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Governing China
The Guangdong model
One Chinese province adopts a beguilingly open approach—up to a point
Nov 26th 2011 | FOSHAN AND GUANGZHOU | from the print edition
UNLIKE attention-seeking politicians elsewhere, senior Communist cadres in
China like to keep their ambitions hidden. If anything, they signal grey
conservatism, stressing how little they wish to change things. But as the
country awaits a change of its leadership late next year, some high
officials are up for a bit of self-promotion. In Guangdong province in the
south the Communist Party chief, Wang Yang, is dropping hints that his more
liberal style of governing might offer a better way for running the country.
Guangdong has long been the most vibrant and economically liberal province
in China. Now the idea that economic liberalism might be matched by greater
political openness has come to be called the “Guangdong model”. A
prominent supporter is Xiao Bin of Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, the
provincial capital. On the blackboard, he draws a picture of an egg. He
makes chalk marks on the white to show how changes can be made in the way
the party rules, while leaving the yolk—for which read a Communist Party
monopoly on power—unmarked.
In this section
»The Guangdong model
Eye-rubbing
Investing or a-whoring?
As you were
Unholy muddle
Tried and found wanting
Reprints
Related topics
China
Guangdong
Chongqing
Mr Wang, who is 56, has been a member of the ruling Politburo since 2007. He
knows well how to keep within the party’s bounds. He rarely talks of the
Guangdong model, which would sound like a slap at others. But among
academics and online commentators, the term has blossomed. Guangdong
newspapers occasionally talk about it.
Fans of the model fiercely defend it against advocates of its rival promoted
by the party chief of Chongqing deep inland, Bo Xilai, who has a flair for
publicity. Both Mr Wang and Mr Bo may join the Politburo’s standing
committee next year, when seven of nine members, including President Hu
Jintao and the prime minister, Wen Jiabao, will step down. Mr Bo trumpets
the importance of state-owned enterprises, traditional socialist values and
the inspirational power of Mao-era songs—while getting tough on organised
crime. Maoist websites lionise Mr Bo; the Chongqing model is held up in
shining contrast to that of Guangdong and its “capitalist roaders”.
Six decades of Communist rule have been punctuated by battles between the
left (as Mr Bo’s supporters are proud to call themselves) and the right (a
label that carries a stigma to this day). This battle is exceptional,
however. It is being fought out not in arcane commentaries in party
newspapers but in open debate. Both camps hold symposiums about their
respective models. A book is out about the Chongqing model. In literary
terms, Mr Xiao admits that the Guangdong camp is lagging somewhat.
Perhaps the debate generates more heat in public than it does in the
Communist Party itself. A researcher at Guangdong’s party school says
Guangdong and Chongqing are not in opposition. Both regions, he says, are
learning from each other. For example, Chongqing is building the development
zones to attract investors that Guangdong pioneered in the 1980s. Guangdong
, he says, could learn from Chongqing’s efforts to absorb migrants from the
countryside into city life. Guangdong academics have studied Chongqing’s
experiments in creating markets for rural land, where powerful restrictions
apply even in “liberal” Guangdong.
In the political realm, however, Mr Wang’s supporters point to changes
which, they say, are distinctive. One concerns the role of trade unions, a
rather sensitive area for a party that is still unnerved by the role that
Solidarity played in Poland in the 1980s to bring down Communist power.
Mr Wang’s rethink was triggered by a spate of 200-odd strikes last year in
the Pearl River delta that began in May with workers downing tools at a
Honda car-parts factory in Foshan, near Guangzhou. Mr Wang, says an academic
, chose not to see the strikes as a threat to political stability. Indeed he
expressed sympathy with the workers’ demands (which is perhaps easier to
do at companies owned by foreigners). Elsewhere in China ringleaders are
commonly rounded up once strikes have been settled, but those in Guangdong
were not. All the incidents, the academic says, had “happy endings”, with
pay increases of 30-40%.
Buying off strikers is common enough in China. But Mr Wang went further,
encouraging state-affiliated trade unions (there are no independent ones) to
be more active in representing workers’ interests. Trade unions in China
are normally little more than creatures of management, run by party cadres.
Prodded by Mr Wang, Guangdong’s unions began encouraging collective
bargaining, a practice officially authorised but widely disliked by local
officials who fear worker activism and upward wage pressures. Mr Wang’s
views did not strike an instant chord with his subordinates. Most
participants at one meeting on how to handle the strikes “didn’t get it”
when he called for a hands-off approach, says someone with knowledge of the
proceedings.
By contrast, during a large-scale taxi strike in Chongqing in 2008, Mr Bo
was more interventionist. He held an unusual televised meeting with drivers,
but later launched a sweeping anti-mafia campaign that resulted in a
wealthy businessman accused of organising the strike being sentenced to 20
years in prison for gangsterism and disrupting transport.
Supporters of the Guangdong model also point to the greater leeway Mr Wang
has given NGOs, which are heavily circumscribed in China. Their registration
in Guangdong, and especially in Shenzhen, a trailblazing economic zone
bordering Hong Kong, involves fewer hoops. Mr Wang has been credited with
promoting more open access to information about government spending. In 2009
Guangzhou became the first Chinese city to publish all its budgets.
It is never entirely clear how much of these initiatives have been taken by
Mr Wang himself. Guangdong in general and Shenzhen in particular have long
enjoyed unusual freedom to experiment. This year Mr Wang has been promoting
the goal of a “happy Guangdong” (the pursuit of which is enshrined in the
province’s new five-year plan). Public happiness, assessed by opinion polls
, is being introduced as a new criterion for judging local leaders’
suitability for promotion.
Yet unhappiness remains rife, and in this Guangdong is no exception.
Dissatisfaction is widespread among the more than 36m migrants in Guangdong,
one-third of the provincial population, many of whom work in harsh
conditions.
Protests, sometimes violent, are common. In Dadun village, on the edge of
one of Guangzhou’s satellite towns, a notice outside the government
headquarters promises rewards of up to 10,000 yuan ($1,600) for turning in
“criminals” involved in large riots in June triggered by security guards
roughing up a street hawker. The rioters were migrants who work in countless
small jeans factories, one even in a temple courtyard, trimming threads and
stamping on studs.
Nor does the Guangdong model extend to free and fair elections. In September
Dadun held a ballot for seats in the local legislature. But only its fewer
than 7,000 Cantonese inhabitants were allowed to vote, and not the 60,000-
odd sweatshop labourers from other provinces. In a village near Foshan,
residents elected an independent candidate, ie one who did not have party
backing. Plainclothes goons now keep watch on his home. A villager confides
her support for the new legislator only in a hushed tone. Mr Wang’s egg-
yolk remains inviolate. |
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