Hu Jintao: How much power does he have?
Maybe my question, "Is Hu Jintao really the most powerful person in the world?" was the wrong one to ask. Today, with reports that his military may have tested a new stealth fighter without his knowledge, the better question is, "How much power does Hu Jintao really have?"
It is a relevant question for the U.S. to ponder, especially with Hu visiting President Obama at the White House next week, and the answer is not so straightforward. The story of China's first test flight of its stealth fighter is a case in point: Many people have asked, incredulous at the media reports, Do you really believe China's military would do that without telling their commander-in-chief, on the day he's meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates? Here's The Wall Street Journal's account:
U.S. officials said President Hu appeared not to have heard of the test flight when Mr. Gates asked him about it in their meeting Tuesday, even after pictures and accounts of it had begun appearing online.
The moment had the potential for huge embarrassment for China's top leader — who in theory controls the military as chairman of the Central Military Commission — just as Chinese officials anxiously try to clear a smooth path for Mr. Hu's state visit to Washington next week.
If the military deliberately kept Mr. Hu in the dark, that would reinforce concerns that hawkish elements in the military are increasingly driving China's foreign policy — including ties with the U.S. — and that they are trying to enhance their power in China's domestic politics ahead of a leadership transition next year.
I admit my initial reaction was skepticism; maybe the American folks in the room misunderstood whatever they saw, or maybe the traveling U.S. press were bamboozled by their Pentagon handlers, or maybe there is an anodyne bureaucratic explanation for what happened. But logically, I do believe it is quite possible, maybe even likely, that Hu was not looped into what his military was doing yesterday. This is actually the scenario that makes the most sense. Would China's top leader bless a provocative military demonstration, which amounts to a thumbed nose at the visiting Pentagon chief, just a week before he visits Washington? That is much harder to believe.
So why the test flight of the J-20 now? Possibly because Gates' visit with top military brass in Beijing had all the romance, and all the prospects for success, of a parental fix-up. The U.S. has not satisfied any of the Chinese military's major demands in advance of improving high-level military relations, chief among which is that the U.S. stop selling arms to Taiwan. We can only guess, but Hu probably made this meeting happen against the better wishes of his top generals, who have shown no inclination to make nice with the U.S. (or neighbors in the region) at any point in the last year.
The timing of the test flight fits with that less accommodating attitude, and does not fit so neatly with what is surely Hu's strong desire for a successful state visit next week. And whether or not it was expressly intended to challenge or undermine Hu's authority, as The Washington Post surmised, we outsiders should recognize the limits of that authority. Hu is closer to a first among equals than a paramount leader, with powerful rivals who have sway over vast fiefdoms — of security, of propaganda, of finance.
As for the military? Hu is chairman of the Central Military Commission, yes, and he can make his generals meet with the American defense secretary before he visits the U.S. The military does officially serve the Communist Party, after all, and Hu is general secretary of the party (the real post from which he derives his principal power.) But he rose to power as a civilian, and does not have the kind of singular authority that the man who anointed him nearly 20 years ago, Deng Xiaoping, had when he ruled China as head of the military.
The U.S. surely took note yesterday, because the question of where power resides is relevant to how it is wielded. That doesn't mean that the PLA is off its leash and that there is a yawning divide between China's civilian and military leadership: It means that the military competes aggressively for policy supremacy, with the security, propaganda and economic policy factions, with large state-owned enterprises, and on and on. For better and worse, but probably better, no one man controls that dynamic. Not even the man we at Forbes called the most powerful in the world.
