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China: New leadership to pursue crony capitalism?
-From DR. ABDUL RUFF
[Dr. Abdul Ruff Colachal, Specialist on State Terrorism ;Chancellor-Founder of Centor for International Affairs(CIA); Commentator on world affairs, Analyst on Middle East, Chronicler of Foreign occupations & Freedom movements (Palestine, Kashmir, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Xinjiang, Chechnya, etc.) Former university Teacher; website: abdulruff.wordpress.com/mail: abdulruff_jnu@yahoo.com]
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Upon successful destruction of Russian socialism, now the world capitalists led by imperialist Americans are focusing on dismantling China communism in full and replace it with corny capitalism to generate a new crop of capitalists to finance global imperialist forces.
And global capitalists and transnationals have already made strong inroads into China economy and finances. Chinese leaders have preferred to promote capitalism on large scale.
After the conclusion of its 18th congress and preceded by months of intense factional struggles, China Communist Party (CCP) has unveiled a new the seven member Politburo Standing Committee (PBC) to lead the nation by choosing Xi Jinping as the party’s general secretary to succeed retiring President Hu Jintao. Xi will formally become president in March when the National People’s Congress is convened. Vice Premier Li Keqiang is expected to succeed outgoing Premier Wen Jiabao. Xi also took over Hu’s post as Central Military Commission (CMC) chairman and the Politburo Standing Committee was reduced from nine to seven for the next five years (and in some cases, the next decade).
The PSC’s first-among-equals, Xi Jinping, appears to be far more charismatic than the man he replaces. Xi Jinping was born in 1953 in either Shaanxi Province or in Beijing depending on the biographer. His early youth was spent in relative comfort as the son of Xi Zhongxun, a major party figure and vice premier to Mao. However, Xi Zhongxun was purged during the Cultural Revolution and his son, Xi Jinping, was consequently sent to the countryside. He held positions in Shanghai. Xi has therefore gained experience working in both China’s rural inland areas, and its eastern and southern coastal, more prosperous regions. As a protégé of Jiang Zemin and the Shanghai faction, Xi will have to work with his opposite number, Li Keqiang, who is often associated with Hu Jintao and the Communist Youth League (CYL) faction.
After erroneous Western media speculation, Xi Jinping declared to achieve the great renewal of the Chinese nation, but has not talked about how to strengthen communist system. The new leadership has no direct connection to the 1949 Chinese Revolution. He represents, like any other terrocractic leadership, the top 10 percent of the population, which according to one study, account for 57 percent of all income, with the wealthiest 5 percent taking 44 percent. At the very apex are 251 US dollar billionaires and 2.7 million dollar millionaires. At the same time, more than 150 million Chinese still live less than $1.25 a day. Xi is well aware of the massive popular discontent just beneath the surface and wants to upset any popular uprisings. .
International capital is demanding a new wave of restructuring to open up new investment opportunities and to boost profits as the global economic crisis worsens. Xi Jinping promised to address the needs of working people; to have better education, more stable jobs, more income, greater social security, better medical and health care, improved housing conditions, and a better environment. The CCP leadership knows it can never meet these demands, as that undermine China’s role as a giant cheap labour platform for global capitalism.
China is extremely vulnerable to the global crisis of capitalism, precisely because of its heavy dependence on exports. In 1997-98, China experienced two years of deflation, amid the Asian financial crisis. That forced the Jiang leadership to carry out wholesale privatisation of state-owned enterprises, destroying tens of millions of jobs in order to attract massive foreign investment.
The World Bank wants China to privatise the remaining economy at the earliest and generate more corny capitalists; It seeks about 100,000 local government-owned companies strategic state enterprises, will be fully privatised.
President Hu’s doctrine of a “peaceful rise” for China has been undermined by Washington’s aggressive turn to utilise military alliances against China. China policy is driven by a further wave of pro-market restructuring as well as the tightening geo-strategic encirclement by US imperialism through the Obama administration’s “pivot” to Asia. Even as the CCP congress was being held, the US held joint military exercises with Japan in the West Pacific, reinforcing its backing for Japan in its dispute with China over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. President Obama visit to Burma, Thailand and Cambodia in a bid to further undermine China’s influence in the region is also viewed seriously in Beijing.
The China leadership fears that any political liberalisation could open up the door for the working class to express its discontent, as began to happen in 1989. Hence Jiang’s faction’s return to dominance is a warning that the regime will not hesitate to resort to repression against any opposition. Jiang came to power following the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, in which the army was used to crush widespread protests by common masses and youth over the lack of democratic rights and deteriorating living standards. Xi was given immediate control of the armed forces because the congress set the stage for the further deregulation of large sections of the economy for the benefit of private and foreign capital, accompanied by the intensified exploitation of China’s 400 million workers.
Notes
The Great Hall of the People formally brought to a close an important era in China’s history: the Deng Xiaoping era. Since being brought back from his second exile in 1978, two years after Mao’s death and the arrest of the Gang of Four, Deng (and the Eight Immortals) has towered over China, first during Deng’s own rule that saw sweeping changes that lifted millions of Chinese citizens out of poverty and modernized the country, and later through Deng's hand-chosen successors, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao.
The new leadership faces a host of pressing challenges, including: an increasingly politically conscious and activist public, armed with far more information than their parents thanks to new social media platforms; a slowing economy suffering from growing debt, weak global demand, official corruption, low domestic consumption, rising labor costs, and r centralization cum break-up State-Owned Enterprises (SEO); and increasingly strained relationships with China’s neighbours and the United States.
New China now seems to believe that future of world is in capitalism and not in. communism which it considers to be a utopian concept. Whether or not any foreign policy shift would emerge now by Xi’s installation as chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC) could depend on China’s ideological policy shift.
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