CAN JIANG HOLD THE REINS OF POWER?

By Bruce W. Nelan

China's top leadership, now that Deng Xiaoping is gone, looks like the ducks on a quiet pond in Zhongnanhai, the palatial government compound in Beijing. The ducks swim along serenely and smoothly. But below the surface their legs are paddling furiously, spreading unseen turbulence. They may or may not change places in their parade, but everyone watching knows that real effort goes into it.

That's not exactly the image Beijing is promoting. The official line is that the transition from the Deng era to that of President Jiang Zemin happened years ago and is locked firmly in place: Jiang was Deng's chosen successor, and he has handily gathered up the reins of power. Well, it would not be China or the Communist Party if that were true. Even under the red emperors Mao Zedong and Deng, as with the real emperors of the past, there were constant plots and purges. But Chinese and Western experts do generally agree that none of Jiang's potential rivals have the strength to replace him in the short term.

Although Jiang is clearly ranked above his colleagues in the leadership, power plays seem inevitable, probably timed to the next Party Congress this fall, where the new leadership will be confirmed. At that meeting, says a Chinese analyst in Beijing, "some people will get jobs, and others will lose theirs." The main contenders will try to strengthen their positions and prepare for the day Jiang trips over a policy or runs into a crisis he can't handle.

For now, Jiang, 70, is better positioned than most people expected. The portly technocrat, a former mayor and party boss of Shanghai, has been a national figure only since 1989, and he is regularly dismissed as a lightweight and a weather vane who swings with the political winds. In fact he has shown a lot of political savvy since Deng called him to Beijing in the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre. With Deng's help he took on all the posts that matter: President, General Secretary of the party, chairman of the Central Military Commission. But Jiang did not let it rest at titles. He went on to build a network beholden to him. He fired scores of civilian, military and police officials and filled their jobs with his own appointees. He promoted Shanghai colleagues to the Politburo and shook up regional party organizations. During the past seven years he has done very well for a leader supposedly without a power base.

Those who dismiss Jiang as a transitional chief say he has no charisma, no military experience, no long career as a revolutionary fighter. In other words, he's not Deng. But none of the other members of China's collective leadership are either. Today's top Politburo members are bureaucrats and engineers. In Soviet terms, Jiang would not even be Nikita Khrushchev; rather, he's more like Leonid Brezhnev. The others are no different, and that works in two ways. They may have no more claim to greatness than Jiang, but now that Deng is gone they can easily go after their present leader. "So long as the old man was still breathing," says Kenneth Lieberthal of the University of Michigan, "they couldn't do a frontal assault on Jiang."

Jiang is listed in the Beijing scorecard not as a Paramount Leader but as the "core" of the "third generation" of leadership. He is ostentatiously collegial, not hogging administrative authority but parceling it out to other senior officials. His biggest concern is maintaining stability. He wants to avoid turmoil of any sort, in society or in the leadership. That, it is safe to say, is an impossible goal. So when problems arrive, he is certain to be challenged.

Several tough ones are already visible, because the transition is not really completed. What communists call personnel questions are always difficult because they are about power. The most obvious personnel problem is Premier Li Peng, 68, whose second five-year term runs out early next year. The constitution says he must step down. Li was the principal villain in the bloody suppression of the Tiananmen demonstrations, and he was expected to fade away. Now, perhaps because he is a foot dragger on economic reforms, he seems to have re-established himself with the Old Guard and has even higher ambitions. He is said to covet either the presidency, which Jiang is not likely to give up, or the chairmanship of the National People's Congress, which is held by another major player, Politburo member Qiao Shi. One scenario has Jiang reviving the title of party chairman, abolished five years after Mao died, taking that spot and naming Li a vice chairman. That would put two conservatives at the apex of the party and would probably provoke a serious fight with many of the leaders left behind.

There is also speculation that to balance Li, the hard-liner, Jiang might promote Qiao Shi to be a party vice chairman. Qiao has a reformist reputation, in spite of his many years as head of China's security and intelligence apparatus. Deng reportedly offered Qiao the post of party General Secretary twice, most recently in 1989, and both times he declined. Some Chinese officials take that as a sign that Qiao is wishy-washy, lacking in ambition. Western analysts think, on the contrary, he may have concluded that the Communist Party is a hollow organization without much future. He seems inclined to go off in a new and risky direction. As head of the National People's Congress, he has worked to transform it from a rubber stamp into a functioning parliament, and he speaks often and strongly in favor of deepening reform and the rule of law. If he pushes hard, he could clash with the party's rigid demand for primacy and obedience.

Whatever the Politburo decides to do about Li--and Qiao seems unlikely to turn loose his parliamentary leadership for him--the country will need a new Premier in a year. Three candidates are already in the scramble. One of them, Deputy Premier Zhu Rongji, 68, is well known as the country's economic czar, the man who has put the brakes on inflation and engineered a soft landing. A Shanghai colleague of Jiang's, he is admired as a skilled technocrat, but his sharp tongue and uncompromising style have made him many enemies, especially among the hard-liners.

Another leading contender is Vice Premier Li Lanqing, 68, a Shanghai reformer who has been in charge of international trade and education. He is a friend of Jiang's and has a reputation as a liberal. But, says a Chinese banker, "unlike some orthodox leaders, he doesn't carry any political baggage." And coming up on the outside is Hu Jintao, 55, the golden boy of the Politburo's inner circle. Also an engineer, Hu is in charge of the party's key organizational department and the promotion of younger members.

Reshuffling will continue next year. Beijing has announced that for the first time it will enforce a retirement age for Cabinet ministers. Though some oldsters will resist, perhaps as many as 20 new ministers will be appointed to replace the retirees. It should be a major round of logrolling and alliance building.

All of this maneuvering in the party and government stratosphere is fascinating to the experts but at the same time feels anachronistic, even eerie. One of the world's last communist dictatorships is remaking itself in a vacuum while surrounded by 1.2 billion people. The great mass of Chinese feel more and more distant from rule of the party, by the party and for the party. They do not think of themselves as full citizens, much less as participants in their own society. Until the government establishes institutions with more legitimacy, with some voice for the people, it will be permanently unstable, no matter how collegial the leaders may seem.

--Reported by Dean Fischer and Douglas Waller/Washington and Jaime A. FlorCruz/Beijing

With reporting by DEAN FISCHER AND DOUGLAS WALLER/WASHINGTON AND JAIME A. FLORCRUZ/BEIJING