One Party Two Factions

Rich Chinese Communists Channel U.S. Tea Party in Tax Debate


Zong Qinghou, China’s richest man, says a property tax will hurt homeowners. Wang Jianlin, the 16th wealthiest, agrees. Lu Guanqiu, No. 19, says China isn’t ready for such a levy.

Their financial clout, a combined $12.4 billion according to Forbes magazine’s latest ranking, packs a political punch. They are members of the Communist Party and delegates to China’s parliament or its political advisory committee. Their concerns about the tax, which the government might adopt in the five-year plan beginning 2011, are shared by many Chinese investors and homeowners.

“A property tax isn’t appropriate,” Zong, 64, chairman of beverage company Hangzhou Wahaha Group Co., said in an interview. “Now everyone already pays monthly management fees, so it would just add another burden.”

Call it a nascent Chinese Tea-Party movement, after the self-described U.S. activists who protest the spending and taxation policies of President Barack Obama and Democrats who control Congress. The groups take their name from a 1773 Boston protest by supporters of independence from Great Britain.

An annual levy on property would give local officials a reliable stream of revenue, making them less dependent on land auctions that have fueled speculation and helped prices rise 10.7 percent in February from a year ago, the fastest pace in almost two years.

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Officials in Beijing are constrained by an emerging affluent class with increasing ability to influence policy. Wang, chairman of property developer Dalian Wanda Group Co.; Lu, 65, chairman of Hangzhou-based auto-parts maker Wanxiang Group Co.; and Zong have connections in the highest levels of government. Their company Web sites document meetings with Premier Wen Jiabao and other leaders.

“The ones who have properties are the ones with the power to implement the tax,” Pan Shiyi, 46, chairman of Beijing-based real-estate developer Soho China Ltd., told reporters in Hong Kong March 11. “So it’s very unlikely” the tax will become law. He and his wife rank 24th on Forbes’ list.

The executives represent one side of a widening rift within the Communist Party, said Li Cheng, director of research at the Brookings Institution’s John L. Thornton China Center in Washington. It will grow as the country continues to develop, pitting them and businesses in coastal regions against those who want to redistribute more of China’s growing income and develop interior provinces.

“This is what I call one party, two factions,” Li said.

[N]ot only did Norquist entertain guests under a portrait of the first head of state of the Soviet Union, he also studied the writings of Antonio Gramsci, the most famous Italian Communist, best known for his concept of cultural hegemony.

From Blinded By The Right:

Despite his promise as an academic, Gramsci became active in the Socialist Party and launched a career as a fierce pamphleteer, making himself a voice to be reckoned with throughout Italian political circles. Inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution in October 1917, Gramsci sided with the Communist minority within the Socialist Party and built up the Italian Communist Party at the dawn of the Italian fascist movement. After serving as Italy's delegate in Moscow to the communist International, he was elected general secretary of the Communist Party in Italy. Soon thereafter, Gramsci was arrested by the government in Rome and spent ten years in prison producing his most influential revolutionary writings, in the form of notebooks and letters, before dying of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1937. Two decades later, his writings were studied carefully by the radical left throughout the world, particularly by leaders of revolutionary movements in the Third World -- and by the anti-Communist Grover Norquist.

Gramsci's concept of cultural hegemony was sprung out of his quest to understand why the working classes weren't more willing to rise up and overthrow the ruling classes. Gramsci posited that culture must be investigated to see what norms contributed to reinforcing (or dismantling) of the larger social structure.

Given his populist framing of his anti-tax group and its efforts, Norquist seems to understand what Gramsci was getting at, albeit with a much different goal.