Chinese leaders in search of a middle path
Lanxin Xiang says by delving into the history of foreign regimes and China's own path to modernity, its leaders are trying to forge a truce between the country's political left and right
After assuming power at the 18th party congress, the "fifth generation" leaders in Beijing seem to be obsessed with the idea of reading history. First, the new anti-corruption tsar Wang Qishan started his job immediately with a book recommendation, and his choice was a foreign work. The Old Regime and the Revolution is a relatively obscure book by French historian Alexis de Tocqueville, whose work on democracy is far more well known.
Wang trained as a historian, and his interest in this work revolves around what is known as the "de Tocqueville puzzle", that revolution rarely takes place when social conditions are at their worst, but starts when conditions are dramatically improving, particularly during the reform period . It seems Wang has adopted a perspective using comparative history, reading French history to find a cure for China's current problem of widespread corruption, the same problem that plagued the Bourbons when none of the "three estates" was willing to rescue the ancien régime during the 1789 revolution.
This is a profound reading of history, although it is unclear whether de Tocqueville intended his case study to be applied universally. In de Tocqueville's account, the Old Regime in France went through two major phases. In the first, France was ruled by a feudal system in which power was dispersed. In the second, modernising French kings undermined the government's traditional base of support. They sought to eliminate the remnants of feudalism in an effort to establish centralised control over French society and promote what they believed to be social progress. But, mistakes made by the kings led to revolution.
Wang's reading suggests that the Chinese are still living under the Old Regime. As a leader of this regime, his politics, like that of de Tocqueville, is necessarily conservative. This means Wang will handle the anti-corruption campaign, which he deems absolutely necessary, with a tough but steady hand, so as not to undermine the legitimacy of the regime.
Surprisingly, Xi Jinping has also shown himself to be a history buff. His down-to-earth speeches are full of substantive rather than decorative historical references. Unlike Wang, Xi focuses more on continuity than disruption.
Two significant themes have emerged so far.
The first is an emphasis on "national restoration". Instead of the "peaceful rise" concept promoted by Hu Jintao , Xi prefers the historically more accurate expression of a nation on the way to recovery and restoration of its previous glory, after more than 160 years of lapse. "Peaceful rise", on the contrary, suggests something sudden and new, and lacks historical continuity.