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US-China relations
OpinionComment

Can China’s ideology tsar, Wang Huning, be the steadying hand in Sino-US relations?

Tom Plate says the newly promoted chief party theoretician is known to be a middle-of-the-road critic of US policy and society, and could exert a positive influence to keep bilateral relations on an even keel

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Wang Huning has the talent to weave together different policy textures into one fine fabric of collective thought. Illustration: Craig Stephens
Tom Plate
Of the three political parties today that pack serious global pop – the Communist Party in China, and the Democratic and Republican parties in America – China’s comes across right now as the least disorganised and ineffective.
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Even so, is it possible President Xi Jinping is now less like an all-powerful Mao Zedong and more like a coalition-canny Abraham Lincoln, whose cabinet famously included quarrelling voices? Some 19th party congress evaluators size up the new Politburo Standing Committee as just that – more like a Lincoln cabinet mash-up than a slate of pure “Xi-sters”. They also note that Xi’s corruption-busting ally Wang Qishan retired. The hypothesis is that the Communist Party is one big happy family when the whole world is watching, but a big squabbling one when out of view, behind closed doors.
So how does surging, ambitious China and surging, ambitious Xi keep the chorus of communist comity singing the same happy tune? One key is Wang Huning, the top-gun librettist on the new Standing Committee. Now something like the chief party theoretician, as well as the go-to speech-writer, Wang has the talent to weave together different policy textures into one fine fabric of collective thought. The youngest law professor to be granted tenure at Fudan University in Shanghai, polishing his French in college (and his English at visiting-fellow stops, including the University of California, Berkeley), Wang is not only a books-and-publication workaholic but also a gifted and usefully flexible theorist.
New Politburo Standing Committee member Wang Huning walks behind President Xi Jinping as they and other new committee members meet the press at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, on October 25. Photo: Reuters
New Politburo Standing Committee member Wang Huning walks behind President Xi Jinping as they and other new committee members meet the press at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, on October 25. Photo: Reuters

Is Wang anti-American? Yes and no. The titles of his books range from America against America and Analysis of Modern Western Politics, to Debate Contest in Lion City (Singapore he likes). He rates the American system less warmly now than in the past. A review of his utterances yields a Communist Confucian of both conviction and flexibility: “The political system must fit into and be accepted by a country’s history, culture and society ... It cannot be too above the ground.” On political reform in China, he notes that it should “stay within the capability of the acceptance in society”. “At this time, centralised decision-making power and modernisation is more ‘politically efficient’ ... This model has achieved stunning economic results,” he writes.

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The party elite’s view of the US has never been simplistic, nor has it been effusively complimentary. On this scale, compared to other party intellectuals – especially Liu Mingfu – Wang is a middle-of-the-road critic of US foreign policy and society, perhaps midway between the hawkish Liu and the cosmopolitan Zheng Bijian, whose take on America was comparatively empathetic. For all this, the overall judgment is that the American political system is little more than a fascist structure.

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