Brain Fertilizer

Simon Says:

Hu and Wen have one main priority above all else: to keep the CCP in power. Everything else flows from that.

Yep. But it goes farther than that. I'm going to take this opportunity to get up on my soapbox and reiterate what I've come to understand about Mainland China's government.

See, if you look at the history of the world and even the United States, every government's top priority, number one function, and prime directive is to keep itself in power. You can see some of that motivation even in the way AG Reno handled David Koresh and the Branch Davidians.

China has a few aspects that make their situation unique.

First, as a people, it seems to me like the Chinese are more obsessed with getting rich than any other people on earth. I'm not sure why that is, but I'm working on some theories. Some definite elements are:

a) China was established as an empire and a conceptual single entity before any of the world's major religions sprang up. And while Buddhism had a deep and profound impact on China, it isn't responsible for China's growth and greatness at all, the way Islam is associated with and drove the rise of the Middle East, the way Hindu is associated with and drove the rise of India, the way Christianity is associated with and drove the rise of western Europe.

b) China has a centuries-old mechanism for allowing the intelligent to elevate themselves and enrich their family through the civil service examinations. If a family could scrape enough money together to educate an intelligent son enough for him to even pass the first of the tests, they could free themselves from toil and trouble. Sure, royalty and nobility were out of reach to the common person, but wealth and comfort was not. Just as the periods of starvation can be seen in Chinese attitudes toward food and how they are willing to eat just about anything that will hold still long enough to add seasoning, the method of "getting rich through education to attain a level involving govt kickbacks" has really seeped into the national consciousness.

Going back to how this makes China's government situation unique, in more modern times, the Chinese really believed that Communism could make them all rich. Not just comfortable, not just enough to eat, but actually rich. And they were willing to make sacrifices as an entire nation and an entire people in order to achieve that goal. They toiled in near (or sometimes actual and abject) poverty for more than a generation, waiting for the windfall. When it never came, Deng Xiaoping had no choice but to allow "modified" socialism, i.e., some elements of capitalism, and once that "wolf" was in the door, it has relentlessly gobbled up the elements of socialism. And the more it has excreted wealth, the more people are eager to let it in to their homes and lives.

Wonderful, right? The people are getting rich like they always wanted, and the govt is responsible for helping it along. What could be the problem?

Well, the legitimacy of the govt of China is based pretty much only on the original mandate to bring about communism. They kind of played a shell game to stay in power while abandoning that original goal. Still, no real problem. But it does seem to mean that they can't figure out how to transform the govt structure and methods as deftly as they've transformed the economy; they still use force, rule of whim, and opacity to protect themselves. And if the people ever did tire of communist party rule and want them to step down, they have a less sturdy basis on which to refuse. Hence, the over-reaction at Tian'an Men square in 1989...

And the way that Mao Zedong maintained his power was unfortunate: anyone who threatened his power and position was branded as a corrupt capitalist. It might have kept him in power and maintained his hero status in the People's Heart, but while it was good for him, it did some permanent damage to the People's Trust of the govt. After all, they had been sacrificing for years to be able to get rich, and that day of enrichment was being delayed by govt officials who selfishly lined their own pockets.

And in that is the element that makes Chinese politics so wacky: for millenia (literally!), the accepted and respected way to get rich was to educate yourself, get a position in govt, and let your whole family live off the sweetheart deals you could make as part of the govt system. Nearly every current communist party official got his position by getting an education and working his way up through the party system. His family members then demand to use his position and access to enrich themselves. He's fulfilling the national dream! He's carrying out the historical imperative!

...but if the People ever found out that he's getting rich on their backs, they'll have him executed and throw his family in jail.

(When you understand how important the family is in China, you'll see how the second part of that is probably the most devastating)

And so the difficulty of every government official is getting down off the tiger with life, wealth, and family intact. When Jiang Zemin had to step down from his position, he tried to retain power...Li Peng was the #3 most powerful guy, but wanted to totally retire. He threw his power to Jiang Zemin to protect his family, kind of leaving Zhu Rongji's protege, Wen Jiabao, in a weakened position. But then Jiang Zemin tangled with his putative successor, Hu Jintao, and apparently lost. Hu was apparently able to use a threat of a corruption charge on Jiang or one of Jiang's family members to get Jiang to back off, and once you show weakness in China's govt system, you are dead in the water.

So that's the additional element that makes China's govt so schizophrenic: By achieving what they are supposed to achieve (as they are pretty much told from birth...it's in all the literature and history), they find themselves in the situation that all they are doing is considered a betrayal that they must keep secret to continue living, and they have to find a good exit strategy to keep their family and comfort. And the first sign of weakness brings a feeding frenzy of other Machiavellian officials who want to burnish their own star at your expense...

It's messy, to be sure.