Globalisation and Legitimacy

So what sustains party legitimacy in a globalised China of Jiang and Hu that is no longer recognisably Communist to many? Who runs China therefore and under what ideology if any? I’ll consider those questions in this post and in the next I’ll consider the very important question of what the key problems are in the vital countryside and the action the CCP is taking in attempting to resolve them.

Many in the West predicted that the CCP would go the way of the Communist parties of Eastern Europe. Evidently they saw the breakdown of Communist ideology as necessitating an end to the rule of Communist parties. I may ask why the CCP alone has been able to maintain its legitimacy but I should also allow that it may not be for all time. Nevertheless it has remained in power and there must be a reason.

The CCP has given thought to this question and has come up with five basic reasons for its legitimacy:

1) It has fostered and maintained enormous levels of economic growth;

2) Consequently living standards have increased [although inequality has also increased markedly, of course];

3) Especially from the mid 1990s, it has tried to promote its aims as nationalist and in the national interest (they point to what they promote as a successful history);

4) They are able to maintain social stability in accordance with their ‘neo-authoritarian’ and ‘Asian Values’ philosophies; and

5) They are working on improving their ethical standards and stamping out corruption.

Perhaps the most promising of these bases of legitimacy in the medium term is the appeal to nationalism but it is a double edged sword.

The powerful ‘culture fever’ that erupted following the CR was partly about reasserting pride in China’s imperial past and national pride generally at China’s historical and ongoing global status and is a positive asset to China as well as CCP legitimacy. Yet pride in turn has depended upon the recent advance in living standards to a large extent and has been dampened by a sense of humiliation at the unfairness of US hegemony and the success of Japan. The expected return of Taiwan to the Chinese fold has become a symbol of the reversal of that humiliation and Taiwan is not necessarily expected to be the be all and end all of that process. Japan is still sometimes seen as an enemy and not sufficiently punished for various war crimes.

The CCP is ‘cashing in’ on these feelings of humiliation in order to promote the sense of unity that it feels is in its immediate interests. This can be seen as necessary to provide the ostensible raison d’être for a post-Marxist CCP government but here is where nationalism has become a two edged sword. The government can also be criticised for the pace at which it addresses the humiliation of a great nation or fails to sufficiently represent the national interest well enough generally. Examples of this problem of popular nationalism include the reaction to WTO negotiations in 2001 (where the CCP was accused of giving away too much) and accusations that China has been too soft on Japan over wartime atrocities.

The CCP’s reaction to the above potential threat to its legitimacy has been to learn the lesson of Tiananmen. Party thinkers in leadership tend to see the lesson as: cracking down hard and early on dissent promotes stability.

Their verdict on Tiananmen has remained unchanged in recent years (despite recent talk of a re-evaluation) as evidenced by the extended prison terms (11 years) meted out to various democracy activists more recently (such as those of the China Democracy Party) and not since commuted (the re-evaluation of the ‘incident’ is yet to materialise).

The approach to the Falun Dafa (Falun Gong) is another result of this reaction. Practitioners were declared an ‘evil cult’ in 1999 and suppressed following a sit-in protest of around 10,000 of them following a scathing editorial against the group. The protest saw them surrounding Zhongnanhai (the residential area in central Beijing near Tiananmen reserved for much of the CCP high leadership). The evil seems to be that it is a challenge to CCP ideology. The group is critical of much of what the current CCP government seems to stand for. Jiang was the main hardliner at the time when it came to cracking down on what is actually a fairly harmless breathing practice called qigong. For more on suppression of this group, go to the group’s own websites.

The other issues being cracked down on are ethnic in nature and concern the Tibetans mainly in Tibet and the Muslims (mainly Uighur and mainly in Xinjiang (called East Turkistan or Uighurstan especially by some separatists)). The “War of Terror” almost couldn’t have come at a better time from the point of view of the CCP. The Chinese government now feels it more or less has the cover it needs to crack down as necessary and it does crack down (whether real terrorism is involved or not) as necessary. Of course China hasn’t been alone in revelling in the cover provided. Russia and Israel are two other notable cases, not to mention the US itself.

Who is in power (if not Marxists) is another question. The year 2002 marked a changing of the guard when Hu came to power but also most of the Politburo was also replaced.

Jiang finished his term as Party Secretary in 2002 (relinquishing that role to Hu) but provided some of the answers to that question as he left this formal role with his Three Represents.

The CCP constitution was amended in 2002 so that the ideology of the party was now formally: Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory and the important Ideology of “the Three Represents (三个代表)”. This last was what the party now stood for (represented). It stood for the most advanced forces of production, the most advanced culture and the fundamental interests of the broadest mass of the people. The shift here was that this suggested it was no longer a party explicitly of workers; it could also be the party of their bosses, and of intellectuals and artists. It now represented ‘advanced elements’ (who by virtue of being that were now also the only people eligible to be members of the party – so you could also be a worker and not eligible) rather than revolutionaries – the revolution was now over. This really just formalised what had already become the practice.

The leadership as I’ve mentioned was also shaken up. Hu assumed the leadership although he was the second youngest of the nine Politburo Standing Committee members.

All but one of the group were also qualified engineers (predominantly from the one technology university that Hu trained in engineering at, Qinghua) – the outlier, Wen Jiabao, was a geologist (trained at the Beijing Institute of Geology). Wen’s case shows that it was possible to be mentored in the party by a discredited leader (Zhao Ziyang in Wen’s case) and still reach the second or third highest rank in the PRC. Only Hu was kept on from the previous group and he was also the only member remaining who had been mentored by Deng. Most had been mentored by Jiang. There’s a joke in China that Qinghua produces China’s leaders and Beida (Beijing University) produces its prisoners. Here’s the group:

Name	Age	Profession	University	Mentor
Hu Jintao	59	Engineer	Qinghua	Deng Xiaoping
Wu Bangguo	61	Engineer	Qinghua	Jiang Zemin
Wen Jiabao	60	Geologist	Beijing Institute of Geology	Zhao Ziyang
Jia Qinglin	62	Engineer	Hebei Engineering College	Jiang Zemin
Zeng Qinghong	63	Engineer	Beijing Institute of Technology	Jiang Zemin
Huang Ju	64	Engineer	Qinghua	Jiang Zemin
Wu Guanzheng	64	Engineer	Qinghua	Jiang Zemin
Li Changchun	58	Engineer	Harbin Institute of Technology	Jiang Zemin
Luo Gan	67	Engineer	Beijing Institute of Iron & Steel	Li Peng

So it’s a technocratic group that have been well mentored in the business of government in the new China and that embraces the new business elites (who might otherwise become an opposition). The training of the group is not in political change, it’s in technocratic problem-solving and that is their focus.

This currently suits the business elites with whom they are intimately linked so it’s not yet in the interests of the business middle class to challenge the political position of this type of problem-solving state. From the orthodox Marxist point of view it is also still possible to view the business class as powerful and imaginative allies provided they remain securely yoked to the benefit of the CPP dictatorship. The times in China are indeed still interesting for Marxists today. To paraphrase Sun Zi, the CCP is keeping its friends close and its (at least potential) enemies closer. And the policy is currently working as the potential enemies are currently being kept happy with the amount of (close) influence they are able to have upon reforms as they occur.

In 2006, the CCP launched the “eight glories and eight disgraces (八榮八耻)” campaign. This is aimed at promoting compliance among the population and it was at least partly designed to be learnt about by rote by schoolchildren. This is how to be a good Communist today. Here are the eight of both:

1. It is glorious to adore the fatherland; it is a disgrace to harm the fatherland;

2. It is glorious to serve the people; it is a disgrace to disserve the people;

3. It is glorious to respect science; it is a disgrace to be ignorant and unenlightened;

4. It is glorious to work hard; it is a disgrace to be indolent;

5. It is glorious to promote unity and mutual help; it is a disgrace to be self-seeking;

6. It is glorious to be honest and trustworthy; it is a disgrace to be mercenary and profit-grabbing;

7. It is glorious to be disciplined and law abiding; it is a disgrace to violate laws and disciplines;

8. It is glorious to be willing to struggle; it is a disgrace to be sybaritic.

The next post will be on the rural issues that continue to plague China (and CCP responses).

"Identity"

The upshot of all of the Nahda debate is that Arabs were debating and deciding upon their very identity and the various loyalties that they might owe. In discussing nationalism and other debates in the recent posts, I have indicated various potentially conflicting identities and loyalties that had become clear including local, regional, sectarian, tribal, state-based, Pan-Arab and pan-Islamic ones. How they might be reconciled and on what basis was obviously an important question for the Arab world.

The most widely considered conflict among the Arabs was that between the nation-states that had been formed in various circumstances and the ideas of pan-Arabism. A diversity of circumstances was recognised but also a common national feeling, language (at least among educated Arabs), culture and (for the most part) the common religion of Islam as a cultural substructure. Against that, I must consider two strong trends that were evident from at least the 1930s: that of a greater Syrian nationalism and Egyptian nationalism.

Syrian nationalism produced the Parti Populaire Syrien founded by Antun Sa’ada in 1932. Syria (as defined by the party) was viewed as a nation separable from the Arab nation with a long history (some of it pre-dating Islam) and common consciousness of its own. That nation essentially encompassed modern Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan. The unity of these then and currently separate ‘nations’ was thus seen as natural in those circumstances. Independence, secularism and social and economic reforms were all central to the party platform initially. After 1945 the party adopted the view that Syrian political unity should be viewed as a stage on the path to a greater Arab unity. The relevance of this party’s political ideas has since waned significantly.

Egyptian nationalism was perhaps reignited in 1938 by the publication of Taha Hussayn’s The Future of Culture in Egypt. The essence of it appears to be that Egypt retains a separate identity from Arab identity as part of a broader Mediterranean civilisation area, that it has drawn inspiration in particular from Classical Greek civilisation from ancient times, that its religion, geography, Arabic language and history is distinctive and that national feeling is directed to Egypt and is inclusive of both Muslims and Christians. While Islam is the major national religion, subscription to it is nevertheless not viewed as a national imperative and a secular form of state is therefore seen as preferable. Egyptian Arabic was considered important to the soundness of Egyptian national life. It was equally important that Arabic learn to absorb modern European thought as it had begun to do under the influence of Muhammad ‘Ali in the 19th Century to usher in the Nahda.

Lebanese nationalism was a further division off from complete Arab unity. Even within a movement for a Greater Lebanon there was a further division between the smaller sub-region of Mount Lebanon and the rest of the region. As under the Ottoman state, Mount Lebanon had had a degree of autonomy so people such as Butrus Bustani argued in the 19th Century for Mount Lebanese nationalism, too, albeit within a broader Arab nationalism opposed to Ottoman hegemony in the Arab world.

Greater Lebanon as a historical idea that had pre-Islamic origins was pushed by certain nationals such as Bulus Nujaym and the French (such as a M. Duplain) partly in an endeavour to protect what the French especially saw as a vulnerable Christian minority in this part of the Arab world.

A modification of that political ideal was the idea of an autonomous Mount Lebanon under French protection and tutelage within a Greater Syria. The basis of Lebanese unity was said to be a unique common language, geography, culture and common interests. Proponents of this idea included Shukri Ghanim and George Samn.

Post-WWI these competing ideas, Arabism, Greater Syria and Lebanon, greater or otherwise, produced conflicts. France declared its idea of Greater Lebanon realised in 1920. The new state began as a virtual Maronite hegemony in the face of a virtually complete Muslim boycott. While Syrian nationalism distinct from Arabism more generally faded, the Egyptian and Lebanese nationalist debates continued.

On the Lebanese side, for example, Ameen Rihani and Edmond Rabbath discussed the special local form of Arab civilisation in Lebanon. Gibran Khalil Gibran expressed a different Arabist view but with Lebanon as an important feature in his short essay, Your Lebanon and my Lebanon. For Christian Arabs and others such as Michel Chiha and Sa’id ‘Aql, Lebanon is a protectorate for Christians in the midst of a sea of Islam and a Phoenician nation. Pierre Gemayyil and the party of the Phalanges proposed that Lebanon was about an irreducible entity, democratic freedoms and a special role for the Christians. Others such as Fou’ad Afram al-Bustani saw the idea of Lebanon as superior to both political and cultural Arabism (and any other ideology). Kamil Salibi recognised many problems with Lebanese unity but nevertheless regarded Lebanon as the workable basis of a common national identity. Ghassan Tueini presented another perspective. He sees Lebanese nationalism as an element of Arab nationalism that shared one culture and language but several religions and polities. He stressed that to be Arab was not to be a Muslim but it was to seek an ultimate unity (permitting political and religious pluralism) of some political kind. He sees today’s era as a new time of realism concerning what is possible and of seeking what is practical.

In Egypt, a parallel debate was occurring following the earlier themes. Husayn Fawzi, a marine geographer, regarded the Egyptian national spirit as rightly a secular and liberal one with strong links to a broader Arab-Islamic culture and its achievements as well as with its pre-Islamic Egyptian historical depth. Louis Awad, the literary critic, similarly saw the liberal and secular nature of the separate Egyptian nation with a particular emphasis on the contribution its Coptic and Christian heritage element makes to the Arab whole. For him, the continuity of the Coptic personality of Egypt from its earliest times shines through its history illuminating it. He sees the Egyptian Arab language as the unifier of this ongoing national personality which he nevertheless regards as in need of some of the ideas developed in European culture.

The Muslim geographer Jamal Hamdan discusses the unique geography and history that makes the Egyptian personality the unique one it is. Anouar Abdel Malik is a Coptic Christian social scientist and historian who proposes a special progressive and socialist role for Egypt within the Arab world and the Third World. Ghali Shukri was another Coptic Christian who regarded Egypt as a rightful leader of the Arab world but as an Arab leader more than as a Third World leader. This literary critic, prose writer, Arab nationalist and progressive held that this position arose out of the pre-eminent cultural history he saw as evident in view of what he saw as Egypt’s great contribution to Arab civilisation. Tariq al-Bishri, the liberal Islamist historian, viewed Egypt in a wide Arab context but still saw study of what he alleged was Christian and Muslim cooperation and harmony in Egypt as both edifying to Egypt and a worthy model for the remainder of the Arab world.

Finally, Edward Said contributed significantly to debate on Arab identity. He noted what he saw as an extraordinary lack of co-ordination between the Arab countries in a report on this topic and a frustration with a negativity associated with operation of the grouping of Arab countries. He saw what he regarded as disappointingly little evidence of either strategic or economic co-operation among the Arab states. He, further, contrasted this inactivity with the common sympathies for, for example, the plight of the Palestinian people under Jewish domination and Israeli occupation expressed by the multitudes protesting on their behalf on the Arab street in nearby Egypt, Syria and Jordan but also in Morocco and other countries.

He saw this virtual inaction as resulting from factionalism, disunity and the absence of a sense of common Arab purpose among the leadership and resulting in turn in unending violence and destruction with apparent impunity being meted out to the people that Said suggests each government is supposed to serve – the wider Arab nation but, more importantly, ordinary people. He argued that this factionalism was shot right through the Arab polity at every level and that it was most likely mainly the result of a “marked absence of ideals and role models”. He also suggested in making this argument that the loss of the Egyptian role model, Nasser, for all his policy faults, was a profoundly sad one as Nasser has not been able to be replaced in the Arab imagination by any potential Arab leader of a liberation movement for ordinary Arab people.

Mecca (or Makkah) and Muhammad's life in summary

What kind of town was Mecca when Muhammad first came to live there (according to Ibn Khaldun, the 14th Century historian, it was originally called Bakkah and now many Arabs prefer to use the Romanisation Makkah or something like it)? It was the centre of a major and apparently annual Peninsula-wide poetry contest. Mecca itself did not produce many significant poets as it was a small settlement and certainly not as large as Medina which produced better poets. Poetry competitions had created over a little over a century a ‘competitive pressure’ for a relatively uniform Arabic language and the favoured dialect was centred on Mecca due to its preeminent competition. So Mecca was in a sense the centre of and springboard for a kind of early Arab nationalism.

Muhammad was born in 570 CE and began calling for a new emphasis in religion based upon what he believed were divine revelations to him in 610 CE when he was aged 40. He was forced to emigrate from Mecca (to Medina) in around August 622 CE. In the new lunar Islamic calendar developed about twenty-five years later (which is a few days shorter than our solar year in the West) this year came to be known as 1 AH (after hijra, hijra meaning emigration). Muhammad died in 632 CE (11 AH) thus ending the period of revelations.

So why did the emigration happen and what was Mecca’s religion that Muhammad wanted to reform? I’ve mentioned it was a trading centre and hub and it was on more than one caravan trade route. We know it held a major poetry competition. It was also served by a port near the modern-day port of Jeddah. There are several sea routes from the port to various parts of Africa and the Christian and Jewish faiths were known.

We also know at least three Goddesses were worshipped among other Gods and that Mecca was also associated with Abraham via a ‘miraculous’ and strong spring that is still apparently going strong today.

Abraham is traditionally the father of the Arabs (via his son Isma'il) and the association may well account for some of the prominence of Mecca as a major religious centre although there was also a tendency for all trading centres to also become religious centres in an otherwise rather lawless and ruthless part of Arabia (arguably for the sake of producing conditions conducive to trade). Trade was undertaken occasionally using the coinage of the northern Persian Sasanian and Byzantine Empires and of Egypt.

Traditionally Isma'il (or Ishmael), the son of Abraham and the first Arab, was able to create the spring as an infant (with Allah’s help) thus indicating today to many Muslims God’s favour bestowed on the Arabs and on Mecca. Only some of this tradition is actually contained in the Qur’an. Abraham and Ishmael are supposed to have built (or even re-built) the Ka’ba at Mecca, the latest version now being venerated in Islam as its most holy site.

Some of these events are re-enacted in the hajj period each year by millions of Muslims together. If possible, all Muslims are required to perform the pilgrimage at least once in their lives.

So Muhammad was dealing with a group of monotheisms that were all known of or practiced to some extent in or near Mecca as well as various polytheisms all occurring in one of the recognised homes of Abraham, a determined monotheist, and father of the Arabs. The major groups of monotheists in the area (especially in Yemen and in Medina, Khaybar and the so-called “Fertile Crescent” to the north), who may be expected to have disapproved of the rampant polytheism, included Jews, Christians and practitioners of an Ishmaelite version of Abrahamism, however it is possible that Allah or Yahweh (Jehovah) were more likely to be regarded as a chief rather than the sole God in Mecca itself.

Hence Muhammad's monotheistic teaching initially found more sympathy in Medina to which he fled in what is referred to as the hijra (there was an earlier Muslim hijra to the succour of Christian Ethiopia but Muhammad himself remained in Mecca on that occasion).

So Mecca was an ancient pilgrimage site but was not receptive of Muhammad's beliefs at first. Trade was good for the leaders of its great families, religion itself was profitable and Muhammad really wanted to rock that boat (and also address injustices that he saw (and saw God as asking him to address)). I'll discuss some of the details in the next post.