OFF THE ‘RED TOURISM’ TRAIL
Caves that were home to Mao Zedong and his allies draw hordes of tourists, but few know about the spot where the two most powerful men in today’s China first met. By William Mellor in Yan’an
Each day, bullet trains speed across the desolate landscape of northwestern China to deliver thousands of pilgrims to the “holy site” of Chinese communism — the former revolutionary stronghold of Yan’an.
Once there, these “Red Tourists,” some even dressed in military uniforms of the era, swarm toward the yellow cliffs surrounding the otherwise unremarkable city to inspect the caves where Mao Zedong and his comrades holed up for 12 years before their triumphant 1949 advance into Beijing. If that is not enough to satisfy a visitor’s patriotic zeal, government websites identify 100 other sites sacred to Mao’s revolution.
But what the booming Red Tourism industry of Yan’an inexplicably does not promote is a place just outside the city that is far more relevant to the current power plays taking place in China — specifically, the machinations under way in Beijing as the country’s two most powerful men seek to retain an iron grip on the world’s most populous nation and second-biggest economy.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and his closest ally, anti-corruption czar Wang Qishan, first bonded in 1969 in a cave in the dirt-poor village of Kangping, about an hour’s drive from Yan’an. The children of elite families, they had been exiled to the godforsaken outpost in Shaanxi province, 1,000 kilometres west of Beijing, to labour with peasants during the madness of Mao’s Cultural Revolution.
Like Mao and the Red Army a generation earlier, Xi and Wang found shelter in the dank caves that pockmark the barren, windswept hills around Yan’an. Wang, five years older, became the de facto elder brother of the teenaged Xi, according to a Cultural Revolution contemporary, Ren Zhiqiang.
Although Xi’s cave in the village of Liangjiahe was 50 kilometres from Wang’s in Kangping, Xi would regularly visit Wang and spend the night there. They would exchange books — precious items during the Cultural Revolution — and, one bitterly cold night, they huddled for warmth under the same quilt, Xi would recall in a later interview.
Today, this duo runs China from the comfort of the vermilion-walled Zhongnanhai leadership compound adjoining Beijing’s Forbidden City. Or at least they do for the time being.
The powerbrokers are preparing for a critical gathering later this year: The 19th Communist Party National Congress, during which China’s new leadership team for the next five years will be unveiled. One factor that threatens the status quo is the informal rule that China’s leaders retire if they have reached the age of 68 when the congress takes place.
Xi will only be 64 this year, and can continue as leader for a second five-year term until 2022. But five of the six other members of the party’s top decision-making body, the Politburo Standing Committee, will be 69 or older — Wang included.
TOP TROUBLESHOOTER
Respected and feared in equal measure, Wang has such a reputation as a troubleshooter that he is nicknamed “Jiuhuo Duizhang”, or Captain of the Fire Brigade. Appointed by Xi as head of the Orwellian-sounding Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, he set in motion the biggest anti-corruption purge in the history of the People’s Republic.
Wang’s swoops not only netted the highest and lowest officials — the “tigers” and “flies” — they also strengthened Xi’s position by targeting leaders of rival factions loyal to former Presidents Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin. Although officially ranking sixth in seniority on the Standing Committee, few doubt he is in practice Xi’s second-in-command, ahead of Prime Minister Li Keqiang. Should Xi’s political rivals insist on Wang’s retirement, Xi will have lost his most trusted and effective lieutenant.
Conversely, if the president has the clout to get the age limit waived, the Xi-Wang duo could continue to run China for another five years, if not longer. Should he succeed in extending Wang’s position on the Standing Committee, there is speculation that Xi may even seek to extend his own hold on power beyond the 10 years that leaders have been restricted to in recent times.
A third term would enable Xi to remain in power until at least 2027, confirming what some already believe — that he is determined to go down in history as the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao. There is even talk that Xi will formalise Wang’s No.2 position by naming him premier in place of Li.
SHARED EXPERIENCE
It is hard to overestimate Wang’s importance to Xi’s ambitions or the ties that bind them from their Yan’an days. Although Liangjiahe, the village where Xi spent seven years, has become part of the Red Tourism trail, Kangping remains a desolate place untouched by tourism crowds, and serves as a testament to how tough times were for both men. When I visited Yan’an a year and a half ago, the guides I met did not even know of Kangping’s existence.
I finally found the cave dwelling where Wang and Xi met, but access was blocked by a locked gate. To reach it, I had to climb over a pigsty wall. The cave was marked by a simple red plaque near a monument to 20,000 young people who endured extreme hardship while exiled there. Survivors of this band of brothers and sisters, now in their 60s, still regularly reunite in Beijing.
“The experience made me understand what the word ‘hungry’ means,” Wang would recount. Xi would describe his seven years in Yan’an as a life-changing period, saying he would always remain “a son of the yellow earth”.
Xi and Wang would later follow very different career paths. While Xi took a more conventional route through the domestic political ranks, Wang achieved a high international profile as a distinguished banker, financial reformer and vice-premier who worked with the US to combat the 2008-09 global financial crisis. In the process, Wang became a close friend of then US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, whose 2014 book, Dealing with China, pays glowing tribute to Wang.
Meanwhile, the bond forged in that Kangping cave proved unbreakable. When Xi succeeded Hu Jintao as China’s leader in 2012, Wang was the man he entrusted with his flagship anti-corruption drive.
“Xi Jinping believes that curbing corruption is essential for the survival of the Communist Party, so it shouldn’t be surprising to anyone that he has gone to Wang Qishan to drive this,” Paulson told me in an interview in 2015.
Back in Shaanxi province, another five years of the Xi-Wang partnership might finally come to the notice of the Red Tourists who swamp Yan’an — and tempt them to head for the overlooked village where, 48 years ago, the two leaders struck up their crucial partnership.