By Kerry Brown -Global Mind | September 26, 2012 - 16:00 GMT 
If there is one striking characteristic of the period of late Hu-Wen rule (broadly, from the 17th Party Congress in 2007 when Hu was able to have most of his key allies in the Politburo and was thus more dominant), it is that it has been a period of control. The ‘stability’ mantra (in Chinese, wei-wen) has been invoked time after time, with increasing intensity, since the Tibet uprisings in early 2008. Further unrest in Xinjiang in 2009 and Inner Mongolia in 2011 only reinforced for the current leadership the fact that social order is non-negotiable. This underlines the staggering fact that in the National People’s Congress this year, the Chinese government admitted that it spent USD 5 billion more on internal security than on national defense. The enemy within, it seems, looms larger in their minds than the threat from outside.
The leaders around Hu Jintao — being so focused on control — must be somewhat dismayed, therefore, that the leadership transition that is now due to take place at the end of this year (most likely mid October) has proved so scrappy and stressful. Contender Bo Xilai and his family scuppered the initial smooth plans. First, through his own energetic lobbying for a post in the key standing committee, and then through the involvement of his wife in the murder of a British businessman, and the flight of his chief deputy to the US Consulate in Chengdu in February. Bo himself is now under investigation, relieved of his formal positions but still a member of the Communist Party.
The one saving grace has been that the uppermost levels of the political elite in the Party have maintained unity, despite the unexpected series of events. Not one has given any overt sign of having misgivings about the treatment of Bo, nor of how the transition process is playing out. The only distinctive voice is that of Premier Wen Jiabao, who has talked in more detail about the need for deeper reform in the area of rule of law — but this is something he has been saying for some time. Everyone else has kept to the same strict tune — everything is fine, the Party is concentrating on economic development, and the strategy to become a middle-income country by 2020 is well on track.
The only problem, of course, is that change of leadership or not, China is in the midst of a very profound transition. This transition began over three decades ago with a turn away from autarkic Maoism, and is steering the country towards a strange hybrid of public adherence by elites to rhetorical Communism, but private allowance of a more and more diverse, private-sector driven economy. The political results are being worked out now, and manifest themselves in the sharp clashes between different social groups visible in protest figures (which have risen each year since the late 1990s), and in the increasing voices from within the Party itself dissenting from the main line of policy and advocating for change beyond the realm of economics.
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