From The Life and Death of Democracy (John Keane, 2009) 832-6
Here was the recipe of Chinese success: a pinch of Marxism; a few shakes of old-fashioned, nineteenth-century European belief in evolutionary progress and science; and a generous cup of the Bolshevik principle of the vanguard party (this was what was meant by ‘democratic centralism’). Stir this all together, add the milk and honey provided by the market, and finally leaven the resulting mixture with the yeast of Chinese civilisation. The result, when baked in time, was what the Chinese authorities liked to call the Harmonious Society. It was the opposite of chaos and disorder, the much-feared negatives that had often appeared in the traditional folk tales and literature of the region, and that had threatened to return during the 1989 Tiananmen events, and in the latter-day stubborn resistance and outright opposition to the Party’s benign rule over the people, for the sake of the people. The Harmonious Society was the destiny of China.
Here our muse drew us back to the messy business of China’s role as a dominant power. For, according to the Chinese authorities, ‘the Chinese people’ were doing all that they could to realise the same principle on a global scale. Experience had shown that it had meant only good things at home, as programme after programme of China Central Television (CCTV) proudly explained to the world. But the vision of a Harmonious Society was bound as well to bring good things to the rest of humanity: gifts like social stability, sustainable economic development, good government and continuous improvement in the level of people’s mastery of their lives. China was a force for ‘win-win cooperation’, President Hu Jintao liked to say. The world was ‘one big family’ and (he told business leaders from the Asia-Pacific region) there was no alternative but to ‘work together’. Harmony was ‘a defining value of the Chinese civilisation’, and that was why China’s growing role in global affairs was wholly positive. China’s widest destiny was to build ‘a harmonious world of enduring peace and common prosperity’. In the Asia-Pacific and African regions, so ran the reasoning, China stood for peaceful development through its own peaceful development. According to President Hu, ‘facts have proved that China’s development will not stand in the way of anyone, nor will it pose any threat to anyone’.
It was all a pipedream, commented our muse, with time on her side. For the reality was that Harmony was prepared to stand against monitory democracy whenever it stood in the way of Chinese indifference towards ‘good governance’, A testing ground for future explosions proved to be Africa, where China simply snubbed the efforts of leading G8 countries to tie aid and investment to ‘zero tolerance for corruption’ and to ‘democracy’, Chinese governments proved that they were simply uninterested in such matters as human rights, the rule of law and media freedom. They insisted that growth would solve most problems, and that no single problem, whether pauperisation or poor administration, could be solved without such growth. How states governed their subjects was consequently the business of their own leaders — just as in China. The principal thing was to keep trade and investment flowing through ‘a new type of strategic partnership’ that fostered ‘political equality and mutual trust, economic win-win cooperation and cultural exchanges’ (these were words used by President Hu Jintao at the biggest ever China-Africa diplomatic event, hosted by Beijing in November 2006, reported our guide), Yet what would happen if one or more partners raised objections against China’s dismal political record at home? Would the Chinese authorities bite their lips, remain calm and otherwise do nothing? What exactly did the rules of Harmony and ‘socialist people’s democracy’ counsel?
Our muse was certain that in a world marked by chronic disharmony, a passive dominant power was an oxymoron. To illustrate this conviction, she told the gripping story of China’s remarkable trespassing on an important election in Zambia, a country in which China had substantial investments in the copper industry, but also in textiles, retailing and road construction. During the course of its 2006 election (Figure 131), Zambia’s wildest and most entertaining in memory, the main opposition candidate, Michael Sata, publicly walloped the Chinese government’s maltreatment of its own workers and denounced Chinese investment in Zambia as profiteering. ‘Foreign relations must benefit all concerned. It must not be oneway traffic’, the chain-smoking, gravel-voiced candidate said during an interview on privately owned Radio Phoenix. ‘Chinese investment has not added any value to the lives of the people of Zambia.’ Sata criticised Chinese investors: ‘They ill-treat our people and that is unacceptable. We are not going to condone exploitative investors. This country belongs to Zambians.’
Sata singled out the giant NFC African Mining plant, located in Chambishi in the northern part of the country, where at the beginning of each shift, spent a thousand metres under ground, poorly paid and underprotected copper miners trudged beneath a Mandarin-language big banner that read, ‘Work Hard to Make the Company Prosperous’. Sata went on to hammer Chinese-run businesses. He accused them of neglecting the safety of Zambian workers. He reminded his audiences that, earlier in the year, workers had been shot at a Chinese-run mine after protesting against miserable working conditions. He threatened to run ‘bogus’ Chinese investors out of the country. He also dared to criticise China’s so-called one-China policy and lampooned talk of ‘China’s peaceful reunification’. It was a policy that required direct interference with the young democracy of Taiwan, he noted.
The words of Sata had bite and considerable popular appeal, our guide reported; many pundits and several opinion polls predicted that he would be the next Zambian president. Nobody thought of him as a political angel, she noted. Nicknamed ‘King Cobra’ – a man judged by supporters and opponents as either ready to strike or evasive and dangerous — the charismatic Sata had risen through the ranks of Zambian politics, combining ministerial experience with a reputation for treading on toes and getting things done. Many agreed that the co-founder of the Movement for Multiparty Democracy was indeed a man of action, but some said he was a thuggish xenophobe, a politician (as one journalist put it) who was ‘not good for democracy’ because he could ‘whip and bully a drunken and demoralised Zambia into action’. That was probably true. Yet his anti-China rhetoric seemed to strike a chord in a country where three-quarters lived in poverty (they earned less than a dollar a day) and at least half the working population was unemployed. The Federation of Free Trade Unions (FFTUZ) in Zambia announced it was throwing its weight behind Sata. Into the final days of the campaign, the topic of Chinese investment dominated newspaper headlines, radio shows and political discussions; the very mention of Sata drew loud cheers from many lower-paid Zambians, including taxi drivers, shop workers and security guards. Support for him was especially strong in the coppermining industry, and reports of his animated ‘jump on the boat’ speeches sparked debate even within the ranks of his more middleclass detractors.
The rumpus grew so serious that the Chinese ambassador, His Excellency Li Baodong, felt compelled to set aside diplomatic niceties, to intervene in the debate, in effect by denouncing the candidate as a ‘bad element’. Speaking a different language from that of Harmony, he said in no uncertain terms that China might have to sever diplomatic ties with Zambia if Mr Sata became president and acted on his campaign promise to recognise Taiwan. His Excellency also raised the spectre of a halt to Chinese investment in the country. And that was that. A few days later, the new bipolarity in world politics had made its mark: following a high turnout of voters, but with life in the capital city of Lusaka now halted by rioting, the Zambian Electoral Commission formally announced that Michael Sata had lost the election to the ruling incumbent, President Levy Patrick Mwanawasa, the bosom buddy of Beijing.
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