Tag Archives: china

China

With the end of Bo Xilai’s trial, is Xi Jinping co-opting the ‘Chongqing model’?

1 Comment

boxilai

It’s been perhaps the most sensational rise and fall of a top Chinese official in a generation, but the corruption trial against former Chongqing party leader Bo Xilai (薄熙来) wrapped up this week with plenty of surprises, China Flag Iconeven if his guilty verdict for bribery, embezzlement and abuse of power, is all but assured.

On the final day of what has been a sensation hearing by Chinese standards, Bo accused a top aide of becoming romantically involved with his wife, capping five days of what has been a spirited defense by one of China’s most charismatic 21st century party leaders.  Far from showing remorse, Bo (pictured above) has vigorously denied the charges and defended his actions:

He said he never cared for money. “The long johns that I’m wearing now were bought by my mother in the 1960s,” Bo said, suggesting he did not approve of the lifestyle Gu had created for their son, Bo Guagua.  “I have been working like a machine. I really don’t have time to care about air tickets, hotel expenses and travel expenses,” Bo said. He added: “The country did not pick me because I am a good accountant.”

That Bo has been allowed to mount such a public (and political) defense is not surprising, given his status as one of the second-generation ‘princelings’ of the Chinese Communist Party (中国共产党).  Even if Bo goes to prison for a decade or longer, the trial will have helped to cement his image as the leader of a ‘New Left’ movement within Chinese politics and society.

But what does that mean for the ‘Chongqing model’ that Bo championed as party secretary in Chongqing from 2007 to 2012?

The ‘Chongqing model’ is a vaguely neo-Maoist approach to governing China that involves a redoubling of state power and control, strengthening state-owned enterprises and aggressively attacking organized crime, while bringing back some truly unique vestiges of the era of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong (毛泽东), such as encouraging the singing of revolutionary-era songs.  It’s often contrasted against the ‘Guangdong model’ — a leadership style that encourages private development to blossom instead of through state-sponsored economic policy and at least a passing respect for the rule of law and other institutional reforms.

You can place the two models on the familiar left-right ideological axis — the Chongqing model prioritizes equitable distribution among all classes, the Guangdong model prioritizes the highest economic growth possible.  In reality, however, the line between the two models is blurrier.  Though the ‘Guangdong model’ is associated with the relatively liberal former Guangdong party chair Wang Yang (汪洋), now a vice premier (though not a full member of the Politburo Standing Committee) in Xi’s government, it was Wang who served for two years as Chongqing party chair as Bo’s direct predecessor.  Realistically, the differences among China’s political elite remain smaller than their shared values.  Just as there’s little chance that China will return to the days of Mao-era socialist state planning, there’s also little evidence that economic liberalization and reform has led (or will lead in the future) to greater political freedom.

Over the weekend, The Wall Street Journal reported that Xi Jinping (习近平), who took power as Chinese president earlier this year after assuming leadership last November as the general secretary of the party’s Politburo Standing Committee, is also lurching to the left in the first year of what is expected to be his ten-year stewardship of the People’s Republic of China: Continue reading With the end of Bo Xilai’s trial, is Xi Jinping co-opting the ‘Chongqing model’? →

Japan

Quivering for the fourth arrow of Abenomics (and other Japanese policy matters)

1 Comment

shinzowins

As widely expected, Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party of Japan (LDP, or 自由民主党, Jiyū-Minshutō) surged to an overwhelming victory in Sunday’s national elections in Japan to determine half of the seats (121) in the House of Councillors, the upper house of the Diet (国会).  While the victory wasn’t enough to give the LDP a two-thirds supermajority in both houses of the Diet, it was enough to usher in a new era of continuity, with the government of prime minister Shinzō Abe (安倍 晋三) set to consolidate power after winning election in the lower house, the House of Representatives, last December.Japan

The result leaves the LDP, together with its ally, the Buddhist conservative New Kōmeitō (公明党, Shin Kōmeitō) with a majority in the upper house, and that will give the LDP the ability to push through legislation without needing to compromise in the House of Councillors and it makes Abe the strongest Japanese prime minister since Junichiro Koizumi (小泉 純一郎) in the early 2000s and ends a seven-month period of a ‘twisted Diet,’ with control of the upper house still in the hands of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ, or 民主党, Minshutō).

But the LDP looked set to fall just below an absolute majority in its own right:

japanHOC

In contrast, the LDP holds 294 seats in the 480-seat House of Representatives, and together with the 31 seats of New Kōmeitō, holds a two-thirds majority.  That the LDP doesn’t hold an equally impressive advantage in the upper house is due to the fact that only half of the seats in the House of Councillors were up for election yesterday and, among those 121 seats, the LDP’s dominance is clear:

japan2013

That also means that the Democratic Party doesn’t face an immediate wipeout, and it will remain the chief opposition party — in fact, their 59 seats in the House of Councillors is actually more than the 57 seats they currently hold in the House of Representatives.  That will give the DPJ a legislative base from which it can attempt to rebuild itself as a political force and to position itself for 2016, when Japan’s next elections are likely to come.  Banri Kaieda, a fiscal hawk who assumed the party’s leadership after its December 2012 defeat, will stay on for now as leader.

But the Democrats weren’t the only losers on Saturday.  It was perhaps an even more difficult election for the Japan Restoration Party (日本維新の会, Nippon Ishin no Kai).  A merger between the two smaller parties of Osaka mayor Tōru Hashimoto (橋下徹) and right-wing, nationalist former Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara (石原慎太郎), it emerged with 54 seats in the House of Representatives in December to become as the third-largest party.  But it won just eight seats on Saturday, and the party now seems likely to split up.  That’s largely due to Hashimoto’s awkward comments suggesting U.S. soldiers in Okinawa should be permitted to use prostitutes and controversial comments that largely defended the ‘comfort women’ system, whereby Japanese soldiers forced women in enemy countries to serve as sexual slaves.  But it’s also due to the fact that nationalist tensions stemming from a standoff with the People’s Republic of China over the Senkaku Islands (Diaoyu Islands in Chinese) have calmed somewhat since last December.

One success story was the Japanese Communist Party (JCP, or 日本共産党, Nihon Kyōsan-tō), which won eight seats on Saturday, bringing its total to 11. Founded in 1922, the JCP has not been a strong force in recent years.  Though it has left its Marxist roots in the past, it has gained a modest amount of strength since the 2008 global financial crisis and it supports ending Japan’s military alliance with the United States.

But beyond the horse-race dynamics of Saturday’s result, what can we expect from Japanese policy in the next three years?  Here’s a look at eight key issues that are likely to dominate the LDP’s agenda, at least in the near future.  Continue reading Quivering for the fourth arrow of Abenomics (and other Japanese policy matters) →

Italy

Italy’s problem with racism goes far deeper than recent slurs against Cécile Kyenge

1 Comment

letta-kyenge

It seems like barely a week goes by without another story coming out of Italy about another racial slur hurled at the Mediterranean country’s first black government minister, Cécile Kyenge. Italy Flag Icon

This week’s row comes from Roberto Calderoli, a member of the Lega Nord (Northern League), the autonomist right-wing party that has in the past allied itself with Silvio Berlusconi, though it’s not part of the current ‘grand coalition’ led by center-left prime minister Enrico Letta.

Calderoli, speaking over the weekend, railed against Kyenge, arguing that her success encourages ‘illegal immigrants’ to come to Italy, that she should be a minister ‘in her own country,’ and added this gem:

“I love animals – bears and wolves, as everyone knows – but when I see the pictures of Kyenge I cannot but think of, even if I’m not saying she is one, the features of an orangutan,” Mr Calderoli said in a speech to a rally in the northern city of Treviso on Saturday.

Calderoli’s comments were unthinkably crass but, unfortunately, they are not atypical in the three months since Kyenge came to power, nor are they incredibly out of the norm for a political culture that has long treated racism with a wink and a smile, such as when Berlusconi himself described Barack Obama, the first black president of the United States, as particularly ‘suntanned.’

Kyenge (pictured above with Letta), an Italian citizen who was born in Congo, came to Italy in 1983, when she set up a practice as a doctor in Modena, in the central Italian region of Emilia-Romagna.  Earlier this year, she was first elected to Italy’s Camera dei Deputati (Chamber of Deputies) as a member of Italy’s center-left Partito Democratico (PD, Democratic Party).  Letta appointed her as the government’s minister for integration, in part due to the work Kyenge has done since founding DAWA, an association designed to promote multicultural awareness in Italy and to foster cooperation between Italy and Africa.  Prior to becoming an Italian deputy, Kyenge served as a provincial councilor in Modena for four years, and she’s a proponent of a jus soli, a law that would grant citizenship to those children of immigrants who are born in Italy.

In short, Kyenge personifies a new kind of 21st century success story for first- and second-generation Europeans in a world where globalized ties are now bound to blur ethnic, racial, national and cultural borders.

It’s worth bearing in mind that this isn’t the first time Calderoli has been accused of racism or insensitivity.  He was forced to resign as a minister in a previous Berlusconi government in 2006 after purporting to wear a t-shirt showing the printed cartoons of a Danish newspaper depicting the prophet Mohammed.  (Having returned to a subsequent Berlusconi government a few years later, it was Calderoli who drafted the election law that now virtually everyone in Italy agrees is worthless).

Nor is it the first time Northern League politicians have made controversial statements about Kyenge — one of its local politicians earlier in June called for Kyenge to be raped, so she would understand how victims feel, and in April, another European Parliament member, Mario Borghezio, called her part of a ‘bonga, bonga government’ and argued that she wanted to ‘impose her tribal traditions from the Congo.’

Kyenge has accepted Calderoli’s begrudging apology, but it’s not even the only incident this week — members of the far-right Forza Nuova (New Force) party held an anti-immigration protest featuring nooses in Pescara in central Italy.

In the long run, it may well be that Kyenge’s graceful responses to unacceptably mean-spirited and racist comments convince more Italians that there’s no place for racism in Italian public discourse — she has the power to turn ugly incidents like Calderoli’s slur into what Obama himself might call a ‘teachable moment.’

But that task is made equally difficult by the integration portfolio that Kyenge holds, which means that she is responsible for policymaking on immigration and the nearly 4.5 million foreign residents who live in Italy.  Even as Kyenge tries to deflect tensions, Calderoli and other Northern League politicians may be using outbursts about Kyenge as a deliberate strategy to inject racial resentment as a potent political wedge issue.

Although migrants have been coming to Italy since the 1970s, which makes immigration to Italy a more recent phenomenon than in other European countries, about two-thirds of Italy’s current foreign residents have arrived in the past decade.  The net result is a country that hasn’t had time to develop the political or cultural institutions to cope with a very rapid influx of foreigners, let alone to develop the vocabulary of multiculturalism in a country that can be sometimes quite insular in a way that’s both profound and provincial, troubling and quaint Continue reading Italy’s problem with racism goes far deeper than recent slurs against Cécile Kyenge →

Bhutan, India

Do Chinese-Indian relations explain the result of the Bhutanese elections?

Leave a comment

tobgay

Although it’s only the second election in the brief history of Bhutanese democracy, Bhutan’s voters will mark the precedent of its first democratic transfer of power following Saturday’s election, in which the opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP, མི་སེར་དམངས་གཙོའི་ཚོགས་པ་) scored a major victory, winning 32 seats to just 15 seats for the governing party.bhutan

That’s quite a turnaround from the country’s first-ever election in 2008, when the governing Bhutan Peace and Prosperity Party (Druk Phuensum Tshogpa, DPT, འབྲུག་ཕུན་སུམ་ཚོགས་པ) won 45 out of 47 seats in the country’s Gyelyong Tshogdu (National Assembly), the lower house of the recently promulgated Bhutanese parliament.

The governing DPT is seen as slightly closer to Bhutan’s monarch, the Druk Gyalpo (འབྲུག་རྒྱལ་པོ, its ‘dragon king’), the young Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck who has, like his father before him, smoothed the path toward the gradual development of a constitutional monarchy.  But both parties support the constitutional monarchy and both parties have ties to the governing elite.  The former PDP leader, for example, is Sangay Ngedup, who previously served as prime minister in the pre-parliamentary era from 1999 to 2000 and from 2005 to 2006.  DPT leader and Bhutan’s first elected prime minister, Jigme Thinley, previously served as prime minister from 1998 to 1999 and from 2007 to 2008.

Here’s more background on Bhutan’s idiosyncratic path to democracy at the time of the first round at the end of May, which eliminated two of the four competing political parties, setting the conditions for the July runoff between the DPT and the PDP.  Although the governing DPT won 44.52% of the first-round vote to just 32.53% for the opposition PDP, the DPT picked up virtually no support in the weeks following its initial May victory.

Tshering Tobgay (pictured above),  the PDP’s current leader, will now become Bhutan’s second prime minister, is a former civil servant, and comes from a younger generation of Bhutanese than either Ngedup or Thinley. (You can watch his TEDx talk in English on happiness here).  He’ll come to power on a wave of discontent over many issues, including a rupee shortage last year that brought about a miniature credit crunch in Bhutan caused, in part, by the government’s decision to spend too much of its Indian rupee reserves.

But the outcome may owe much to India’s ham-fisted decision to terminate a kerosene and cooking gas subsidy to its northern neighbor at the end of June, causing prices of the two energy sources to rise, allegedly in retribution for Thinley’s diplomatic overtures to the People’s Republic of China.  In the immediate aftermath of Saturday’s election, Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh made it clear that the subsidy would be restored as soon as possible.  But the clear implication is that India used its special influence with Bhutan, the top recipient of Indian financial aid, to attempt to intervene in an internal election:

New Delhi was alarmed not just by Thinley, who made himself the official ambassador of Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness phenomenon, reaching out to Beijing but also the manner in which he established diplomatic ties with many other countries without bothering to take South Block into confidence.

Tobgay used the crisis as yet another instance to criticize Thinley for jeopardizing Bhutanese-Indian relations and he’s stated that bilateral relations with India will be his top priority.  Though Indian officials now admit the subsidy decision could have been better timed, it’s hard to see how the subsidy dispute could have helped Thinley in the closing days of the Bhutanese campaign.  Given the central economic and geopolitical role that India plays in Bhutan, it wasn’t a good sign for Thinley that he spent the final week of the campaign on the defensive over Indian relations.  There are a lot of reasons for the PDP’s victory on Saturday, including the wholly separate issue of last year’s rupee shortage, wider doubts about the Bhutanese economy, youth unemployment and the still-unsettled treatment of the Nepalese minority in Bhutan.  But it’s not hard to see how the PDP’s success — in southern Bhutan, in particular — came about in large part due to the Indian issue.

To understand why India (and China) are so important to Bhutan is to understand the simple geography of the country:

bhutan

Continue reading Do Chinese-Indian relations explain the result of the Bhutanese elections? →

Nicaragua

Don’t take the concept of the Nicaraguan Canal seriously until the Chinese government does

Leave a comment

(11) View from Parque Historica

Over the past month, Nicaragua has been working to push forward with a plan to build a canal linking the Pacific Ocean to the Caribbean Sea — a dream that predated the actual construction of the Panamá Canal in 1914.Nicaragua

The original push in the United States for a canal through Central America started as the dream of U.S. senator John Tyler Morgan of Alabama, a former Confederate colonel during the U.S. civil war, who hoped that a canal through Nicaragua would restore the U.S. south to economic prominence, and he pushed throughout the 1880s for a Nicaraguan canal, in particular, long before Panamá, then itself the northernmost province of the Republic of Colombia, was a serious option, despite the fact that the engineer of the Suez Canal, Ferdinand de Lesseps, had failed in French-led efforts to build a canal through the isthmus of Panamá.

19th century Nicaraguan dreams turn to 20th century Panamanian realities

After the French disaster in Panamá — beset by corruption, disease and ultimately failure — Nicaragua seemed the clear favorite for U.S. interests in the construction of a Central American canal.  The story of how Wilson Nelson Cromwell (who helped found the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell) and Philippe Bunau-Varilla transformed public opinion, first within the administration of former U.S. president William McKinley and, thereafter, Theodore Roosevelt, and then in the U.S. Congress, to favor a Panamanian route as speedier and less costly is one of the most amazing stories in the history of congressional lobbying.  After all, Panamá already featured a French railway to facilitate construction, ports on either side of the isthmus, the remnants of the aborted French canal effort, and it would, after all, be much shorter than any Nicaraguan canal.

As debate in Congress ultimately turned into a battle of the routes, Bunau-Varilla and U.S. senator Mark Hanna, a top Republican powerbroker, had worked to convince skeptical colleagues that Nicaragua’s volcanic activity made it too unstable for a canal.  Incredulously, Hanna delivered a speech on the Senate floor purporting to show all of Nicaragua’s supposed active volcanoes would make the route more difficult.

But the tour de force turned out to be a stamp — as Matthew Parker writes in Panama Fever: The Epic Story of One of the Greatest Human Achievements of All Time:

Over the next few days Bunau-Varilla scoured the philatelists of the capital looking for a certain 1900 one-centavo Nicaraguan stamp, which he had come across the year before.  In the foreground of the stamp is pictured a busy wharf while in the background rises the magnificent bulk of Mount Momotombo.  In an artistic flourish the illustrator had added smoke to the top of the volcano, which was actually more than a hundred miles from the proposed Nicaragua canal.  Just before the vote, every senator was sent this ‘evidence’ of the dangers of the Nicaragua route.

nicaragua mt momotombo 5c blue0001

Ultimately, the vote favored Panamá over Nicaragua by just eight votes.  Roosevelt’s administration thereafter embarked on the self-interested cause of Panamanian independence from Colombia and, having helped deliver such independence in 1903, commenced building the Canal over the next decade, with U.S. doctors and engineers learning how to reduce yellow fever and malaria along the way through the reduction of mosquito populations.  Though the United States controlled the Canal through much of the 20th century, U.S. president Jimmy Carter formally agreed in a 1977 treaty to cede control of the Panamá Canal Zone back to Panamá.  Since that transition in 1999, Panamá has reaped much of the economic benefit of the Canal’s income, which has helped Panamá become one of Central America’s strongest economies, and the country is preparing for the completion of a project in 2014 to widen the Canal, thereby expanding Panamanian economic opportunities.

A Sandinista canal

Fast-forward nearly a century, and Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega hopes to succeed where over a century’s worth of futile dreams have failed — that is, with a little help from the Chinese.

Ortega came to power for the first time in 1979 when his Sandinista revolutionaries overthrew U.S.-backed dictator Anastasio Somoza, the last of a line of three Somoza family members that had controlled Nicaragua since the mid-1930s.  Somoza was no great loss for Nicaragua, but his overthrow came at a difficult time for the country, which was slowly recovering from an earthquake in 1975 that had essentially leveled Managua, the capital, hastening its long-term decline as the financial capital of Central America to the rising Panamá City.  Ortega came to power as part of a Sandinista junta, and though he slowly emerged as Nicaragua’s top leader as president from 1985 to 1990, his rise to power led to one of the most brutal proxy fights of the Cold War, with Ortega and the Sandinistas turning to the Soviet Union for support and the United States clandestinely arming and supporting the ‘Contras,’ plunging the tiny Central American country into a decade-long civil war.

ortega

Ortega (pictured above) stepped down in 1990 after losing the presidential election, but as Nicaragua slowly recovered from the carnage of the 1980s, and as Nicaraguans suffered through a long line of democratically elected, if massively corrupt and mediocre presidents, Ortega retained a strong following, especially among the country’s poorest residents.  He returned to power in 2006 after winning a highly fragmented election under the old Sandinista banner (FSLN, Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional), having remade himself as a democratic socialist along the lines of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez.  Ortega, who quickly consolidated the instruments of power, eliminated the hurdle of term limits and was overwhelmingly reelected in November 2011 under conditions that were tilted widely in favor of the Sandinistas.

But unlike in the 1980s, when Ortega seemed to be genuinely interested in eliminating corruption and establishing a new more just, socialist era for Nicaragua, Sandinista 2.0 has jettisoned the ideology for a state capitalist model that’s just as corrupt as the Somoza era ever was. Continue reading Don’t take the concept of the Nicaraguan Canal seriously until the Chinese government does →

Iran

What U.S. commentators get wrong about Iran — and why Iran’s election matters

Leave a comment

rafsanjanivotes

Mark Dubowitz, the executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, writes in The Atlantic this morning that Iran has a ‘presidential selection,’ not a presidential election.Iran Flag Icon

That will come as some surprise to Iran’s 75 million citizens, many of whom have turned out today to participate in the first of what is likely to be two votes to determine who will succeed outgoing Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  Moreover, the ultimate winner of the election will pay a vital role in shaping policy for the struggling Iranian economy over the next four years and, more crucially for the United States, help determine the tone that Iran will take with respect to ongoing P5+1 negotiations over the future of Iran’s nuclear energy program.

Iran’s democracy is, shall we say, less than perfect from any objective standards of democracy — Western, Islamic or otherwise.

But Dubowitz is essentially arguing that the election has no consequences:

But Iranian voters know better. The election may indicate changes in the interfactional balance of power within the regime, and a victory by [Hassan] Rouhani or [Mohammad Baqer] Qalibaf may temper the tone of the regime’s nuclear intransigence, but there will be no change in substance. In the Islamic Republic of Iran, election in reality means selection. [Supreme Leader Ali] Khamenei will remain in charge.

But that Khamenei will remain in charge is a coals-to-Newcastle argument.  Today’s election is for president, not for Supreme Leader.

We may not like it, but the dual roles of the Supreme Leader and the Iranian president are part of the system of Iran’s government for over three decades.  You can, perhaps, think of the Supreme Leader as a strong head of state and the president as the head of government.  It’s perhaps easier to think of Iran’s president as akin to a prime minister — Iran had a prime minister in the 1980s, but the office ended in 1989, largely because of the overlap between the president and the prime minister.  It’s arguable that Iran’s president has more independence from the Supreme Leader than, in effect, French prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault has from French president François Hollande.

Perhaps Iran’s is not the most representative system, but it’s more representative than the dictator-for-life model that Hosni Mubarak effected in Egypt for three decades with the full bipartisan support of U.S. policymakers.  It’s also more representative than the current system of selecting the leadership of the People’s Republic of China as well.

Dubowitz is right that there are many reasons to cast doubt on the role of the Guardian Council, a gatekeeper body comprised of 12 members, six appointed by the Supreme Leader and six by Iran’s conservative-dominated parliament.  Despite hundreds of hopeful presidential candidates, the Guardian Council approved just eight candidates to run in today’s election, though two have already dropped out.  The Guardian Council has never approved a woman to run for the presidency, and its dubious refusal to approve former president Hashemi Rafsanjani, a moderate seen as the best shot in 2013 for reformist-minded voters, calls into question the even-handedness of the Guardian Council.

It also refused to allow Ahmadinejad’s chief of staff Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei to run, though many believe Mashaei’s campaign was a stalking-horse candidacy designed to provide Ahmadinejad a way to continue to influence policy despite a limit of two consecutive presidential terms.

Without doubt, these disqualifications (and Guardian Council interference in other minor elections, such as for Tehran’s city council, and in Iran’s parliamentary elections last year) call into question whether Iran’s odd style of democracy is as robust as it once was.  Remember that eight years ago, the relatively unknown Ahmadinejad leapt over many more experienced rivals into the presidency on a conservative and populist agenda, and 16 years ago, reformist dark-horse candidate Mohammed Khatami won the presidency in a landslide as well. Continue reading What U.S. commentators get wrong about Iran — and why Iran’s election matters →

United States

Remembering Medgar Evers and the fight for civil rights

Leave a comment

evers

 

Exactly 50 years ago today — on June 12, 1963 — a young 37-year-old civil rights activist was brutally shot in the back in the driveway of his home in Jackson, Mississippi.USflag

That young activist, Medgar Evers, had spent his tragically truncated life as the field secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a role in which he helped James Meredith break the segregation barrier in order to become the first black male to enroll in the University of Mississippi in 1962.

Evers today has entered the pantheon of American heroes.  His remains lie in Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, D.C.  If you fly into Jackson today, you’ll fly into Mississippi’s largest airport, which is now named in honor of Evers.  But at the time, his murderer was twice freed after a jury, comprised solely of white men, refused to convict him — he was convicted only in 1994 on the basis of new evidence.

In the 50 years since Evers death, the United States has become a much more equal place — after all, it elected its first non-white president five years ago, and it’s had two black secretaries of state.  The world of white privilege and segregation that Evers — and Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights leaders of the 1960s — fought to tear down is unrecognizable today.

But that doesn’t mean the cause for civil rights is over.  Within the United States alone, black Americans remain far behind, as a group, on terms of socioeconomic gains.  Immigrants to the United States, many of whom came to this country as young children, remain in painful legal limbo.  Gay and lesbian Americans struggle not just for the right to same-sex marriage, but the right to live, work and exist without prejudice.  A U.S. prison population in excess of seven million people (though that number is starting to decline), many of who are in prison for non-violent offenses, faces innumerable challenges to even their basic safety behind bars.  The revelations of the NSA and PRISM programs show that the U.S. government continues to push forward with new surveillance tools that, though they may enhance homeland security, innumerably reduce global privacy rights.

That highlights the fact that the lines between greater civil rights in the United States and greater civil rights globally has blurred.  In many ways, the work of Medgar Evers is now a broader, globalized struggle.  U.S. activists work alongside European, Asia, Arab and African activists to challenge inequality worldwide.

  • In Mauritania and elsewhere in the Sahel, the fight continues against the continued practice of human slavery.
  • In Turkey, the crackdown this week of protesters at Taksim Square by prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan have highlighted the fact that the biggest threat isn’t creeping Islamism, but the more garden-variety illiberal disregard for basic civil rights like freedom of speech and freedom of expression, and deeper abuses of power that have hollowed out Turkey’s democracy.
  • Even as western Europe enters a world of same-sex marriage equality, many pockets of the world feature significant hurdles for gay and lesbian individuals — sub-Saharan Africa continues to treat gay activists with brutality and just yesterday, Russia passed a troublingly broad anti-gay law.
  • In Iran, moderate presidential candidate Hassan Rowhani has pushed for the loosening of political and cultural censorship and greater political freedoms within the framework of Iran’s existing Islamic republic.
  • In the People’s Republic of China, residents of Hong Kong marched last week on the occasion of the anniversary of the government crackdown on Tiananmen Square in 1989.
  • The Arab Spring protests of 2011 — from Bahrain to Tunisia to Egypt — have made political participation unavoidable throughout the Arab world, even if new majoritarian Islamist governments now face new civil rights challenges in finding a way to make Islamic democracy work without introducing new elements of religious, political and gender-based inequality.
  • A few hundred miles from the coast of Florida, Haitians continue to suffer from some of the worst poverty in the world, exacerbated by the tolls taken by the 2010 earthquake.

So as today’s more globalized fight for civil rights continues, it’s worth reflecting today to remember Evers and an entire generation of Americans who defined much of the content of what we think of as ‘civil rights’ in their fight for racial equality in the United States half a century ago.

DSC02059

Bottom photo credit to Kevin Lees — Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia, May 2012. 

Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Iran, Pakistan

In one year, south Asia and the ‘Af-Pak’ theater as we know it will be transformed

1 Comment

south_asia

No one thinks about ‘southwest Asia’ as among the world’s regions.  But should we?

Consider for a moment that within the next 12 months, the world will witness the following:Iran Flag IconIndia Flag IconPakistan Flag Iconbangladesh flag iconafghanistan flag

  • the rollout of a new, more stable government headed by Nawaz Sharif in Pakistan dominated with the twin problems of regional security and economic growth, itself a transfer of power following the first civilian government to serve out a full term in office since Pakistan’s founding in 1947; 
  • the selection of a new president for Pakistan in August 2013 to succeed Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto;
  • the selection of a new army chief of staff in Pakistan in November 2014 to succeed Ashfaq Kayani, who’s led Pakistan’s military since 2007 (when former general Pervez Musharraf was still in charge of Pakistan’s government) and who remains arguably the most powerful figure in Pakistan;
  • the drawdown of U.S. combat forces in Afghanistan for the first time since 2001 later this year;
  • the election of a new president in Afghanistan in April 2014 to succeed Hamid Karzai, who cannot (and doesn’t want to) run for reelection;
  • the election of a new government in Bangladesh before the end of January 2014 under the explosive backdrop of the ongoing 1971 war crimes tribunals and the Shahbagh protests of earlier this year; and
  • the election of a new government in India before the end of May 2014 — likely to be headed by the latest member of the incumbent party’s family dynasty, Rahul Gandhi, or the sprightly chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi — that will end of a decade of rule by prime minister Manmohan Singh.

Taken together, it’s a moment of extreme political change in South Asia, with turnover in each of the five pivotal countries (with a cumulative population of over 1.65 billion people) that touches and concerns the ‘Af-Pak’ region, and the greater South Asian region generally, which could well be the world’s most sensitive security theater and remains a critical region for global economic development — India is one of the four BRIC countries, and Bangladesh, Iran and Pakistan are each ‘Next Eleven’ countries.

That’s without mentioning the fact that we’ve just entered the first year of what’s expected to be a decade of leadership by Xi Jinping and the ‘Fifth Generation’ of Chinese Communist Party leadership in the People’s Republic of China, and the ongoing interest of Russia as a geopolitical player in the region, with so many former Central Asian Soviet republics bordering the region. It’s also without mentioning the thaw in political repression and diplomatic isolation currently underway in Burma/Myanmar.

For some time, discussion about the European Union has involved the caveat that major policy initiatives on EU policy, especially with respect to monetary union and fiscal union, are on hold until the German federal election, which will take place at the end of September 2013.  It’s reasonable to assume that Angela Merkel will want to secure reelection as Germany’s chancellor before pushing forward with new changes.

But that pales in comparison to the political transformation that will take place in west Asia in the next 12 months, even though I see very few commentators discussing that when they talk about Iran, south Asia, Af-Pak, etc.  In many ways, I think that’s because foreign policy analysis don’t typically think about this particular set of countries as a discrete region in its own right.

Iran comes up in the context of the Middle East and much more rarely in the context of Afghan or Pakistani security, even though Iran’s population is comprised of Persians and Azeris, not the Arabs who otherwise dominate the Middle East.

It’s more common to think about Pakistan today in the context of Afghanistan (for obvious U.S. security interest reasons) than in the context of Bangladesh, even though Bangladesh continues to battle over political ghosts that originated in its 1971 war of independence from Pakistan.  But how much of that has to do with, say, early turf wars in the Obama administration between the late diplomat Richard Holbrooke and other envoys, or the Bush administration’s initial approach to the global war on terror?

It’s common to think about Pakistan, India and Bangladesh together (but not Iran) because they were so centrally administered together as part of the British empire from the 18th through the 20th century.

Looking forward through the end of the 2010s and the 2020s, do any of those linkages make as much sense?

Without channeling the spirit of Edward Said too much, what do we even call the region spanning from Tehran to Dhaka and from Mumbai to Kabul? West Asia? Southwest Asia?

Though I cringe to call it a Spring, make no mistake — the leadership realignment has the potential to remake world politics in ways that transcend even the Arab Spring revolts of 2010 and 2011.

 

China

Glamorous singer Peng Liyuan reshapes role of China’s first lady

1 Comment

Guest post by Michael Cole

ling

When asked, “Who is Xi Jinping?” a Beijing wit might respond, “He is Peng Liyuan’s husband.”

China Flag Icon

Xi’s long slog to the top post in China’s Communist Party (中国共产党) was achieved by quiet service and loyalty to the right power players. It was a predictable course pursued by many ambitious scions of powerful Chinese families, with one surprising difference: Xi is married to Peng, one of China’s favorite superstar singers.

In March, amid military pageantry at Tiananmen Square, in the shadow of the Forbidden City’s imposing gatehouse and the famous portrait of Mao with the Mona Lisa smile, Peng Liyuan ascended to the top of the Communist Party leadership dais with her husband, the new president. Soldiers marched, generals saluted, and the sun shone on a rare blue-sky day while Peng smiled and waved. In China, as it is everywhere, a warm personality stands out and gives heart. Peng was an uncommonly elegant presence among the dowdy leadership, and everyone noticed.

In the following weeks, headlines tinged with hopefulness have chronicled President Xi Jinping’s commitment to punish corruption, maintain and control China’s economic growth, and even curb the dangerous effects of pollution. His success will take years to assess, but his tenure is already proving to be a stylish departure from his predecessor’s as he travels the world and appears on television with his wife.

During trips to Russia, Tanzania, and Congo, she has received praise for her personal style. Stepping off an airplane in Moscow in March, she wore a trim black trench coat cinched at the waist, and carried a smart leather bag, both made by the highbrow but homegrown Chinese label Exception de Mixmind. In Tanzania, she wore a chic skirt-suit in peach brocade and carried a small leather purse made in Chengdu. Appearing on television in Beijing, she wore a silk qipao, a traditional tunic dress with a high collar. Her look is both elegant and distinctly Chinese, and her manner warm but formal.

Although the wife of a Chinese president has no official position, Peng Liyuan’s popularity is making her truly China’s first lady. Her presence at public events makes her unique, as most premiers’ wives have remained conspicuously discreet. When former president Hu Jintao visited Washington, DC to attend a state dinner at the White House, his wife Liu Yongqing was notably absent, but Peng’s image makes her a potential game-changer. The New York Times compared her to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis; London’s Daily Telegraph compared her popularity to the “Lady Katherine effect;” and Weibo fan groups proliferate. In the ultimate sign of China’s approval, the massive retail site Taobao – China’s eBay – is flooded with copies of her popular clothing choices.

Critically, Peng arrives on the scene at a moment when China’s Communist Party and government need a new face to show the public, despite the fact that they form a system that is adamantly, and sometimes violently, opposed to change. Chinese politicians do not like to make waves. Senior Party members’ tight-lipped discretion keeps generations of political secrets, and their unfashionable uniform of red ties and square black suits masks immense wealth. Observers speculate endlessly about rivalries within the Party, but officials are united in their mission to maintain appearances.

The Communist Party’s stale old images have little appeal in media-saturated modern China. Elderly Chinese tell folk stories of Mao’s personal warmth and penchant for wordplay, but few want another leader like him. State companies produce grand dramas about well-known revolutionaries beloved for idealism and selflessness, but the cinemas sit empty. Global news outlets have dissected the government’s trust deficit amid news of corruption and abuse, but they arguably miss the point: modern Chinese peoples’ cynicism masks their unmet need for leaders who make them proud, and who represent their best selves. China wants a hero. 

By some accounts, the Party’s image problem is rapidly becoming a legitimacy crisis. Riots break out over problems such as economic inequality, labor abuse, and pollution, but leaders lack both inclination and credibility to address the issues, and instead use violence. “Netizens” on Weibo and Renren — the Chinese Twitter and Facebook, respectively — spread news of officials’ corruption faster than government censors can ‘harmonize’ their posts. In magazines, social media, and conversation, commercialism rules and ostentation wins the day. Pop stars and athletes receive adulation while officials struggle to evade ridicule.

In a system that thrives on stability — or harmony, as the Chinese say — Peng Liyuan presents an opportunity to try a new approach. Personally, she now occupies the role of a much-loved first lady, but it’s unknown who her role models might be. Chinese and international observers are watching for signs of how she understands her role, how she intends to use their unprecedented good will, and whether her image indicates changes in how the top leadership will behave and relate to the public.  Continue reading Glamorous singer Peng Liyuan reshapes role of China’s first lady →

China

Photo of the Day: Henry Kissinger meets Li Keqiang

Leave a comment

kissingerli

So this is pretty amazing.China Flag Icon

Henry Kissinger, the U.S. secretary of state and national security adviser who paved the way for U.S. president Richard M. Nixon’s historic visit in February 1972 and thereafter, the normalization of U.S.-Chinese relations, met with Li Keqiang (李克强), the new premier of the People’s Republic of China on Tuesday:

[Li] said China is willing to work with the US to develop an unprecedented type of relationship in order to allow both sides to benefit from bilateral cooperation and play their due roles in maintaining world peace.

Kissinger highlighted the vital importance of US-China relations in promoting world peace and development, suggesting that both sides should work on long-term planning and strengthen communication to foster ties.

It must have been quite a stunning chat, considering that the current ‘Fifth Generation’ of leadership is essentially four generations of Chinese governance removed from the generation that Kissinger and Nixon encountered — Chinese premier Zhao Enlai (周恩来) and Chinese Communist Party chairman Mao Zedong (毛泽东).  Like him or love him, Kissinger remains one of the top old-school Sinologists in the United States, writing at age 89 a new book, On China, just last year.  When Nixon visited China, Li was just 17 years old.  The change that China has seen in the ensuing 41 years is one of the most amazing transformations of any human society in such a short period of time.

More background here on Li from my seven-part series from November 2012 on the seven members of the Politburo Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (中国共产党).  Li speaks fluent English; unlike many of his colleagues on the Standing Committee, he is a protégé of Hu Jintao (胡锦涛) and unlike Chinese president Xi Jinping (习近平), Li is not a princeling.  An economic reformer, Li served as the Party secretary of Henan province previously, and he’s emphasized since becoming premier that his chief tasks will be to roll back Chinese government spending in favor of private sector development, corruption and the massive size of Chinese government bureaucracy, and tackling the growing gap between China’s rich and poor.

China

Xi’s just not that into you

Leave a comment

chinakisses

Add The People’s Daily to the cadres of those who hate Valentine’s Day, according to the South China Morning Post.

China Flag Icon

But don’t blame it on curmudgeonry, blame it on corruption — apparently, Cupid and cupidity go hand in hand:

A four-paragraph story in People’s Daily said Valentine’s Day had become a hatchery of decadent ideology, indulgent lifestyle, fraud and corruption for some party members who squandered money indulging their lovers.

It went on to say that such a trend had been seen among some senior party members, including disgraced former Chongqing party secretary Bo Xilai, former railways minister Liu Zhijun and former Shanghai party secretary Chen Liangyu, who all kept mistresses or had illicit affairs with many women.

The writer then asked why such a romantic holiday in the West, where lovers presented flowers, offered chocolates and sent greeting cards, had transformed into a breeding ground for corruption when it reached the mainland. The problem was cadres who had abandoned communist beliefs, the article said, breaking their party oath and betraying the cause.

Ahem, paging James Fallows.

I cannot find the story on the People’s Daily English website, only a piece that seemed to welcome the fact that the Spring Festival surrounding Lunar New Year coincides with Valentine’s Day, giving business a boost:

Any concerns that Valentine’s Day clashing with the Spring Festival 
holiday might hurt business have been allayed as both retailers and 
restaurateurs report good turnover. It could even be said 
that the two dates are perfect partners and suit 
each other down to the ground.

It’s quite true that Xi Jinping (习近平), the secretary-general of the Chinese Communist Party  (中国共产党) and the incoming president of the People’s Republic of China, has made waves recently in a speech stating that opposing corruption will be a top priority of his incoming administration — he pledged to pursue both ‘tigers’ and ‘flies’ (in other worlds, both top Party officials and rank-and-file bureaucrats) guilty of corruption.

But perhaps this is taking things a little too far?

Meanwhile, with the United States pursuing a free trade agreement both with the European Union and, through the Trans-Pacific Partnership, with South American and East Asian nations, maybe it’s time for China to send a valentine to the European Union to discuss its own bilateral trade agreement.

China

Happy Chinese New Year!

Leave a comment

DSC06319

It is now, of course, the Year of the Snake, as people of Chinese descent across the world today mark the Lunar New Year. China Flag Icon

But, for world politics, the Chinese new year will bring the formal inauguration in March of Xi Jinping (习近平) as the next president of the People’s Republic of China, completing the transition from Hu Jintao (胡锦涛) to Xi as China’s ‘paramount leader’ — Xi already became the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (中国共产党) last November with the election of seven members (including five new members) of the Politburo Standing Committee of the CCP.

Furthermore, Li Keqiang (李克强) is set to succeed the popular, but now scandal-plagued Wen Jiabao (温家宝) as the premier of the PRC government at the opening of the 12th People’s National Congress in March.

Just last week, Xi drew a bright line against corruption in the wake of accusations that several of Wen’s family members had amassed fortunes largely due to Wen’s powerful position and in the aftermath of the most spectacular Chinese political scandal in two decades surrounding now-disgraced former Chongqing party secretary Bo Xilai (薄熙来).

In a widely covered speech, Xi pledged to go after ‘tigers and flies’ in his fight against corruption — meaning that his leadership would stand for corruption neither among the highest-ranking officials nor among rank-and-file bureaucrats.

It remains to be seen whether Xi has the will to carry through that fight, but he’s already drawing quite a stylistic contrast from the buttoned-down ‘China, Inc.’ image of his predecessor Hu.

Photo credit to Kevin Lees — Bellagio, Las Vegas, January 2013.

Japan

Twelve considerations upon the DPJ wipeout in Japan’s legislative elections

6 Comments

Japan

Well, that was quite a blowout.  Just a little more than three years after winning power for the first time in Japan, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ, or 民主党, Minshutō) was reduced to just 57 seats in a stunning rebuke in Sunday’s Japanese parliamentary elections.

Japan

Shinzō Abe (安倍 晋三), former prime minister from 2006 to 2007, will return as prime minister of Japan, and the  Liberal Democratic Party of Japan (LDP, or 自由民主党, Jiyū-Minshutō), which controlled the House of Representatives, the lower house of Japan’s parliament, the Diet, for 54 years until the DPJ’s win in 2009, has seen its best election result since the early 1990s, with 294 seats.  Among the 300 seats determined in direct local constituency votes, the LDP won fully 237 to just 27 for the DPJ.  An additional 180 seats were determined by a proportional representation block-voting system, and the LDP won that vote as well:

japanproportional

In contrast, the DPJ has fallen from 230 seats to 57 seats — by the far the worst result since it was created nearly two decades ago.  Its previous worst result was after the 2005 elections, when the popular reformist LDP prime minister Junichiro Koizumi (小泉 純一郎) won an overwhelming victory in his quest for a mandate to reorganize and privatize the bloated Japanese post office (a large public-sector behemoth that served as Japan’s largest employer and largest savings bank).

Outgoing prime minister Yoshihiko Noda (野田 佳彦) has already resigned as the DPJ leader, and a new leader is expected to be selected before the new government appears set to take office on December 26.

The result leaves Abe with the largest LDP majority in over two decades — together with its ally, the Buddhist, conservative New Kōmeitō (公明党, Shin Kōmeitō), led by Natsuo Yamaguchi (山口 那津男), which increased its number of seats by 10 to 31, Abe will command over two-thirds of the House of Representatives, thereby allowing him to push through legislation, notwithstanding the veto of the Diet’s upper chamber, the House of Councillors.

It’s a sea change for Japan’s government, and we’ll all be watching the consequences of Sunday’s election for weeks, months and probably years to come.  Just a full working day after the election, events in Japan’s politics are moving at breakneck speed.

For now, however, here are 12 of the top takeaway points from Sunday’s election: Continue reading Twelve considerations upon the DPJ wipeout in Japan’s legislative elections →

Japan

Can Shinzō Abe boost Japan’s economy?

2 Comments

Over at Slate, Matthew Yglesias made the argument last week that the likely victory of former prime minister Shinzō Abe (安倍 晋三) and the return of the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan (LDP, or 自由民主党, Jiyū-Minshutō) to government after a three-year hiatus means that Japan might finally embark on a path of more expansionary monetary policy — namely, more quantitative easing and a higher inflation target. Japan

With Japan apparently headed back into a recession — its fifth in 15 years — that strategy could be the surest way to boost the Japanese economy, but it’s a little naive to believe Abe can command enough political support, even with a landslide victory in Sunday’s election, to dictate monetary policy to the Bank of Japan.

Earlier in the campaign, Abe pledged to force the Bank of Japan to purchase construction bonds directly from the Japanese government (although, as Yglesias notes, Abe has already backed down from that pledge during the campaign).  Abe needs the BOJ to buy those bonds in order to finance additional infrastructure spending, with the LDP calling for up to ¥200 trillion ($2.4 trillion) in public works over the next decade.  Public spending is an old LDP favorite, but that staggering amount of spending could well pull Japan’s economy out of recession and deflation.

Abe has also pledged to appoint a new bank governor — the term of the current Bank of Japan governor Masaaki Shirakawa (白川 方明) ends in April 2013 after five years heading the BOJ — who agrees to set an annual inflation target of 2% or even 3%.

Abe’s push for expansionary fiscal and monetary policy comes as a bit of a 180-degree turn, given that the third and final government of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ, or 民主党, Minshutō) under prime minister Yoshihiko Noda (野田 佳彦) recently expended its last gasp of governing willpower to double Japan’s consumption tax from 5% to 10%, which is scheduled to begin in 2014.

It seems much likelier that Abe could implement a new round of fiscal expansion than strong-arm the Bank of Japan, which has an extraordinary amount of central bank independence — derived in part from the memory of hyperinflation that resulted after World War II when politicians controlled monetary policy decisions.

Noda (pictured above, right, with Abe) has attacked Abe’s platform as a dangerous intrusion on central bank independence and he has attacked the LDP plan for additional debt-financed spending as the same old LDP  ‘baramaki’ (pork barrel) politics, especially given Japan’s debt-to-GDP ratio is already, by far, the world’s largest, at around 230%.  Greece, by the way, has only a 160% ratio.

Japan has traditionally been able to carry such a high ratio because much of that debt is held by its citizens, who collective have one of the top savings rates in the industrialized world, but with $13.64 trillion in debt already on its public books, it’s not clear whether Japan could sustain public spending that would boost its debt-to-GDP ratio to nearly 300%.

As Yglesias notes, the Bank of Japan has been criticized for nearly two decades for its policy to keep Japan’s inflation target at zero:

Back in 1999, Ben Bernanke condemned the self-induced paralysis of Japanese monetary policy made by flailing officials who claimed it was beyond their power to fix this. He called for “Rooseveltian resolve” on the part of Japan’s leaders to shake the bank out of its torpor.  Paul Krugman, too, spent the late ’90s urging Japan to aim for more inflation, arguing that mucking around with the banking system was inadequate and weird delusions of respectability were holding policymakers back.

As Yglesias also notes, Europeans and Americans promptly forgot that advice when the 2008 financial crisis exploded budget deficits:

Suddenly, criticizing the Bank of Japan went out of style. America became Japan and simultaneously forgot what America used to think about Japan.

But perhaps the lesson that Yglesias is forgetting — and the lesson that the 2008 crisis taught Europeans and Americans — is that politics matters, and that politics can intrude on what might otherwise be a clear policy path, whether it’s ‘fiscal cliff’ negotiations in the United States or the ‘kick-the-can’ politics of eurozone bailouts.

Yglesias is also forgetting that Japan has politics, too. Continue reading Can Shinzō Abe boost Japan’s economy? →

China

Fifth Generation: Who is Xi Jinping?

3 Comments

This is the seventh and final post in a series examining the Chinese leaders named to the Politburo Standing Committee during the 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (中国共产党) that concluded November 14.  Prior installments on Zhang Gaoli here, Zhang Dejiang here, Liu Yunshan here, Yu Zhengsheng here, Wang Qishan here and likely future premier Li Keqiang here. 

In many ways, there’s not much I can add to what the world’s press has already written about Xi Jinping (习近平) in the past 24 hours, who’s been the newest figure on the world scene since becoming the general secretary of the Party yesterday and, in a bit of a surprise, also the chairman of the Party’s Central Military Commission.  He is expected to take over before March 2013 as China’s president, thereby fully succeeding Hu Jintao (胡锦涛).

There’s much we already know about Xi — starting with the fact that much of the world’s press and other policymakers find Xi leagues more expressive and relatable than Hu.

Xi is a ‘princeling’ — the son of Xi Zhongxun, a revolutionary hero, former vice premier and Politburo member, who was purged during the Cultural Revolution, but returned to help Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s to develop parts of Guangdong provide as special economic zones.  When Xi Zhongxun was purged from the leadership in the 1960s, however, and Xi Jinping was just 15 years old, he was sent off to a remote village in Shaanxi province in the center of China.

As Robert Lawrence Kuhn writes in How China’s Leaders Think, Xi Jinping’s time in the ‘wilderness,’ so to speak, has now become part of his mythology:

Xi Jinping spent the next six years in this harsh, poor rural area — chopping hay, reaping wheat and herding sheep as a member of a local work unit.  He lived in a cave house, as was the local custom.  But he adjusted well to his new life, impressing older colleagues with his enthusiasm to labor long and hard, and with his personal modesty.  He built a reputation for endurance by winning wrestling matches with farmers, and by carrying ‘a shoulder pole of twin 110-pound buckets of wheat for several miles across mountain paths without showing fatigue.’

Xi did not lose his love of studying, however: by night, he would read thick books in the dim light of kerosene lamps.  The locals liked to go to his cave to listen to his stories about history and the world beyond the mountains.  Everyone, old and young, enjoyed chatting with him.

I’m not sure whether this is just so much hagiography for the next ‘paramount leader’ of the world’s largest country, but there’s no doubt that the young Xi certainly made an impression, and Xi was soon off to Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University, where he studied engineering.  Xi also holds a doctorate in law.

He spent much of his early career in Fujian, a province of nearly 37 million people on the Chinese coast just north of Guangdong province.

In 2002, Xi became the Party secretary of Zhejiang province, the province that lies immediately south of Shanghai, is home to 54 million people and is generally one of China’s most prosperous provinces, with double-digit growth rates during much of Xi’s tenure.  Kuhn reports that Xi was untainted by allegations of corruption and, indeed, had ‘zero tolerance’ for corruption and dishonesty — a fact that bodes well at a time when the Party’s been struck with corruption scandals that touch everyone from outgoing premier Wen Jiabao to the disgraced former Party secretary of Chongqing municipality, Bo Xilai.

Although Xi was appointed Party secretary of Shanghai municipality in 2007, he was appointed in the same year to the Politburo Standing Committee, and he quickly left the Shanghai position to assume the PRC vice presidency where, among other duties, he was responsible for overseeing the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

Notably, his wife is Peng Liyuan, who until very recently was more well-known in China than Xi.  Peng is a popular singer and entertainer with the People’s Liberation Army (she’s technically a major general).  Perhaps even more interesting, however, is that Xi’s first wife, Ke Lingling is the daughter of a former Chinese ambassador to the United Kingdom, and Ke still lives there today (and not in China).

But there’s also much we don’t know about Xi, notably in the way he hopes to lead the People’s Republic of China over the next decade.   Continue reading Fifth Generation: Who is Xi Jinping? →