Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Between communism, socialism, and democracy: China and political reform

Baraka_Guru · 10-15-2010, 07:48 AM

Quote:

Communist Chinese elders promote free speech in open letter

By MARK MacKINNON
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
Ahead of party's Central Committee plenum, elders back Premier Wen in push for internal reform

October 13, 2010

This week's gathering of the elites who lead the Communist Party of China was shaping up to be another staid and predictable affair. But then the country's Premier went off-script.

Everyone will be clapping when the cameras are on in the Great Hall of the People. But behind the scenes, this year's annual meeting of the party's powerful Central Committee will also likely feature a lively argument about the need for urgent political reform.

The lightning rod for the debate is not Nobel Peace Prize winning dissident Liu Xiaobo, but Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, who is scheduled to retire along with President Hu Jintao in 2012. Mr. Wen has in recent weeks more openly associated himself with the reformist wing of the party, and this week he got some weighty backing in his push for political modernization in the form of an open letter [http://cmp.hku.hk/2010/10/13/8035] from 23 Communist Party elders, who argued that it was time to end the "scandalous" practice of censorship and to allow freedom of speech.

"For our nation to advertise itself as having 'socialist democracy' with Chinese characteristics is such an embarrassment," reads the letter, which was signed by Mao Zedong's former secretary and the former editor-in-chief of the People's Daily newspaper, among others. "China's citizens have the right to know the ruling party's sins."

The four-day plenum of the Central Committee, which begins Friday, will still be carefully choreographed to convey the message that those who rule this country of 1.3 billion people are confident and united. A new five-year economic plan - perhaps the most crucial economic program in the world in terms of its importance to the global recovery - will be released without any public debate. Xi Jinping, the country's vice-president, will almost certainly be named to the country's Central Military Commission, the last step before he is expected to succeed Mr. Hu upon the latter's retirement in 2012. All in attendance will applaud.

Signees of the elders' letter who were contacted by The Globe and Mail said they hoped to support Mr. Wen in his efforts put political reform on the agenda for Central Committee. "There is a pro-reform faction among the Central Committee leaders. And, personally speaking, I think the power of the pro-reformers is not to be ignored. Many people often mistakenly think that the party is a board of iron," said Xiao Mo, a former department head at the Chinese National Academy of Arts.

Mr. Xiao said the letter-writers wanted to ally themselves with Mr. Wen, in his push for change from within the party, rather than Mr. Liu, whom he said advocated change that would be too rapid for a country of China's size and complexity.

"Premier Wen has been too isolated recently. The higher you stand, the colder it is," said Xin Ziling, a former director of the editorial desk at the China National Defence University who was the lead writer of the open letter.

Predictably, the letter disappeared from Chinese websites within hours of being leaked Wednesday, another victim of the same censorship its authors decried. It will be formally released Thursday.

Mr. Wen himself fell victim to the censors after reigniting the reform debate with a speech he gave in August in the city of Shenzhen, which was celebrating the 30th anniversary of the economic modernizations introduced by former leader Deng Xiaoping. "Without the guarantee of political system reform, the successes of restructuring the economic system will be lost and the goal of modernization cannot be realized," Mr. Wen said.

Those words may sound less than revolutionary to the Western ear, but in the coded and careful language of the Communist Party, they were remarkable, especially as they followed an comments earlier this year in which Mr. Wen praised late party secretary Hu Yaobang, a reformer whose death in 1989 triggered the Tiananmen Square uprising. However, key parts of Mr. Wen's remarks were omitted from the official Xinhua newswire report on his speech, and thus not approved for use by other media outlets.

The reaction from other senior leaders to Mr. Wen's Shenzhen speech also hinted at the difficulties reformers will have in winning support among the nine-member Politburo and the 200-plus members of the Central Committee. The party's powerful chief of security, Zhou Yongkang, warned in a magazine article that some members had come under the influence of "erroneous Western political and economic ideas." Mr. Hu followed Mr. Wen to Shenzhen and gave his own speech in which he emphasized the need for the party and the country to "resolutely uphold the road of socialism with Chinese characteristics (the term used for China's current system of allowing some market reforms while maintaining tight political controls)."

"There is real and meaningful debate within the party about what sort of political reform China should undertake," said Russell Leigh Moses, a Beijing-based expert on Chinese politics. "What Wen and his allies want most of all is a conversation about politics and the direction of the Chinese polity."

Mr. Wen, who is affectionately referred to as "Grandpa Wen" and likely the most popular politician in China, referred to the opposition he was facing within the party during an interview last month with CNN []Video - Breaking News Videos from CNN.com. Noting there was "some resistance" to his ideas, he said China's next generation of political leaders - likely Mr. Xi and current vice-premier Li Keqiang - had no choice but to carry out further political reforms. "The wish and the will of the people are not stoppable. Those who go along with the trend will thrive, and those who go against the trend will fail," Mr. Wen said.

The remarks were again ignored by China's state-controlled media, and some websites [http://cmp.hku.hk/2010/08/29/7167] that carried them were censored, leading to expressions of disbelief among Chinese Internet users. "The people could not even listen to the words of their premier. Even he himself does not have freedom of speech," a user nicknamed Garuda wrote on the popular sina.com microblogging service.

What's not clear yet is how the internal party debate on political reform will be affected by the Oct. 8 awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Mr. Liu, who is serving an 11-year jail sentence for his role in drafting the pro-democracy manifesto known as Charter 08. The Chinese government has reacted angrily to the award, calling it an "obscenity" and an insult to China's justice system.

And while the debate on political reform could well prove crucial to the future of this rising superpower, it's likely to remain behind the scenes for now. The only item officially on the agenda for the party plenum is the approval of a new five-year economic plan, which is likely to set annual targets for the country's growth between 2011 and 2015. The leadership is also expected to debate the country's 30-year-old one-child population control policy, though there have been conflicting signals about the likelihood any changes to the unpopular rule.

Communist Chinese elders promote free speech in open letter - The Globe and Mail

Well, they say with time comes change. But in China's case, it's a bit more complicated than that. The country has seen a surge in economic growth that is changing the very makeup of its society. In a sense it's a developing nation becoming a developed nation. The personal wealth of the Chinese is seeing unprecedented levels. This includes their access to technologies such as computers and the Internet.

In the midst of this, you have a government that clings to communist politics, but having already given way to economic compromise in the form of a mixed economy (introducing capitalist measures to a command economy). Politically, the government remains largely authoritarian, limiting free speech and access to information (read: Google China).

However, among China's elder politicians is a desire for change.

And, of course, there's this: This Nobel prize was bold and right — but hits China's most sensitive nerve | Timothy Garton Ash | Comment is free | The Guardian

What do you think of this? Do you see China's politics moving towards a more moderate socialism in the form of social democracy? How do you see a transition to free speech happening within the ranks? Will free speech lead to other reforms along the lines of human/civil rights?

What is the danger? Will this lead to unrest among the power that be? Is China ready to introduce more personal freedoms among its people?