Analects | Bo Xilai v Chen Guangcheng

Who is the mightier?

The two men, seen as symbols, represent today's great contest between the powers of top-down and bottom-up

By R.G.

THE two biggest personality-driven stories of the season, those swirling around Bo Xilai of the Politburo and Chen Guangcheng of Dongshigu village, have provided not only two extraordinary tranches of grist for the journalism-mill but also two very different sorts of vision for the future of China. Whose story matters more?

Bo Xilai, in a man, represents the nexus of power and wealth that runs contemporary China. He was the high-flying princeling, a son of one of Chairman Mao's revolutionary comrades, who hoped to become one of the top nine figures at the Communist Party Congress to be held this autumn. Now he has been purged from officialdom, his wife detained in connection with the alleged murder of a British businessman, and he himself stands likely to be prosecuted.

In many respects Chen Guangcheng can be seen as his polar opposite. Born into a poor rural family, blind since childhood, Mr Chen is a self-taught lawyer who has spent years trying to represent the interests of poor peasants in his native Shandong province. He is one of hundreds of millions born to Chinese farms, without privilege of any kind, whose hope of a better life is driving them to fight for their rights.

For the past three decades (and, arguably, for three millennia before that), the likes of Mr Bo mattered most. Though they have stayed largely anonymous, in their dark, boring suits and with their interchangeable titles, the revolutionaries and engineers behind the controls of the People's Republic have built an extraordinary engine for growth, enough to persuade much of the world that China's rise was inevitable. China's leaders have indeed done amazing things for the country economically. Never mind that Mr Bo's leadership in Chongqing appeared to present a different economic and social model—with its emphasis on the state's involvement in the economy, a return to socialist moralising and a dash of populist personal style. In fact it exemplified the time-honoured way of Chinese imperial power: rule from the top down.

But China is changing in a fundamental way. The story illustrated by Mr Chen, in his unwillingness to give up fighting for the little guy, his perseverance in the face of insuperable top-down power, represents the many forces that are now pushing up from the bottom. Blind men who teach themselves the law and then take on the Communist Party are still rare. But workers in factories seeking greater representation are not. And neither are house-church Christians pushing for more religious freedom. When the villagers of Wukan succeeded in ousting their corrupt local officials last year theirs, was just one of countless battles fought across the countryside. Peasants are becoming ever more willing to challenge corruption and poor governance. Wukan was not alone in persuading the party to listen, and back down.

The new middle classes too, while still not wanting to rock the boat too much—they have benefited from the current set-up after all—are anxious to have their voices heard. Economists who analyse the link between economic development and political change note that few non-oil producing countries manage to sustain one-party rule once GDP per person passes $6,000 in terms of purchasing-power parity (PPP). The IMF says Chinese GDP per person is now more than $8,300 by PPP. Many of those new middle classes are looking for an independent legal framework to protect their newly-earned property and wealth. They too will take to the streets in protest, on issues such as pollution (eg, for the closure of a petrochemical plant in Dalian last year) and public safety (eg, in the case of the Wenzhou rail crash last year—and against the attempts to cover it up).

The middle classes have long had something to say and now, in the form of the Twitter-like microblogs known as weibo, they have a platform to say it. Cracks are appearing even in the façade of the Communist Party's control over the media. After four major newspapers ran an editorial strongly condemning Chen Guangcheng's flight to the American embassy in April, the microblog of one of them, the Beijing News, posted a late-night tweet with the photo of a sad clown beside the words “In the deep still of night, we take off our mask of insincerity, and say to our true selves, ‘we are sorry'.” More criticism on the popular microblogs was levelled at the papers that ran the editorial than at Mr Chen himself.

Despite all this, top-down power is still the deciding factor in China; the 18th Party Congress will be crucially important for the country's future. With Mr Bo out of the way, it will probably look like a smooth transition of power to the “fifth generation” of Communist Party leaders, allowing for nervousness among Mr Bo's erstwhile allies, and the usual horsetrading. But that smooth pliability does not go all the way down to the grass-roots. While the party can still imprison men like Mr Chen at will, it cannot squash the sense of engagement that comes naturally to a more mobile, prosperous and wired society. As the costs of success—financial, social and environmental—become clearer, and the fault lines beneath China's rise are exposed, people like Mr Chen are starting to propel China's future from the bottom up in a way that has never before happened. That is why his case (if only as an emblem, for now) says more about China's future than Mr Bo's.

Those who might wish to change their country, though, must contend not just with the Communist Party's brute force, such as subdues people in Mr Chen's role. They must also find a way to grapple with the vested interests of those who profit so handsomely from the Party's current state.

It is hard to verify whether reports of Mr Bo and his family's wealth are exaggerated. What is clear is that Chinese political leaders at all levels use their power to become extremely wealthy, and have created a sort of comprador class that will be very hard to challenge. Mr Bo played the game, lost and has been swept aside. But there are many more families like his among the princelings, the army and the heads of state-owned enterprises. They are well-entrenched, integrated parts of a regime that has no interest in letting go. They stand on a collision course with the pressures pushing from the bottom up.

For 20 years, it has been more dangerous for the Communist Party to start political reform than it has been to put it off. The tipping point, when the reverse becomes true, may be at hand. Mr Chen would symbolise that shift.

China has made extraordinary progress and does not always receive the credit it deserves for it from its watchers in the West. But the time has come now for leaders to lay out their vision for the next ten years. Their vision for China needs to be about more than roads and buildings and high-speed railways; it needs to concentrate more on people. Inherent tensions are starting to throw the inevitability of China's rise into question. For all their success in building an increasingly modern country, China's leaders have no broader vision for what they want their country and its people to be.

Chen Guangcheng is just one peasant-activist. He may never have intended to get involved with high politics. It is no small irony that, when it comes to defining a society in which the government obeys the laws and individuals' lives are to be respected, it is the blind man who has the clearest vision.

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