Don't Drop the Vase!

I was lucky enough to attend a talk given by Dr Tim Summers, of Hong Kong-based XTE China Consulting, who delivered gave an excellent primer on the mechanics and personnel involved in China's transition to the fifth generation of leadership. His key message was a warning against seeing this changeover as just a fight between 'factions'. The two 'factions', or rather coalitions, commonly identified are: 

• the 'princeling' or 'elitist' coalition around Xi Jinping (almost certain to be the next leader of the CCP and President of China); and 
• the 'populist' or 'tuanpai' (youth league) coalition, supposedly  represented by Li Keqiang (probably, though not inevitably, the next Premier). 

Similarly, we should avoid identifying either as 'liberal reformers' or 'hardliners': what matters is the discovery of consensus and balance within the Party.

Fundamentally he's right. To interpret the changeover as some sort of Japan-style faction-fight seems more likely to obscure than enlighten. In their heyday factional politics in Japan was a mix of loyalty, discipline and interest-swapping which could and regularly did transcend the formal structures of Japan's governance. On one level they were trivial, on another level important. . . . . I guess.  In Western party politics, factional fights are much simpler: all parliamentary parties with a chance of gaining power are coalitions containing different streams of thought constantly vying for pre-eminence. 

Neither model seems to fit what's at stake in China. And yet, I am loathe to dismiss this identification of the 'princelings' and the 'tuanpai' groupings because I think they do represent something tangible and important. Struggling to put it into words, I found myself drawn back to the triptych of Ai Wei Wei dropping a Han dynasty urn.    

What is it about these photos which make them so powerful, so unforgettable? I think it's to do with all the questions to which we have no answers. Is the urn really a Han-dynasty urn? Does Ai Wei Wei mean to drop it?  How does he feel about dropping it? Is he destroying a work of art, or is he creating one? What could justify such vandalism?  How would his father Ai Qing (celebrated poet, joined Mao in Yan'an in 1941, persecuted in the 1950s anti-rightist campaign) view it? Is this an act of rejection of China's past, or a perverse assertion of its future? Is dropping the vase a tragedy or a triumph? Does it really matter if we have yes/no answers to these questions? 

Recognize that whatever else Ai Wei Wei is, he is a classic princeling, schooled and privileged by the Party, and also therefore perversely alive to its vulnerabilities and responsibilities as both it and he unavoidably and famously collide with modernity. His relationship to the Party, and to other princelings, is profoundly personal.  My guess is that every one of the 'princelings'  - Xi Jinping, Wang Qishan, Zhou Xiaochuan, Chen Yuan, Lou Jiwei, Liu Mingkang, Bo Xilai, Zhu Min etc - they'll all feel the power of these pictures, and this action. 

For what the princelings share is  personal 'ownership' of the problem: they have inherited both the Party and China from birth in a way which no-one who has worked his way up steadily through the Party hierarchy quite has. Their task is unavoidable and in many ways unenviable - what would it mean to shirk the duty? The vase is in their hands. . . . Creation or destruction?. . .  And how to tell the difference. . . .