A Death in the Lucky Holiday Hotel (48 page)
Read A Death in the Lucky Holiday Hotel Online
Authors: Wenguang Huang Pin Ho
Moreover, the economic reforms have unleashed a strong and deep desire among the masses to get rich, and it angers and frustrates them to see wealth fall into the hands of a small group of party officials and well-connected private entrepreneurs. The gap between the rich and the poor has spawned discontent if not hatred for the rich and powerful. Short-sighted development is depleting natural resources and polluting the environment without consideration for the future generation.
The greed of government officials knows no bounds. Rampant corruption has seeped into every aspect of social and political life—police, the courts, taxation, quality control, and petition handling. One needs to bribe the teacher to get into a better school and the doctor before surgery. Under Hu Jintao, the government launched one campaign after another to purify the party ranks and there are more anticorruption organizations than ever before, but apart from a few high-profile showcase trials, nothing has worked.
Despite the government’s tight control of the news media, the public is better informed than ever, as was evident by the way that the Bo Xilai scandal spread by Weibo and mobile technology, subverting government attempts at censorship. The government finds it harder and harder to control the Internet, with hackers bringing down firewalls almost as soon as the government’s own hackers put them up. More Chinese are being enabled to think for themselves and make informed decisions about their country’s future. The party could lock up all the dissidents in China, but they cannot prevent disgruntled workers and peasants from rising up to rebel against prevalent corruption and social injustices. The government could mobilize its armed forces, or even the military, to put out ten such fires, but if they lose control of just one, it could spark a spontaneous revolution, similar to what has happened in the Middle East and the dictatorial states of the former Soviet Union.
Many in the government might prefer to see the West as the country’s main source of potential instability. And it is true that as China has expanded its investments worldwide, exporting not only cheap goods but also trashy ideological and cultural values, its rapidly modernizing military forces and seemingly insatiable quest for resources have led to more tension abroad, especially with its Asian neighbors. China’s increasingly arrogant behavior and rhetoric, typical of the nouveau riche, is drowning out its diplomatic objectives. Growing domestic nationalism also makes China’s foreign policy more vulnerable to criticism at home, giving the government less room to maneuver amid its global rivals. But unquestionably the greatest danger to the stability of the Chinese government is the Chinese Communist Party—the most vulnerable and volatile elements come from within the party itself. For years, Western analysts have credited Deng Xiaoping for bringing about an orderly institutionalized leadership transition, but the Bo Xilai scandal, brought about by the death of a formerly obscure Englishman, not only scuppered the formula for the 2012 transition but also suggested that the concept of a peaceful transition that ensures the continued dominance of the Communist Party may no longer be possible.
For more than two decades, the party has established a system of supposed meritocracy for all levels of leadership, from the Politburo Standing Committee to state enterprises. The criteria for promotion are based on a candidate’s age, academic degrees, and governing experience or accomplishments. But the process is not governed by open and fair rules. Selections of officials are made by a few party strongmen and elders in a back room. As a consequence, the leadership transition is fraught with conspiracies and fierce factional infighting before the Party Congress. The political elite still relies for advancement on family or personal connections, character assassination, persecution, and as we have seen, even murder. Bo’s misfortune befell him when he conspired with his friends and allies at the top to seize power, only for his opponents to apply a similar conspiratorial method to bring him down. In the ancient Chinese imperial court, succession-related conspiracies and killings were perpetual themes. It is no different in the twenty-first century, now that the Communist Party has become a kleptocratic monarchy in all but name.
In some respects, however, getting rid of Bo is proving more difficult than many anticipated. Bo’s allies and foes are deeply intertwined—sharing common political and economic interests. Under these circumstances it’s hard to move against an opponent without harming or offending elements of one’s own clique, especially as alliances are fluid and constantly shifting. New rounds of political conspiracies are being fomented by the clones of Wang Lijun and Bo Xilai, and more political earthquakes are likely to strike. Observers of contemporary Chinese court politics might not know in what form and how big future political shakeups will be or who will emerge victorious, but the cascading scandals are revealing the vulnerability of the entire China development model—economic development without democratic reforms. In a country where the rulers reject democracy and the public lacks the ability to rise up against the rulers, political coups are constant threats. Until China ends the one-party system, there will not be stability or safety for Chinese citizens or foreign businessmen, corporations, and governments.
The strange death of Neil Heywood in the provincial backwater of the Lucky Holiday Hotel might have passed unnoticed but for the neu
rotic vulnerability of China’s competing power players and the fundamental rottenness of the system. A police chief with too many enemies and an overambitious politician facing his last chance at the ultimate elevation turned a minor character into a cancer at the center of the body politic, causing the hurried and almost desperate reorganization of its greatest public show. The show—the Party Congress—was kept on the road this time, with the parade of new leaders unfurled, and the overall sense of China’s global rise uninterrupted. But the Chinese Communist Party might not be so lucky next time.
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Asylum,
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234–237
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Wang Lijun
Biden, Joe,
307
The Biography of Premier Wen Jiabao
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Bo Xicheng,
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