White Elephants

At home sick, catching up on my newspapers, I came across this week's Parade Magazine, with its cover story of "The World's Worst Dictators." Hu Jintao of China comes it at Number Three.

I don't wish to serve as an apologist for the CCP, whose abuses are well-documented. Tibetans, Uighurs, democratic activists - I could put out a laundry list of the persecuted in today's China. However, labeling Hu Jintao as the World's Third Worst Dictator strikes me as a gross oversimplification, whether through ignorance or more likely, the desire to present easily digestible info-bits to Parade's presumably less than sophisticated audience.

Let's start with the nature of the Chinese Communist Party's leadership. Throughout its history, the CCP has rarely been a unified monolith. Even at the height of Mao Zedong's cult of personality, different factions struggled and competed for dominance and control. It's hard to know with any certainty what goes on behind closed doors in CCP leadership circles, but clearly there are winners and losers within the Party at any given time. Many speculate, for example, that Jiang Zemin and his "Shanghai Mafia" hold onto power even though Jiang recently resigned the last of his official posts (the premature revealing of which is said to have led to the jailing of a Chinese researcher working for the New York Times - go here for a fascinating series of articles by Chinese journalism students discussing the case). Any leader rising to positions of power in today's China does so through consensus and coalition-building as well as competition. Hu Jintao might wish that he had supreme, absolute power - the definition of a dictator - but he doesn't, and it's really too soon to say what his intentions are and what kind of leader he'll be.

It's true that early signs are not terribly encouraging, especially disappointing to those who considered Hu a potential reformer, even China's Gorbachev. Many who wish to see a more democratic China point instead to Premier Wen Jiabao, who was, afer all, Zhao Ziyang's former assistant. But effective leaders in China tend to be those who are willing to take their time to get what they want. When asked for his opinion of the French Revolution, Zhou Enlai was famously said to have replied: "It's too soon to tell." Zhou was known for his wit, but he was also a man who took the long view of things.

Right now the CCP is struggling to reinvent itself, to maintain its relevence in 21st century China. I personally can't believe that every Party member is corrupt, brutal and dictatorial. There are those who would push for reform, for openess, who perhaps even recognize the virtues of competition. The optimist in me sees these people helping to move China forward, in spite of the corruption, the abuses of power and the sheer monumental difficulties of governing a country as huge and complex as China.

Part of my optimism comes from my personal experiences, from the vast changes I've witnessed in China in my own small lifetime. The China of 1979 was truly a police state. The State controlled nearly every aspect of the individual's life: where you lived, worked, whom you married, what you wore, what you said and who you said it to. You saw the beginnings of dissent - Democracy Wall, for example. I remember a particular discussion with one of my classes. "What will you do after graduation?" The answers from my students were almost universally, "I will be assigned to a position. I have no choice." One student said, "I would like to teach economics. But that is only a dream." Only one student said anything different. He was a handsome, confident guy - actually, I had him pegged for one of that classes' likely two Party members - but what he said was, "I'm going to become an entrepreneur. I think I will succeed at this."

Around Christmas that year, in 1979, Emma threw a party for her graduate students and teachers. It was a "White Elephant" party. Everyone was supposed to bring something they no longer wanted or needed and would exchange it for something brought by someone else. One of the teachers brought a handful of Mao buttons. "White elephants," he'd said with a sly grin. Everyone got a good chuckle out of that...the sort that comes with a nervous, backwards glance...

CORRECTION: Oops. Actually, Hu Jintao was #3 on Parade's Dictator list last year. This year he's dropped down to #4. My mistake.