STEVE PIECZENIK TALKS

Warning To Chinese Fifth Generation Leaders- Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang: China’s Corruption, Increased Middle Class, and Slowing Economy- Serious Political Destabilization Problem.

Beware Another Tiananmen Square Riot!

As we depart the successful transition of power on November 6^th, what we, Americans, prove to the world at large, that no matter how strongly we feel about our political differences we basically reconcile them in an orderly, efficient, non-corrupt [for the most part] bipartisan way called ‘voting’ and ‘elections’.  

No matter what the outcome, millions of Americans from the street /town/city level have developed an orderly and quite efficient, vigorous way to participate in the election of the next President of this country in what most world leaders would consider a ‘consistent‘ , ‘non-disruptive’ fashion.

  We Americans tend to take that voting process for granted because its part of tradition, its our right!  Be it Republican, Democratic, Liberal, Libertarian, Tea Party, the differences in ideology conjoin into an electorate process with primaries, run-offs, voting outcomes and then electoral college representation. 

The U.S. elections (despite the incessant carping about one or another part of this system of ‘orderly transition’) is by far and large watched,  anticipated and envied by countries that do not have this representational nature of power transition among their elites.

In particular,  I talk about China. 

  For on November 8, 2012,  in complete contrast to the American representational system,  the Chinese transfer of power will be ‘predetermined’,  ordained by Communist Party elites, and by nature involve an incredible amount of “Quanxi”—relationships, which often translate into economic dysfunctional activities, if rampant not corruption.

Let me be more specific….

  Tomorrow on November 8, the transfer of control for the Chinese Communist Party from Chinese President Hu Jintoa and Prime Minister Wen Jiaboa,  core of fourth generation pre-appointed leaders, will transfer to Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang.
But this transition will be marked by serious tensions- civil and military unrest due to China’s discordant internal problems.

How do I know? And why do I say this now?
  I have been involved with China Politics since my days under Henry Kissinger.  In addition, I was mentored (at M.I.T) by a famous sinologist, Dr Lucian Pye, a son of Christian Missionary, born in China, and a remarkable Scholar and visionary about the future of China.  At the time of my graduate studies, I helped him with some psychiatric insights about Mao and Chou En-lai and how to evaluate each man given the charismatic, often bombastic nature of Mao, and the quiet, more reserved, if not deferential character of Chou En-lai. 

Subsequently, I wrote a paper titled “Ambivalence In the Confucius Basis of Chinese Thinking and The Revolutionary Nature Of Chinese Communism.” which outlined regime change in the PRC.

I was and am concerned about the nature of China’s political stability and maintenance of that stability in a country of 1.3 billion people.  The Central Committee has always had to worry about maintaining the integrity of the Han (majority) people and the viability of a country that for centuries had been rife with internal strife and civil wars.   Feeding, nurturing and making a productive society of 1.3 billion people in a land mass with few rivers (i.e. not enough water) and a western area of the country which accounts for about one third the land mass bereft of any water, is extremely problematic.

  In the beginning of the Chinese Revolution, under the leadership of Mao, Lin Piao, Liu Cho Chi, and others, millions of Chinese were slaughtered and the rest incarcerated.   As history progressed, the Chinese Communist Party had to be mindful of it’s bloody past, but steer the country toward economic growth and begin to disavow the old days of Cultural Revolution.  

Deng Xiao Ping, who had been incarcerated by Mao for anti-revolutionary ‘thoughts’ and then was ‘rehabilitated’, was the first PRC leader to order the Central Committee and it’s members to create an export economy that could generate enough income from low paying manufacturing ‘sweat shops’ along the the coastal sea areas [Canton, Guandong, etc]  so that the PRC could ship cheap products overseas.

This cheap, indentured labor, was purposefully intended to undercut the overseas competition and generate a significant war chest for the PRC in order to underwrite the peasants who were primarily involved in nonexistent agricultural inland endeavors for the sole purpose of just keeping them busy for they had no other work for them to do. 

China soon grew more wealthy- exporting cheap goods overseas and importing raw materials, water, minerals and fuel.   A large Middle Class arose in the cities along the coast and somewhat inland ----Beijing, Nanjing, Shanghai, Harbin--- where millions of workers were becoming more prosperous.  However, there were more than half a billion inland agricultural-based peasant became increasing poorer.  This increasing disparity between the rich [soon there were over one million millionaires] and the thirsty poor [have to have water shipped to them from the USA and other countries] is causing mounting tension within the country.

  Well needless to say, the richer got richer, the Power Elite of the Communist Party got fatter, more corrupt and more brazen in their lavish, debauched live styles.  Eventually this decadent life style of the Senior members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party became so outlandish and brazen that their ‘princelings’  [benighted children of parents who had fought in  Mao’s Original Revolution] were discredited in the press all over the world and ended up involved in a scandal with Bo Xilai whose wife ‘ostensibly killed a British MI-6 corrupt operative’.

The point is really quite simple.

  As George Orwell (ex-MI-6 Operative in Psychological Warfare) wrote in his now famous book,  Animal Farm, ‘all animals are equal , but some animals are more equal than others’.

  1989 Tiananmen Square Riots,  the Chinese students defied the orders and tanks of the PRC Central Committee,  in order to demonstrate to the world at large [where the PRC news was even more suppressed than now]  how corrupt the Communist Political Elite had become and how Communism had fostered the continuing inequality between the ‘have’ and ‘have nots’. 

My dear readers, I am writing this blog on the eve of the Chinese Leadership change and saying to you, and those of you who read me in Hong Kong and the mainland---that nothing has changed.

For the past ten years under the fourth generation princeling leadership the growth rate of the China went down from 11 % to a low 6% which is the minimum that the PRC must maintain just to keep a stable, steady course.

  Since their tenure there has been over 75000-100,000 serious internal demonstrations against the Central Committee caused by their incorrigible corruption and their refusal to address the needs of their 500 million starving peasants and increasing unemployment.

While the Chinese Middle Class rose- the quality of life went down thanks to unsafe, contaminated water, air, baby food, milk, and most other daily consumer durables. 

More importantly , the hard earned money of the middle class as well as other workers in the PRC was spent on wasteful, useless, State Owned Enterprises [SOEs] known for their corruption, inefficiency. 

This fourth generation has made China into a ‘basket case’ of capital cronyism, corruption, inefficiency, indentured labor.  In addition, there is a massive outflow of PRC capital to the US, Germany and other countries that would protect the safety and value of the corrupted ‘huan’.

Tomorrow, the fifth generation of leaders [party sycophants who were chosen almost five to ten years ago because they too were Party Princelings and were sworn to maintain the viability of the Communist Party Conference] will be inaugurated in a fanfare of pomposity and absurdity worthy of the court of Empress Dowager.   The princelings have demonstrated a complete disregard for the concerns of the China’s  children [especially their health], the University students who cannot find a job because they are not a ‘princeling’ and the workers who cannot find work because the Communist Party deems them ‘unworthy’ of being a ‘party member’.  Many of these ‘disposables’ are sent back to the choking sands of the Gobi Desert to die of thirst and the hunger.

Congratulations to the Fifth Generation of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party.

 I wish you the best that you deserve:

• Another Student Revolution all over the country.
• A military coup by the long-neglected People’s Liberation Army [PLA].
• And in the words of The Great Chairman Mao Tse Tung—May a Thousand Flowers Bloom --- of discontent, riots, and military insurrection. 

And may you one day learn the true lessons of the Honorable Confucius who long ago had to wander China to teach the War Lords about decency, transparent rule of law and justice and truth.

However, as friends of China have long known, those are lessons each Princeling decided to abandon some time ago for his/her personal ambitions. 

Let Revolution Proceed!!!