From Third World to First The Singapore Story pdfdrive com

wen ge
– their shorthand for 
wen hua da ge ming
, the great Cultural
Revolution. The leaders and officials we met were more open and at ease,
willing to discuss their past mistakes and future problems. There were fewer of
the slogans that used to be plastered all over Beijing and other cities, and of the
giant square placards in rice and wheat fields. The few modest slogans now
exhorted people to work hard for the Four Modernisations. They were becoming
more natural, more like other societies.
China’s leaders were conscious of having lost a generation because of the
Cultural Revolution. They had turned away from Mao’s belief in perpetual
revolution. They wanted stable relations with other countries to get economic
cooperation and help China recover. I thought it unlikely that there would be a
modern China for another generation.
Every province of China is different in geography, economy, education and
standard of efficiency. The preoccupations of their governors are different. I did
not realise how dry, dusty and barren north China was until I visited Dunhuang,
the beginning of the Silk Road, to see the famous Buddhist grottoes which had
been abandoned for many centuries. When the governor of Gansu province sent
me on a camel ride to the “Singing Sands” not far from Dunhuang, I realised that
we were on the edge of the Gobi and Taklamakan deserts. Their Bactrian camels
were splendid double-humped shaggy creatures more elegant than the single-
humped dromedary of the Arabian peninsula. The scenery with its high sand
dunes was beautiful if bleak; but life was and still is hard.

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These tours showed us why provincial loyalties were strong in such a vast
and densely populated country. Their accents, diets and social habits vary. The
elite could not know each other as well as their counterparts did in Europe, Japan
and the United States. America may be a continent, but the population is not as
large, and excellent communications allowed their elite to meet and interact
regularly. China is too populous, and until the 1980s when they built up their
airports and imported Western aircraft, communications were so poor that they
lived in separate worlds. Hence every leader who rose to the top in Beijing
brought with him as many of his provincial colleagues as was decent without
arousing resentment from those excluded. Fellow provincials understood and
could best read their leader’s mind.
There is strong inter-provincial rivalry. Every governor will rattle off the
basic statistics of his province – land area, population, cultivable land, rainfall,
annual production of agriculture, industry services, and its ranking among the 30
provinces for each individual item, including total GDP. There is equally keen
inter-city rivalry; each city mayor will recite its vital statistics and ranking
among cities. The ranking is settled by the central government to encourage
competition, which appears over-keen as leaders try to improve their position by
all means, even resorting to trade wars. A fast-growing province like Guangdong
needed to import food for the influx of “floating” workers from other provinces;
its neighbour would refuse to sell it grain. A province with a successful
motorcycle manufacturing plant could not export its products to adjoining
provinces that wanted to protect their own motorcycle plants.
I had assumed that the communist system made for complete unified central
control. This never was so in China. From the earliest dynasties, provincial
authorities have enjoyed considerable independence in interpreting imperial
edicts, and the further away from the centre a province was, the greater its
independence. Five words, 
shan gao, huang di yuan
(mountains are high, the
emperor is far away), express the cynicism and scepticism of generations of the
disaffected who have been shortchanged by the local authorities. We were to
have firsthand experience of this when we embarked on an ambitious project in
the city of Suzhou in the 1990s.
I gained some insights into how their government works: cumbersome and
multi-layered, with four layers of authority – central, provincial, city or county,
and district. In theory, written directives from the centre apply equally across a
whole continent. In practice, their battles over turf are fierce and tenacious, each
ministry jealously guarding its rights and trying to extend its powers. Intra-

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ministry contests and gridlocks are frequent. There is no distinction between a
civil servant and a political appointee. The Chinese Communist Party is supreme
and anybody of any consequence must have a position in the party. To rise as an
official or do well in private business, party membership is invaluable.
The quality of the men in charge of China is impressive. With training and
exposure to free-market economies they could equal top executives in America,
Western Europe and Japan. They have capacious minds, analytical and quick on
the uptake. Even in casual conversation the subtlety of their presentation shows a
sharpness of intellect that can be fully appreciated only if one understands the
Chinese language.
I had expected this of the leaders in Beijing, but was surprised to discover
the high calibre of their provincial officials, party secretaries, governors, mayors
and senior officials. The thick layer of talent spread over the continent is
impressive. Those who get to the very top are not necessarily a class apart from
those who just missed it. In a populous country like China, the luck of the draw
plays a considerable part in getting to the top even though they have a careful
and thorough process of selection, with the emphasis on ability and character, no
longer on ideological purity or revolutionary fervour as during the disastrous
years of the Cultural Revolution.
One former cadre gave me an insight into how the personnel section of the
Communist Party of China selects their top talent. Everyone has a file or dossier,
which starts with his primary school report, containing not only his academic
performance but his teachers’ assessments of his character, behaviour, values
and attitudes. At every stage of his career, there are records of judgements of his
peers and superiors. At every level for promotion, all suitable candidates are
assessed before appointment. At the top echelons of the pyramid is a core of
between 5,000 and 10,000 who have been chosen and carefully graded by the
organisation department of the Communist Party, not the government. To ensure
that gradings are correct, inspection teams from the centre visit provinces and
cities to assess the assessors and interview a cadre before he is promoted. In case
of disagreement, the matter would be reviewed in Beijing. The selection process
is thorough, searching and comprehensive. Finally, at the very top, promotion is
done by the leader himself who has to judge not only the merit but also the
loyalty of the candidate. It was Deng Xiaoping who chose Zhao Ziyang to be
general secretary of the Communist Party and nominally number one in China. It
was Deng who reversed his decision after Tiananmen in 1989.

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