Decoding The Inscrutable Chinese CP

By Kumar David -December 1, 2013 

Prof Kumar David

Upshot of the Third Plenum: Decoding the inscrutable Chinese CP

The Third Plenary session of Central Committee elected at the 11-th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party’s met in December 1978, chose Deng Xiaoping as paramount leader, adopted an agenda of economic reforms and the rest is history you might think. No, it was two years before the world awoke to its colossal impact. The plenum communiqué, crafted in Mao-speak, was as opaque as a slab of lead. The Third Plenum of the 18-th CC met in November 2013. Xi Jinping has been waffling about monumental change for months, but the post-plenum communiqué matched its predecessor in foggy opacity. However, a more lucid plenum resolution containing 60 initiatives was released last week. I have not been able to lay hands on a full English version.

However, a few things have happened already; small but crucial experiments in Anhui to allow peasants to sell land, and second, asking Sri Lanka, after CHOGM, to pay attention to human rights. The latter may not be a one-off thing but signal a turn bringing Beijing back from where it is now, way out on a limb, closer to the prevailing international consensus on human rights. Don’t expect a reversed vote at the next UN-HRC or anything dramatic. China moves by deliberate infinitesimal steps, but like a glacier once it begins to shift, change is inexorable. This however is not my topic today, Rajapakse buffoonery bores me. Instead, I turn to the infinitely and globally more important issue of the reforms that have kick-started the Xi Jinping decade.

There is one trait to grasp if you wish to figure out the post-Mao chess board; slow, gradual moves in small steps, watch then move again. Never precipitate big-bangs. Chinese political thinkers are unanimous: The Soviet Union collapsed because of big-shot, big-noise folly; perestroika, glasnost and such like desperate throws of the dice. Confucius like fixation with social stability, consolidation at every stage, safeguarding Party authority, that’s the pace. ‘On the darkest of nights a monkey does not loose its grip’. The Politburo has learnt a Tamil proverb!

The leaders turned a blind eye in 1979 when peasants in one area dismantled Communes, let it spread, and then enacted a universal household responsibility system (in effect, private farming). First a few experimental  joint ventures with state enterprises in the early 1980s, then a welcome mat for overseas Chinese capitalists, now some of the largest foreign investments in history – Foxconn is not a factory, it’s a whole blithering district! Reform came from the countryside and mutated into glittering seaboard cities, then gradually took over the global consumer goods market. All gingerly done with bandaged feet; China’s women may be liberated, but the Party prefers measured steps.

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