Anurag Viswanath: Hu attempts to contain discontent

Most Standing Committee members are from the poorer provinces this time around.

The 17th National Party Congress of the 85-year-old, 73 million-member monolithic giant "" the Communist Party of China (CPC) concluded on Sunday, October 20, with President, Party General Secretary and Military Head, Hu Jintao's "Scientific Concept of Development" (kexue fazhan guan) being adopted and enshrined as the guiding principle of the CPC's Constitution and the notion of xiaokang (well-off society) as the new mantra. Hu has stated his goal post as quadrupling of China's GDP by 2020 and modernisation by 2050.

The Congress was held in the backdrop of an ever-widening disparity between the rich and poor, rural and urban, on a scale never seen before in modern China. Simmering and increasingly seething discontent is rearing its face. Straddling these contradictions is the CPC, whose ascendancy and legitimacy is based on the mandate of the peasant-worker proletariat versus a reality that is leaving behind this very power base on the sidelines of an increasingly prosperous, modern society.

Hu's theoretical formulation is a tacit recognition that continued endorsement of Deng Xiaoping's post-reform mantra, 'Let some get rich first' may cause a backlash in an increasingly unequal, stratified China with a disparate, uneven realisation of xiaokang. The Scientific Concept of Development, espoused by him in 2004, is a focus on common prosperity and people-centered growth, encapsulating notions of a green GDP, harmonious socialist society and balanced, coordinated development. This focus, by implication, suggests that his predecessor Jiang Zemin's formulation san ge daibiao or "Three Represents" (to take the requirements of China's advanced social productive forces, the progressive course of China's advanced culture and the fundamental interests of the overwhelming majority) was not "scientific". Hu's attempt at a new theoretical formulation is his "contribution" to Marxist theory, a festschrift to himself and his shot at ensuring his legacy for posterity. In his view, this will complement other guiding principles enshrined in the Constitution's lexicon "" Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong's Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory (at the 15th Party Congress in 1997) and Jiang Zemin's "Three Represents"(at the 16th Party Congress in 2002).

While the current fourth generation combine of Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao will be at the helm for the next five years, the Congress also unveiled the probable new guard "" the fifth generation leadership (born in the 1950s), who will take over at the 18th Congress in 2012. The political undercurrent of the 17th Congress was also a face-off between Hu and his predecessor Jiang, a proxy war of sorts.

Since Mao and Deng, no leader has been all-powerful, and little is known about the intense factional rivalry within the party. In the post-1978 period, Deng proved to be the consummate political persona, who dared to reverse Mao's policies and outshone his contemporaries on the contentious debate within the party on reforms. The "Butcher of Beijing" also survived Tiananmen and re-invented himself as a grand patriarch. But since then, his successor Jiang has been less successful. Jiang, who was propelled to the centre-stage from Shanghai due to his covert support during Tiananmen, owed his term to Deng's blessing. Jiang's retirement from the Central Military Commission as late as 2004 made Hu stand in his shadow for a long time. Jiang's elevation of his proteges (aka the Shanghai gang), who manned six of the nine positions in the Standing Committee between the years 2002-2007, ensured his political visibility even after he stepped down.

Most Jiang's proteges are out this time and Hu has almost come into his own, albeit with a compromise with his predecessor. Over the last year, heads have rolled in several purges, some masked as rooting out "corruption" "" Jiang proteges have been targets, such as Chen Liangyu, the high-profile and flamboyant Mayor of Shanghai, in a pension scandal. This has signalled Hu's subtle message, which Chinese use in private conversations "" "Killing the chickens to scare the monkey."

All eyes will be on one of the new members who made it this time to the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central committee, the highest policy-making body in China: Li Keqiang, 52. Li, the rising star is Hu Jintao's Communist Youth League (Tuanpai faction) protege and served at Liaoning province in the industrial rust belt of the northeast, which has witnessed several mining-related accidents and protests. Both Hu and Li served in the Communist Youth league in the 1980s and hail from the same province, Anhui.

Perhaps the compromise candidate is the princeling star, Xi Jinping, 54, who also made it to the Standing Committee. Xi served as the party secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Committee and owes his rise to a strong patron-client relationship with Jiang Zemin, both of who belong to the "Shanghai gang". Xi's father was a heavyweight CPC member in the days of Deng Xiaoping. With this, Li and Xi are heir apparents, and will be in the running for the top job in 2012 "" the next five years will determine who will emerge the frontrunner.

Besides Li and Xi, the other new faces on the Politburo are He Guoqiang, 63 and Zhou Yongkang, 64. The emphasis on a meritorious-technocratic leadership continues "" most in the leadership line-up are engineers. The sole exception is Li, armed with a Doctorate in Economics. Unlike the last Congress which was largely manned by the 'Shanghai gang' from the prosperous coastal belt, the present Standing Committee members are not from the affluent coastal belt, but from the central or north-eastern provinces. Wu Banguo, Hu Jintao and Li Keqiang are from one of the poorest provinces, Anhui. Jia Qingling and Li Changchun hail from the industrial belt (Hebei and Liaoning). He hails from interior Hunan and even Xi is originally from Shaanxi province. The only exception is Zhou, who is from prosperous Jiangsu.

The leadership is in place, but the biggest challenge for the CPC, despite all the internal rivalries rife in this year's Congress, is not within the party, but within the country "" in managing to keep a lid on the simmering discontent in the countryside, and continuing its monopoly on power. China's estimated 900 million rural population is restive and increasingly restless, as the divide between the rural and urban areas grows dramatically. Fuzzy land rights and forcible land appropriation has created a rising group of san wu nongmin "" the "three no peasants" "" peasants left with no land, no job and no income. The three major problems of the rural areas ( san nong wenti) "" agriculture, peasants and rural areas "" forced Hu to abolish the 2,600-year-old agricultural tax in 2006 and announce the drive to "building a socialist countryside". In recent years, China has been witness to an unprecedented numbers of protests/mass incidents primarily in rural areas "" in 2005, there were 87,000 'strikes', up 6.6 per cent from 2004, and an estimated 1,20,000 protests in 2006. This is the ultimate challenge to the fourth and fifth generation of leadership, and will determine whether the CPC can continue its hold on the people, who are increasingly holding the Damocles' sword on the CPC.

The author is an independent researcher who has written widely about Chinese politics