Daily News Brief November 8, 2012 |
Top of the Agenda: China Begins Leadership Transition
China launched its eighteenth National Congress on Thursday, a once-in-a-decade power transition (BBC)
that will see Xi Jinping replace President Hu Jintao and Li Keqiang
step in for Premier Wen Jiabao. Hu began the session with a stark
message on corruption, warning more than 2,000 delegates that a failure
to tackle the issue could "even cause the collapse of the party and the fall of the state (AP)."
While Li and Xi's appointments have been long expected, the exact
composition of the committee, which could reduce its number from nine to
seven, will not be revealed until next week. The highly scrutinized
transition has been fraught by political scandal, fueled by media
reports about the wealth and graft of the ruling Communist Party.
Analysis
"China's
vested interests are a roadblock to change. When leaders sought to
improve labour rights, exporters cried bloody murder. So entangled is
power and money that the incumbents resisting change and the party
supposedly fostering it are one and the same thing. In short, collectivist leadership
will curb any lurking Chairman Mao tendencies Mr Xi may have and vested
interests will seek to squash his inner Deng Xiaoping. That is, of
course, assuming Mr Xi wants to push through change," writes David
Pilling for the Financial Times.
"In
China, as anywhere else, a crisis can catalyse reform or revolution.
Pray that it is reform. This increasingly urgent reform, if it happens,
will not result in a western-style liberal democracy
any time soon, if ever. But even some Communist party analysts
acknowledge that, in China's own long-term national interest, the
changes will need to go in the direction of more rule of law,
accountability, social security and ecologically sustainable
development," writes Timothy Garton Ash for the Guardian.
"Dissidents
and other undesirables were hustled out of Beijing for the 18th Party
Congress or otherwise kept confined from public view—a show of the
Chinese security's state's octopus-like grasp on society.
The police presence in Beijing now is overwhelming. Hu's Opening
Ceremony speech gave little indication of real political openness in the
future," writes Hannah Beech for TIME.
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