| The speaker is a media personality and the recipient of the 12th Prem Bhatia Awards for Excellence in Journalism. And rightly, Ms Aiyar’s lecture, and the ensuing discussion, was very interesting, to the point and truly informative. In fact, her presentation style added to the substance of her talk.
Ms Aiyar initiated the morning seminar by drawing attention to the Chinese political ‘landscape’: that our view of the one party system in China as being extremely efficient in comparison to India’s chaotic and inefficient democracy, is a ‘gross misperception’. On the contrary, the Communist Party (CCP) leadership is in a constant state of mediation and negotiation amidst factionalism and tensions within the CCP.
Though the ideological debate and dissent within the CCP has been effectively contained at least under Deng and Jiang’s leadership, the current landscape seems to be proving quite difficult for Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, owing to China’s economic reforms that have necessitated painful structural adjustments. Though China has emerged as the world’s 4th largest economy, its Gini Index is 0.447 (it is a commonly used statistical measure of inequality where 0=perfect equality and 1=perfect inequality), worse than that of India’s (0.325).
Ms Aiyar drew attention to the contending voices within the CCP: emergence of New Left voices and the Right/reformist camp. She invoked the debate over the recent private property bill to validate her argument. She also highlighted the conflict that the CCP encountered in balancing the interests of the property owning urban elite on the one hand and the peasantry on the other. There is also tension while implementing central policies by local officials who are often corrupt and inefficient. The lack of an effective conflict resolution mechanism and its current mode of dissent management through use of force during peasant protests, etc., makes the country vulnerable and unstable; here, she drew the analogy of a pressure cooker with no safety valve. However, she clarified that she is not in support of the thesis that China would disintegrate owing to its mammoth problems.
Nonetheless, she concurs that the CCP is in a constant act of juggling and consensus-building, with the consequence that the emergent tensions have been thrown into the open.
Ms Aiyar emphasized the importance of the peasant constituency for the CCP as they constitute about 700-800 million of the total population and is solely responsible for bringing the CCP to power. She cautioned that if this constituency, which formed the earlier power base of the CCP, is unhappy for too long, then it might be a problem.
Hu’s and Wen’s strategy has been to develop a more left-oriented rhetoric in order to stay in power, while ‘quietly’ pushing the reform agenda. According to Ms Aiyar, the government must give paramount priority to actual implementation of ‘socialist goals’, ‘new socialist countryside’ and ‘social justice’ alongside economic growth.
She concluded with the optimism that as long as China is able to overcome its socio-economic hurdles, it will not face any overt calamity; also the political spectrum is showing signs of much desired maturity, pragmatism and internal debate.
As far as the 17th party Congress is concerned, Hu is likely to consolidate his power base and get rid of the remaining ‘Jiang clique’. Personally, she feels that Hu is a conservative and not a reformer. Therefore, ‘we will see little political reform, continued but slightly tempered economic reform and a continuing embrace of pragmatism’. |
