City Politics in China Leave Observers Perplexed

China might have entered the World Trade Organization and promised more liberalization, but its political process remains opaque and downright puzzling.

Witness the fate of the men who presided over the most prominent Chinese cities outside the capital: Shanghai and Hong Kong.

Mayor Xu Kuangdi helped lift Shanghai’s profile from a faded colonial enclave to the new face of Chinese capitalism. Foreigners sing his praises for openness and efficiency. Locals rank him as one of the few incorruptible spirits on the political stage.

That apparently was not enough. After six years in office, the former academic was demoted last weekend to an obscure position as head of a Beijing engineering school. One of his deputies, Chen Liangyu, took over as acting mayor.

Hong Kong’s chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa, on the other hand, dragged the commercial hub through a second recession since he took office after the former British colony reverted to Chinese rule in 1997. Low polls dog his tenure, and few people have any confidence he can turn things around. Cartoons frequently lampoon him.

But Tung is hanging on, and last week said he will seek reelection. The former shipping tycoon will probably run unopposed.

Both examples, of course, are orchestrated from Beijing and remain difficult to sort out, as Chinese politics often are.

“Jokingly, maybe they should send [Xu] to Hong Kong, maybe that will be a good solution,” said David Zweig, a China expert at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

The case of the Shanghai mayor is particularly intriguing because his predecessors, President Jiang Zemin and Premier Zhu Rongji, went from running the city to running the country.

With the reshuffling of Beijing’s top leadership expected next year, putting Xu on the sidelines could suggest the end of an era for what has come to be known in the Chinese capital as the “Shanghai gang.”

“The central government can’t all be run by people from Shanghai,” said Hu Wei, a political science professor at Jiaotong University here.

“The next generation of leaders are likely to rally around Hu Jintao, who is not from Shanghai,” he said, referring to the man handpicked by Deng Xiaoping, the late paramount leader, to succeed Jiang.

But the political changes could also illustrate intense horse trading or rivalry at the top. A number of other key personnel changes are taking place across the country, all tied to the realignment of power anticipated after the changing of the guard.

Xu is not known to get on well with Shanghai’s party secretary, Huang Ju. But Huang is a protege of Jiang and expected to keep moving up.

Xu is better linked with Zhu, who brought him into City Hall in 1995. Xu’s replacement, however, is an ally of Jiang.

Xu’s new job as Communist Party secretary at the Chinese Academy of Engineering can be seen as another steppingstone. But the career academic is unlikely to move to the front lines of politics. That comes as a surprise and disappointment to the foreign community, which has benefited from his pro-business policies.

“This is definitely a big loss for Shanghai,” said Sydney Chang, past president of the American Chamber of Commerce here. “He’s a visionary. We can all see how the city has grown.”

No one knows much about Chen, the new 55-year-old mayor. But he is unlikely to veer far from the course set by the previous administration.

“Foreigners like Xu because he is a scientist by training, open-minded and fluent in English,” Hu Wei said. “But there are many politicians like him in China. They just haven’t had the chance to prove themselves.”

Although Xu’s age, 64, is often used to explain why he could not remain in office, Hong Kong’s top boss is also 64. But Tung, who has Beijing’s blessing, is expected to govern for another five-year term, even though surveys show 65% of the island’s residents are opposed to his reelection.