Harmony And Verity

The world's largest, most powerful and influential countries have concluded their presidential elections within a week of one another.  One was a democratic election, when a country of just under four hundred million people exercised their franchise to vote for a new president.  The other was a decidedly undemocratic shuffling of an executive administration comprised of a handful of political elites of a single-party state representing a country of huge ethnic, religious and cultural diversity of 1.3 billion people.

Although there is the potential of any number of political parties presenting themselves for consideration in the United States of America, for all intents and purposes there are two rival political parties, the Democrats and the Republications; liberals and conservatives.  And in that democratic country each of the leading (!) political parties appealed to their constituents - voters who preferred a 'left' approach or a 'right' approach to fund them.

And fund those parties they most certainly did, without restraint.  While there were individual donors, ordinary citizens who take their politics seriously and were committed to donating modest funding they could afford to ensure their candidate was triumphant, big business and corporate interests were also represented, as also were political action committees, committed collective and powerfully persuasive lobbyists.

 It took no less than a staggering six billion dollars to fund all of the advertising and public relations to elect a president in the United States in 2012.  It is, therefore, not too far-fetched to offer the opinion that a democratic election can be bought.  And the ascension of a winning candidate in a totalitarian ideological state?  Well, it is arranged, not by the purported will of the people, but by the carefully judicious machinations of a ruling hierarchy that plans to ensure its vision and its rule is perpetuated.

Increasingly, however, a worried Politboro sees harmony disturbed by social restiveness.  And they are listening to the people.  And now that Chinese Premier Hi Jintao's ten-year tenure is over, enter his successor, current Vice-President Xi Jinping, who has been named to the throne, and will be formally invested in March of 2014.  The bonus in the investiture of Xi Jinping, is that his wife will make a most talented, becoming First Lady, am eminent and popular culture figure as a singer of hugely admirable repute.

And her husband is expected in some quarters to turn the country toward a more moderate stance.

The people have spoken, after all.  With the tentative step to open China to the world of export and trade through Chinese-style capitalism, a large middle class has bloomed, and they have the effrontery to feel entitled to more of the good life, for their expanding numbers.  They, like those emerging from traditional poverty, have no liking for the health-impacting environmental messes left behind through massive industrialization in China's push for domination in manufacturing and export.

Nor do any parts of the Chinese empire feel supportive of the network of bureaucratic interference in peoples' lives, nor the limitless graft and corruption that stains the country, from the lowliest village party official to the members of the Politboro.  President-elect Xi Jinping, new head of China's Communist Party, has also been made head of the Chinese military.  Hi Jintao will relinquish his roles in March; out with the old in with the new and the young and the ambitious.

And the address which the new leader gave was a breath of fresh air to the Chinese, void of the usual party-tainted rubbish that weighs down the rhetoric and puts people to sleep for the prolonged periods of ennui that result from sitting in the Great Hall of the People and listening to the speeches of the great and the powerful, the tedious and the tendentious.  What issued from the lips of the new voice of official China was meretricious in design and would be hugely so in intent:

"Our people love life and yearn for better education, stable jobs, more satisfactory income, greater social security, improved medical and health care, and a more beautiful environment.  We want our children to grow up well and have better jobs and more fulfilling lives.  The people's desire for a better life is what we shall fight for. Every bit of happiness is created by hard work.

"China needs to understand the world better and the world needs to understand China better, too.  Our party faces many severe challenges and there are also many pressing problems that need to be resolved, particularly corruption, being divorced from the people, and going through the formalism and bureaucracy caused by some party officials.

"We are well aware that the capability of one individual is limited - one can only work for a limited period of time. But there is no limit to serving the people with dedication.  Our road ahead is a long one."

Very plain-spoken, that speech, and certainly it hits all the high notes, addressing the major concerns of the Chinese people.  It is, in fact, a speech very similar to those which President Barack Obama of the United States has given in select words , addressing like issues not at all different from those used by President-elect Xi Jinping.