The Struggle for Socialism in China: the Bo Xilai Saga and Beyond :: Monthly Review

mo nt hlyreview.o rg http://monthlyreview.org/2012/10/01/the-struggle-for-socialism-in-china The Struggle for Socialism in China: The Bo Xilai Saga and Beyond :: Monthly Review Yuezhi Zhao more on Asia , Marxism & Socialism Yuezhi Zhao is prof essor and Canada Research Chair in Political Economy of Global Communication at Simon Fraser University, Canada. She is the author of Communication in China: Political Economy, Power, and Conflict (Rowman & Littlef ield, 2008). From Tahrir Square to Wall Street, f rom Athens to Montreal, dreams of emancipation are mobilizing a new wave of revolts all over the world. Simultaneously the f orces of repression are being unleashed everywhere to impose “new mechanisms of social control” with the aim of establishing “new conditions f or achieving surplus value” in the af termath of a protracted capitalist economic crisis.1 Some anticipated a Chinese popular uprising f ollowing the Arab Spring. Instead, since spring 2012 the world has seen a sensational drama of elite struggle surrounding the ousting of the Chongqing head of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Politburo member Bo Xilai, including a crackdown on his Chongqing Model of development. Even though the CCP has been able to contain large-scale social unrest, divisions amongst the elite became a f ocal point of political struggle during this dangerous year of power transition in China. The ousting of Bo was so signif icant that it has widely been described as a political earthquake of a magnitude rivaling the downf all of Mao’s designated heir Lin Biao in 1971 or the crackdown in 1989. Bo was no ordinary CCP Politburo member, and the Chongqing Model was not just another instance of the “decentralized experimentation” so characteristic of the CCP’s policy-making process.2 What was increasingly at issue, and was emphasized by the press, was the contrast between two models of development: the “Guangdong Model” and the “Chongqing Model.” Guangdong symbolized a more f ree market approach, rising inequality, and an export orientation. Chongqing was characterized as looking to revitalize socialist ideas and populist claims in its push f or rapid and balanced growth. At stake today, then, is not just the f ate of Bo, but also China’s revolutionary past, the complicated intersections of domestic and transnational class politics, and the unf inished struggle f or socialism in China. China’s lef t-leaning online voices have characterized Bo’s ouster—labeled the “3.15 coup” because it was carried out on March 15—as an attempt waged by his opponents at the CCP central leadership not only to prevent him f rom possibly assuming a powerf ul position at the next Politburo Standing Committee, but also to suppress the potential f or a more egalitarian shif t in China’s developmental path. For their part, right-wingers have accused Bo and his allies of attempting to stage a coup to seize national power and of wanting to return China to the dark days of the Cultural Revolution. The actual developments, of course, are much more complicated and messier than these simple accusations of coup and counter-coup. The basic story line of the Bo saga is well-known. On February 6, 2012, shortly bef ore Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping was due to visit the United States, Wang Lijun, Bo’s right-hand man and Chongqing’s f amed gang- busting f ormer police chief , attempted to seek political asylum in the U.S. consulate in Chengdu. Af ter intensive negotiations among the relevant authorities, Wang was taken by central Chinese security authorities to Beijing. At a press conf erence in Beijing on March 9, Bo accepted responsibility f or Wang but vigorously def ended his experiments in Chongqing. On March 14, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao openly reprimanded Bo’s Chongqing leadership, accusing it of trying to revive the Cultural Revolution. On March 15, Bo was dismissed as the CCP Chongqing Secretary without of f icial explanation. Then, at 11:00 PM on April 10, China’s of f icial media delivered what is known as the “midnight f right” in the Bo saga by announcing that he had been stripped of his memberships in the CCP Central Committee and its Politburo. Signif ying the CCP central leadership’s attempt to cover up any f undamental political division, Bo was said to have been put under investigation f or “serious violations of disciplines,” while his wif e Gu Kailai was under detention on suspicion of murdering Neil Heywood, described as a “British businessman” who had close connections with Bo’s wif e and son. On August 9, 2012, in a tightly controlled court case that was perceived to be a political show trial that has lef t many unanswered questions, Bo’s wif e Gu Kailai was tried f or Heywood’s murder and f ound guilty. On August 20, Gu received a suspended death sentence. Other than waging an unprecedented propaganda campaign to rally the whole nation behind the central leadership in the immediate af termath of the April 10 announcements, China’s state media made no f urther announcements in the evolving Bo saga until the tightly controlled of f icial news about the legal proceedings against his wif e. In f act, the system deliberately tried to manuf acture a bout of national amnesia about it throughout much of the summer. Meanwhile, f or a sustained period throughout spring and a good part of summer 2012, the “rumor machine” surrounding the case operated in high gear outside China and through the cracks in the “Great Firewall of China.”3 Leading Anglo-American news outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Financial Times, and the Daily Telegraph—along with Falun Gong media and right-wing overseas Chinese-language websites such as the U.S. National Endowment f or Democracy-f unded Boxun.com —published lurid tales of corruption and intrigue against Bo: f rom secretly wire-tapping Hu Jintao to illegally f unneling massive f unds abroad, f rom engaging in dangerous liaisons with high-level military of f icers to colliding with high-f lying business tycoons. Given the opaque nature of the case, it raises the question: How much of the inf ormation would have come directly f rom CCP insiders? What is the level of collaboration between Chinese, U.S., and British authorities in this ostensibly “Chinese” political drama at a time when it has become more important than ever f or the state managers of these countries to co-manage the crisis-ridden global political economy? Now that an apparent political struggle has been ref ramed as sensational murder case, what’s next? Rather than dwelling on the details, many of which will likely remain obscure f or some time, this article f oregrounds the historical context and the political content of the Chongqing Model. The model inspired hope among the disenf ranchised and provoked f ear among the benef iciaries of China’s ref orms. It at once embodied sincere, distorted, and perhaps even perverted f ragments of a project of “socialist renewal” in post-ref orm China. On the one hand, an extraordinary alliance of Anglo-American capitalist media and right-wing Chinese language media and bloggers have portrayed Bo as being corrupt, dangerous, opportunistic, and cynical. On the other hand, some on the lef t would question the very notion of socialism in China to begin with. The struggle f or socialism in China has been virtually absent f rom the great mélange of news coverage and commentaries on the case so f ar. Nevertheless, this struggle constitutes the most crucial part of the story. The intriguing and complex communicative politics around the Bo saga is highly symptomatic of ongoing domestic and international battles over the f uture of China. The underlying drama, theref ore, is larger than Bo, and larger even than the Chongqing Model. Chongqing and the Dialectic of China’s Ref orm If Mao Zedong Thought once served as the hegemonic ideology of China’s pursuit of socialism in the twentieth century, two of Deng Xiaoping’s slogans, “letting some people get rich f irst” and “development is ironclad truth,” have served as the most powerf ul ideological justif ications f or China’s post-Mao developmental path. Given that this path has transf ormed China f rom one of the most egalitarian societies in the world under Mao to one of the most unequal in the contemporary world, it is not surprising then that f ew have taken the CCP’s claim of building “socialism with Chinese characteristics” seriously. However, f or many Chinese, the lived experiences of socialism—both positive and negative—are real, and so are the contemporary contradictions between rhetoric and reality. Despite Deng’s “no debate” decree—that is, there should be no debate about whether the post-Mao ref orms are capitalistic or socialist—overt and covert struggles over the direction of China’s ref orm path, its internal contradictions, and variegated social conf licts have compelled the CCP leadership to continue to claim the mantra of socialism on the one hand, while attempting to readjust China’s developmental path on the other. As early as 2003, the CCP had modif ied Deng’s development doctrine to promote the so-called “scientif ic concept of development”—that is, a more people-centric, and socially and ecologically sustainable developmental path. By October 2007, the CCP’s 17th National Congress had of f icially committed itself to “accelerate the transf ormation of the mode of economic development.” The global f inancial crisis that erupted in 2008 has not only injected new energy to calls f or “socialist renewal” as the only viable alternative to f urther capitalistic reintegration, but also compelled the leadership to intensif y its rhetoric about shif ting Chinese development away f rom a GDP-driven and exported-oriented model.

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