China's Local Leaders Hold Absolute Power

Party Vows Reform but Moves Slowly

XIFENG, China -- When Zhang Zhiguo took over as Communist Party leader in Xifeng county, he was determined to make his mark, to push this impoverished corner of northeast China into the mainstream of swift economic development.

By some measures, he succeeded. During the five years of his hard-charging leadership, Xifeng's gross domestic product tripled, to more than $50 million in 2007, and Zhang was headed for promotion in the party hierarchy.

But Zhang's career came to a crashing halt in January. That is when party leaders in Beijing found out that Xifeng police had traveled 500 miles to the capital to arrest a woman who had authored a magazine article that Zhang found unflattering. On further investigation, the party leadership had other concerns as well -- about Zhang's overbearing style, for instance, and the rough treatment of homeowners who had to make way for a multimillion-dollar commercial center that seemed to make little economic sense.

A party investigating team showed up in early February. Soon afterward, Zhang was fired, with no public explanation. The night he left town in disgrace, Xifeng residents said, they set off fireworks in celebration.

Zhang's stormy passage through Xifeng was in some ways extraordinary. But in many other ways, his exercise of absolute power was typical of the way China's Communist Party operates in thousands of cities, towns and counties across the country. Despite three decades of widely heralded economic reforms, the party has clung tenaciously to its Leninist-inspired monopoly on politics. As a result, most of China's 1.3 billion people still live under the thumb of local party secretaries who are responsible only to the higher-level party officials who appoint them.

China's leaders have said the country is evolving politically, without setting any timetable for reforms. In the meantime, they have interpreted their hosting of the Olympic Games in August as an international endorsement of their contention that the pace must be slow. For the moment, as Zhang's time in Xifeng showed, the top-down Communist system still insists on concentrating power in the hands of party functionaries who manage local politics and finances beyond challenge from the law.

The party has carried out numerous reforms in recent years to improve the competence of such officials and guarantee their honesty. The May 12 earthquake in central China has become an obvious test of these reforms; leaders have warned that party officials will be judged by their response to the disaster.

With President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao providing strenuous leadership from the top, the party apparatus pushed hard to mobilize help in quake-hit zones as soon as the scale of the catastrophe became clear. Participation was broad, but it was all under the guidance of party officials. Ultimately, governance in Sichuan province differs little from that of Xifeng and other localities: The party refuses to allow outside powers, such as an independent judiciary, a probing press or a genuine legislature, that could keep tabs on bureaucrats.

"The Xifeng case was very typical of China," said Su Chunyu, a Liaoning province lawyer who has followed events here closely. "It was typical of the way politics work and typical of the way the law works."

Zhang, in his mid-50s, parted his jet-black hair smartly near the middle and seemed almost always to wear a suit and tie, residents recalled, setting him off as an important figure in this little town.

According to Liang Yunfei, head of the party's Propaganda Bureau in Xifeng county, Zhang had arrived here in 2002 as a county administrator and, by the following year, had been appointed party secretary.

Liang described him as a charismatic leader who quickly demonstrated a determination to think big even in a small arena. He was doing what China's modern party secretaries are assigned to do: forge alliances between government and business to promote investment and improve the economic standing of those living under the secretary's sway.