A Death in the Lucky Holiday Hotel (45 page)

       
Combating corruption and promoting political integrity, which is a major political issue of great concern to the people, is a clear-cut and long-term political commitment of the party. If we fail to handle this issue well, it could prove fatal to the party, and even cause the collapse of the party and the fall of the state.

Reuters and other Western news organizations published revealing photos of delegate reaction during Hu’s largely empty speech, which was filled with political jargon from a bygone era. Some delegates, especially the party elders who lined the front row on the podium, yawned, picked their noses, or dozed off; others looked distracted, as if they were listening to some long-winded eulogy that had little to do with them.

“The Party Congress without Bo Xilai is dull and stifling,” observed a princeling—the son of a military leader who was reluctant to disclose his name. “Bo had more personality and he was an unpredictable wild
horse. His Chongqing model created a healthy dissenting voice within the party. The country’s problems need different approaches and models. With his defeat by a small group of narrow-minded dictators, deathly silence reigns.”

Such comments made the senior leadership nervous. Outside the Great Hall of the People, thousands of plainclothes police hovered around Tiananmen Square like specters. The Beijing municipal government had reportedly mobilized 1.4 million police and volunteers to prevent any disorder in public places during the Party Congress. Human rights groups claimed dissidents and petitioners were rounded up and many forced to leave the city. Taxi drivers were told to close their windows and remove window handles to prevent passengers from distributing anti-party leaflets when passing sensitive parts of the city. Kitchen knives were said to have been removed from store shelves, and there was even a rumor that authorities were on the lookout for seditious messages on ping-pong balls, which would be tossed out on the streets. Police inside toy stores asked customers to show their ID cards when buying remote-controlled model planes.

Despite the tension outside, the public reaction was a collective sigh of relief when the lackadaisical opening was broadcast on state media—there had been speculation that the Party Congress would have to be delayed until 2013 due to the Bo Xilai scandal.

Over the following week, many Chinese chose to skip the dull proceedings—for example, the party’s work report or approving amendments to the party charter, pro forma proceedings required for the bureaucracy but of little interest to the public—and went about their lives. But the key broadcast, the unveiling of the new leadership lineup at the conclusion of the congress, was a must-see because it would reveal the direction their lives would take for the decade. People were concerned about how the leadership would reverse a slowing economy while tackling the party’s rampant corruption.

Since the mid-1980s, the Communist Party has installed new leaders every ten years in even-number party congresses, and nominated prospective successors in odd-number party congresses. In theory, delegates select through a competitive election system 390 members and alternates for the Central Party Committee, which is in turn
charged with appointing the general secretary and members of the Politburo (twenty-five members), the most powerful decision-making body of the party. The Politburo elects from among its number a group who will form the Politburo Standing Committee, in which is vested supreme power over the country.

All Politburo Standing Committee members are predetermined by party power brokers, including party elders such as former president Jiang Zemin, outgoing president Hu Jintao, and other members of Politburo Standing Committee. Delegates merely rubber-stamp whatever list is presented to them. The Party Congress is not a place for debate, but for validation of decisions by the leadership.

There is no great secrecy about who is being considered. As in previous years, political insiders showed me a list of the leadership lineup for both the party and the military in September 2012, but since then, a number of changes were made. The final list had yet to be determined just days it was due to be endorsed. Names were added, others deleted as the various factions in the party argued for and against candidates.

Before August 2012, the Bo Xilai scandal further perpetuated the public’s negative perception of princelings as a privileged, corrupt, and law-defying group and the polarization of views among princelings weakened its bargaining power over the leadership lineup, giving President Hu and his youth leaguer faction the upper hand. However, following the overseas media expose of the Ferrari incident involving the son of President Hu Jintao’s chief of staff, Ling Jihua, the princelings had the opportunity to turn the tide. At the same time, Li Yuanchao, another President Hu protégé and strong contender for a seat on the Politburo Standing Committee, was found linked to several of Ling’s unpopular initiatives. The loss of Ling and Li seriously damaged President Hu’s credibility and undermined the chances of any candidates he put forward. It gave former president Jiang Zemin more clout over the succession, and he was able to fill six of the seven seats on the Politburo Standing Committee with his allies, three of whom are princelings.

For Xi himself, the transition to the top has not been smooth. While President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao became the public faces of the anti-Bo faction, Xi remained silent in public, even though
he was seen as the true beneficiary of Bo’s downfall. Insiders said Xi felt conflicted about punishing Bo, even though Bo directly challenged his status as the “crown prince.” Their life experiences were so matched that Xi used to address Bo Xilai as “third brother.” In 2011, Xi visited Chongqing and lavished praise on Bo’s “Singing Red and Smashing Black” campaign and his social welfare policies. “These activities have gone deeply into the hearts of the people and are worthy of praise,” Xi was quoted as saying. “Chongqing’s public housing is a virtuous policy, a benevolent effort, and a positive exploration. We have to come up with more concrete measures that bring benefits to the people.” His enthusiastic embrace of Bo’s Chongqing model prompted Hong Kong media to report in October 2012 that Xi had promised Bo a top seat in his new leadership team. Given his past history with Bo, Xi maintained a stance of cautious detachment. The Bo Xilai scandal caused a dangerous rift among the princelings, reducing Xi’s support from this important political resource. Xi had to exclude several pro-Bo princelings in his new military leadership makeup to purge Bo’s influence in the army. There were reports that many of Bo’s close princeling friends were being investigated for corruption.

In September, Xi mysteriously disappeared from the public for two weeks—he had supposedly hurt his back, but the state media chose not to report it, leaving the foreign media to speculate about his whereabouts, with unsubstantiated reports saying Xi was under attack from party elders and fellow princelings who shared different views about the future of China. The
Washington Post
carried an unverified story, claiming that Xi had been hit by a chair hurled during a contentious meeting of princelings: “Xi Jinping tried to calm them down. He put himself physically in the crossfire and unwittingly into the path of a chair as it was thrown across the room. It hit him in the back, injuring him. Hence the absence, and the silence, and the rumors.” Another journalist in Beijing, Gao Yu, wrote in her blog that Xi had submitted his resignation and his mentor, former president Jiang Zemin, had sent several of his friends to get Xi to stay. The rumor swirled around Beijing as preparation for the Party Congress neared completion. What should have been a done deal—Xi’s ascension—was now open to question. Later, a source close to Xi said to me that Xi was not sick.
He actually held closed-door meetings with military leaders to strategize transition. But the rumors illustrated the public’s nervousness due to the much-talked-about intense factional struggles.

The leadership transition in China was scheduled to take place two days after the 2012 US presidential election, the outcome of which held potentially huge ramifications for China–US relations. Widely covered throughout China, the heated debate in the run-up to the election and the unpredictable outcome due to the closeness of opinion polls generated unprecedented interest among the Chinese public. Even though government censors restricted any online discussions of nominees Barack Obama and Mitt Romney to prevent comparisons between the US election and the imminent leadership transition in China, several media outlets in Hong Kong cited sources as saying that the Chinese leadership might adopt an internal multiple-candidate election for the Politburo and its Standing Committee as a way to resolve factional conflicts over the lineup.

Because I had already obtained what insiders called “a final list”—the result of the usual behind-the-scenes deal-making—I seriously doubted the speculation about a multi-candidate election. I published my list on
Mingjing News
and stated that all talk about a multi-party election was wishful thinking: “If the final outcome is different from what I have released, it proves that I’m wrong.”

On the morning of November 15, 2012, the newly “elected” Politburo Standing Committee members, all dressed in navy blue suits, with dyed black hair and tepid smiles, paraded to meet some four hundred Chinese and foreign reporters in the east wing of the Great Hall of the People. All the faces were on the list.

The Politburo Standing Committee would be reduced from nine members to seven. A smaller committee was deemed to be more efficient, by reducing the incidence of factional haggling over decision-making. The idea, which had been in discussion since 2011, prevailed after the Bo Xilai scandal. Zhou Yongkang’s seat controlled China’s law enforcement, judicial authorities, and national security, and had a budget bigger than that of China’s military. It was eliminated and his former responsibilities devolved to other Politburo members, whose decisions and recommendations would require final endorsement of
the Standing Committee. The other function cut from the committee was propaganda. There were concerns about the damage its aggressive censorship activities had done to the reputation of the Standing Committee.

Insiders said the loss of two spots in the top decision-making body exacerbated the political bickering. In the end, all competing factions chose to resolve the debacle with a simple hard requirement—that of age. Younger candidates, such as the fifty-seven-year-old party chief of Guangdong, were excluded on the grounds that they still had time to compete in the next round five years later. Those approaching the retirement age of sixty-eight, such as Yu Zhengsheng, the former party chief of Shanghai, made it to the list with the excuse that “if he doesn’t join this year, he will not have another opportunity.” In the end, the seven-member leadership has an average age of 63.4 years compared with 62.1 years in 2007.

Backroom bickering aside, the spotlight was on fifty-eight-year-old Xi Jinping, who survived much behind-the-scenes political maneuvering, and was officially crowned the party general secretary—he will be made president in the spring of 2013 when the legislature convenes and charged with leading the world’s second-biggest economy for the next decade.

When describing Xi’s life, many preferred to compare Xi with Bo Xilai, who shared similar upbringings and work experience, though they landed in starkly different places—one leader of China, the other a prisoner number.

Xi was born into the family of a revolutionary veteran in June 1953 and is four years younger than Bo Xilai. His father, Xi Zhongxun, fought with Mao as a guerrilla in northwestern China, against the invading Japanese and the civil war Nationalists. He was appointed vice premier of China in the 1950s. Like Bo, Xi lived a sheltered life before the age of twelve, attending an elite school for children of senior leaders. But his life took a dramatic turn in 1962.

His father was put in charge of a book that chronicled the life of a former comrade who had been killed in battle in 1936. Because the book objectively mentioned another influential political figure purged by Mao, Kang Sheng, China’s intelligence chief accused him of using
the book, excerpts of which had been published in several state-run newspapers and magazines, to attack Mao and subvert the party. Xi’s father was forced to undergo denunciations and was exiled in 1965 to the central province of Henan. His status was reduced to that of a deputy manager of a tractor factory. When the Cultural Revolution started, Red Guards found him, put him on a multi-city denunciation tour, and locked him up for nearly ten years in a Beijing prison. The Red Guards added another charge to his crimes—that of being a Western spy. The basis for the charge was that he had looked at West Berlin with a pair of binoculars when he toured the Berlin Wall during an official visit to East Germany in 1959.

Xi’s entire family was affected by his persecution by the Red Guards. Like Bo Xilai, Xi Jinping was excluded from many activities in school for being the son of a purged official. During the Cultural Revolution, he and other children of disgraced party officials roamed the streets after school, engaging in street fights. They were constant targets of the local public security bureau. At the age of fifteen, Xi Jinping joined thousands of young people who responded to Mao’s call to settle in the countryside. Initially, he reportedly returned to his father’s native village in Shaanxi province, but no relatives dared take him in. Xi and twelve others ended up in a village in the yellow hills of northern Shaanxi, where people lived in caves and electricity was a rare luxury. There was barely enough to eat.

Three months after he arrived in the village, all of his fellow “sent down” youths had deserted because they found it too hard to acclimate. Xi was miserably homesick and escaped by train to Beijing, where he was caught by the street committee for sneaking back to the city without approval. The public security bureau detained him for six months. By the time he was released, both of his sisters had left to become peasants in Inner Mongolia. His mother, a devoted Communist, insisted that he return to northern Shaanxi to complete his “reeducation.”