The danger of pursuing ‘Harmony’ in Chinese foreign policy

The recently concluded five-yearly congress in Beijing reaffirmed two things. First, President Hu Jintao is unchallenged as China’s supreme leader. Second, Hu’s ‘Three Harmonies’ policy will continue to define the regime’s priorities.

Hu had a context for pursuing grand policy in threes. His predecessor Jiang Zemin had his rather obtuse policy known as the ‘Three Represents’. Hu’s ‘Three Harmonies’ is intended to be more accessible. It is intended to reinvigorate both the Party and its connection with the Chinese people.

The third harmony of President Hu’s ‘Three Harmonies’ policy centerpiece is to maintain social stability and create a ‘harmonious society’ under the rule of the Chinese Communist Party. This is very much an admission that the Communist Party faces formidable obstacles if it is to remain in power. The main problem for the Party is declining legitimacy in the eyes of the majority of Chinese. Addressing the consequences of this has become the senior leadership’s main obsession.

Within a couple of generations, China has become one of the least equal societies in the world. Some 150-200 million party members and other well-connected ‘middle classes’ have benefited enormously from China’s growth. But around one billion have been left behind. Martin Ravallion, the director of the World Bank’s Development Research Group, recently told a poverty conference in Beijing that the increase in inequality in China was “the most dramatic” that he had seen “in any data anywhere.” In other words, the vast majority are not rising with the tide. Instead, as the dramatic decline in consumption levels (as a proportion of GDP) suggests, they are sinking further even as China’s GDP continues to grow.

The other two ‘harmonies’ deal with ‘reconciliation’ with Taiwan and promoting China’s ‘peaceful rise’ in the world. Talk about pursuing the ‘Three Harmonies’ all sounds very ambiguous. How has President Hu and the Communist Party actually responded and what do pursuing the ‘Three Harmonies’ actually mean?

One development has been the rise of the so-called ‘New Left’ in Chinese politics with Hu at the helm.

President Hu understands better than most that the discontent of the masses is the greatest threat to the continued dominance of the Communist Party. In 2005, the latest available official figures, there were 87,000 significant instances of unrest in China. That is about 240 each day. A Human Rights Group based in Hong Kong believes that the true number was closer to 300,000. Many of these instances involve protests by tens of thousand of people. This is no small matter of a couple of dissatisfied citizens venting their anger every once in a while.

President Hu realizes that selling China’s ‘economic miracle’ to the almost 1 billion people left behind is an impossible task. In extensive research conducted by the state sanctioned Academy of Social Sciences, about 85 percent of rural Chinese consider local Party officials ‘corrupt’ or ‘very corrupt’. The ‘New Left’ which emphasizes a return to Communist China’s roots – ideological purity, defending against ‘foreign devils’, resisting the neo-colonialisation of the West – might be a crude attempt to play the ‘nationalism card’ to deflect blame for its failings but it has been shown to be effective.

To be sure, there is already a rich vein of discontented nationalism to tap into within China. The Chinese, quite understandably, yearn to put right what they see as their 150 years of ‘humiliation’ at the hands of foreign powers – beginning with their defeat at the hands of the British in the Opium Wars of the 1840s. At its foundations, it is a collective desire to regain China’s ‘dignity’ and return the country to its former great status.

A strong sense of nationalism does not in itself presage a disruptive China in the region. In some circumstances, it can even be a positive and cohesive force.

However, President Hu’s ‘New Left’, which taps into this extant nationalism and blames many of the domestic problems on foreign influences and actors, indicates the emergence of a new chauvinism in Chinese political direction. For example, protests against Japanese actions are encouraged if not staged. The issue of Taiwanese ‘reconciliation’ is portrayed as a test of national dignity and a struggle of the highest national order between right and wrong: the right of China to reclaim its lost ‘province’ against the efforts of the West (especially America) to keep China down.

This exploitation of a national ‘victim narrative’ is a seductive strategy for President Hu. It presents a ready-made tactic to deflect blame for domestic failures, unite Chinese against perceived foreign enemies, depict calls for political reform and liberalization as insidious foreign ideas, and further entrench the idea that the Communist Party is the champion of restoring China’s national dignity in the world.

Doing this for domestic political ends is one thing. Applying moderation and restraint in managing a future crisis in the Taiwanese Strait or other contested territories – once the fires of these sentiments have been flamed – is the danger.

Dr John Lee is a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies. His book, Will China Fail?, was released by CIS on October 20.