Author: M. V. Kamath
Publication: The Free Press Journal
Date: November 28, 2002
On November 15, 2002, a new a post-Revolution
generation of younger leaders assumed the reins of power of the Communist
Party of China (CPC) and 59-year old Hu Jintao, currently vice-President,
took over the party's secretaryship from his mentor and long-time leader
(1989-2002) Jiang Zemin. What does this presage for India? Or does
it really matter? It would seem that six associates of Jiang have been
named to the nine-man Politburo Standing Committee which is China's top
ruling body which should normally mean that Jiang's policy towards India
would possibly continue, unchanged.
But we will have to wait and see.
Jiang may have retired from the secretaryship, but he will continue to
be the President and chairman of the Central Military Commission at least
until next March when the government leadership changes will be due.
Will this chosen successor Hu make any meaningful changes in China's foreign
policy? Will he keep Pakistan a little further from his heart and at the
same time come closer towards India? No one apparently knows and few dare
to predict.
Sadly, the Indian media has been
showing little interest in China and its leaders. What bells will ring
in Indian minds if one mentions Wu Bangguo, Wen Jiabao, Jia Qinglin, Zeng
Qinghong, Huang Ju, Wu Guanzeng, Li Changchun and Luo Gan? There would
hardly be anyone in India's political circles who would even be able to
pronounce these names correctly. And yet these are the members of the Politburo
who make policy. Isn't it time for our policy makers to wake up?
Even the new leader Hu is an unknown
quantity in India. For that matter, he is reported to be even more
of an enigma even in China itself. A report in the `New York Times' says:
``Read the 68-page address that President Jiang Zemin delivered to the
nation last week. Watch TV or read newspapers, listen to businessmen or
people on the street. No one talks about Hu Jintao. The 59-year old party
apparatchik has climbed to the top rung of the hierarchy leaving fingerprints.
There is no policy, phrase or point of view clearly associated with Hu''.
But then that is China, not India. Junior leaders do not speak out of turn.
They know their place under the sun.
As long as Mao Tse tung was alive,
Deng Xiaoping would not have dared to utter a world against his boss or
his political theories. But once Mao was safely buried, Deng came into
his own. In the case of Hu, should he have any special views in mind
he will, no doubt, have to wait for the demise of Jiang and that may take
some more years. A former official ousted after the crack-down on the 1989
Democracy Movement in China has been quoted as saying that Hu is like the
moon, reflecting light, or turning dark, depending on the circumstances.
That may be an extreme description of the new leader hailing from the middle
class (if such there is) but there is no doubt that the has survived a
decade-long leadership trial by persuading elders that he is the perfect
party mandarin, pragmatic and flexible, yet discreet and fiercely loyal.
The son of a merchant, Hu has been
variously described as ``the enforcer who was the top official in Tibet
when China imposed martial law there in 1989 to quell unrest, the nationalist
who supported anti-American protesters after a US bomb destroyed the Chinese
Embassy in Yugoslavia in 1999, the innovator who installed broadband Internet
access at the Communist Party school and encouraged academic debates about
democracy and separation of powers'', and one, broadly speaking more interested
in power for power's sake than in a larger political vision. That is not
exactly what is likely to make India happy.
A man who can sternly put down a
revolt in Tibet cannot be expected to be more accommodating when it comes
to discussing boundary lines with India. Apparently Hu has been China-bound
all of his 59 years except for two foreign trips last year. This
man needs to be watched. And yet, China is on the move even ideologically.
Till the other day, the CPP cadres were bound by three guidelines or what
China called ``Three Represents'' namely, Marxism-Leninism, Mao Tse
tung thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory. To these three have in recent
times been added Jiang's dictum of capitalism within a framework of socialist
modernisation which may be dismissed as a contradiction in terms but has
been Jiang's contribution to current-day China's economic theory. It is
expected to be pushed to its logical conclusion by Hu.
Given the backwardness of China's
rural areas and life in China's backyard is no bed of roses and the influx
of large numbers of untrained peasants towards the more developed urban
centres along with east coast the task is by no means going to be easy
for whoever is in power. The `New York Times' quoted Wu Guoguang,
an expert in Chinese politics at the Chinese University as saying: ``People
think Hu will fulfill their own dreams; the liberals see a reformer, the
conservatives see a hardliner''. That is not a flattering description and
may possibly reflect as much ignorance as knowledge about the man.
Besides, men change with the times.
And nations don't have permanent enemies even as they don't have permanent
friends. And whether Hu will have a new policy he certainly cannot be expected
to develop one overnight or will merely continue Jiang's thesis which sanctions
opening the party to private entrepreneurs, previously excluded as `capitalist
exploiters'. It will be likely to be muted.
What is clear is that China is struggling
to come to terms with economic realities and will to practise pragmatism
as its political philosophy, with a determination that is frightening.
Has anyone watched pictures of the Chinese Communist Party's 16th Congress
closely? Has anyone noticed that `every one' of the 2,100 delegates seated
in the Great Hall dressed exactly alike?
Every one wore a dark suit and tie.
When they stood up again everyone seemed to follow a predetermined drill
and they stood up with their hands by their side like so many robots.
Compare that audience with a similar one in India. Note how India's parliamentarians
dress. No two Indian MPs dress alike; their forte is individualism. The
Chinese forte is discipline, unanimity. If the party bosses lay down what
dress members should wear the order is obeyed implicitly. Does it come
as a surprise, then, that the party congress `unanimously' approved Jiang's
proposal of opening party membership to formerly reviled capitalist entrepreneurs
without anyone batting an eyelid? That is China.
One suspects that it is because
China has no one strong religious belief that it can accept anything that
seems workable as its immediate religion, whether it is Marxism-Leninism,
or Mao-ism and what now goes for a strange marriage between socialism and
unabashed capitalism and the implied de-humanisation of Labour. For
let is not be forgotten that it is American capital that is now being allowed
to set up shop in China to exploit Chinese labour. Nothing can be more
shameful. It is against everything that socialism has so far stood for.
China may describe it as pure pragmatism.
It may even argue that the American exploitation of Chinese labour is a
temporary phenomenon and will surely disappear once prosperity comes in
a big even gradual way to the country. Americans, like Ambassador
Blackwill, are singing hosannabs to China's current open door polity. It
suits them. Time was, soon after the second world war, then America similarly
opened its doors to Japanese goods on a massive scale. No words of praise
for Japanese entrepreneurship were sufficient but today Japanese economy
is in the doldrums. Exploitation can go unchallenged only up to a point.
A time comes when it becomes counter-productive.
No doubt China will learn its lesson
with the passage of time. If the United States wants to open its gates
to Chinese-manufactured apparel, bicycles, electronic goods and the like
to enable its money lords to make a quick buck, it is welcome to do so.
India can only wait and see. What India needs immediately to do is to try
to understand the new power structure in Beijing and make it see reason.
Before September 11, 2001, China
appeared to have solidified a policy of playing off Pakistan against India
and to undermine India's strength as much as possible. A current view in
Delhi is that things have changed for the better, but if that is so, the
change is hardly noticeable. The dumping of cheap Chinese goods in
India is not exactly a sign of friendship. That is yet another way, if
none might say so, of undermining India's strength. India must make a concerted
effort to keep Chinese goods out lest they do unacceptable damage not only
to Indian industry but to Indian labour as well. Permitting cheap Chinese
goods to flood India is to commit economic hara kiri.
Friendship with Beijing does not
mean one has to destroy one's own economic infrastructure, for a Chinese
smile, or a warm handshake. Delhi must put India's interests first, last
and always. But China can still show that it cares for Indian friendship
by taking a new look at Pakistan and its policies of encouraging terrorism.
Every bit of help that China extends to Pakistan whether in the field of
nuclear technology or of missiles is a calculated show of hostility towards
India. And Delhi, one hopes, will make that much clear to Hu and his associates.
A policy of Chinese equidistance
between Pakistan and India is the least that is acceptable to Delhi. One
hopes that Hu is pragmatic enough to understand that much and act accordingly.
In an increasingly globalised world the ancient art of playing off one
country against another to retain one's own security is getting to be redundant.
The fourth generation Chinese leaders led by Hu, one hopes, will be the
first one to realise it and make it the sheet anchor of its future foreign
policy. That way lies wisdom and, what is more, greater scope for peace
and prosperity.
