Ignored Facts about Eric X. Li's Meritocracy in China

The notion that China's leadership upward mobility follows something called meritocracy is a total myth if you examine what's REALLY involved in the process. This argument, which began to appear years ago on the world stage,  has suddenly been embraced by the Chinese government as an argument for its legitimacy in the world.  Eric X. Li is a spokesperson who perpetuates this idea that most people in China probably haven't even heard about. (The original propaganda that most Chinese have been familiar with, Eric Li included, since the founding of the PRC was that the Communist Party was legitimate because HISTORY has proved that it was the only party that was able to lead the masses out of misery and into happiness.)

As it's often said, the devil is in the detail.

Let's look at some widely known facts about how lower-level carders, as it is called in China, started their career moving upward. Eric Li said it is merits that move them up, through a Party apparatus called Organization Office (组织部).

First of all, an Organization Office is staffed with people hand-picked by higher officials. The reason for that is that the officials know this is the way for people of their choice to be moved upward. It is not like that the Organization Office independently looks into a candidate recommended through some kind of democratic process and moves him up. The Office is mostly a clearinghouse where paperwork is created and at the same time serves as a mechanism to tell the public that a carder to be promoted has gone through a legitimate procedure. No one knows what procedure has been followed and how the person became a candidate in the first place.

It is no wonder that, if you look at the recent leadership transition closely, you would find that the first order of business for President Xi Jinping was to select someone to be the head of the Central Organization Office. The person he selected is his trusted friend he has worked for a decade, starting when Xi was a provincial leader. The lower-level leadership on the provincial level, county level, and even township level all follow this model.

This is also where corruption raises its ugly head. A higher official has a pool of trusted people to choose for promotion. And the people in the pool know how to get ahead of the pack. If they don't, they learn how to sharpen the skills to curry favor. There are books in various forms. The most recent one is in the literary form titled Civil Servant's Notebook (公务员手记), widely popular for a while in China and written by a secretary of a disgraced mayor in a northeastern province. Many pay bribes to the officials who'll decide their fate. This widely-known phenomenon is called "buy and sell office" (买官卖官). The recently disgraced politburo member and Chongqing Party secretary, Bo Xilai, was found to sell positions for millions of dollars. Imagine what could happen for thousands of lower-level positions.

Second, Eric X. Li said that it took Xi decades to move up the the highest leadership position. It is a widely known fact that the reason he was moved from place to place to beef up his resume was because his father was one of the founding members of the PRC. He was not an outstanding official by merits by any account. In fact, in one of the counties where he was a deputy secretary, his performance was not even recognized by the provincial leadership. He was transferred to another province and promoted, nonetheless, because of the position of his father. For another person without Xi's connections under that situation, he would probably have been stuck in that county position for many years to come.

There are hardly any hard standards/criteria to promote someone, except that he has connections. It will take someone longer to move up without any connections, if not impossible. Higher officials have vested interests to promote their own guys because they are people who would protect them from prosecutions later on after they retire from their positions. This is true for the highest level of leadership as much as for lower-level ones. It's no wonder that, a decade after President Jiang Zeming retired, he still had a hand in choosing the current leadership. No one in China honestly believes that he was doing it for the good of China. He was doing it to protect his own interests and the interests of his people. (There was an article in a recent New York Times about the same mentality behind Putin efforts to become the president for the second time in Russia.)

It is a wide phenomenon that the leaderships, from the central government to lower levels, choose their own family and relatives to fill in important positions, setting them up to even higher positions later on. Most recent prominent ones:

• The son of Li Peng, the former prime minister under Jiang Zeming, was promoted to Governorship of Shanxi Province last year, after years of being an executive of a large state-owned company. The junior didn't move to the governorship through the system that Eric Li claimed.
• The son of Jiang Zeming was promoted to be the head of Chinese Academy of Sciences when Senior Jiang still was in power. This position was usually held by famous scientist and the young Jiang was nowhere near that level of academic achievement. The junior stepped down later because of serious health problems.
• The son of Liu Shaoqi, a one-time president of China and protege of Deng Xiaoping, was promoted to an equivalent of four-star general years ago and was later obscured because of the fall of Bo Xilai.
• Bo Xilai, a son of another founder of the PRC, underwent similar process as Xi Jinping all the way to Politburo before the sudden fall a year ago. He had been widely speculated to become a member of the 7-member Politburo Standing Committee. He has been believed to be a victim of the power grab during the leadership transition between President Jiang Zeming and President Hu Jintao. 

There are many, many more!!! Ask any Chinese, and they'll tell you one or two.

When we examine the so-called meritocracy system in detail, it is hard to convince people that the officials who moved up this way are competent. I'm not saying they all incompetent, but instances abound that point to incompetency at all levels of government. Years ago people say that academia is the only place that is still unaffected by corruptions. It's NOT true anymore.

There is a widely spread saying in China that mocks its process of selecting leaders. The reason it is widely spread is because it has a lot of truth in it.

         If I say you are good, then you're good, even if you're not good.

         If I say you are not good, then you're not good, even if you're good.

(It rhymes in Chinese: 说你行你就行，不行也行；说你不行你就不行，行也不行。）

It is often a barometer in Chinese politics to look at who in a lesser position in the central government is removed for one reason or another. The removal would be a clear indication that his patron(s) could be out of favor and could even be removed in disgrace soon. Many examples can be found before, during, and after leadership transitions.

I personally have done a lot of of thinking about similar arguments. I consider myself well read in current Chinese issues, and I visit China every two years and still have many friends at lower- and middle- levels of government. From what I see in China and read in the Chinese media, official and blocked, the truth is far different from the one presented by Eric X. Li. I think this is partly because Eric Li has a different audience. And I doubt his presentation would even be published at home because few in China will resonate with him.

Imagine someone in Eric Li's status could make a speech in China in front of a Chinese audience, or publish an article on People's Daily as he did on New York Times, and argue that the Western democracy is superior to China's meritocracy. Why wouldn't the Chinese government allow this kind of healthy exchange of ideas? What is the government afraid of? Superior is superior, no matter what.