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Tag: Jiang Zemin

  • China security forces are well-prepared for quashing dissent

    China security forces are well-prepared for quashing dissent

    BEIJING — When it comes to ensuring the security of their regime, China’s Communist Party rulers don’t skimp.

    The extent of that lavish spending was put on display when the boldest street protests in decades broke out in Beijing and other cities, driven by anger over rigid and seemingly unending restrictions to combat COVID-19.

    The government has been preparing for such challenges for decades, installing the machinery needed to quash large-scale upheavals.

    After an initially muted response, with security personnel using pepper spray and tear gas, police and paramilitary troops flooded city streets with jeeps, vans and armored cars in a massive show of force.

    The officers fanned out, checking IDs and searching cellphones for photos, messages or banned apps that might show involvement in or even just sympathy for the protests.

    An unknown number of people were detained and it’s unclear if any will face charges. Most protesters focused their anger on the “zero-COVID” policy that seeks to eradicate the virus through sweeping lockdowns, travel restrictions and relentless testing. But some called for the party and its leader Xi Jinping to step down, speech the party considers subversive and punishable by years in prison.

    While much smaller in scale, the protests were the most significant since the 1989 student-led pro-democracy movement centered on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square that the regime still views as its greatest existential crisis. With leaders and protesters at an impasse, the People’s Liberation Army crushed the demonstrations with tanks and troops, killing hundreds, possibly thousands.

    After the Tiananmen crackdown, the party invested in the means to deal with unrest without resorting immediately to using deadly force.

    During a wave of dissent by unemployed workers in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the authorities tested that approach, focusing on preventing organizers in different cities from linking up and arresting the leaders while letting rank-and-file protesters go largely untouched.

    At times, they’ve been caught by surprise. In 1999, members of the Falun Gong meditation sect, whose membership came to rival the party’s in size, surrounded the leadership compound in Beijing in a show of defiance that then-leader Jiang Zemin took as a personal affront.

    A harsh crackdown followed. Leaders were given heavy prison sentences and members were subject to harassment and sometimes sent to re-education centers.

    The government responded with overwhelming force in 2008, when anti-government riots broke out in Tibet’s capital Lhasa and unrest swept through Tibetan regions in western China, authorities responded with overwhelming force.

    The next year, a police crackdown on protests by members of the Uyghur Muslim minority in the capital of the northwestern Xinjiang region, Urumqi, led to bloody clashes in which at least 197 were killed, mostly Han Chinese civilians.

    In both cases, forces fired into crowds, searched door-to-door and seized an unknown number of suspects who were either sentenced to heavy terms or simply not heard from again. Millions of people were interned in camps, placed under surveillance and forbidden from traveling.

    China has been able to muster such resources thanks to a massive internal security budget that reportedly has tripled over the past decade, surpassing that for national defense. Xinjiang alone saw a ten-fold increase in domestic security spending during the early 2000s, according to Western estimates.

    The published figure for internal security exceeded the defense budget for the first time in 2010. By 2013, China stopped providing a breakdown. The U.S. think tank Jamestown Foundation estimated that internal security spending had already reached 113% of defense spending by 2016. Annual increases were about double those for national defense in percentage terms and both grew much faster than the economy.

    There’s a less visible but equally intimidating, sprawling system in place to monitor online content for anti-government messages, unapproved news and images. Government censors work furiously to erase such items, while propaganda teams flood the net with pro-party messages.

    Behind the repression is a legal system tailor-made to serve the one-party state. China is a nation ruled by law rather than governed by the rule of law. Laws are sufficiently malleable to put anyone targeted by the authorities behind bars on any number of vague charges.

    Those range from simply “spreading rumors online,” tracked through postings on social media, to the all-encompassing “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” punishable by up to five years in prison.

    Charges of “subverting state power” or “incitement to subvert state power” are often used, requiring little proof other than evidence the accused expressed a critical attitude toward the party-state. Those accused are usually denied the right to hire their own lawyers. Cases can take years to come to trial and almost always result in convictions.

    In a further disincentive to rebel, people released from prison often face years of monitoring and harassment that can ruin careers and destroy families.

    The massive spending and sprawling internal security network leaves China well prepared to crackdown on dissent. It also suggests “China’s internal situation is far less stable than the leadership would like the world to believe,” China politics expert Dean Cheng of the Heritage Foundation wrote on the Washington, D.C.-based conservative think tank’s website.

    It’s unclear how sustainable it is, he said. “This could have the effect of either changing Chinese priorities or creating greater tensions among them.”

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  • Jiang Zemin, who guided China’s economic rise, dies

    Jiang Zemin, who guided China’s economic rise, dies

    BEIJING — Jiang Zemin, who led China out of isolation after the army crushed the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests in 1989 and supported economic reforms that led to a decade of explosive growth, died Wednesday. He was 96.

    Jiang, who was president for a decade until 2003 and led the ruling Communist Party for 13 years until 2002, died of leukemia and multiple organ failure in Shanghai, state media reported.

    His death comes after the party faced its most widespread public show of opposition in decades when crowds called for leader Xi Jinping to resign during weekend protests of anti-virus controls that are confining millions of people to their homes.

    A surprise choice to lead a divided Communist Party after the 1989 turmoil, Jiang saw China through history-making changes including a revival of market-oriented reforms, the return of Hong Kong from British rule in 1997 and Beijing’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001.

    Even as China opened to the outside, Jiang’s government stamped out dissent. It jailed human rights, labor and pro-democracy activists and banned the Falun Gong spiritual movement, which the ruling party saw as a threat to its monopoly on power.

    Jiang gave up his last official title in 2004 but remained a force behind the scenes in wrangling that led to the rise of Xi, who took power in 2012. Xi has tightened political control, crushed China’s little remaining dissent and reasserted the dominance of state industry.

    Chinese state TV devoted 48 minutes of an extended evening news broadcast to Jiang’s death. He was shown chatting with farmers, touring factories and meeting foreign leaders.

    The party declared him a “great proletarian revolutionary” and “long-tested communist fighter.”

    Jiang was responsible for China “getting onto a global platform and rehabilitating itself after 1989,” said Kerry Brown, a Chinese politics expert at King’s College London. “He will be remembered as someone who made probably a pretty positive contribution.”

    Rumors that Jiang might be in poor health spread after he missed a ruling party congress in October at which Xi, China’s most powerful figure since at least the 1980s, broke with tradition and awarded himself a third five-year term as leader.

    Jiang was on the verge of retirement as the party secretary for Shanghai in 1989 when he was drafted by then-paramount leader Deng Xiaoping to pull together the party and nation. He succeeded Zhao Ziyang, who was dismissed by Deng due to his sympathy for the student-led Tiananmen protesters.

    In 13 years as party general secretary, China’s most powerful post, Jiang guided the country’s rise to economic power by welcoming capitalists into the party and pulling in foreign investment after China joined the WTO. China passed Germany and then Japan to become the second-largest economy after the United States.

    Jiang captured a political prize when Beijing was picked as the site of the 2008 Summer Olympics after failing in an earlier bid.

    U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called Jiang “a steadfast advocate for international engagement” and recalled his “personal warmth and openness.” The U.N. Security Council marked his death with a minute of silence.

    Portly and owlish in oversize glasses, Jiang was an ebullient figure who played the piano and enjoyed singing, in contrast to his more reserved successors, Hu Jintao and Xi.

    He spoke enthusiastic if halting English and would recite the Gettysburg Address for foreign visitors. On a visit to Britain, he tried to coax Queen Elizabeth II into singing karaoke.

    A former soap factory manager, Jiang capped his career with the communist era’s first orderly succession, handing over his post as party leader in 2002 to Hu, who also took the ceremonial title of president the following year.

    Still, he was said to be frustrated that Deng picked Hu, blocking Jiang from installing his own successor. Jiang tried to hold onto influence by staying on as chairman of the Central Military Commission, which controls the 2 million-member People’s Liberation Army. He gave up that post in 2004 following complaints he might divide the government.

    After leaving office, Jiang had influence over promotions through his network of proteges. He was considered successful in elevating allies to the party’s seven-member Standing Committee, China’s inner circle of power, when Xi became leader in 2012.

    Jiang faded from view and last appeared publicly alongside current and former leaders atop Beijing’s Tiananmen Gate at a 2019 military parade celebrating the party’s 70th anniversary in power.

    Jiang was born Aug. 17, 1926, in the affluent eastern city of Yangzhou. Official biographies downplay his family’s middle-class background, emphasizing instead his uncle and adoptive father, Jiang Shangqing, an early revolutionary who was killed in battle in 1939.

    After graduating from the electrical machinery department of Jiaotong University in Shanghai in 1947, Jiang advanced through the ranks of state-controlled industries, working in a food factory, then soap-making and China’s biggest automobile plant.

    Like many technocratic officials, Jiang spent part of the ultra-radical 1966-76 Cultural Revolution as a farm laborer. His career revived after that and in 1983 he was named minister of the electronics industry, then a key but backward sector the government hoped to revive by inviting foreign investment.

    As mayor of Shanghai between 1985 and 1989, Jiang impressed foreign visitors as a representative of a new breed of outward-looking Chinese leaders.

    A tough political fighter, Jiang defied predictions that his stint as leader would be short. He consolidated power by promoting members of his “Shanghai faction” and giving the military double-digit annual percentage increases in spending.

    Foreign leaders and CEOs who shunned Beijing after the Tiananmen crackdown were persuaded to return.

    When Deng emerged from retirement in 1992 to push for reviving market-style reform, Jiang also took up the cause.

    He supported Premier Zhu Rongji, the party’s No. 3 leader, who forced through painful changes that slashed as many as 40 million jobs from state industry in the late 1990s.

    Zhu launched the privatization of urban housing, igniting a building boom that transformed Chinese cities into forests of high-rises and propelled economic growth.

    After 12 years of negotiations and a flight by Zhu to Washington to lobby the Clinton administration for support, China joined the WTO in 2001, cementing its position as a magnet for foreign investment.

    China’s economic boom split society into winners and losers as waves of rural residents migrated to factory jobs in cities, the economy grew sevenfold and urban incomes by nearly as much.

    Protests, once rare, spread as millions lost state jobs and farmers complained about rising taxes and fees. Divorce rates climbed. Corruption flourished.

    Despite a genial public image, Jiang dealt severely with challenges to ruling party power.

    His highest-profile target was Falun Gong, a meditation group founded in the early 1990s. Chinese leaders were spooked by its ability to attract tens of thousands of followers, including military officers.

    Activists who tried to form an opposition China Democracy Party, a move permitted by Chinese law, were sentenced to up to 12 years in prison on subversion charges.

    “Stability above all else,” Jiang ordered, in a phrase his successors have used to justify intensive social controls.

    It fell to Jiang, standing beside Britain’s Prince Charles, to preside over the return of Hong Kong on July 1, 1997, symbolizing the end of 150 years of European colonialism. The nearby Portuguese territory of Macao was returned to China in 1999.

    Hong Kong was promised autonomy and became a springboard for mainland companies that want to do business abroad. Meanwhile, Jiang turned to coercion with Taiwan, the self-ruled island Beijing says is part of its territory.

    During Taiwan’s first direct presidential election in 1996, Jiang’s government tried to intimidate voters by firing missiles into nearby shipping lanes. The United States responded by sending warships to the area in a show of support.

    At the same time, trade between the mainland and Taiwan grew to billions of dollars a year.

    One of Jiang’s sons, Jiang Mianheng, courted controversy as a telecommunications dealmaker in the late 1990s, when critics accused him of misusing his father’s status to promote his career, a common complaint against the children of party leaders.

    Jiang is survived by his two sons and his wife, Wang Yeping, who worked in government bureaucracies in charge of state industries.

    ———

    Associated Press writers Danica Kirka in London and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed.

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  • China reaffirms Xi’s dominance, removes No. 2 Li Keqiang

    China reaffirms Xi’s dominance, removes No. 2 Li Keqiang

    BEIJING — China’s ruling Communist Party reaffirmed President Xi Jinping’s continued dominance in running the nation Saturday, one day ahead of giving him a widely expected third five-year term as leader.

    A party congress effectively removed Premier Li Keqiang from senior leadership. Li, the nation’s No. 2 official, is a proponent of market-oriented reforms, which are in contrast to Xi’s moves to expand state control over the economy.

    The weeklong meeting, as it wrapped up Saturday, also wrote Xi’s major policy initiatives on the economy and the military into the party’s constitution, as well as his push to rebuild and strengthen the party’s position by declaring it absolutely central to China’s development and future.

    Analysts were watching for signs of any weakening of or challenge to Xi’s position, but none was apparent. The removal of Li, while not unexpected, signaled Xi’s continuing tight hold on power in the world’s second-largest economy.

    “The congress calls on all party members to acquire a deep understanding of the decisive significance of establishing comrade Xi Jinping’s core position on the party Central Committee and in the party as a whole and establishing the guiding role of Xi Jinping Thought,” said a resolution on the constitution approved at Saturday’s closing session.

    “Xi Jinping Thought” refers to his ideology, which was enshrined in the party charter at the previous congress in 2017.

    In brief closing remarks, Xi said the revision to the constitution “sets out clear requirements for upholding and strengthening the party’s overall leadership.”

    Li was among four of the seven members of the party’s all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee who were missing from its new 205-member Central Committee, which was formally elected at the closing session.

    That means they won’t be reappointed to the Standing Committee in a leadership shuffle that will be unveiled Sunday. Xi is widely expected to retain the top spot, getting a third term as general secretary.

    The three others who were dropped were Vice Premier Han Zheng, party advisory body head Wang Yang, and Li Zhanshu, a longtime Xi ally and the head of the largely ceremonial legislature.

    Li Keqiang will remain as premier for about six more months until a new slate of government ministers is named.

    If he had stayed on the Standing Committee, it would have indicated some possible pushback within the leadership against Xi, particularly on economic policy. Li had already been largely sidelined, though, as Xi has taken control of most aspects of government.

    The more than 2,300 delegates to the party congress — wearing blue surgical masks under China’s strict “zero-COVID” policy — met in the Great Hall of the People in central Beijing.

    Most media, including all foreign journalists, were not allowed into the first part of the meeting when the voting took place.

    Former Chinese President Hu Jintao, Xi’s predecessor as party leader, was helped off the stage a little more than two hours into the 3.5-hour meeting without explanation.

    Hu, 79, spoke briefly with Xi, whom he had been sitting next to in the front row, before walking off with an assistant holding him by the arm. Jiang Zemin, 96, who was president before Hu, did not appear at this congress.

    As speculation swirled in some Western media about the reason for Hu’s departure, China’s official Xinhua News Agency tweeted late Saturday that he was not feeling well and had been accompanied to a nearby room for a rest.

    Only 11 women were among the 205 people named to the Central Committee, or about 5% of the total. Members of minority groups made up 4%. Those percentages were roughly the same as in the last Central Committee.

    At least one committee member, Wang Junzheng, the Communist Party leader in Tibet, has been sanctioned by the U.S. for human rights abuses.

    Police were stationed along major roads, with bright-red-clad neighborhood watch workers at regular intervals in between, to keep an eye out for any potential disruptions.

    An individual caught authorities by surprise last week by unfurling banners from an overpass in Beijing that called for Xi’s removal and attacked his government’s tough pandemic restrictions.

    A report read by Xi at the opening session of the congress a week ago showed a determination to stay on the current path in the face of domestic and international challenges.

    Xi has emerged during his first decade in power as one of China’s most powerful leaders in modern times, rivaling Mao Zedong, who founded the communist state in 1949 and led the country for a quarter-century.

    A third five-year term as party leader would break an unofficial two-term limit that was instituted to try to prevent the excesses of Mao’s one-person rule, notably the tumultuous 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, under which Xi suffered as a youth.

    Xi has put loyalists in key positions and taken personal charge of policy working groups. In contrast, factions within the party discussed ideas internally under Hu and Jiang, his two immediate predecessors, said Ho-fung Hung, a professor of political economy at Johns Hopkins University.

    “Right now, you don’t really see a lot of internal party debates about these different policies and there is only one voice there,” he said.

    Xi has emphasized the central role of the Communist Party, expanding state control over society as well as the economy. In his remarks, he said the party, which marked its 100th anniversary last year, is still in its prime.

    “The Communist Party of China is once again embarking on a new journey on which it will face new tests,” he said.

    The congress concluded by playing the communist anthem, “The Internationale.”

    ———

    Associated Press writer Kanis Leung in Hong Kong contributed to this report.

    ———

    The title for Standing Committee member Han Zheng has been corrected to vice premier, not Shanghai party chief, his former position.

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  • China party congress offers look at future leaders

    China party congress offers look at future leaders

    BEIJING — While Xi Jinping is primed to receive a third term as head of China’s ruling Communist Party on Sunday, it is unknown who will join him for the next five years on the party’s leading bodies, the Central Committee and the Politburo.

    Analysts will scrutinize who joins, and who leaves, for any clues about the future direction of policy as well as just how much power the 69-year-old Xi has been able to amass as one of China’s most influential figures in the country’s modern political history.

    Most closely watched will be the Politburo Standing Committee, whose size fluctuates but has stood at seven members under Xi. Based on past practice, the new lineup will be revealed when the members walk out from behind a curtain Sunday, one day after the end of a weeklong party congress.

    The positions they take on stage, to Xi’s left and right, will indicate their rank within what is considered the inner circle of power. Leading contenders include both current members and newcomers:

    ———

    PREMIER LI KEQIANG

    One major question is the future of the party’s No. 2 official, Premier Li Keqiang, who has been on the Standing Committee since 2012 and is primarily responsible for heading the cabinet and managing the world’s second-largest economy.

    The 67-year-old Li is regarded as an advocate of market reforms and private enterprise, in contrast to Xi, who favors state-led development with an emphasis on technological self-reliance and reducing the large gap between rich and poor.

    Li has had little impact on policymaking since Xi sidelined him politically, but he has led efforts to promote consumption-led economic growth and reduce reliance on exports and investment, employing tactics that some other countries say violate China’s free-trade commitments.

    Though he has said he will step down as premier next year, he is still eligible to stay on the Standing Committee. If he remains, analysts say that might indicate that supporters of a more market-driven economy have tempered Xi’s push for greater state control.

    ADVISORY BODY HEAD WANG YANG

    Other possible holdovers include Wang Yang, who joined the Standing Committee in 2017 and is also regarded as a member of the wing that favors markets, private enterprise and economic experimentation.

    Wang heads the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a party-controlled advisory body made up of representatives from various sectors such as religious groups, professional organizations and chambers of commerce.

    He won plaudits in 2011 for defusing protests by residents of the fishing village of Wukan over land sales by local officials.

    POLITICAL THEORIST WANG HUNING

    Longtime party political theorist Wang Huning is seen as likely to stay on the Standing Committee. He may move up to head of the National People’s Congress, the largely ceremonial legislature, which would make him one of the top three party officials.

    VICE PREMIER HU CHUNHUA

    Among possible newcomers, Vice Premier Hu Chunhua is considered one of those with the best chance. He was a top official in Guangdong province from 2012 to 2017, where he led a crackdown on “naked officials” who work in China but have sent their families to live abroad, considered an indication of corruption.

    Hu rose through the party’s Communist Youth League, which is seen as a separate faction from Xi’s circle and politically close to Xi’s predecessor, former party leader and President Hu Jintao.

    Hu Chunhua is known as a boy wonder who ranked first in China’s national university entrance examinations and became the youngest person to hold several official posts.

    He spent the first two decades of his career in Tibet, where he promoted economic development and oversaw efforts to suppress pro-independence sentiment. He was thereafter appointed party secretary for the Inner Mongolia region.

    SHANGHAI CHIEF LI QIANG

    Li Qiang has been party secretary of Shanghai, China’s largest city and financial hub, since 2017. The post was previously held by Xi, former President Jiang Zemin and former Premier Zhu Rongji.

    Li is regarded as being close to Xi after serving under him in the southeastern province of Zhejiang, a center for export-oriented manufacturing and private enterprise.

    His reputation was dented by a lengthy lockdown of Shanghai earlier this year that confined 25 million people to their homes, disrupted the economy and prompted scattered public protests.

    CHONGQING LEADER CHEN MIN’ER

    Chen Min’er, another Xi ally who worked under him in Zhejiang province, has served as party secretary of the vast southwestern city of Chongqing since 2017.

    The 62-year-old Chen is regarded by analysts as a rising star whom Xi might want to promote in order to secure his legacy in the next generation.

    Chen has never held a national-level position but is seen as a capable leader who made Chongqing’s government more responsive and efficient after a turbulent period under the now-imprisoned Bo Xilai, who was a Xi rival.

    He previously held the top post in Guizhou, a relatively poor southern province, from 2012 to 2017.

    ———

    The guessing game aside, some question how much the makeup of the Standing Committee matters given Xi’s steely hold on power and the lack of significant policy or ideological differences.

    With his combative approach, Xi is more of a politician in the mold of communist China’s founder Mao Zedong than his more collegial predecessors, who sought to encourage the private sector and maintain good relations with the West.

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