29 March 2012

Lessons and warnings for the Chinese Left from the ouster of Bo Xilai

Bo Xilai showing his ‘red spirit’

Bo Xilai’s loss of his post in Chongqing two weeks ago is an event to be sorely lamented, particularly for those of us who care about greater social equality and political reform in China. Beneath all of the ‘70’s camp and the Maoist kitsch of the ‘Sing Red Songs’ campaign and the often dirty politics of what was a very messy business in cleaning up organised crime in Chongqing (the draconian networks of informants, agents and assassins of said gangsters reaching even as far as Edinburgh; I think commentators do a vast disservice to Mr Bo when they understate the massive problem his administration faced), Bo was undertaking some well-needed political stands from his perch in Chongqing in favour of public ownership, in favour of welfare and in favour of the transparency of information (even if his way of going about it was also somewhat cartoonish).

Mr Bo was a self-promoter, there is absolutely no doubt about that. But he also enlisted and greatly relied on the advice and policy prescriptions of the noted economist Dr Cui Zhiyuan in constructing the experimental ‘Chongqing Model’ of governance – a man whose political and economic leanings are emphatically not in a Maoist direction, but rather share more in common with Baron Keynes, his pupil James Meade and the democratic instincts of political philosopher Roberto Mangabeira Unger. And in turning over secret CCP archives to the media for perusal, Mr Bo managed to shake up the habitual secrecy and institutional opacity which has become the CCP’s stock-in-trade – a Maoist Bo was not, and a truer friend the Chinese political reformer never had, if only they had come to realise it. And Bo’s replacement in Chongqing at the behest of the central government, Zhang Dejiang, looks to be a downright nasty piece of work (if one’s standard is how politically repressive and deaf to the welfare of his constituencies his administrations have been in the past).

But Mr Bo was hated mostly for the challenge he posed to the right-liberals (much the same way the EU hates Lukashenko’s Belarus not because it is Soviet, but rather because it has eschewed Soviet ideology whilst retaining a certain commitment to public ownership and to a peaceable foreign policy – and these it wishes to classify as Soviet), and instead of allowing his critics to tar him with the brush of the Cultural Revolution, he gleefully tarred himself with it. Limited largely by his own devotion to his father and to his Party, he was forced to explain his policies using the only convenient political reference, that of Mao Zedong. I have commented earlier that I think this is a dangerous route to take – Chairman Mao is a fickle ally at best of the political programmes that will best suit China now. New Leftists would be better advised from now on not to romanticise the Cultural Revolution but to harness their nationalist instincts in more productive directions – toward the massive stock of traditional Chinese thought that holds endless potential for various sorts of self-reflective radicalism.

This is not only because the ruling elites of the CCP will, from now on, gaily stamp out any semblance of leftism under the guise of retaining stability. It is also because the Cultural Revolution was a fickle friend to start with: rather than enforcing the egalitarian ideals that Mao Zedong wished to promote, it served only to undermine them. Pitting students against teachers and children against parents, rooting out ‘reactionary’ elements amongst one’s friends and acquaintances, all served to destroy the fabrics of trust and goodwill which are ever needed to maintain a moral economy. It should come as little surprise that a powerful, amoral state and gangster capitalism (politically personified in Deng Xiaoping) would step in to fill the vacuum. This is not an era a leftist of any sort should embrace uncritically, since integral to the programme of leftism should be a preservation of the familial and social bonds of affection which must necessarily underpin any kind of sympathy for the poor or for the excluded. And it is only in the spirit of critique of the Cultural Revolution that one should pay praise of any sort to Chairman Mao or to his policies, which did kick-start the engines of growth which had lain constructed but idle since the Qing Dynasty, and which did substantially deliver on the promises of human dignity and material well-being for women and for tenant farmers throughout China.

All is not lost for the political left in China. This is a stunning setback, to be sure, and those Chinese who advocate greater levels of social welfare, more transparency in government and the virtues of public ownership will undoubtedly need to mind their step in the coming months and years. But they also may be wise to take greater stock of the Confucian-inspired communitarianism that lies at the root of the project they advocate, and imagine a new means of politically articulating their project which doesn’t necessarily rely so much on Cultural Revolution-era throwbacks.

EDIT: Though he spoke in terms of ‘cooperation’, Bo Xilai had apparently issued a strong challenge to CCP single-party rule in his final days in office. Very interesting, though it is me saying so.

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