Insecure at the Top in China (The New York Times)

June 15, 2011 Insecure at the Top in China By DIDI KIRSTEN TATLOW BEIJING — When protesters besieged government offices last week in Lichuan, a city in the central province of Hubei, a local resident said they smashed a sign reading "Serve the People," probably the most famous slogan of the Chinese Communist Party. Anger that had grown for days after the death in police custody of Ran Jianxin, a local People's Congress deputy, exploded last Thursday. Relatives said Mr. Ran was beaten to death, and they released photographs of his body. Mr. Ran was widely believed to be fighting official corruption, which residents said had run unchecked for years. The party celebrates its 90th birthday on July 1, outwardly confident that it deserves to rule for "the next 90 years," as Li Zhongjie, deputy head of the Party History Research Center, told Beijing News. Inwardly, however, it is haunted by a sense that it is not truly loved, said Kerry Brown, one of six overseas academics who attended three days of meetings last week with officials of the major party organs. "They don't have the hearts of 99 percent of the population, and they are worried about that," said Mr. Brown, head of the Asia Program at Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London. The party can point to enormous achievements. It has overseen the creation of great wealth in the last three decades, with economic reform lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty. China is now the world's second-largest economy, after that of the United States, with foreign reserves of more than $3 trillion, according to People's Daily, the party mouthpiece. Its global reach is expanding, fast, as it hunts for raw materials and strategic assets like ports to sustain its growth. Its elite, which includes about 2,800 people at or above director or vice minister level, in the government and military, is intensely loyal, said Mr. Brown. "They think they've got everything right. The economy over the last 10 years has quadrupled. So why don't people like them?" he asked, rhetorically. "It's paradoxical." Or, as Mr. Li said in Beijing News, betraying awareness of the problem: "The question is, do the people welcome you or not?" Key reasons for its unpopularity are corruption, and its regular resort to violence when people ask for more oversight of government, said Mr. Brown. At the "International Workshop on CPC Party-Building," hosted by the party's International Department, the scholars met with officials from the Central Committee's Propaganda Department, Organization Department, Policy Research Office, Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, United Front and Party History Research Center. It was a "serious and respectful exchange of views," said David Shambaugh, head of the China Policy Program at George Washington University in Washington. Still, there was a "disconnect" between opinions expressed in the party officials' papers and those of the overseas scholars, Mr. Shambaugh said. "We think they're stagnating," he said. "They felt, essentially, the foreign view emphasized the party's fragility and insecurity." "'Why are you foreigners so obsessed with problems? Things are progressing,"' he said, indicating the officials' views. Anti-corruption work, cadre training and building a meritocratic civil service were three areas where the party sees progress, the scholars said. Anti-corruption officials presented "a very detailed paper," said Mr. Shambaugh. But the party asked the scholars not to disclose the contents of the officials' papers, reflecting habitual secrecy in an organization that still requires new members to swear they will "guard the secrets of the party." The party has long admitted that corruption is a problem. Yet reporting on the use of violence against people — photographs from Lichuan show armored personnel carriers on the streets and security forces beating protesters — is taboo, even if the public is increasingly aware of it via the Internet, said Mr. Brown. "Historically, violence has served them well," he said. The party seized power in revolution, consolidating it with campaigns that killed tens of millions of Chinese. Today, it is seeking a more consensual form of rule, but can't agree how. "The thing that haunts them is the transfer from revolutionary, disruptive power, to ruling power," Mr. Brown said. "It was never quite sorted out." On a recent trip to Lichuan, before the protests, discontent was palpable. One farming family described how the local government had seized its land. "We got 32,000 renminbi per mu," or $4,900 per 667 square meters, or 0.16 acre, said the wife. Five mu were gone, and the remaining five would go soon, she said. "We heard they are trying to get 500 mu of land to do something, no one knows what," she said. Did they protest? "It's no use," she said. Did she at least feel it was an acceptable deal? She gave a disparaging look. "No. It's very little money, because the land is gone forever. We can't grow anything to eat anymore. We'll have to look for work in the city," she said. "This place is too, too 'black,"' said another person over dinner, using a common term to describe corruption. She also asked that her name be withheld, fearful of retribution in a city where at least some people last week felt the slogan "Serve the People" was better off smashed to the ground.