Jiang Zemin

Allen Bullock HST 407 7/24/2003

Jiang Zemin, as the President of China, will be leading the world's most populous country into the 21st century. A new biography of Mr. Jiang describes him as an economic reformer but not a political reformer and as someone often mistakenly believed to have blundered his way to power. Bruce Gilley is the author of the first western full-length study of the Chinese leader.

Historians, political scientists, and journalists hungry for reliable information about Chinese politics have to rely on official publications, and on the semiofficial and nonofficial accounts that bubble up in Hong Kong. These are the same methods of tracking and analyzing China's political movements that outsiders have used for decades. It is in this Byzantine context that Bruce Gilley has written Tiger on the Brink, a biography of Jiang Zemin and a highly readable account of modern Chinese politics. Unfortunately, Gilley is sharply limited by the same lack of access as every other student of Zhongnanhai. A correspondent for The Far Eastern Economic Review who covered China out of Hong Kong, Gilley has done an admirable job of scouring Chinese-language publications for tidbits about Jiang's personal background. But hamstrung by lack of information, this story of Jiang's decade at the top of China's Communist Party only partly satisfies.

Tiger on the Brink is essentially a first-rate job. However, Gilley had to rely overwhelmingly on secondary sources; as he relates in the preface, the closest he ever got to his subject was when he ran into the portly president in the men's room at the Great Hall of the People. And Jiang left the restroom before a surprised Gilley could think of a question to ask.

The big cat in the book's title apparently refers to China, not Jiang, for it is unlikely that anyone would ever mistake the genial and cautious leader portrayed by Gilley for such a ferocious creature. Gilley reinforces the assessment of Jiang as a politically slippery but tenacious survivor, less tiger than "Mr. Tiger Balm," a moniker he once gave himself, which Gilley uses to head a chapter. Jiang Zemin emerges from this book as a skilled political tactician, who distinguished himself over nearly 50 years of Communist Party politics not as an intellectual or a fighter but by his ability to get along with superiors and inferiors alike, and by making use of an unsurpassed knack for currying favor with influential men.

It is tempting to assume that the world's most populous country will produce a leader with a character of similar magnitude. Yet Jiang tends to make a mild impression on those he meets. Observers hoping to find him a liberal have been disappointed; yet so have been those who expected a reactionary or an ogre. If Jiang has any strong political views or vision, they remain well hidden.

While Mao has been enshrined as the helmsman of the revolution, Deng is known as the architect of reform. Jiang, it is thought, would like to be remembered as the grand engineer, the man who kept the machine called China running. That may seem a modest goal compared with those of his predecessors. But Jiang is a modest man, with much, as Churchill might have said, to be modest about.

Jiang's leadership style -- indecisive, replete with contradictions and mostly concerned about muddling through -- reflects an uncertain time for Chinese Communists. While the nation executes a stunning shift from a planned to a market economy, Jiang and his colleagues continue to mouth meaningless shibboleths about the ongoing, dominant role of the socialist state. As corruption grows worse, Jiang announces one toothless, anti-graft crackdown after another.

Jiang likes to present himself as a highly educated idealist in touch with the common man. Gilley shows him instead as an accomplished, calculating performer who has mastered the political routines of Communist Party politics. Mao and Deng each possessed a charisma that grew out of deeply held political convictions, Jiang, as Gilley describes him, does not stand for anything. It is hard to imagine a man or woman on the streets of Beijing able to think of a single principle that Jiang represents -- apart from holding on to power. According to Gilley, Jiang once implied that he is "not a dictator" to a surprised group of American academics. Describing the checks placed on his personal power by the consensus-oriented philosophy of China's leadership, Jiang modestly insisted that his authority was limited. As Gilley aptly observes, Jiang's true audience for this speech was probably members of the Politburo, whom he hoped to placate with assurances that they were equals. While consensus may sound like an enlightened leadership style to outsiders, in China it comes only after endless back-biting, meddling, and negotiating between top leaders and their staffs. Unfortunately, Gilley can only hint at such antics; the details remain beyond his reach, lost behind the omerta of Communist Party politics.

While the particulars may be obscure, the effect of Chinese "consensus" is evident at many meetings held with foreigners, in which officials seem unable to speak freely and are restricted to repeating Communist Party lines. All of which have presumably been worked out in advance. Gilley illustrates the point with a humorous anecdote: Jiang's first meeting with President Clinton in 1993 was so badly hemmed in by the official script that it reduced the meeting to farce. After shaking hands, Jiang took out a prepared statement criticizing the United States for butting into China's internal affairs over human rights and read it aloud, word for word. After 20 interminable minutes, an exasperated Clinton interrupted to suggest that he and Jiang should talk to each other, not lecture. Jiang looked up, but did not stop reading. After another 10 minutes, Clinton joked aloud to one of his aides that he "should have brought my saxophone along to get some practice in." Jiang's interpreter misinterpreted: "Mr. Clinton says he would like to play his saxophone for you." "Jiang's eyes lit up with glee," Gilley writes. "Really?" he asked, finally putting down his speech. "That's great. I play the erhu. I should invite you to my home in Beijing and you could play your saxophone while I play my erhu!" One might be tempted to put the exchange down to linguistic or cultural misunderstanding. But the episode reveals how, even after four years at the helm, Jiang still did not feel he had the authority to speak for himself.

Though well liked and competent, as a bureaucrat Jiang exhibited little that hinted at his bright future.