Political ascent is a more calculated affair in the East
OPINION: My Taiwanese hosts were puzzled. The Kiwi journalist had absented himself from visiting local windfarms to hunker down in the back of the tour bus to follow the formation of a new government in New Zealand.
The result – a youthful prime minister who had led the party for barely three months – was as unthinkable to them as a reality television personality becoming president of the United States.
In Taipei, political advancement is usually a highly prescribed, lifelong process.
At least our Prime Minister had nine years of parliamentary experience and a previous career in politics, I proffered.
A democratic but a far more formal society than New Zealand, Taiwan also lives in the shadow of its huge, undemocratic neighbour across the Taiwan Strait.
Not only does China seek an end to Taiwan’s independence through reunification, but it is equally serious about grooming its leaders over decades before they assume ultimate power.
It was presumably no accident that Taipei invited foreign journalists for a bout of soft diplomacy in the same week as the Chinese Communist Party was holding its Party Congress in Beijing – a five-yearly event where leadership of the emerging superpower is anointed.
This time, as expected, 64-yearold Xi Jinping was confirmed as president for a second term. But in a break with the past, Xi’s successor is not obvious.
Of the seven highest-ranked Politburo members, only Xi and
Australia has remained a closer friend to the US than New Zealand, which is seen to have drifted into the embrace of Beijing.
his prime minister, Li Keqiang, were familiar faces.
Two likely successors were not among ‘‘the seven’’.
While Politburo members retire by convention at 69, it appears Xi may be considering a third term, a credible possibility given his emergence as the most powerful Chinese president since Mao Zedong. That influence was affirmed by the publication at the congress of the ‘‘Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era’’.
While not the most thrillingsounding read, the document carries vital code to Xi’s hold on power, right down to its title. As a ‘‘thought’’, it ranks higher than the ‘‘theory’’ of ‘‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’’ espoused by the reformist president Deng Xiaoping, who laid the foundations for China’s emergence as a new kind of market economy in the 1980s.
The fact that Xi’s ‘‘thought’’ describes a ‘‘new era’’ is significant, allowing changes to Deng’s approach to achieve Xi’s vision of China as a ‘‘great, modern socialist country’’ by the middle of the century.
It would assume global leadership that China only aspires to today while maintaining the politics of a one-party state.
Its expansionist ambitions are largely economic, expressed by the Belt and Road strategy. It insists its territorial ambitions go no further than reclaiming Taiwan and asserting sovereignty in the South China Sea.
However, Xi clearly expects China to be more successful in the next 30-plus years than Western democracies, where democratic institutions and social cohesion are threatened by the politics of social inequality and populism.
This shift holds big challenges for New Zealand.
Owing to accidents of history and strategic location, China and New Zealand have formed a far deeper, warmer relationship than might be expected between a tiny, free-trading liberal democracy and the world’s most economically dynamic dictatorship.
Across the ditch, Canberra has watched with concern as that relationship has deepened while Australia has remained a closer friend to the United States than New Zealand, which is seen to have drifted into the embrace of Beijing – a development far from welcomed by our newly appointed foreign minister, Winston Peters.
A fly on the wall at the Kirribilli House brunch between Jacinda Ardern and her Australian counterpart, Malcolm Turnbull, in Sydney on Sunday might take an interest in whether such topics are raised.