(Note:
this is a longer variant of the piece published in the China Beat today. Here it includes the
economic aspects of Bo's performance and my comments on the so-called
"Chongqing Model." – Xujun)
So here is a curious thing: since Bo Xilai's downfall, the
international media has gone wild speculating on its causes, but few have
mentioned the economic factor. The
majority of English reports focus on Bo's attention-generating personal style
that might have offended Beijing's top leaders.
Behind the visible factors, however, is a hidden, and much more
alarming, issue: Bo's Chongqing government had (still has) huge fiscal
deficits. Premier Wen Jiabao, in his March14th press conference, emphasized
controlling local government debt. This suggests that Chongqing's deficits likely
played a big role in Beijing's assessment of Bo's performance.
A Chinese
report shows that Chongqing's 2011 fiscal deficit was more than 100 billion
yuan (roughly 16 billion in US dollar). This, a 30% of the year's fiscal
revenue, may not look to be the worst, but deficits have been persistent
throughout Bo's tenure. The highest – at 50% – occurred in 2009, the year the "crackdown on
gangsters" campaign began. Mayor Huang Qifan was quoted as saying the
deficits were to be balanced out by the central government. The talk of the
town is that one motivation for Bo's crackdown was to confiscate
private business money to fill the hole in his government spending.
Why did Chongqing's
deficits continually run high? A few
examples might provide a clue. One thing I wrote about last year was Bo Xilai's
billion-dollar
gingko trees. In a Great Leap
Forward like zeal to carry out his vision of "Forest Chongqing," in
2010 alone Bo spent 10 billion yuan
to plant expensive gingko trees that he favors but are not suitable for local
conditions. That expense was 10% of the city's fiscal revenue for 2009. (I
wonder if it is the symbolic value of gingko – a species dubbed as "living
fossil" – that Bo was after. His image
would never be far away as long as the gingkoes were around, much like the
first well Mao helped to dig in Ruijin in the 1930s that is forever
commemorated.)
Another
example: in Bo's "red culture" campaign, he prevented
Chongqing's satellite TV from showing commercials. So where could the TV
station get its revenue from? The city's fiscal budget covered 50% of
it. (On March 15, hours after the news broke that Bo was gone, the TV
station broadcast its first ad in two years.)
As I've also reported, Bo's "red song" campaign had been a big burden on the
city's finance. The singing activities
were a mandatory task driven down through the system's hierarchy to every work
unit. "They arrange work time to
sing 'red songs,' and the city finances it," commented a Chongqing
historian I interviewed last year, "This expense goes through neither
process of auditing nor process of argumentation. A word from the leader, then you must support
the activity."
A source said that,
after Chongqing's police force was reorganized in the "crackdown on
gangsters" campaign (and Wen Qiang, the old police chief and Wang Lijun's
predecessor, was executed), each year Chongqing would order 70,000 police
uniforms – at a cost of
4000 yuan each – from Dalian, where Bo Xilai
and Wang Lijun came from. That annual expense alone totals 280 million.
One outcome of the
"crackdown" are the so-called "police platforms" that Bo
Xilai and Wang Lijun placed everywhere along Chongqing's streets. Each one of
those modern-equipped platforms cost several million yuan. There was no study
on cost-effectiveness, but the platforms apparently have made people feel safer
and thankful to Bo.
~
Here is another
curious thing: in the wake of Bo Xilai's sudden downfall, shortly after what
could be called an online carnival among China watchers – probably more in
celebration of a rare, real-life political drama than anything else – the international
media is changing its tune and beginning to paint a more sympathetic image of
Bo than previously reported, by focusing on Chinese people's love of him. Reuters, for example, has a report titled
"In
China's Chongqing, dismay over downfall of Bo Xilai" that quotes a working "stick man" (棒棒军, a porter-for-hire) who praises Bo as
"a good man" that "made life a lot better here." The
Telegraph's Malcolm
Moore (the intrepid reporter who brought Wukan to the world's
attention) even went so far as to call Bo "one of the most loved"
officials in China.
Those reports,
however, can be misleading if not balanced by a variety of opinions or careful
analysis.
China is the most
populous country in the world, and Chongqing is the most populous metropolis in
China. With that many people, one can
find any and all kinds of opinions among them, certainly including the ones quoted
above. But when we assess Chinese public
opinion about a leader, a crucial factor that should never be forgotten is the
opacity of China's politics. Under this
condition, there is only so much one can read into either love or hatred of a
leader by the masses. Mao was the most
loved in the 1950s and 60s, but it was Mao's policies that caused tens of
millions of deaths during that period.
Deng Xiaoping was one of the most hated during the Cultural Revolution
(as "China's second biggest capitalist roader"), but he went on to
make China richer with his "reform and opening" policies. As I wrote
in a dual book review on Mao's Great Famine and Tombstone, an information blackout during the 1959-61
famine had caused millions of peasants to quietly die with no complaints about
Mao and the Communist Party. Today, the Internet has greatly increased
information accessibility (often in the form of rumors), but that is still
largely beyond people at the bottom of the society who struggle to make a daily
living, people like the "stick men."
I have been talking
to fellow townsfolk throughout Bo's tenure in Chongqing, both in person during
my visits and via phone and email. One
thing I notice – though this is not to claim that my sample set is
statistically significant – is that the more access to information people have,
the more negative their opinions of Bo are.
(The "stick man" quoted by the Reuters report above provides
collateral evidence to my observation – he "said he could not read and did
not watch television.") Age also
mattered, with people who had experienced the Cultural Revolution tending to be
more suspicious of Bo.
Others’ attitudes
toward Bo went through a change after the "crackdown on gangsters"
campaign began. I noted this in February 2010, in a blog post titled "Turning
Winds in Chongqing's Crackdown." I am one of those who
changed.
Watching my hometown
from afar, my first impression of Bo Xilai was rather good. In November 2008,
Chongqing's taxi drivers went on strike, the first such occurrence in Communist
China. I followed this event online as closely as I could, and was worried that
a bloody repression might be inevitable. At the time, Bo had held his post as
Chongqing Party chief for less than a year.
He was in Beijing when the strike started on a Monday; meanwhile, Chongqing's
official media reported arrests of cab drivers. On Thursday, however, after Bo
returned to Chongqing, he held a three-hour long televised meeting with
representatives of the taxi drivers and citizens to discuss their
requests. He appeared fair and open-minded, telling the drivers that
their demands were legitimate and their problems would be attended to. He gained their trust and the strike ended
peacefully. As I wrote
at the time, I was very impressed. I still remember the relief I felt for
my townsmen. I thought that Bo was different, and that he might make a
difference for Chongqing—perhaps for China, too.
A year later, when
the "crackdown on gangsters" began, the taxi strike was deemed to
have been organized by "mafia."
I visit my home city often and I knew the predicament of the cab drivers
was real – so that verdict was enough for me to be alarmed. Where had the
sympathetic Bo gone? What was the real purpose of the "crackdown"?
Today I continue to
wonder what role the taxi strike played in Bo's decision to start a Cultural
Revolution-style campaign, and what he had really felt inside when he appeared
as a sympathetic listener to the strikers.
Initially, the
crackdown made a positive impression on me as well – like the general public, I
was eager to see the corrupt punished. The irony is, later I would be as
shocked by the death sentence of Wen Qiang, Chongqing's police chief preceding
Wang Lijun, as I was pleased by Wen's arrest at first.
Then came the
official attempt to overturn the verdict of the taxi strike. Then came the Li
Zhuang case. Then came a dozen death sentences and executions
in quick succession – a batch execution, really, with a concentration not seen
since the heyday of the Cultural Revolution.
An ex-judge I met
last year questioned the legality of Chongqing's crackdown. "There is no
such a term as 'mafia' or 'gangsters' in China's criminal law," he told
me.
~
The last curious
thing I want to mention here is this: on
March 8th, during the National People's Congress (NPC) in Beijing,
Bo Xilai gave a press conference that attracted a big crowd of journalists;
lots of questions were asked and answered, but no one brought up the
disappearance of a Chongqing delegation member, Zhang Mingyu. Zhang was taken
by force from his Beijing
residence by Chongqing
police, believed to have been sent by Bo Xilai. Zhang's lawyer tried to reach
out to media and netizens through microblogs.
I saw reports of Zhang’s disappearance on March 7th and
tweeted about it with a bit of shock – this was happening during the NPC, which
is supposed to be China's highest legislative meeting. Would anybody inquire about a violation of
the basic rights of its own delegates?
A few foreign media outlets reported Zhang's lawyer's calls
for help on March 7th. After that, Zhang, and his name, were no
longer seen anywhere, as if he had vanished or never even existed. For a week,
I searched for his name on the Chinese internet every day. Nothing.
Until March 15th, that is, the day Bo Xilai's
removal was announced. A friend who knew
I was concerned with Zhang's fate sent me a link to a VOC report on Zhang's
release.
He was lucky. Another
Chongqing citizen, Fang Hong, disappeared a year ago after calling Bo Xilai
"shit," and was never seen or heard from again.
It is thinking about the helplessness of individuals like
those that brings fear to me. I write things like this essay – will I disappear
one day when visiting Chongqing? Bo's departure has made me feel safer.
What about Bo's
"Chongqing Model" though?
First, I don't believe there is such a thing as a "Chongqing
Model." If we are talking about the
mass-campaign style of carrying out a government policy, that's as old as
Maoist China; that's not Chongqing's patent. If we are talking about the
urbanization policies, we have to ask whether individual wishes and rights are
respected. Recently a Chongqing farmer
attempted suicide when visiting Taiwan with a tourist group; his misery was
that all his land was forcibly taken by the government. Meanwhile, Chongqing is
to spend $6 billion this year contracting out
agriculture to Brazil, Argentina, Canada and other countries, the
implications of which are unclear.
I have seen Bo Xilai characterized as a Western-style
politician, which I find amusing. Bo is a product of China's political
system, pure and simple. His education was Mao worship and he has not
transcended it; his ideas are all out of old playbooks; his suffering in his
youth – years of unjust imprisonment during the Cultural Revolution – seems to
have only made him more cynical and cruel.
China's political system needs to be reformed in order to
prevent bigger crises. So where is the
hope? If nobody coming out of the system I grew up in could carve a new path
forward, we will probably need to wait for those who grew up after the
upheavals of the Cultural Revolution had subsided. Alas, that is a generation
raised on crony-capitalism and rampant corruption. Such is the dilemma.
-------------
Update 3/22:
http://www.smh.com.au/ business/show-them-the-money- old-china-20110325-1ca3f.html
http://www.watoday.com.au/ world/bo-can-do-one-man-does- his-bit-to-be-the-great-will- of-china-20110806-1iglu.html
http://www.smh.com.au/world/ chinese-businessman-held-on- brink-of-mafia-expose- 20120307-1ukx2.html
http://www.smh.com.au/world/ sacking-overshadows-china- power-shift-20120315-1v86b. html?skin=text-only
-------------
Update 3/22:
As a follow up, I got a note from the Australian journalist
John Garnaut, who works for Sydney
Morning Herald. He told me he has been following Zhang Mingyu's story since last year.
Unfortunately he and a colleague "were
both locked out of the Bo presser at the NPC, along with many others. I was
disappointed no one asked about zhang mingyu. We reported as soon as he was
released."
The following links he sent me might be of interest:
http://www.smh.com.au/
http://www.watoday.com.au/
http://www.smh.com.au/world/
http://www.smh.com.au/world/