The New Dominion

On 14 April 2010, Wang Lequan (王乐泉) was removed from his post as Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) for the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region by order of the Central Committee of the CPC. The Central Committee reached its decision in the course of a two-day conference on Xinjiang. The much-despised and oft-celebrated Wang, who has held his post since 1995, is to be replaced with current Hunan CPC Secretary Zhang Chunxian (张春贤). Wang himself has been demoted back to Beijing, where he will assume his new post as Deputy Secretary of the Political and Legislative Affairs Committee of the CPC Central Committee.

Farewell, old friend.

Hello, beautiful.

Wang initially came to office following the 10-year tenure of Song Hanliang (宋汉良 1934-2000, in office 1985-1995), a long-time Party member from Shaoxing, Zhejiang who had worked in Xinjiang’s oil industry since 1954. Song was appointed not only Party Secretary of the XUAR, but also the First Secretary and First Political Commissar of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC). Wang (1944-), himself from Shandong province, arrived in Xinjiang in 1992 after a long career in the Party and government of Shandong. He was appointed Acting Secretary in 1994 before receiving both of Song’s appointments the following year. In 2002, Wang was appointed to the Politburo, reflecting both Hu Jintao’s confidence in him and the increasing importance of the Northwest in the Party’s plans for China.

Zhang Chunxian (1953-), for his part, is portrayed as a good communicator, perhaps what Xinjiang needs after 15 years of tough posturing and insulting propaganda. Vice President Xi Jinping traveled to Urumchi in person on the morning of 24 April to announce Zhang’s new appointment and praise his skills and “liberated” and “creative” ideas. Indeed, as Party leader in Hunan, he succeeded in using the Web to encourage communication between the provincial government and its citizens. The Party established an on-line government forum, and Zhang himself offered New Year’s greetings to web users on a message board. He became known as a Party Secretary who focused on people, both in the administration and in policies that aimed at strengthening Hunan with “culture.”

Like his predecessors, Zhang has a background in engineering, but he also holds a degree in management from the Harbin Institute of Technology. He has also served as the PRC’s Minister of Communications (2002-2005). This, however, is in itself no indicator of his mastery of media, since the Ministry, both then and in its new identity as the Ministry of Transportation, was concerned not with telecommunications, but with shipping, the postal service, and public transport. Zhang’s most obvious credentials in this respect are his smiling, clean visage, which should help him avoid the “Ratzinger effect” that accompanies Wang’s tough, authoritarian, and somewhat toad-like image, and his rumored marriage to CCTV newscaster Li Xiuping, which may bring a rare dash of celebrity to the position. It is uncertain whether Zhang will also take Wang’s place as Commissar of the XPCC.

Some journalists outside of China see Zhang’s apparent focus on the economy as a contrast to Wang’s insistence on stability through strict limitations on non-Han culture and language. There is nothing new, however, about the rhetoric of economic development in Xinjiang. Song Hanliang, back in March 1992, “described economic construction as the Party’s central task for the 1990s,” including developing close ties with newly-independent Central Asian states. (Harris 1993: 123) Only a month beforehand, however, he and other Xinjiang party and government leaders had engaged in the usual rhetoric about ethnic and religious “splittism.” (119) These two policies continued throughout Wang’s time in office, and economic development and trade with Central Asia have been tied with increasing intimacy to security cooperation. (Becquelin 2000: 70) Certainly, Wang Lequan also oversaw the push for strictly Mandarin-medium education for minorities in Xinjiang and supported it with ridiculous statements, most amusingly, “minority languages in Xinjiang contain only limited amounts of information.” (Dwyer 2005: 37) This policy, however, is part of a broader drive for standardization on the national level that has been going since the early 1990s. Certainly, Wang has paired these strict ethnic policies with Strike Hard campaigns. Xinjiang, then, has been on a tight leash, and policies on “culture” and “development” have gone hand-in-hand. So, it is difficult to say whether the appointment of Zhang, photogenic and media-savvy though he may be, will signal a real change in that way Xinjiang is managed.

Some citations:

Becquelin, Nicolas. “Xinjiang in the nineties” in The China Journal No. 44 (July 2000), pp. 65-90.

Becquelin, Nicolas. “Staged development in Xinjiang” in The China Quarterly No. 128 (July 2004), pp. 358-378.

Dwyer, Arienne M. The Xinjiang conflict: Uyghur identity, language policy, and political discourse. (Policy Studies 15). Washington: East-West Center, 2005.

Harris, Lillian Craig. “Xinjiang, Central Asia and the implications for China’s policy in the Islamic world” in The China Quarterly No. 133 (March 1993), pp. 111-129.