Losing heavenly mandate?

Comments on Isabelle Oderberg “Losing the heavenly mandate”, 13/07/2009, http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/Losing-the-heavenly-mandate-pd20090713-TVREM?OpenDocument&src=sph

I am truly amazed by Isabelle Oderberg’s knowledge of the Chinese superstitions about extraordinary natural events. They not only have been written in many history books or quasi history books, but also been said about the year of 1976 when Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and Zhu De died.

In that year, there was a big earthquake in Central/Northern China. There were some reports that there were also large meteors falling from the sky and divided into three parts with one of them very big, in probably northeast China. Some books even say that Mao himself felt helpless, resigned and probably with the implication that he realised he was going to die soon when he heard the news.

But I must say that I am not sure the recent natural signs are anything of similar indications of changes. The Chinese leaderships seem to be as strong as ever, both physically, mentally and politically. So is its political system, it seems.

We all hope that China can introduce political reforms and allow more freedom for its people and the press. But it appears that the Chinese leadership group takes the view that stability and economic development should and must outweigh all other things. The collapse of the former USSR has struck deep and hard in the minds of many Chinese, not just their political leaderships. No one wishes or wants to become China’s Gorbachev. So no one will know when real and more widespread political reforms will occur in China.

But it should be acknowledged that many Chinese are content with the way China has been going, although there are also many unrests happening. It is a big country and the legal system and people’s concept or interpretation of the legal system is different from here in Australia.

Further, it has to be recognised that there has been remarkable progress in the political system since the pass of the Mao era in China. Now at least no leader is expecting to be on the top job for more than two terms that is 10 years. This differs greatly to the case of the Mao era, the case in the former USSR, in many former Eastern communist countries, the case in North Korea now.

When a person’s leadership is limited clearly by time, his or her behaviour differs greatly from a person who expects his leadership to last for a life time. China has successfully made leadership successions. If China continues this path for another decade or two, things will continue to improve. That is very important.

Slowly but surely, China will come to a stage when its leaderships feel it is safe to introduce more bold political reforms. That will take time, but it will happen, sooner or later. But whether it happens under external pressure or coming from internal initiatives is hard to tell. I would bet it would be the latter.

China, as a country, is unlikely to like being pushed. Just think about how our former prime ministers, Mr John Howard and Bob Hawke, how reluctant they were in relinquishing their prime ministerships, one will not find it too difficult to understand the difficult and long process of political changes in China. Mr Howard fought to the end until he was lost his own seat, and Mr Hawke lost and was pushed aside after two challenges (and the second one successful) from Mr Keating. The matter of fact is that they were in Australia, don’t forget.

China will become a more democratic and free country one day. But it is more likely to occur in its own terms.