If there is one thing that China needs to avoid in the coming years then it is the militarization of its upper echelons of power. Just like Imperial Japan of the 1930s a stronger, more assertive military often masquerades as the panacea for the many social problems that arise after intense modernization, but in fact they are the harbinger of serious, future troubles. Who can tell which way the 2012 presidential handover will swing? However, there are credible signs coming out of China that a harder, military faction is in ascendancy. No one epitomizes this ‘tough’ military stance more than my favourite General, Liu Yuan. Below is an article written by Gordon Chang on Liu’s latest comments.
“Gen. Liu Yuan, a fast-rising star in Beijing political circles, this month called on China to return to its Maoist roots. A conference in the Chinese capital highlighted his essay glorifying war, sympathizing with terrorists flying planes into buildings, and criticizing China’s top leaders for betraying the country’s revolutionary heritage. The rant by the son of Liu Shaoqi, once Mao Zedong’s anointed successor, highlights the dangerous belligerence of today’s officers and their growing independence from Beijing’s civilian authorities. These senior military figures are also beginning to pose a threat to global peace.
Liu, 60, has essentially challenged the Communist Party’s control of the military. First, he called on China to rediscover its “military culture” and for the Chinese people to give in to their aggressive instincts. His diatribe, in a chilling passage, tells us that “man cannot survive without war.”
Second, he criticized the country’s last three leaders, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, the current president and party general secretary. “The Party has been repeatedly betrayed by general secretaries, both in and outside the country, recently and in the past,” Liu writes in perhaps the most inflammatory passage in his widely circulated essay. The essay itself first appeared late last year as the preface to “Changing Our View of Culture and History,” a book-length collection of political tracts by leftist Zhang Musheng, the son of another Chinese official.
Liu’s thoughts come on the heels of Gen. Chen Bingde’s visit this month to Washington, where the chief of general staff sought to calm tensions and portray China as no threat to the United States. Although American officials would prefer to listen to Chen’s soothing words, the United States has to take heed of Liu, who is more representative of thinking in the upper ranks of the People’s Liberation Army.
Liu is one of the most powerful of the so-called “princelings,” children of former and current party leaders. This year he was named political commissar of the PLA’s General Logistics Department after becoming a full general in 2009. He is soon expected to be fast-tracked to a seat on the Central Military Commission, the body that governs the military.
Liu also is believed to be close to another princeling, Xi Jinping. Xi, expected to succeed Hu Jintao as China’s supreme leader next year, has also advocated a return to Maoism. A third princeling, the charismatic Bo Xilai, became a Communist celebrity in recent months for leading a “Red Culture” campaign in Chongqing, where he is party secretary.
Maoism is on the rise in China. China-watchers attribute its resurgence to the ongoing political transition, in which the so-called Fourth Generation leaders are supposed to give way to the Fifth. As Bo Zhiyue of the National University of Singapore told the Sydney Morning Herald, “there is also jockeying for power among princelings in the name of the legacies of their fathers.” So the powerful offspring are trying to diminish reformers and their legacies as a means of getting ahead during the historic political transition.
Yet this explanation does not catch the full backward drift of the Chinese political system. After all, Hu Jintao, the target of the princelings, has himself been in the forefront of a Maoist revival in the last half-decade. Unfortunately, Chinese leaders are trying to respond to the widespread mood of discontent in Chinese society with a renewed emphasis on ideological indoctrination.
Most people in society, especially the young, aren’t buying Hu’s Maoist campaign. And neither are restive military officers like the outspoken Liu, who see this moment as the time to consolidate power. Now they feel strong enough to publicly take on civilians, who are viewed as weak.
And in a sense, civilian party leaders are vulnerable. First, Chinese generals and admirals are starting to look like power brokers, as Xi Jinping and other Fifth Generation civilian leaders involve themselves in factional struggles and seek PLA support for their ambitions. Second, the clout of central Communist Party officials is declining as authority diffuses throughout the country and as they lose legitimacy for various reasons. Third, civilian leaders are relying on the military to keep order — and to keep themselves in power in the face of protests across the country. And finally, the military has remained relatively cohesive while other power blocs in the Communist Party have frayed.
The result of these four trends is the partial remilitarization of politics and policy as the top brass is filling the resulting void in power. In China there now exists the same dynamic that shaped Japan in the 1930s. Officers are thinking more about what they can do, not what they should.
Washington for the longest time has tried to downplay the rise of hostile elements in the Chinese military. That is a mistake. Before Liu became a famous essay writer, he made his mark by making incendiary comments. In 2004, for instance, he called the United States a “whore.” Senior Chinese officers are now disrespecting not only their own civilian leaders but American ones as well. China’s generals are on a bender — and just about everyone else needs to watch out.
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