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Party Chief Jiang Zemin, 70, Holds Reins but Faces Tests

BEIJING, Feb. 19 -- China now lies more firmly than ever in the hands of its president and Communist Party chief, Jiang Zemin (right), the leader of a government that in the last three years has rallied Chinese nationalism, lectured its own people on moral integrity, moved slowly to reform state industry, fired missiles near the shores of a defiant Taiwan and rebuffed American entreaties on human rights.

Whether Jiang, 70, succeeds on a new and larger stage is linked with China's uncertain future and to the mixed legacy left by Deng Xiaoping. To Jiang and all of China, Deng bequeaths the central paradox of his 18-year reign: While he undertook economic emancipation and an "open-door" policy, Deng protected the sclerotic Communist Party's monopoly on political power.

As long as this contradiction between economic freedom and political repression persists, the specter of political instability hangs over China's future, which is also clouded by the economic and social changes pulsating through this nation of 1.2 billion people. Deng's successors inherit an economy that is racing ahead at double-digit rates but beset by problems of inequality, corruption, bankrupt state enterprises, rural poverty and ideological drift.

Given China's history of policy dictated from above, people in search of direction will look to Jiang, hailed by the official Chinese media as the "core" of the next generation of Chinese leadership. The government propaganda machinery already dutifully churns out the words of Jiang, including his recent calls that people pay attention to "spiritual civilization," a mixture of Miss Manners and Leninist obedience to the Communist Party.

But Jiang is widely seen as a transition figure between China's revolutionary-era giants and a generation that has yet to come into its own.

Although Jiang holds the nation's three most important posts -- president, Communist Party general secretary and chairman of the Central Military Commission -- Deng proved that titles often bear little relation to a person's actual power. Since 1990, Deng's sole title had been honorary chairman of China's bridge association.

Catapulted to power in the wake of the bloody 1989 crackdown on democracy demonstrators, Jiang was handpicked by Deng because of who he was not: He was not aligned with a Beijing-based faction or either extreme of the economic reform debate.

More than five years later, Jiang has managed to establish a more secure place for himself even as his patron Deng faded from the scene. Jiang's allies, often called the "Shanghai faction," occupy key posts in the party, military and People's Armed Police. Unlike Mao Zedong's short-lived successor, Hua Guofeng, to whom Jiang is sometimes derisively compared, Jiang has had years to establish his own power base.

Jiang sits uneasily atop a coalition that includes the 57-million-member party, the powerful military, a vast state industrial complex and the increasingly vibrant provinces and private businesses that have been booming under Beijing's loosening grip.

Jiang also shares power with other key national figures. They include Premier Li Peng, a former electric power industry technocrat who declared martial law in 1989 and is widely identified with the subsequent Tiananmen Square crackdown in which hundreds of democracy protesters were killed; Deputy Premier Zhu Rongji, a blunt-spoken former state planner who is now the economic czar; and Qiao Shi, the former head of party intelligence activities, who as chairman of the National People's Congress is trying to breathe life into the traditionally rubber-stamp body.

None possesses the stature or authority of Deng, a hero of the communist revolution. Technocrats Jiang and Li advanced through factory, power plant and bureaucratic jobs and before 1989 played no role in the crucial turning points in China's modern history. Zhu, purged in the anti-rightist campaign of 1957, languished for nearly two decades within the central planning bureaucracy.

No Dynamic Alternative Their greatest strength may be the lack of a dynamic alternative. "Now . . . there is no person or group within the party with enough prestige to command trust among the people," said Liu Binyan, an exiled Chinese journalist and former party member living in the United States.

Such personalities matter because Deng leaves behind no entrenched system of governance.

Although he criticized China's first Communist Party leader, Mao, for creating a cult of personality and vowed to lead China into a more institutionalized political system, in the end Deng relied on his personal stature. Paradoxically, as he stepped back from formal government and party posts to make way for a new generation, his personalized style of leadership became even more central to his reign, further undermining his successors' influence.

As a result, institutional relationships among the party, the National People's Congress, the military and Jiang remain fluid.

Although Deng had not appeared in public since early 1994, his mere presence may have restrained bickering among factions of the coalition he had forged over the years. Those factions ranged from the die-hard communist Deng Liqun to the former allies of Hu Yaobang, the more liberal party boss Deng deposed in 1987.

Unlike the widely divergent views Deng had to balance in 1978, the viewpoints of today's party leaders are relatively close. Hard-line communists have been marginalized; five influential conservative elders died of natural causes between March 1992 and March 1993 and in April 1995, Deng's more conservative comrade -- and sometime rival -- Chen Yun died. Cultural Revolution-style rhetoric has virtually vanished. In the context of the past 45 years of Chinese politics, almost everyone in the government is a reformer, although they disagree sharply over the pace and extent of change.

More importantly, China's booming private sector -- from vegetable vendors to independent power companies -- threatens to engulf the Communist Party. Even the 3.2-million-member military, which is represented at the highest councils of the party and government and could wield influence in the Deng succession, is busy tending to its business empire.

Deng's economic policies have created powerful constituencies for reform by putting more cash and consumer goods in the hands of the Chinese people. Farm incomes soared in the early 1980s and are rising again. Millions of Chinese own shares of stock. Indeed, there may be no alternative to reforms. As Wang Meng, a writer and former culture minister, recently responded to a critic of Deng's reforms: "If reform would trigger off disasters, then what about no reform at all? Would the situation be stable and unshakeable if there were no reform?"

Deng's successors are likely to share his obsession with stability. Pent-up frustrations are fed by widespread corruption. Some 350 million people still earn less than $1 a day, while party and military leaders cruise around in fancy cars with darkened windows. The specter of widespread layoffs by state-owned enterprises looms over 25 million surplus industrial workers. About one-third of the rural labor force is underemployed, and 75 million people from the countryside have left their homes to look for work in cities, where urban residents blame them for rising crime rates.

"There's an ugly mood and it's about a whole bunch of things," said Andrew Nathan, a professor at Columbia University who has analyzed Chinese public opinion data. "It's against government, against rich people who drive Mercedes and ignore red lights, against dissidents and against the foreigners."

"The problems that led to the Tiananmen crisis have not been resolved," said Liu, the exiled journalist.

Most people still look to Communist Party leaders to bring about change, if only because there are no alternatives to the party. The Chinese Communist Party has jailed dissidents who dare to speak out and quashed most nongovernmental groups that function independently.

A Troubled Party Leading dissidents, such as Wei Jingsheng, remain symbols of unresolved political and human rights issues, but they lack the organization or platform to challenge the government on anything other than moral grounds. Independent trade unions have been swiftly crushed. "Right now, because of heavy government pressure, the labor movement can't exist in organized form," said Han Dongfang, a trade union organizer in exile in Hong Kong.

Yet the party is troubled from within. By jettisoning communism and adopting market mechanisms, Deng turned the party into a hollow shell. It lacks a unifying ideal or moral core, other than the aim of helping people get rich. It talks about "socialism with Chinese characteristics," or a "socialist market economy," but no one is clear about what that means.

In search of a model, many Chinese leaders look to the authoritarianism practiced by Singapore's former president Lee Kuan Yew, a frequent guest in Beijing. Lee combined free-market economics with ruthless political repression. "As long as the leaders take care of their people, the people will obey the leaders," Lee said at a Beijing conference. Increasingly, China's leaders have mixed that with emotional appeals to Chinese nationalism on issues ranging from Chinese consumer-brand loyalty to Taiwan policy.

Tough on DissentJiang has proven himself capable of following the tough party line on dissent.

In 1986, he confronted student protesters at his alma mater, Jiaotong University in Shanghai. As he entered, he saw anti-government posters quoting Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. Jiang, who attended an American missionary school near Shanghai and speaks English well, surprised the students by reciting the Gettysburg Address in English. He chided students for misunderstanding Lincoln's meaning. The address, delivered to dedicate the national cemetery at the site of the pivotal Civil War battle, not only proclaimed ideals of freedom but stressed the importance of preserving the union even if it meant using force of arms against fellow citizens, Jiang said.

Although Jiang did not use troops in Shanghai in 1989, three protest leaders from Shanghai were executed afterward. More recently, the government has sentenced 1989 student leader Wang Dan to an additional 11 years in jail and cracked down hard on Tibetans, Catholics and Muslims. Hong Kong Democratic Party members who carried the last elections have been swept aside with little fanfare by the Beijing-backed administration preparing to take over the territory on July 1.

Many doubt, however, that Jiang acts from conviction. They call him a political weather vane. In 1991 he began to lean toward party leftists, but in 1992 he veered back toward reformers as Deng's displeasure mounted. Recently Jiang has courted different wings of the party.

In strengthening his network in Beijing, Jiang has elevated allies from Shanghai to key jobs including the commander of the People's Armed Police, which would deal with any domestic disturbances. Another Jiang ally, Shanghai Mayor Huang Ju, has been made a full member of the Politburo. Two Jiang allies were elevated to deputy premier. Jiang has also tried to cultivate ties with the People's Liberation Army, making sure soldiers' pay increases keep up with inflation and letting the military shop for new hardware. He also moved some top commanders to different posts.

But as Jiang himself said in a 1993 interview with U.S. News & World Report, China has an ancient saying: "In the sea of officials, people are always sinking and floating to the surface."

CHINA'S LEADERSHIP AFTER DENG

Jiang Zemin, 70

Born in Jiangsu Province.

Positions: President, chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, chairman of the Central Military Commission

The son of intellectuals, Jiang went to an American missionary school where he learned to speak English. He joined the party in 1946. He trained as an electrical engineer in the late '40s, and served as section chief in several Shanghai light industrial factories after the Chinese Communist victory in 1949. He worked in the Stalin Automobile Plant in Moscow in 1955-56 before returning to various posts in state-owned enterprises in Shanghai and Wuhan. It is unclear what happened to him during the Cultural Revolution. In 1982, he was appointed a member of the party's Central Committee. In 1985, he was appointed mayor of Shanghai and the following year was named Shanghai party chief and a member of the Politburo.

Jiang was catapulted into the leadership after the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators at Tiananmen Square and the subsequent ouster of the party chief, Zhao Ziyang.

In response to a question at a 1994 news conference, Jiang said: "How can you say that democracy is a dirty word in China? To copy models of the West is not democracy... There should not be one model of democracy."

Li Peng, 68

Born in Sichuan.

Positions: Premier, member of the standing committee of the Politburo

Li's father was killed fighting the Nationalists in 1931. Li was adopted by longtime premier Zhou Enlai and sent to study in Chongqing. He joined the party in 1945. He studied hydroelectric engineering at the Moscow Power Institute for six years and was chairman of the Chinese student association in the Soviet Union.

From 1955 through 1966, Li worked at state power companies in northeast China. During the Cultural Revolution starting in 1966, he was deputy director, then director of the Beijing Electric Power Administration.

Named to the party's Central Committee in 1982, he became a deputy premier the following year. In 1985, he was elected a member of the Politburo and the party's Secretariat. He became China's fourth premier in 1988. But in 1990, he lost control of economic policy to Zhu Rongji.

Li is a major symbol of the bloody crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators at Tiananmen Square. Two weeks before the shooting of hundreds of protesters, Li had signed the martial law order on behalf of the State Council.

But he has defied predictions that his career would end and remains premier. He suffered a heart ailment, but appears to have recovered after a period of treatment.

Zhu Rongji, 68

Born in Changsha.

Positions: Deputy premier, governor of the People's Bank of China

Zhu joined the Communist Party in 1949. He graduated from the electric motor engineering department of the prestigious Qinghua University in Beijing and went directly into the economic planning bureaucracy.

A career economic planner, Zhu was labeled a rightist in 1957. Reports vary about his fate during the Cultural Revolution, but most believe he spent some time laboring in the countryside, though his official biography makes no mention of it.

Rehabilitated in 1979 after Deng came to power, Zhu rose rapidly through the Shanghai party leadership during the 1980s. He succeeded Jiang as mayor in 1988 and won plaudits from local residents for tackling issues such as traffic and living conditions while also pleasing foreign investors. During the Tiananmen demonstrations, he helped avoid bloodshed in Shanghai by making a public plea for protesters to go home.

Zhu succeeded Jiang as Shanghai party secretary in 1989, and then was elevated to deputy premier in 1991. When Li Peng became ill, Zhu took over the economic portfolio from Li, supposedly on a temporary basis, but he remains the country's economic czar.

Though widely praised by foreign investors and economists, Zhu has earned many enemies in China with his tough economic programs and unusually blunt manner of speaking.

Qiao Shi, 72

Born in Zhejiang Province.

Positions: Chairman of the National People's Congress, member of the Politburo's Standing Committee.

Qiao Shi is distinguished from other leaders by his extensive work in party security and intelligence, probably dating to the war against the Nationalists. From 1963 to 1983, Qiao served in the International Liaison Department of the Central Committee, the party's intelligence unit, eventually becoming its head.

He currently is head of the secrets protection committee. He was elected to the Politburo and the party Secretariat in 1985 and appointed deputy premier in 1986.

Qiao has been a strong supporter of Deng's reform policies, but is widely believed by Chinese analysts to have abstained from the leadership vote on whether to use force against pro-democracy demonstrators in 1989. He is thought to have been a leading candidate for the party's top job when Jiang received it.

His subsequent move to the National People's Congress put him in the public eye after years of secret intelligence work. He has stressed the need to establish a rule of law and has tried to strengthen the authority of the People's Congress.

He has a British-educated son and a U.S.-educated daughter.