观察家报 中国会不会出现戈尔巴乔夫

中国下一任领袖的特征和目标本身就十分重要：中国已经超越英国，到今年年末，它将超越德国成为仅次于美国和日本的第三大经济体。它已经是世界第二大军事大国，是最大的出口国，拥有最大的外汇储备。但本周参加党代表大会的每一位成员都知道，他们的选择会引起额外而特别的回响。

　　他们在选择1949年革命之后的第五代共产党领导人。这些不再是以革命奠定合法地位的领导人，不再有着同样的共产主义使命感。他们是经理人和管理者，他们想要这个体系保持运作。在苏联，戈尔巴乔夫以苏联第五代领导人的资格质疑共产主义，他并非单枪匹马地支持改革和公开化；许多党政干部已经认定苏联经济和社会模式机能不良、腐败、效率低，必须改变。

　　在领跑者中会不会出现中国的戈尔巴乔夫？

　　胡锦涛本周将再次呼吁反腐败。麻烦在于尽管有他的言辞，只有3%的贪官被抓，主要是因为反腐运动是由自身腐败的官员来运作的。

　　还有环境，每年多达75万人死于空气污染。城乡差距由来已久，而且在日益加剧，劳动和社会保障部警告说，如果不平等继续加剧，2010年后将无法保障社会稳定。然后还有经济，过分依赖出口和投资，依赖农民的储蓄以及廉价的劳动力。去年，在日本、欧盟和美国三个专利部门获准的专利中，中国只占0.3%。

　　中国领导人充分意识到包围他们的危机，意识到唯一可行的办法是加强问责性、公开性和监督。政治问题是组织更多“社会主义民主”，允许引入好事物，同时确保竞争性选举的进程不失控。

　　胡锦涛在6月表示他将呼吁“解放思想”和政治改革。在过去六个月，他允许党校的理论家讨论民主的优越性。《炎黄春秋》曾自由地辩论这个问题。在党代表大会的预热阶段，这些是重要的迹象。

　　本周将有揭晓。共产党政治是不透明的，但含义不再仅限于中国。它能否不经重大政治和社会动荡掌握下一阶段的发展会影响我们所有人。（原标题：中国的下一任领袖会不会是它的戈尔巴乔夫；作者：Will Hutton）

Will China's next leader be its Gorbachev?

The country's top political figures gather this week to choose a new President. Their decision will affect us all

Will Hutton

Sunday October 14, 2007

The Observer

Forget the general election that wasn't - the biggest political event of this autumn is about to take place. The 17th congress of the Chinese Communist party starts tomorrow in Beijing. Every important figure in communist China, ranging from city mayors to the chief executives of state-owned enterprises, will gather and politick for the next five days - and then choose a President of China to succeed Hu Jintao in 2012.

The character and aims of China's next President are important enough in themselves: having powered past Britain, by the end of this year, China will have overtaken Germany to become the third largest economy in the world after the USA and Japan. It is already the world's second military power, biggest exporter and owner of the largest foreign exchange reserves. But as every member of this week's congress knows, their choice has an additional and particular resonance.

They are choosing the fifth generation of Communist party leaders after the 1949 revolution. These are no longer leaders legitimised by revolution or who have the same sense of communist mission. They are managers and administrators who want to make the system work. In the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev's readiness to question communism was intertwined with his membership of the Soviet Union's fifth generation of leaders. He did not champion perestroika and glasnost alone; much of the nomenklatura had decided that the Soviet economic and social model was dysfunctional, corrupt and endemically inefficient and had to change.

Will one of Hu Jintao's two 'Lis', as the frontrunners to succeed him, Li Keqiang and Li Yuanchao, are popularly known, feel the same way as they walk out in front of the cameras in the Great Hall of the People on Friday? Will one prove to be China's Gorbachev?

The 2,200 or so handpicked delegates are pulled in two directions. They are beneficiaries of enormous and rampant corruption; Minxin Pei, director of the China programme at Washington's Carnegie Institute, calculates that 10 per cent of the value of all land and investment deals is set aside to grease Communist party officials' hands. Corrupt payments stand at $86bn every year - and they are rising. Pei says this poses a lethal threat to the system because of growing popular revulsion; he is right and the leadership agrees with him. Doubtless Hu will speak out against corruption this week, yet again.

The trouble is that, despite his rhetoric, only three in 100 corrupt officials is caught, largely because the anti-corruption campaigns are run by officials who themselves are corrupt. Worse, nobody believes in the underlying moral purpose of communism; old habits, including the imperial system of concubinage, are returning with a vengeance. And this is generating a contrary pull. A growing proportion of the Chinese nomenklatura - like the Soviet Union's before them - knows that the system, for all its successes, is running out of time.

There is the environment, where up to 750,000 people a year die of air pollution. There is the chronic and rising inequality between town and country with the Ministry of Labour and Social Security warning that if inequality continues to rise, it refuses to guarantee social stability after 2010. Then there is the economy, over-reliant on exports and investment and dependent on vast peasant savings and cheap peasant labour. China registered only 0.3 per cent of the world's 'triadic' patents (valid in Japan, the EU and US) last year.

It is an elephantine subcontractor to the West, dependent for its competitiveness on forcing its currency to be linked to the dollar. That means it is acquiring a stunning and unsustainable extra $500bn of foreign exchange reserves a year, which has helped drive Chinese inflation to a 10-year high.

Hu and the politburo are fully aware of the crisis that could engulf them and that the only viable solution is more accountability, openness and scrutiny. The political problem is to organise more 'socialist democracy' which may permit these good things while making sure that the process does not get out of hand with popular demands for competitive elections. The story of this week's party congress is how far Hu will be able to manoeuvre between the conservatives, who want to call a halt to even the smallest of reforms for fear it will lead to loss of political control, and the Dengist reformers, who know the Chinese economic and political establishment has got to subject itself to more scrutiny and the rule of law or the game is up.

Hu is on the reform side of the argument - just. He said in June he would add calls for 'emancipating thought' and political reform to his longstanding commitment to harmonious economic and social development and science at this week's congress. Over the last six months, he has permitted leading theorists in the party school to discuss the advantages of democracy. Yanhuang Chunqui, a liberal weekly, has freely debated the issue. In the run-up to a party congress, these are important indications.

The other question is whether Hu will succeed in getting both 'Lis' into the politburo, the first step to the succession. Li Keqiang is party secretary of the important industrial province of Liaoning, a former secretary of the communist youth league and on the mildly reformist Hu side of the argument.

Li Yuanchao runs the equally significant province of Jiangsu, is younger and has a track record of being a genuinely innovative reformer, pushing democratic socialism to its limits in opening up the local media, promoting the rule of law and subjecting party cadres to public examination. He is deplored by the conservatives. The first Li getting on the politburo would be a goodish signal; both would be very strong.

This week comes the denouement. Communist party politics are opaque, but the implications are no longer confined to China. Whether it can navigate the next phase of its development without a major political and social upheaval affects us all.