Participating in China’s Political Process

By Fang Jue

March 18, 2008

Three days ago, my old friend and ex-colleague, Xi Jinping, was elected as vice president at the National People’s Congress in China. He will be the President of China within five years.

The incumbent president, Hu Jintao, is an orthodox communist. He has had no any interest in democratic reform. And he has ignored China’s bad human rights record. President Hu is getting old. He had intended to choose his protégé, Li Keqiang, as his political successor. If Hu’s stream of succession had been realized, it would have further delayed political reform in China; therefore, I had to advocate against Hu’s intention although Mr. Li Keqiang was my old friend and close schoolmate at the university.

I wrote an article entitled What Issue Is the Biggest Issue at the Seventeenth Party Congress last March and published it in the Hong Kong-based magazine The Trend in April 2007. In it, I suggested that the standing committee of the political bureau of the Communist Party of China, China’s highest leadership, should include not only Li Keqiang but also Xi Jinping. I expressed my belief that Mr. Xi has had a good record on economic reform and an open-door policy for twenty-five years. I was the first to speak on behalf of Xi’s elevation to his new political position one year ago.

Six months later, the Seventeenth Party Congress endorsed Mr. Xi Jinping as China’s next paramount leader. This was a political victory for us.

However, is political victory enough to assure China’s political future movement toward democracy?

President Hu Jintao, at sixty-six years old, belongs to the fourth generation of Chinese Communist leadership. Vice President Xi Jinping, at fifty-five years old, belongs to the fifth generation of Chinese Communist leadership.

The Voice of America, sponsored by the U.S. government, had a live TV interview with me on Thanksgiving Day, November 27, 2003 during which I gave the VOA advance notice of what was to come. “I think the fifth generation of leaders is not a homogenous body,” I said. “They have different political views. The biggest challenge for the fifth generation of leaders will be whether or not they will accept the democratic transformation when the historic tide comes”. The fourth generation of leaders had just taken office one year ago on that Thanksgiving. Few people even knew that a fifth generation of leaders even existed or who the fifth generation of leaders were. I concluded my interview with this prediction: “Democratic transformation is the biggest task for contemporary China. The fourth generation of leaders does not seem to be up to it. China’s major hope is not within the fourth generation of leaders, but after it. I believe the fourth generation of leaders is merely a transitional stage ”. The transcript of the interview, entitled China’s Big Change Might Happen after the Fourth Generation of Leaders was posted on the United States-based website http://www.boxun.com. Thus, I was the first prophet announcing the fifth generation of leaders five years ago.

The emergence of the fifth generation when we achieved political victory last October did not mean that I was ready to retire from the political stage. “Any democratic transformation in communist nations is not only dependent on a few reformers among the Party’s highest leadership. Power sharing with the communist reformers in China’s democratic process is my favorite vision of the future ”. I wrote in an article entitled Power Sharing with My Old Friends which I posted on the United States-based website http://www.2newcenturynet.blogspot.com when the Seventeenth Party Congress ended on October 22, 2007. Thus, I was the first individual with a claim to advocacy of power sharing between the future communist reformers and constructive dissidents five months ago.

I was satisfied with those three “firsts”.

Last December, a representative from the Chinese authority visited me in New York City to sound out whether I would come back to China. I stressed that there needs to be some power sharing in China. I would only come back to my homeland if I could see some political reform there.

When President Hu Jintao took office five years ago, most Americans raised the question “Who is Hu”? It seems to be time to raise a new question: Who is Xi? And another new question may be: Who is Fang Jue or Jue Fang?

I also have my own special question: Does the United States have an effective and long-term policy toward China rising even though nobody understands China’s political process?

(The author, Fang Jue, is a Chinese political activist living in the United States. fangjue2005@hotmail.com)