林中斌 部落格 / Blog Chong-Pin Lin

    On March 31, at the release of China's latest defense white paper, Chinese military spokesman Col. Geng Yansheng said to the press in Beijing that China "attaches importance to its military relationship with the US and is taking steps to advance exchanges with the US military". Such a friendly gesture of goodwill from Beijing would have been impossible a year ago.


    At the time, bilateral tensions rose high as Beijing protested furiously on Washington's announcement of arms sales to Taiwan at the end of January and unilaterally ceased military exchanges with Washington. From then on till late October, Beijing behaved more assertively than in previous years that alarmed its Asian-Pacific neighbors.

    On October 31, the US Secretary of State Hillary met Chinese State Councilor Dai Binguo on Hainan Island. US-China relations began to improve. Three months later, Chinese president Hu Jingtao paid a state visit to Washington.


    This and two other reversals of Beijing's behavior since early 2010 have puzzled China watchers. The key to the riddles, ultimately locked in the black box of Beijing's decision-making, may also lie in the Fifth Plenum of the Chinese Communist Party's 17th Central Committee held from October 15 to 18.

    The second reversal was Beijing's relationship with Norway. On October 8 last year, Oslo announced to award the Nobel peace prize to Liu Xiaobo, a jailed Chinese political dissident, and Beijing angrily responded by suspending all interactions with Oslo. Yet, on December 10, the day an empty chair representing the absent Liu received the prize, a leading Chinese national oil company signed a contract with its Norwegian counterpart, offering financial and equipment assistance to the latter for oil drilling in the North Sea.

    The third reversal involves Chinese premier Wen Jiabao's talks on political reforms which underwent a turnabout. From March 5 to October 3, five days before Norway's announcement on Liu Xiaobo, Wen made ten public appeals on the subject before the act came to a screeching halt. However, he resumed mentioning the topic on February 27 this year during an interview..

    All three trends coincided with the turn-around in mid-October, the time of the Plenum. That meeting approved the 12th Five-Year Plan which switched China's growth-only development strategy to one aiming at reducing inequality and enhancing social stability. Such an objective would step on the toes of vested interests in the Communist Party. Without the Plan, however, brewing social instability would one day boil over and threaten the Communist party hold on power. Pushing for the Plan, Hu and Wen must overcome resistance within the Party.

    The Plan would lower the GDP growth target to 7% per annum down from double digit growth in most of the recent years. The Plan would inject new indicators, such as those on improving the conditions of environment and education, to gauge the performance of provincial and ministerial officials. All those new measures would constrain the opportunities for officials to pocket money when launching lucrative mega-projects.

    Many of the pro-growth officials were promoted during the time of Jiang Zemin, the predecessor of Hu Jintao. A notable reminder was Chen Liangyu, the former Party chief in Shanghai and a protege of Jiang. In 2005, Chen openly defied premier Wen who asked Shanghai to control the skyrocketing real estate market. Chen was later arrested for corruption. Today, many provincial lords like Chen still wield formidable influence.

    The pro-growth forces could fault Hu for buckling under foreign pressure in order to derail the Plan. Therefore, Hu and his close allies could not but opt for assertiveness in handling foreign policy in order to assure the passage of the Plan. Tough acts abroad signified political gesturing at home.

    Hu's assertive foreign posturing before mid-October paid off, and the Plan then became the country's new development blueprint after the Plenum. Afterwards, excessive assertiveness was no longer needed. Beijing patched up with Oslo. Wen, not worried about being perceived to succumb to Norway's pressure on human rights, resumed his call for political reform, which was intended to mitigate popular discontent and to prolong Communist rule. China also improved its relations with the US.

    In retrospect, even during the months when China acted assertively, it did not let the situation get out of hand, because Hu's real concern was the domestic agenda. That is why after seemingly hysterical reactions to Washington's arms sales to Taiwan, Beijing showed goodwill to Washington first. On February 18, despite bilateral tensions, the US Nimitz aircraft carrier group was given permission to dock in Hong Kong, which had been previously denied.

    (The author is a former deputy defense minister of Taiwan, and current professor at the graduate institute of international affairs and strategic studies of Tamkang University in Taipei.)

References:

Geng Yansheng 耿晏生

Dai Binguo 戴秉國

Chen Liangyu 陳良宇