asia un atteggiamento aggressivo e più nazionalistico per affermare i propri interessi territoriali nel Mar di Cina Meridionale, Filippine, Vietnam, e nel mar Cinese Orientale con il Giappone;

 

o   secondo alcuni analisti, questo atteggiamento potrebbe prefigurare il tono del decennio della futura presidenza di Xi Jingping, che ha dato un messaggio chiaro al segretario americano alla Difesa, Panetta: gli Usa devono tenersi fuori dalla disputa sulle isole tra Giappone e Cina. 

 

o   Commentatori e funzionari cinesi hanno accennato al bisogno del Giappone di distanziarsi dagli Usa …

–       Xi Jinping (59), figlio di un generale, vanta legami molto più stretti con le forze armate cinesi, in crescita, di quelli che aveva il presidente uscente Hu Jintao alla sua elezione.

–       Anche se non diverrà subito presidente della Commissione Centrale Militare (ora è vice-presidente), lo sarà entro due anni, e gli rimarranno 8 anni come diretto responsabile.

–       Poco conosciuto fuori della Cina prima di divenire primo segretario del PCC nel 2007, ha fatto carriera nella zona costiera delle province del Fujian e Zhejiang, di fronte a Taiwan, con cui ha potuto alimentare legami economici, ha incontrato suoi leader economici, che hanno fatto enormi investimenti nelle due province, divenute uno dei più potenti motori economici della Cina.

 

–       Ha mantenuto il portafoglio delle relazioni con Taiwan quando nel 2003 è divenuto capo del partito nello Zhejinag, anche se di solito è il governatore a seguire gli affari con Taiwan. Da attendersi, secondo un ex rappresentate di Taiwan a Washington, che nel medio termine Xi chieda con più forza l’integrazione di Taiwan con la Cina.

–       La combinazione del potere politico come capo del PCC, e le buone relazioni con i militari farebbero di Xi un leader di peso con cui gli Usa devono confrontarsi.

–       Uno dei maggiori cambiamenti della politica estera cinese rispetto al decennio trascorso (concentrata sull’assicurarsi le materie prime per lo sviluppo interno) sarà una maggior enfasi sul rafforzamento militare (con un aumento del bilancio in linea con/ o maggiore dell’aumento dell’economia) per proteggere gli interessi cinesi in Asia ed espandersi all’estero.

–       Il rafforzamento dell’Esercito popolare cinese giunge proprio in un momento in cui gli alleati asiatici degli Usa (Giappone, Sud Corea, Australia Singapore e India) si chiedono se questi ultimi dispongano dei mezzi finanziari e della volontà di rafforzare la propria presenza militare in Asia.

–       Le forze armati cinesi attendono armamenti sofisticati e missili spaziali e a lungo raggio, utilizzabili contro le portaerei americane nell’Oceano Pacifico e Indiano.

–       È da vedere se sceglierà di confrontarsi in modo più positivo con gli Usa o di sfidarli, o una via di mezzo.

 

–       Secondo Jin Canrong, professore della School of International Studies at Renmin University di Pechino, nel suo discorso a Washington a febbraio, Xi ha lanciato una sfida alla leadership globale degli Usa suggerendo che Washington deve dare spazio alla crescente potenza cinese. Jin prevede che l’economia cinese continui a crescere più velocemente di quella americana, un fatto che modificherà il modo di pensare degli americani.

Da quando è vice-presidente ha visitato oltre 50 paesi, contro i 17 visitati da Hu Jintao quando era vice-presidente.

As China Awaits New Leadership, Liberals Look to a Provincial Party Chief

–          GUANGZHOU, China — As the once-a-decade tussle over how to fill seats in the Communist Party’s supreme ruling body enters its final days, many of the nation’s beleaguered liberals are casting an anxious gaze southward to Guangdong Province in the hope that the top official of this booming export hub near Hong Kong might win a coveted spot in the central leadership.

–          Although his prospects have dimmed in recent weeks, Wang Yang, the provincial party boss who has cultivated a following by denouncing “entrenched interests” and promoting individual happiness over party perquisites, remains the reformist camp’s best candidate for counterbalancing the slate of colorless technocrats and conservatives who are likely to dominate the all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee that runs China.

But anxiety among Mr. Wang’s followers has been heightened by the impending retirement of Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, whose frequent pronouncements on democracy endeared him to liberal dreamers, even if his words proved to be largely empty talk during his 10 years in office.

“Wang Yang has become the main receptacle for the expectations and hopes of China’s reformers,” said Xiao Bin, a public affairs professor at Sun Yat-sen University here in Guangzhou, the provincial capital.

–          Even if he is something of a political chameleon, Mr. Wang has become a torchbearer for advocates of free-market economics and quasi-enlightened governance, much the way his former rival Bo Xilai, the fallen party chief of Chongqing in southwest China, had been championed by the neo-leftists who crave a return of Mao-style populism.

–          With Mr. Bo having been deposed in a salacious murder and adultery scandal, Mr. Wang stands as one of the country’s few charismatic political figures.

“There’s always a degree of maneuvering over who may or may not be promoted to Standing Committee positions, but I can’t recall a time when we’ve been so focused on the prospects of one person,” said Joseph Fewsmith, an expert on Chinese politics at Boston University.

–          For a variety of reasons, the Standing Committee, currently run by nine men, will probably be reduced to seven seats during the coming party congress, which begins on Thursday.

–          With two spots already occupied by Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang, who are set to become president and prime minister respectively, Communist Party power brokers, including retired President Jiang Zemin, 86, are in the throes of a secretive political dance to decide on the remaining handful of seats.

–          Even though he is considered unlikely to make it to the inner sanctum this time, party insiders say that Mr. Wang, 57, will play an important role in the next government, perhaps as a vice premier, and that he is an odds-on favorite to ascend to the Standing Committee during the next round of retirements in 2017.

–          A lifelong party stalwart and a current member of the 25-seat Politburo, Mr. Wang would not be mistaken for a Western-style liberal. He does not call for free elections, and he rarely strays far from the agenda set by Beijing.

–          But at a time when the party apparatus has embraced a clenched-fist approach to news media censorship, rural unrest and demands for social justice, Mr. Wang stands out for his paeans to political liberalization and the virtues of American-style individualism.

“We should eradicate the wrong concept that happiness is a benevolent gift from the party and the government,” he said this year.

Known for his cherubic smile and a refusal to follow the pack of party elders who dye their graying hair jet black, Mr. Wang, the son of a laborer, is fond of folksy sound bites that sometimes take aim at the party elite.

–          Since his appointment as Guangdong’s party chief in 2007, he has called on provincial officials to publicly reveal their assets and ordered government departments to communicate with the public via Sina Weibo, China’s wildly popular microblog platform.

–          In June, after one of several recent visits to Singapore, he returned home to extol the city-state’s soft-glove approach to authoritarian rule. “If China doesn’t reform,” he said, “we will be slow boiled like frogs.”

–          When he was faced with an insurrection last year in the fishing village of Wukan, Mr. Wang displayed a knack for coolheaded crisis management: he called off the riot police, tossed out Wukan’s corrupt party officials and allowed villagers to elect a new slate of leaders.

Mr. Wang is often mentioned in the same breath as Mr. Bo, who also managed — at least for a while — to navigate the narrow space between party establishment and political maverick. Their jousting took the form of a debate over economic policy, expressed most notably in cryptic talk about cake — as a metaphor for China’s wealth.

–          Mr. Bo argued for cutting up the cake and distributing it more equally; Mr. Wang insisted on first making the cake bigger.

With their forceful personal styles and flair for self-promotion, both Mr. Wang and Mr. Bo are controversial figures within a party that expects its leaders to be wooden apparatchiks.

– Mr. Wang’s office declined to make him available for an interview. But party insiders who have followed his career, which includes his unremarkable stint as the party boss of Chongqing, say his reformist credentials are overblown. He has repeatedly tacked away from the expectations of bolder change that he himself encouraged, and even die-hard supporters admit that his vows to fight corruption, reduce the power of vested interests and increase government transparency have had, at best, mixed results.

–          “The thunder is loud, but the rain has been rather light,” said Mr. Xiao, the academic, who nonetheless counts himself an admirer.

–          Some of Mr. Wang’s boldest ideas — like shifting Guangdong’s dependence on cheap exports to innovative and environmentally friendly industries — came to naught. Meanwhile, critics say, he has used an iron glove during the past year in a cynical attempt to burnish his appeal to the leaders up north who will decide his political future.

–          He initiated an aggressive anticorruption drive that resulted in scores of arrests, and, more ominously, tightened censorship rules ahead of the party congress. And his decision to solve the Wukan impasse through peaceful means appears to have been a one-shot gesture, say activists who point to a spate of recent protests over illegal land grabs that ended in violence.

–          Political analysts suggest that Mr. Wang simply adapted to the more liberal ethos of Guangdong, which is heavily influenced by Hong Kong, the former British colony that enjoys a measure of self-rule. Long a magnet for millions of rural migrants drawn to the region’s factories, Guangdong, with its 100 million people, is a weather vane for the social and economic pressures bearing down on China.

–          In the early 1980s, the paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping, and his allies promoted China’s successful experiment with the free market here. And Mr. Deng returned in 1992 to symbolically swat back the party conservatives who threatened his reforms.

“People here are proud of Guangdong’s progressive streak,” said Ding Li, a senior researcher at the Guangdong Academy of Social Sciences. “We are also happy to be far away from Beijing — and the least controlled by it.”

–          In addition to a few pilot projects that reduced red tape and shrank an unwieldy bureaucracy, Mr. Wang’s most notable accomplishment was to ease the restrictions that hobble nongovernmental organizations in much of China.

–          The changes have led to a flowering of local civil society groups, but the reforms appear to have come with some caveats.

–          In Shenzhen, labor rights advocates say they have been dogged by local officials who object to their work and who they say forced seven such groups out of their offices.

“His words sound sweet to the ears, but they are hollow,” Guo Feixiong, 46, a human rights advocate who recently emerged from a five-year prison term, said of Mr. Wang.

–          If Mr. Wang does not make it onto the Standing Committee, some analysts say, it will be an indication of the waning influence of departing President Hu Jintao as well as Mr. Wen, who has been one of his most vocal supporters.

–          Mr. Wang’s rise may well be hamstrung as well by his relative youth. If elevated now, he could serve three five-year terms on the Standing Committee, which, apparently in the minds of some party elders, would allow him to amass too much power.

–          For the moment, members of China’s urban intelligentsia and the disenfranchised farmers who see him as their champion have been left to fret and speculate. Many, like Liu Zhengqing, 48, a rights lawyer in Guangdong, are fully aware that Mr. Wang may simply be a political pragmatist dressed as a liberal.

“I admit that Wang Yang isn’t a great reformer,” Mr. Liu said, “but considering the other leaders out there, he is the best hope we have.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Close Army Ties of China’s New Leader Could Test the U.S.

–          BEIJING — On one of his many visits abroad in recent years, Xi Jinping, the presumptive new leader of China, met in 2009 with local Chinese residents in Mexico City, where in a relaxed atmosphere he indirectly criticized the United States.

–          “There are a few foreigners, with full bellies, who have nothing better to do than try to point fingers at our country,” Mr. Xi said, according to a tape broadcast on Hong Kong television. “China does not export revolution, hunger, poverty nor does China cause you any headaches. Just what else do you want?”

–          Mr. Xi is set to be elevated to the top post of the Chinese Communist Party at the 18th Party Congress scheduled to begin here on Nov. 8 — only two days after the American election. He will take the helm of a more confident China than the United States has ever known. He will be assuming supreme power in China at a time when relations between the two countries are adrift, sullied by suspicions over a clash of interests in Asia and by frequent attacks on China in the American presidential campaign.

–          In the last four months, China has forged an aggressive, more nationalistic posture in Asia that may set the tone for Mr. Xi’s expected decade-long tenure, analysts and diplomats say, pushing against American allies, particularly Japan, for what China considers its territorial imperatives.

–          The son of a revolutionary general, Mr. Xi, 59, boasts far closer ties to China’s fast-growing military than the departing leader, Hu Jintao, had when he took office.

o   As Mr. Xi rose through the ranks of the Communist Party, he made the most of parallel posts in the People’s Liberation Army, deeply familiarizing himself with the inner workings of the armed forces. 

–           Even if Mr. Xi does not immediately become head of the crucial Central Military Commission as well as party leader, he will almost certainly do so within two years, giving him at least eight years as the direct overseer of the military.

– This combination of political power as head of the Communist Party and good relations with a more robust military could make Mr. Xi a formidable leader for Washington to contend with, analysts and diplomats in China and the United States say. 

–          “The basic question is whether Xi will suspend the drift in the U.S.-China relationship and take concrete steps to put it on a more positive footing — or will he put it on a different, more confrontational track?” said Christopher K. Johnson, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, and until recently a China analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency.

The answer appears to lie somewhere in between.

–          In a speech in Washington in February, Mr. Xi said that China and the United States should forge a “new type of relationship between major countries in the 21st century.”

–          Mr. Xi offered little specificity beyond respect for each side’s “core interests and major concerns,” “increasing mutual understanding and strategic trust” and “enhancing cooperation and coordination in international affairs.”

–          But essentially, said Jin Canrong, a professor at the School of International Studies at Renmin University in Beijing, Mr. Xi was challenging the global leadership of the United States by suggesting that Washington needs to make room for China’s rising power.

–          “China should shoulder some responsibility for the United States and the United States should share power with China,” Dr. Jin said. “The United States elites won’t like it,” he added, “but they will have to” accept it.

–          Dr. Jin predicted that the Chinese economy would continue to grow at a much faster pace than America’s. “That fact will change their minds,” Dr. Jin said of American attitudes toward sharing power with China.

–          Before becoming heir apparent — ascending at the last party congress in 2007 to the position of first secretary of the Communist Party and then a few months later to the vice presidency of the Chinese government — Mr. Xi had little exposure to the world beyond China.

–          Significantly, though, he spent much of his career before moving to Beijing in the coastal area of Fujian and Zhejiang Provinces across from Taiwan, which China regards as a breakaway province. In that capacity, he nurtured economic ties with Taiwan, and met frequently with Taiwan business leaders who made huge investments transforming the two provinces into one of China’s most powerful economic engines.

–          In 2003, when he was elevated from provincial governor to party chief in Zhejiang, the top position there, Mr. Xi kept the portfolio of relations with Taiwan, even though Taiwan affairs were usually relegated to the governor, said Joseph Wu, a former representative of Taiwan in Washington and a member of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party.

–          In the medium term, Mr. Wu said, he expects Mr. Xi to be “tougher” in calling for greater integration between Taiwan and the mainland, a policy that Taiwan has resisted so far.

–          Since becoming vice president, Mr. Xi has visited more than 50 countries, a concerted effort to get to know the world before taking power, said Bo Zhiyue, senior research fellow at the East Asian Institute at the National University of Singapore, who tracks elite politics in China.

–          In contrast, Mr. Hu made 17 foreign visits during his tenure as vice president, Dr. Bo said.

–          One of the big changes from the past decade, when China’s foreign policy was focused on securing raw materials from abroad for its soaring domestic economy, will be a stronger emphasis on building up the military to protect China’s interests in Asia and expand its reach abroad. Mr. Xi is perfectly positioned to take on that role.

“The P.L.A. considers he is their man,” said Dr. Jin, the professor at Renmin University.

–          Mr. Xi will be in charge of a military whose budget almost certainly will grow at a pace with the economy, or even faster.

o   The People’s Liberation Army is awaiting an array of sophisticated weaponry now under development, including space and long-range missiles capable of use against American aircraft carriers in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. The question is how it plans to exploit them.

“There are voices in China saying that now that the military has the capacity, they should use them,” said Phillip C. Saunders, director of the Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs at the National Defense University in Washington.

–          As vice president, Mr. Xi has served as vice chairman of the Central Military Commission since 2010 under President Hu. As part of the brutal factional politics at the top of the Communist Party, Mr. Hu delayed Mr. Xi’s rise to the deputy post by one year, but that did little to undermine his longstanding ties to army leaders, Chinese officials say.

–          The Chinese military’s new buoyancy comes as America’s allies across Asia — Japan, South Korea, Australia and other friends, particularly Singapore and India — worry whether the United States has the money, and the will, to enhance its military presence in Asia, as President Obama has promised. 

In this situation, China will try to make inroads across the region, Asian diplomats say.

–          But Mr. Xi, with his strong standing with military leaders, may also find himself called on at times to restrain the ambitions of the army. “Xi will have to guide strategy,” Dr. Saunders said. “Then he has to go back to the P.L.A. and say, ‘This is how it will be.’ That is potentially contentious.”

–          Even before his watch begins, many see the stiffer hand of Mr. Xi in disputes in the South China Sea with the Philippines and Vietnam and in the East China Sea with Japan.

–          Chinese officials and commentators have alluded recently to what they see as the need for Japan to distance itself from the United States, even forgo the mutual defense treaty with Washington.

When Mr. Xi met with Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta in Beijing in September, he delivered “an earful,” and left the unmistakable message that the United States should stay out of the way in the standoff between Japan and China over claims to the disputed islands.

Many see that as a harbinger of an effort by Mr. Xi over the next decade to increase the power and presence of China in Asia, a region where the United States has held the upper hand since the end of World War II.