看18大，学英文（3）

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China’s new leaders can bolster the regime’s credibility by loosening their grip.Published on Friday November 09, 2012


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Outgoing Chinese President Hu Jintao, left, shake hands with his predecessor Jiang Zemin during the opening session of the Communist party congress in Beijing. (Nov. 8, 2012)














As with every Chinese leadership change, the watchword in Beijing is Discipline. “We must uphold the leadership of the Communist party,” outgoing President Hu Jintao told party cadres this week. “We must not take the treacherous road of changing flags and banners.”
This anxious battening down of the hatches against political pluralism “for a long time” is predictable but discouraging. China’s spectacular rise owes as much to its industrious people, as to its cosseted elite. It is past time China’s self-selected leaders put some trust in the grassroots, if only to validate themselves.
But that is asking a lot of the Communist elite, discredited though its ideology is. In contrast to America’s wildly contested election, China is changing leaders relatively smoothly, secretly and with scant regard for popular opinion. Brokerage among powerful factions behind closed doors has crowned Vice-President Xi Jinping as party leader and president and Li Keqiang as premier, although the composition of the top echelon won’t be known for a few more days.
From a Canadian point of view these are people with whom we can do business. Xi Jinping is a so-called “princeling,” the son of one of Mao’s commanders, with high social status. He is a pragmatic elitist, a nationalist who is nonetheless open to the West. He has presided over Shanghai and other fast-developing regions. He values small business, and trade.
He is also known for speaking his mind. “Some foreigners with full bellies and nothing better to do engage in finger-pointing at us,” he once chided. “First, China doesn’t export revolution; second, it doesn’t export famine and poverty; and third, it doesn’t mess with you. What more is there to say?”
Despite the barb, Xi knows that it is not foreigners who are the fiercest critics of China’s system. Many Chinese also crave reform. While successful and globally ambitious, China is also dangerously split on rich-poor, urban-rural lines. High-level corruption and lawlessness are endemic. Its newly assertive middle class chafes at ostentatious party privilege, graft and incompetency. People can also see that the richest, most advanced nations are the freest.
If China’s anxious elite wants to bolster its legitimacy, one approach would be to gradually open up the political process by encouraging truly independent candidates to stand for people’s congresses, and by allowing direct election of leaders in cities and towns. Non-party members should be allowed to hold official positions. And the party should be subject to the rule of law. It’s a faint hope, to be sure. But hope springs eternal, in China as elsewhere.