CID at Harvard University: Unhealthy Politics, Newsweek, 5/12/03

Unhealthy Politics

By Roderick Macfarquhar
Macfarquhar is the Leroy B. Williams Professor of History and Political Science at Harvard University and a Faculty Associate at CID.

With no cure in sight, China's SARS epidemic has set off a tussle for power in the upper reaches of the Communist Party leadership. The country's political virus could linger long after the health hazards.

China's SARS epidemic has its Communist Party leaders on their heels. Not since the 1989 student uprising in Tiananmen Square has its leadership been so exposed to the humiliating glare of international scrutiny and criticism. The cancellation of prestigious conferences in the capital and the potentially precipitous drop in foreign trade and investment as foreigners obey the World Health Organization's advisory to shun Beijing are embarrassing enough. Worse is the image of China's leaders behaving in feckless fashion, putting politics before people.

The leadership's perennial obsession with secrecy led it to prevaricate about the extent of the disease in the capital for five months. The rationale seems to have been a desire to avoid public panic during the passing of the torch to new leaders at the Party Congress last November and the National People's Congress in March. But in truth, the party has always carried the "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil" policy--preferred by bureaucrats everywhere--to extraordinary lengths. The assignment of the 2008 Olympic Games to Beijing augured for many China's arrival in the modern world. But the SARS epidemic has revealed the early-20th-century Leninist paranoia that still infects the behavior of China's leaders, and the Third World nation that lingers behind the glittering skyscrapers of Beijing and Shanghai.

The public-health crisis is also beginning to pull back the curtain that hides the divisions within the party itself. Clearly, the honeymoon is over for the new leaders, President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao. Whether praise for the energetic measures they have taken to contain the epidemic ultimately outweighs blame for concealing it will doubtlessly depend on the human toll SARS exacts. The public-relations battle will be fought out partly through the ubiquitous urban Residents' Committees, the asphalt-level apparatus through which the party confronts its subjects. But for China's leaders the popular mood will be of less consequence than the factional struggle within the party.

When Hu took over in March, he did not inherit the full panoply of China's leadership posts. His predecessor, Jiang Zemin, retained the key chairmanship of the party's Central Military Commission. Jiang also seeded a significant number of his "Shanghai faction" in the ranks of the new Politburo, orchestrated by his main trusty, Vice President Zeng Qinghong, a brilliant political operator. At the time Jiang gave every appearance of leaving office reluctantly, and having bowed to necessity he --seems determined that his faction should preserve his legacy in the people's eyes as the third member in an apostolic succession--Mao, Deng and Jiang.

Today, when every Chinese leader is of a reformist bent, the endemic factionalism in the leadership appears to be driven more by personality than policy. Most Western observers assumed that power plays between Hu and Jiang would begin in earnest in several years when Hu began to lay the groundwork for a second term. The SARS epidemic could be the catalyst for the struggle to begin now. As the senior civilian overseeing the military, Jiang has ultimate responsibility over the capital's military hospitals. The military's initial refusal to reveal the number of their SARS cases led to China's international humiliation when the full extent of the epidemic in Beijing was finally revealed. Was Jiang kept ignorant or was he trying to protect his power base from external interference?

Most party officials would probably like the military made subservient to the civilian bureaucracy and deprived of its special relationship to Jiang. The military's insubordination in the early stages of the crisis may be an opportunity for Hu to whittle away Jiang's power base. But he is proceeding cautiously. One of the two principal scapegoats so far, the minister of Health, was certainly a Jiang protege, but the other, the mayor of Beijing, was one of Hu's men--almost certainly a sacrifice to prevent a backlash from Jiang loyalists. And significantly, the more powerful Beijing official, the party's first secretary--also of Jiang's clique--escaped with only a public self-criticism. Hu cannot go too far too fast.

But he is not entirely alone either. Hu has found a potent ally in Wen Jiabao, a protege of Jiang's former political opponent, Zhu Rongji. Indeed, Hu appears to be exploiting the moment to employ a number of officials from Zhu's circle. Known as the "Iron Lady," Vice Premier Wu Yi--the highest-ranking woman in the government--was appointed last week as chief of the leadership team overseeing the battle against the deadly virus. And Wang Qishan, also a longtime Zhu protege, is now serving as the acting mayor of Beijing.

For their part, Jiang and his front man, Zeng Qinghong, know it would be fatal to seem to be endangering the anti-SARS campaign in the interests of scoring political points. So, much will depend on the success of the campaign. If SARS is quickly contained, the position of Hu and Wen will be greatly strengthened. It is hoped they might be emboldened to experiment with greater transparency in other spheres of public life. But if the epidemic spreads through large parts of the country and primitive rural medical care proves unable to cope, then Jiang could point out that the epidemic burgeoned only after Hu took over the party. Either way, the political virus unleashed by China's SARS crisis may persist longer than the health hazards.

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Copyright �2003 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.
Last revised 05/20/2003