Aspasia Karras
A REPRESENTATIVE piece at the current Hong Kong Biennale art show is a small pile of Chairman Mao Zedong’s little red book.
In the context of threats and statements from Beijing to prevent future marches in Hong Kong, it presents a critical counterpoint to the generally upbeat approach most Hong Kong citizens appear to be taking to the impending integration.
Certainly, if the booming coastal cities like Shanghai, the permanent traffic jams in Beijing, and the burgeoning construction industry are anything to go by, they have little to fear, at least in terms of material wealth.
The Communist Party’s congress in October, however, appears to have registered the slackening ideological base of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). For the first time in years, it spent most of its time reaffirming its delegates’ solid communist values, as opposed to the now normal discussions on market reform.
Another congress highlighted the nature of the large-scale institutional and social re- engineering in the country. The Ministry of Personnel hosted the Third International Conference of the International Institute of Administrative Sciences – a Brussels-based organisation which specialises in public sector management and reform.
The venue was appropriate: China has inherited the oldest continuous administrative culture in the world, and is engaged in radical administrative reform.
In most countries, such reform spurns buzzwords such as transparency, efficiency, accountability, and public participation. In China it is a unique scenario. The process of creating a “socialist market economic system” is so integrally linked with the administration of the state that most Chinese presentations at the conference were based on the assumption that economic reform means administrative reform.
Watching China’s approach could prove useful to South Africa, grappling as it is with similar issues.
The process, Chinese officials argue, has been systematic, starting in 1982 when the structures of cadres (management), leading groups and the de facto system of life tenure in leading posts were challenged.
In 1988, the Chinese began to make inroads into separating the government from enterprises and restructuring the functions of the state council. In 1993, reform in government organisations at all levels began. This meant rationalising staff, decentralising some elements of power, developing markets to create a unified national market system, and raising work efficiency.
The result has been that 20-million administrative employees were axed, leaving nearly 110-million employees of government organs, enterprises and institutions. The cuts have come with the reduction of ministries, commissions and working organs of the state council to 59 from 89.
Another result was the introduction of a tax assignment system, basically an attempt to work out the spending and revenue among 59 government departments, 30 provincial, 333 city, 1 735 county and 48 000 township governments.
It is interesting to note that the reforms of the PRC seem to be reverting to the systems of old, once again placing merit as a criterion for employment and continued employment in the public sector.
The merit criteria for a cadre are: “To be revolutionary, young, well educated and professionally trained.” State employment is, as from October 1993, governed by a state civil service system, which attempts to enhance and battle respectively two of the strongest cultural inheritances, efficiency and corruption.
The state has also introduced limited liability and joint stock company models, with varying degrees of central control on the appointment of management and board members, and wages being determined using several standards.
What officials fail to explain is whether systems were put into place to compensate 20- million workers for the entitlements they had lost.
Institutional transformation has been incremental. Despite attempts to maintain a system where housing and basic social services are taken care of, the problems of poverty are still visible. Beggars are reappearing on the streets of major cities alongside huge department stores and Western boutiques. The red light districts in Beijing and Shanghai are undergoing a revival.
The sheer vastness of the country has traditionally meant the application of the central political will varies widely. Coastal cities remain wealthy; inland, poverty holds sway. Mass removals of peasants to new areas for political reasons (as is happening in Tibet), and for survival reasons in the central provinces, continue unabated.
The state’s inclination to decentralise power may simply be about accepting what is already happening on the ground.
Social re-engineering, however, is still visible. Even the Beijing airport, personifying the hardline Communist China of the 1950s, is soon to be replaced by a high- tech model.
The reality is that the only places you can still buy little red books are antique stalls and fleamarkets: the thoughts of Mao Zedong are now sold strictly as tourist curiosities.