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发表于 2015-9-11 03:00:56
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(Bloomburg News Sept 2015)
Xi tries to maintain hands-on style while leading 1.4 billion
Even trusted deputies must run decisions by powerful president
Earlier this year, China’s security agencies gave their daily briefings to President Xi Jinping a multimedia makeover. Paper documents were out. PowerPoints and videos were in. The presentations now run about 10 minutes, a big time-saver for China’s hands-on leader.
The public and state security ministries set up teams to make their daily reports to the Communist Party chief more condensed, visual and engaging, said a person with direct knowledge of the practice. The goal was to ensure Xi “could have some fun” while absorbing the information necessary to make decisions, they said, asking not be identified discussing internal government practices.
Even for a leader with a flare for multitasking, China’s past two months would be taxing. The stock market shed $5 trillion, a yuan devaluation sparked a global currency sell-off and warehouse explosions in one of the country’s biggest ports killed more than 160. That came while Xi, 62, was shutting down large swaths of the capital for a World War II anniversary parade to solidify his leadership of the military and show strength to the world.
Where others faced with such demands might delegate authority, Xi continues to consolidate his own. The president has since taking power almost three years ago given himself control over financial policies, long-term economic planning and cyber security. The multimedia briefings illustrate how Xi attempts to balance his top-down leadership style with the demands of looking after one-fifth of the world’s population.
‘Inherently Vulnerable’
“A system that requires the top leader to run most of the key policy matters is inherently vulnerable,” said Steve Tsang, a senior fellow at the University of Nottingham’s China Policy Institute. “The risk of the top leader being overwhelmed by the sheer scale and spread of the problems to be handled is very high.”
Such centralized decision making represents a departure from the consensus-based approach set up by late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping. The system of consulting with the party’s top leadership on major decisions was established as an alternative to cult of personality blamed for the excesses of Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution.
Like Mao, Xi has established a broad view of his authority. He’s thrown his office behind everything from censoring the Internet, to promoting national soccer skills to ordering artists to hew closely to Marxist ideology. Even amid China’s recent tumult, he’s continued to widen his portfolio.
Party Outreach
On July 30 he created a party group focused on “united front work,” or the party’s outreach to non-party elites and organizations including those in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and appointed himself chief. When the Shanghai Composite Index plunged 7.6 percent and broke the 3,000 mark on Aug. 25, the president was hosting a two-day conference in Beijing on the region of Tibet.
The selloff that week was fueled in part by investor concern over the government’s decision to suspend an unprecedented stock-support program. The resumption of state intervention later helped push the market back over the 3,000 line and keep it there for Xi’s parade.
Economic Management
In recent years, prosaic matters such as financial markets would fall clearly under the purview of the premier, Li Keqiang. Xi has put himself above Li by giving himself control of two party “leading groups,” one dealing with financial policies, which had been led by previous premiers, and another economic and social reform group of his own creation.
By putting the prestige of the party chief behind economic matters, Xi’s actions were initially seen as raising the prospects for reforms including changes to China’s bloated state sector. But it also opened him up to a greater share of the criticism should the economy take a turn for the worse.
“He will be blamed for whatever goes wrong, and he no doubt has many enemies,” said Joseph Fewsmith, a Boston University professor who specializes in elite Chinese politics. “Given the turmoil in the Chinese economy lately, there must be a lot of griping that Xi does not understand the economy. And getting the economy right is important.”
Corruption Campaign
The arrangement also complicates things for Li. While he holds responsibility as the head of the government and continues to be the chief spokesman for the economy, he may have less control over policy decisions.
Xi’s aversion to delegating also applies to matters overseen by some of his closest associates. For instance, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection -- the top anti-graft agency -- is run by Wang Qishan, a decades-long friend of Xi’s and the sixth-ranked figure in the party.
Nonetheless, Xi signs off on all major investigative decisions in the agency’s corruption crackdown, said Ren Zhiqiang, a property mogul who keeps regular contact with Wang. “Who dares to investigate anybody without Xi’s approval?” said Ren, who’s also an Internet commentator with 30 million followers.
In a commentary published in the official People’s Daily last month, Wang described Xi’s intimate involvement in the campaign, saying he “carefully reads” every inspection report and “gives clear instructions.”
Revising Speeches
For Xi, no detail is too small. He sometimes revises remarks prepared by his speech writers to insert obscure Mao quotations, according to a person with knowledge of the practice.
While personal attention demonstrates a level of commitment, it also suggests a lack of confidence in subordinates, said Hu Xingdou, a professor of political economy at the Beijing Institute of Technology. “His insecurity stems from worries that his power base is still not solid enough,” Hu said.
Xi’s centralized approach could explain how seemingly unrelated initiatives become linked. Ensuring a successful parade was cited as both taking priority over the stock-market-support effort and, after the market slid further, as a reason for resuming the program.
Internal Debates
China can ill afford confusion as it attempts to overcome social and demographic challenges and control its economic slowdown, Tsang said.
“The kind of problems China is facing now would be taxing for any leadership under any political system,” Tsang said. “Neither Xi nor the Chinese government can feel that they are getting the Chinese stock market and economy to behave as they instructed. The internal debates and self-doubt process must have started.” |
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