Zhu Rongji’s death triggers China’s ‘superpolitics’

Zhu Rongji passed away on 12 August, just five days before the 100th anniversary of Jiang Zemin’s birth. Less than two months later, the Chinese Communist Party will convene the fifth plenum of the 20th Central Committee.

With all three events compressed into such a short period, Chinese politics from now through October is suddenly entering a highly unusual phase.

Borrowing a term sometimes used in American and Western political discourse to describe periods when major political events pile up and reinforce one another, I would call it China’s period of “superpolitics”.

By “superpolitics” I do not mean that some extraordinary power struggle is under way in Zhongnanhai, much less that retired elders are preparing to challenge Xi Jinping. Quite the opposite. Taken separately, the centenary of Jiang’s birth, the death of Zhu and the fifth plenum each follow their own institutional logic. None is particularly abnormal in itself.

Standard protocol

As the officially designated “core” of the CCP’s third-generation central leadership, Jiang would in any case receive a high-profile commemoration on the centenary of his birth. That is part of the party’s political tradition.

The arrangements surrounding Zhu’s death should likewise be understood first in terms of established political protocol. Zhu was a former premier and former member of the Politburo Standing Committee (PSC). The official evaluation of him and the level of his funeral arrangements largely follow precedents set for leaders of his rank. There is no need to interpret this treatment as Xi suddenly elevating Zhu, still less as evidence of some “reformist comeback”.

Even the timing of Zhu’s death, while sudden to the outside world, was probably not entirely unexpected inside Zhongnanhai.

Zhu was 97. The health of a retired leader of his rank would be closely monitored by the central leadership. If his condition had become serious, the CCP General Office and other relevant agencies could hardly have waited until his final moments before beginning preparations. His obituary, funeral arrangements, propaganda coverage, security and the schedules of serving and retired leaders would all have required contingency planning. Exactly when such plans were activated would of course have depended on Zhu’s condition.

What could not be planned for was not Zhu’s death itself, but what might happen if he died precisely on the eve of the centenary of Jiang’s birth.

Calling to mind the 1990s and early 2000s

Once Jiang and Zhu reenter public view at the same moment, two originally separate political events automatically merge into a third: the Jiang-Zhu era itself returns to China’s political memory.

That is something Xi has reason to care about.

Jiang alone can be incorporated neatly into the CCP’s official historical narrative: the third generation of central leadership, the “Three Represents” party building, reform and opening, followed by a seamless progression from Deng Xiaoping to Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao to Xi Jinping, culminating in Xi’s “new era”.

Zhu alone can likewise be placed within the standard funeral narrative for a former premier. His official obituary has already detailed his contributions to macroeconomic management, fiscal and financial reform, state-owned enterprise reform, housing reform, government restructuring, and expanded opening to the outside world.

But once Jiang and Zhu are put together, the picture changes.

What Chinese people will remember is not simply Jiang and Zhu as two individuals. They will remember the China of the 1990s and the early years of this century.

That was a China of rapidly advancing market reform, large-scale inflows of foreign investment, entry into the World Trade Organization, and fast-growing private enterprise. It was also a China whose government largely believed that most problems could ultimately be solved through further reform and development.

That era should not be romanticised. State sector restructuring threw tens of millions of workers out of their jobs. Inequality widened rapidly. Corruption proliferated. Social protection lagged badly behind. Economic reform raced ahead while political reform largely stopped. These were all part of the Jiang-Zhu legacy.

But political memory is not a history textbook.

When people look back, they rarely conduct a balanced accounting of every gain and loss. More often, they compare the most vivid features of the past with the things they are least satisfied with in the present.

That is where the political difficulty begins.

Zhongnanhai’s antennae up for economic nostalgia

People may miss Zhu. They may also miss Jiang. But once this turns into nostalgia for the “Jiang-Zhu era”, the meaning changes.

Saying, “China was moving forward then”, may sound like little more than nostalgia. Saying, “Entrepreneurs dared to invest then,” can be treated as an economic judgment. Saying, “China was genuinely opening itself to the world then,” is hardly an anti-government statement.

But when all these sentiments appear together, they naturally generate an unspoken question: why is China different today?

What Xi really has reason to care about is not whether people openly commemorate Jiang and Zhu, but whether Jiang and Zhu become a mirror reflecting today’s China.

The same applies inside the party.

Many of today’s officials in their 60s, 70s and older formed their political instincts and governing experience during the Jiang-Zhu years. The model of local governance with which they are most familiar emphasised attracting investment, prioritising GDP growth, building development zones, expanding exports, improving the business environment, and encouraging corporate investment.

The political environment facing officials today is very different. Party leadership, security, risk prevention, inspections, debt, ideology and accountability increasingly come first in administrative decision making.

These officials are not going to form some new “reform faction” because Zhu has died, nor is there any coherent “Jiang faction” waiting to reassemble. But they may still make a different kind of comparison: was the old model of governance better at releasing economic dynamism?

That would not constitute an organisational challenge to Xi. But it could become an undercurrent in the evaluation of his governing line.

Questions about China’s party-governance politics today

The fifth plenum, scheduled for October, will consider “major issues concerning the sustained advancement of full and rigorous Party self-governance”. Official language has explicitly linked this agenda to consolidating the party’s governing position.

The result is a striking political structure.

In August, China is being taken back to the Jiang-Zhu era.

In October, it will be brought into Xi’s politics of comprehensive and rigorous party governance.

One is the reform politics of the past. The other is the party-governance politics of the present.

Less than two months separate them.

This is what I mean by a period of “superpolitics”.

Its defining feature is not that some earth-shattering political event must occur. Rather, the density of political interpretation suddenly rises.

In ordinary times, if a retired PSC member attends an event, he is simply attending an event. But now, if he appears both at Jiang’s centenary commemoration and at Zhu’s funeral, people will immediately begin analysing whether the “elder statesmen” are making a collective appearance.

If a retired leader fails to appear, the explanation may simply be poor health. But people will now speculate about whether his political treatment has changed.

Awkward timing

If a Politburo member or Central Committee member is investigated during this period, it will not be seen simply as another corruption case; observers will immediately connect it to the fifth plenum.

A routine personnel adjustment may be interpreted directly as preparation for the 21st Party Congress.

Even a sentence praising reform and opening, a commemorative article on Jiang or a television shot of Zhu could be assigned political meaning far beyond the words or images themselves.

That is another feature of “superpolitics”: the events themselves have not changed, but the multiplier applied to their political interpretation has.

For Xi, that is precisely where the greatest difficulty lies.

Jiang’s centenary cannot be downgraded, because downgrading it would itself become a political signal. Zhu’s funeral cannot be downgraded either, because it involves established political protocol for retired leaders. Nor can the fifth plenum alter its timetable simply because these two events have intervened.

In other words, all three political processes must proceed.

But at the same time, the top leadership will want to prevent outsiders from linking them together into an alternative narrative.

One thing especially worth watching is whether the authorities deliberately keep Jiang and Zhu separate in their official messaging.

If state media use one set of language to commemorate Jiang and another to mourn Zhu, while carefully avoiding broader formulations such as the “Jiang-Zhu era” or “Jiang-Zhu reform”, I would not be surprised.

Commemorated separately, Jiang is the core of the party’s third-generation leadership. Zhu is a distinguished leader of the party and the state.

Put them together, however, and they immediately become a political symbol with a very specific historical meaning.

That is why the most important thing to watch over the next two months is the narrative.

Of course, if one or two Politburo-level officials are investigated during this period, or if important central personnel changes take place, the characteristics of this “superpolitics” period will become even more pronounced.

How the part informs the present

At that point, the historical politics represented by Jiang and Zhu, the politics of retired leaders created by their collective public appearances, the party-governance politics surrounding the fifth plenum, the personnel politics generated by anti-corruption investigations, and the emerging preparations for the 21st Party Congress would all overlap at once.

But even without such an unexpected development, China’s period of “superpolitics” has already begun.

Zhu’s death will not alter Xi’s grip on power. The centenary of Jiang’s birth will not bring the Jiang-Zhu era back.

But from now until the fifth plenum, these two men will repeatedly remind both Chinese society and the party that China once operated under a very different model of political and economic governance.

The fifth plenum, meanwhile, will once again tell the party where Xi intends to take it.

Past and present are suddenly being compressed into the same two-month period.

That is what makes this round of Chinese “superpolitics” worth watching.

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