Xi Jinping 习近平 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
It’s been more than a week since the Third Plenum of the 18th Party Congress in China ended. But with a 5,000-word communiqué, a 60-items resolution, a 11,000-word letter from President Xi Jinping and so far, seven People’s Daily editorials, China watchers continues to speculate on the specific areas where reform is seriously intended, and the prospect for actual implementation.
The plenum is significant in that it sets the policy agenda for the next nine years under President Xi Jinping’s rule. The spotlight has centered on the upgrade of the market’s role from “basic” to “decisive” in economic development, as well as the establishment of two new committees, the National Security Committee and the Central Deepening-Reform Leading Group, commonly seen as a significant step towards power consolidation at the very top, despite a lack of information on who will chair them.
But the most comprehensive document of all, The CCP Central Committee Resolution Concerning Some Major Issues In Comprehensively Deepening Reform (abbreviated “The Resolution” below), offers much richer political messages. One important issue that has not received enough attention, for example, is the implication for central-local government relations, which will profoundly affect policy implementation at the localities.
To get a fuller picture, I spoke with three China experts for their opinions: Kenneth Lieberthal, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and former director for Asia at the National Security Council; Huang Jing, Chinese politics professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore; Lin Tingjin, professor of public administration at Nanjing University of Finance and Economics, who also provides consulting services for the Jiangsu provincial government. Here they address two questions: 1.What are the highlights in The Resolution? 2. Implementation of reform will depend on the central government’s ability to enforce policies at the local level. What does the document tell us about the future of central-local government relations?
What are the highlights in The Resolution?
Kenneth Lieberthal: What the media has not picked up on is that the core of The Resolution is nailed at the end. The important line is “jianchi dang guan ganbu yuanze,” to strengthen the principle that the Party manages the cadres. That implies there will be no reduction of party power in the system. The Party organization role will not shrink, and the Party’s penetration into the society is going to strengthen. They are going to count on the Party to make things happen, no matter it’s less interference with economic development or the implementation of other reforms. That’s saying, we are going to have the cake and eat it too.
What this resolution says clearly is, Xi Jinping personally wants to be known as someone who recognizes that the Chinese system needs major reform to meet its goals in sustainable development. But the implementation is enormously difficult and will be prolonged.
Huang Jing: The document set the Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang leadership in an advantageous position in the upcoming bargaining with various opposition interests groups. They have to be bold and dramatic in this document so that they can bargain down in the future.
Compared to the resolutions of the important plenums of 1978, 1998, and 2003, the current Resolution has pointed out a very clear direction for continuous reform. The leadership is determined to let the market play a decisive role in economic development, and to develop a fair and transparent environment for competition. One important point is that they are trying to break the monopoly of state-owned enterprises – don’t get me wrong, that in no way means they are breaking the SOEs themselves, which aren’t necessarily bad. It’s not the ownership that matters, but rather how they are managed and operated, and how they compete. It’s disappointing that the mainstream western media analysis is, to various extent, undermined by the “politically correct” mindset that single party rule is absolutely bad and so are the SOEs.
Some people may think The Resolution is quite negative because the new leadership is trying to centralize political power with the establishment of the National Security Committee and the Central Deepening-Reform Leading Group. Sure it’s bad news if you look at it from the angle of how political institutions evolve. Democracy is all about decentralization, while single party rule is all about centralization. Some people argue that Xi Jinping is creating a strong man of himself like Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. History has taught us that it’s not good news when you have a rising power with a strongman.
But we should also see the measures as an effort to restructure political institutions and power distribution in order to centralize the policymaking process. It reflects the new leaders’ determination that they want to be in charge—in the past decade, one major reason that an adopted policy was compromised in implementation was the problem of decentralization, which has caused wide-spread policy distortion.
Lin Tingjin: The Resolution still talks about the relationship between the government and the market, and the government’s changing functions, which have all been in discussion for the past twenty years. For example, this is the sixth or seventh time that administrative reform has been brought up. What I care about is how the reforms will be implemented.
Third Plenum"s Message On Central-Local Relations--Views From America ...
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