On Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning, all delegations held meetings and carried out preliminary elections for candidates of members of the new Central Committee and of members of the new CCDI, as well as for candidates of alternate members of the CPC Central Committee.

The preliminary elections were competitive with elimination margins of more than eight percent.

The preliminary elections were conducted under the supervision of scrutineers in accordance with the election methods adopted at the congress. The results of the preliminary elections are valid, according to the presidium’s third meeting.

On Tuesday afternoon, the delegations will hold meetings to mull over the draft name-lists of candidates for members and alternate members of the new CPC Central Committee and the new CCDI.

A formal election will be held on Wednesday morning.

The South China Morning Post called the vote “another embarrassing blow to the Communist Party’s much touted internal democracy,” and observers commented that the preliminary results do little to reinforce the belief that the Communist Party is moving toward a more democratic process for choosing its leadership:

Hong Kong-based analyst Johnny Lau Yui-siu said the results laid bare the leadership’s reluctance to push for meaningful political reform.

“It basically disappoints everyone who still had hopes for the top-down approach to intra-party democracy,” he said.

He said the fact that Xinhua’s report yesterday did not mention the exact percentage of nominees eliminated showed the leadership did not have much to show off about.

“If we look at the 13th party congress 25 years ago, when the idea of electoral competition was first introduced with [5 per cent more candidates than seats on] the Central Committee, we’ll see the talk of intra-party democracy is nothing but deception,” Lau said.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 18th party congress, central committee, democracy, leadership transition, Politburo, Politburo Standing Committee, reform
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Most analysts believe the Chinese intelligence threat is largely amorphous, a vast human network vacuuming up many bits of information. China’s seemingly unique approach to intelligence is known by various names, including ‘human wave,’ ‘mosaic,’ or the ‘thousand grains of sand’ approaches to intelligence. Ultimately, it’s a view of Chinese operations fundamentally at odds with normal understandings of intelligence.

There a three major assumptions about this approach. First and most importantly, is that Chinese intelligence officers don’t rely on the traditional tradecraft of clandestine collection, such as paying or blackmailing for secrets. Second, that their secret services rely on the efforts of ethnic Chinese émigrés and citizenry abroad rather than the willingness of foreign citizens to betray the trust afforded them.And third, that the Chinese intelligence services play a secondary role relative to large, informal networks of amateurs, vacuuming up information irrespective of Beijing’s economic, military, and political priorities.

But is this really an accurate picture?

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: CCP 5th generation, CCP Central Committee, central committee, leadership
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”In particular, crackdowns must be imposed on any aggression directed against the party and its leaders as well as against the promotion of other political systems and a free press.” Such is the essential message in an official and classified document from the Chinese Central Committee leaked to the Danish daily

On the first page of the document, it is stated that its contents has been approved by the Central Committee and sent out for implementation. The document is one of a number of papers leaked from the top Chinese echelon that directly contradict public statements by Chinese leaders. Among other things, the regime has insisted that it does not exercise any censorship. However, the official document outlines several instances of how the Chinese authorities should prevent people from getting in touch with ”politically sensitive information”. Such information must be either ”blocked”, ”destroyed” or ”cleansed” from the Internet, media and books, the order from the Central Committee to the lower levels of the state apparatus makes clear.

The document, which is the dated from the beginning of March, has been communicated to ”all provincial governments” and ”all headquarters of the People’s Liberation Army” with the message that they must ”work hard together in order to diligently execute the policy” that ”comrades in the Central Committee and leaders of the State Council have agreed upon”.

[...] The classified documents reveal that the Chinese government plays a double game with a large and growing gap between the self-portrait regime that Beijing itself wishes to project to outside world and the way it actually intends to rule. The communist regime’s propaganda apparatus is instructed to introduce China to other countries as peaceful, increasingly democratic and open to the outside world. But behind the facade, its grip on Chinese people and society should be tightened to new levels of harshness.

”Although it is no secret that there is an extensive censorship going on in China, the government denies that it is taking place, These documents undermine this denial by virtue of the the government’s own words,” says media analyst at Hong Kong University David Bandurski.

Update: On Twitter, Bandurski claims that the article misrepresented his views, and that he was never actually shown the documents in question.

[They] Shared paraphrases with me which I said sounded completely run-of-the-mill, so they’ve overplayed … →

Danish report totally out of context. David Bandurski doesn’t “believe they can be seen” as anything. I didn’t comment on THESE reports. →

On Dan. rep. I was asked to comment on such reports on censorship generally, without knowing what the reporter had in hand. I stressed that. →

Fond of all you journos, but a certain misleading Danish report might have me taping my own interviews from now on. →

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: censorship documents, central committee, information leak, Internet censorship, propaganda
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Economic policy centered on the five-year plan is supposed to be the main topic, along with personnel.

But a growing number in the government would like to expand the conversation and take on a far more vexing question: political reform.

For some time now, there has been a debate within the Party, not about how to survive in power but how to thrive and grow. Under the rubric of “Party-building”, cadres have been in constant conversation about just how much reach the Party should have when it comes to the economy, how much control is needed over society.

Would a smaller, smarter Party be more efficient? Is oversight of the Party best achieved by anti-corruption campaigns or the steady stare of a public that would hold officials accountable? Would that mean elections? Should the Party be in the business of persuading the populace through a more attractive ideology or should it focus on helping local governments provide needed services to society?

These are not empty debating points or some meaningless ideological exercise. Instead, these discussions reflect real concerns among many of the faithful that the legacy of the present leadership needs to go beyond simply growing the economy and avoiding decline. And many of the arguments about limiting the power of the Communist Party are a direct attack on hardliners in the leadership who have had the upper-hand under Hu Jintao—hardliners who think that society needs to be civilized and guided, and that the best Party is a dominating one.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: CCP, CCP Central Committee, central committee, political reform
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The 200-odd Central Committee members are set to discuss personnel changes and a new five-year economic plan that starts in 2011. Vice President Xi Jinping may take a position on the party’s military commission, paving the way for him to replace General Secretary and President Hu Jintao, who steps down in late 2012, political analysts say.

In the run-up to the plenum, Wen has called for a relaxation of state control of social and political affairs. At last year’s session, Hu advocated more “intra-party democracy,” to give lower-level officials a greater hand in appointments and policymaking.

“Wen has called for fundamental political reform,” said Victor Shih, a professor at Northwestern University in Evanston Illinois who analyzes Chinese politics. “This may be a ploy by Hu to” to make changes within the party and encompass more radical reforms, he said.

Past plenums have provided turning points in the party’s history. A gathering in 1959 in the mountain resort of Lushan was the scene of a failed move to criticize the economic policies of the late Chairman Mao Zedong, allowing him to cement his leadership. A meeting in 1978 saw the rise of Deng Xiaoping, who led China’s opening to outside investment.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: central committee, freedom of expression, Xi Jinping
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