Many reports in the media suggested that this year’s meeting of the Congress of the CCP Central Committee would produce significant legislative proposals that would make the CCP more democratic and transparent. But the meetings closed on Sept. 19 with nothing new having been proposed.
Two reforms in particular had been talked about as possible: a change in how the primary-level representatives and leaders of the CCP are elected and a requirement for the CCP’s leadership to report income and assets.
Voting and Power
The current election process works like this: The higher level of the CCP leadership and the CCP’s Department of Organization pick the candidates. Then the names of candidates are released to the lower-level CCP organizations, and initial feedback from people who have known or worked with the candidates is collected. After that, these candidates are placed on the ballot for an open vote. Very often, only one candidate per office is on the ballot.
Essential changes are needed to make this a free and democratic process. First, the selection of the candidate by the higher-level CCP officials, not by the Party members choosing the candidates or the candidates themselves offering themselves for the election, has left open a loophole for corruption.
Many office holders have bribed the higher-level officials to become a candidate, and some of the higher-level officials have actually sold the candidacy to the lower-level officials. Of course, family members, relatives, and close friends of the higher-level officials often have a better chance to be chosen as a candidate.
Second, the feedback collected from the Party members about the candidates is not open to the public and is not handled transparently. Many times, complaints have been given about candidates’ work, character, or illegal actions, but their names have ended up on the ballot anyway.
Third, because the vote is often a public show of hands, people are afraid of voting against the candidate out of fear of retribution.
The hope had been that reforms would include having the candidate either place his name in the election or be nominated by the members and having a secret ballot with one member, one vote.
These hopes were disappointed because allowing a free and democratic process within the Party could be fatal to the Party‘s life.
Today’s Party members and leaders know that communism is no longer a strongly held belief in which Marxism, Leninism, and Mao’s thoughts provide the guiding principles of governing.
To maintain the CCP in power so that its members and leaders can enjoy social privilege and access to economic opportunities, they have to prop up the CCP as long as they can. At the same time, many of them have moved their children and money to other countries, knowing that one day the CCP will eventually lose power.
Observing how the former Soviet Union dissolved, they have concluded that with any relaxation on the tight control of who runs the Party, the selection of leaders may produce people like Yeltsin and Gorbachev who would put an end to the CCP.
Transparency and Corruption
A “sunshine bill,” which would mandate that CCP officials publicly report their income and assets, has been talked about for over two decades.
Twenty years ago, when the Beijing university students took to the streets and occupied Tiananmen Square, one of their leading demands was for an end to corruption. The students’ aspiration for making China a better country was met with tanks and machine-gun fire.
Today, few Chinese would question the observation that the corruption of CCP leaders and officials has reached a point of no return. A popular saying says, “It would ruin the nation if we do not stop the corruption, but it would destroy the Party if we do.”
In Secretary-General Hu Jintao’s report to the 17th Congress of the CCP in 2007, he discussed how the corruption of the CCP has compromised the CCP’s ability to rule and caused social instability. Last year, there were over 100,000 protests in China, with some involving violence and death.
Instead of dealing with the corruption at its roots, the CCP has conducted training camps for all levels of the Party leaders and public security chiefs this year on handling what it calls “sudden onset incidents,” or what are ordinarily called protests or demonstrations.
Hu is facing a seemingly insolvable dilemma. He knows that checks and balances on power, an independent judiciary system, a free press, and free elections are needed even to make possible keeping corruption under control. But what happens to the power of the CCP if these anticorruption mechanisms are in place?
Even if Hu desired to take these steps, the CCP leaders and their families will not let him. They will not let anyone weaken the leadership of CCP. Members of the CCP-leadership class often say that they will not let go the power obtained by their ancestors who sacrificed with their blood and lives. Of course, it would be more accurate to say that the sacrifice was of other people’s blood and lives.
Anyone who has romantically or naively hoped that the CCP will make any substantial change toward freedom, democracy, and transparency will continue to be disappointed. Such changes are simply too dangerous from the perspective of CCP leaders.
Michael Young is a Chinese-American writer based in Washington, D.C., who writes on China and the Sino-U.S. relationship.
