China fears unrest at home more than foreign war
In a signal of where China’s Communist party sees the immediate threat to political stability and its hold on power, spending on domestic security is again outstripping the budget of the national defence forces.
Figures released by the ministry of finance early this week show Beijing expects to spend the equivalent of $ 111 billion on police, state security, armed militias, the courts and prisons this year, an increase of 11.5 per cent over last year, while the official budget for the various arms of the military is $ 106 billion, a rise of 11 per cent on 2011.
Beijing’s anxiety about domestic unrest was underlined by Premier Wen Jiabao when he spoke at the opening of the Communist party- managed parliament, the National People’s Congress, earlier this week.
The government must “effectively defuse various types of conflicts, risks and dangers; prevent isolated problems from growing into major ones, and promote social harmony and stability,” he said.
The problem of local uprisings against corrupt party and government officials is a matter of acute attention because it figures in the behind- the- scenes jockeying among cadres for advancement as the Communist party prepares later this year to select its fifth generation of leaders since seizing power in 1949.
There are signs of unusual uncertainty about this raft of leadership changes and their implications for a party that now looks more like a classic Chinese dynasty than a revolutionary movement.
Money has been flooding out of China in streams of tens of billions of dollars a year as wealthy Chinese look for safe havens for their assets and for themselves in the United States, Europe and Canada, especially in Vancouver and Toronto.
Recent surveys have agreed that about 60 per cent of wealthy Chinese are either in the process of emigrating or intend to do so, with most citing uncertainty about stability in a country beset by an immovable one- party state and an increasingly restive population.
One element in the positioning among party hopefuls looking for advancement is a debate about how to respond to the unrest without relinquishing the party’s monopoly on power.
More liberal elements think China should move toward acknowledging the rule of law and adopting some international norms that offer accused people due process before the courts and the semblance of fair trials.
Hardliners, however, think the party’s inability to control the Internet as a forum for the exchange of ideas and information means that society is already almost out of control.
This faction thinks the only way to restore social harmony is to reinforce the law and law enforcement agencies as tools of state power.
This debate has been given added bite by the waves of unrest in the Middle East in the last year and the toppling of long- established regimes by “people power” uprisings or civil war.
A clear example of this debate was December’s uprising in the southern fishing village of Wukan. Villagers evicted party officials and police, and blockaded their community in protest at the theft of common land by Communist officials.
Instead of sending in the riot squad or People’s Armed Police, the party secretary of the Guangdong provincial government, Wang Yang, allowed free elections in which the villagers picked their protest leader as the new senior Communist party official.
But Wang, who is hoping for a seat on the Communist party politburo’s nine- member working committee, the hub of power in China, is being criticized for his conciliatory approach, which some think could encourage similar protests elsewhere.
China’s budget for domestic security announced this week suggests hardliners may have the upper hand at the moment. But it never pays to be a liberal in the run- up to leadership changes and it is normal in China for assertive and aggressive policies on both domestic and foreign affairs to dominate at these times.
Spending on domestic security has exceeded that on national defence since 2010, but the continued focus on social stability comes as daily outbreaks of unrest — “mass incidents” in the official phrase — in angry reaction to the plundering of local communities by party and government officials continue to rise, apparently beyond control.
The government used to issue tallies every year on the number of “mass incidents,” usually defined as a protest or demonstration involving at least 1,000 people and which requires intervention by riot squads or major police units.
But government agencies stopped reporting the figures when the numbers became embarrassingly high.
The most recent authoritative estimate is from Niu Wenyuan, an economist and senior adviser to the State Council – the equivalent of Canada’s Privy Council Office – who last month was quoted in the magazine Xin Kuai Bao saying there are on average 500 such incidents every day, or over 180,000 a year.
In Canadian terms, that’s the equivalent of 36 riots every day across the country. If that happened, it would be obvious to everyone very quickly that there were serious structural flaws in society.
For China’s Communist Party the problem is how to respond.
Since the last national uprising against corruption and government failures in 1989 when martial law was declared and the army called out, Beijing has tried to provide economic advancement instead of political reform.
That pact with the populace has now all but run its course.
Economic growth is slowing. China’s advantage as a cheap manufacturing centre is dwindling. Urbanization is almost beyond control. Environmental degradation is a threat to
Recent surveys have agreed that about 60 per cent of wealthy Chinese are either in the process of emigrating or intend to do so, with most citing uncertainty about stability.
health. State- owned industries continue to dominate the economy. The disparity between rich and poor is at social crisis levels. The majority of the rich are intent on leaving the country.
The ingredients for harmony and stability seem in short supply.