Why Xi Jinping, the Pope should share notes

Xi Jinping and Jorge Mario Bergoglio would seem like natural enemies. The Chinese president runs a government that squashes religious freedom, limits procreation and has a dismal human rights record. The former Cardinal Bergoglio — better known now as Pope Francis — wants access to Mr Xi’s many citizens in order to spread the Catholic Church’s teachings, challenge the Communist Party’s hold on dogma and even reach out to North Korea.

Yet, these world leaders should really be sharing notes. The tasks facing the two men who took office only one day apart last year are surprisingly similar — and not only because both lead flocks that each number more than one billion people, noted Mr Stephan Richter, publisher of online magazine The Globalist.

“This is only where the stunning parallels start,” wrote Mr Richter. “China’s Communist Party and the Catholic Church share more than certain organisational characteristics, including being heavily male-dominated power structures. In addition, they both offer up ideologies or faith systems with an absolutist claim. That isn’t an easy proposition in an era when fewer and fewer people are inclined to adhere to such rigid propositions.”

DAUNTING CHALLENGES

When you look at the daunting challenges facing Mr Xi and the Pope, you really have to wonder if this is a matter of what Mr Richter called “two shepherds, two cultural revolutions”. Both have lots of housekeeping to do to shake up rigid bureaucracies that traffic more in ethical failures and corruption than their predecessors wanted to admit.

Both are redoubling efforts to reduce poverty. Both face powerful and shadowy resistance to their pledged reforms. Both the Communist Party and the Vatican suffer from disillusionment and a loss of legitimacy among the masses. And despite the best of intentions, it is entirely unclear if either man will succeed.

Pope Francis, of course, has made headlines for saying and doing previously unthinkable things. Purging and investigating church leaders who were once thought untouchable — including those involved with the Vatican Bank — is causing shock waves. So are the pontiff’s moves to take on the church’s biggest scandals. His call for bishops around the globe to poll Catholics about the appeal of church teachings is a revolutionary step all its own.

Mr Xi, too, seems to be trying to purge the system. He spent the first 12 months in office solidifying his power base. However, as his second year begins, the gloves may be coming off. The investigation into former security chief Zhou Yongkang and his family and cronies — who had netted an estimated US$14.5 billion (S$18.2 billion) worth of illegitimate assets — may be the biggest corruption probe in modern history.

Last week, a former senior military officer, General Gu Junshan, was charged with misuse of state funds and abuse of power. Retired General Xu Caihou, a former vice-chairman of the military commission under former President Hu Jintao, is also being investigated for corruption.

WILL THEY CHANGE TOP-DOWN APPROACH?

These moves suggest that Mr Xi’s anti-graft campaign could go deeper than officialdom had anticipated. It is early, and Mr Xi could just be looking for some easy targets to buttress his good-governance bona fides — or just robbing Peter to pay Paul. But it is hard to exaggerate the chilling effect all this is having in Beijing.

Should these purges continue, Mr Xi would have a freer hand to turn his big rhetoric of changing China’s growth model into reality.

After all, getting China’s government out of the economy requires reining in the powerful state-owned enterprises and shadow-banking interests that enrich party members. Just as a kind of mafia inside the Vatican’s Roman Curia bureaucracy has much to lose from Pope Francis’ shake-up, the many millionaires and billionaires China Inc has created are facing uncomfortable scrutiny.

If he is to promote real change, Mr Xi knows that, ultimately, he will have to stamp out the land grabs, illicit trading, insider trading and rent-seeking that have tarnished Beijing’s image.

Mr Xi also seems to understand, like the Pope, that he needs to develop a better sense of his flock’s grievances and concerns. Along with his roles as President, military chief and party general-secretary, Mr Xi recently added Internet tsar. While aimed at silencing dissent, the move is also about gauging public opinion. What is the biggest threat to the Communist Party’s legitimacy — graft, slowing economic growth, pollution, lavish lifestyles of public officials or the one-child policy? Sinister as it is, obsessive monitoring of chat rooms and microblogging sites gives Mr Xi a window into his subjects’ thinking.

The big question is how far these men will go to make opaque and excessively top-down organisations more transparent. I will defer to Vaticanologists on Pope Francis, but I fear there is a limit to what Mr Xi will do in his 10 years in office. “Bringing more openness is a risky manoeuvre, not only because it will raise the ire of many insiders,” Mr Richter explains. “It can also easily turn into the proverbial Pandora’s box.”

Even so, it is heartening to see Mr Xi beginning to address the official corruption eating away at China’s political soul. And if he ever needs a comrade to chew things over with, he may find one in the most unexpected of places. BLOOMBERG

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

William Pesek is a Bloomberg View columnist based in Tokyo who writes on economics, markets and politics throughout the Asia-Pacific region.