In terms of breadth and boldness, the People’s Daily series is nothing to write home about. Most of the language is a song of self congratulation from China’s leaders about the progress they say they have already made on political reform.

On issues many would regard as fundamental to substantive and meaningful political reform, the People’s Daily series seems to shut the door. It says quite explicitly, for example, that “the leadership of the Party must be upheld”:

In actively and steadily promoting political reform we must uphold the fundamental political system and basic economic system of our country. We must uphold as one the three [principles of] the leadership of the Party, the people as masters of their own country (人民当家作主), and governing of the country by rule of law.

The obvious problem — arguably the crux of reform itself — is the clear conflict between the first priority, the firm commitment to the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, and the second and third priorities. Can there really be rule of law if Party leaders can manipulate the courts? And how is the mastery of the public to be exercised?

CMP also translates responses from readers concerned about how the Chinese government can check its own power without a separation of powers

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 18th party congress, people's daily, political reform, propaganda
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Q: Since economic reform began in 1978, the Communist Party has had a strong record of growth and poverty reduction. Does this provide legitimacy for continued one-party rule?

Mao: No, it’s not enough. The government is under big pressure.… Most people think that political reform is lagging behind. We should first have freedom of speech. I think that is probably the most important [reform]. Only in this environment can people supervise and oversee the government. After freedom of speech [there is] the right to choose the government. In China’s case, the leaders aren’t chosen by the people. They chose themselves, and we have nothing to say. That is a dangerous relationship ….

What is the biggest challenge to the ­leadership over the next five years?

That would be the clash between vested interest groups and social justice. The law can’t control [these groups]. They have special freedom. They get extra income because of … privilege power. Big state enterprises are vested interest groups. They collude with politicians.

Mao also discusses the surprisingly strong reaction to his iconoclastic essay on Mao Zedong last year. A focal point of the outrage that followed was the leftist Utopia website, where users looked forward to the economist’s “annihilation”. But when Utopia was forced offline following Bo Xilai’s fall from grace, Mao spoke up in its defence. From his Sina Weibo account, on March 28th:

当局把乌有之乡等网站封了。不过我还是希望他们有说理的机会。我虽然不赞成他们的观点，但是发言权是不可剥夺的。我也希望他们不要诽谤别人，说某某人是汉奸，也不可鼓动别人去杀人，去抢别人的财产。给人发言权是为了讲清道理，不是去害人，也不是发泄情绪。这些都不是一个良好的社会应有的现象。

The authorities have shut down Utopia and other sites, but I hope there will still be a chance to reason things out. Although I disagree with the Utopians’ points of view, their right to express them is inalienable. [But] I also hope they will no longer libel people, saying that they’re traitors to China, and urging people to kill them and steal their property. The point of freedom of expression is for one to clearly set out one’s points of view, not to harm others or to vent one’s spleen. These are not desirable social phenomena.

Mao was recently awarded the 2012 Milton Friedman Liberty Prize by the Washington-based Cato Institute, which said that “the arc of his life has been one of well-measured action in the pursuit of liberty.”

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: democracy, freedom of expression, freedom of speech, Mao Yushi, Mao Zedong, maoism, political reform
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

First came his remarkable and likely last press conference, at the closing of the National People’s Congress last month. With an intensity of bearing suggesting he meant business, Wen launched into a spirited defense of the necessity of China’s continued economic reform, hearkening back to the Third Plenum of the 11th CPC Committee, a crucial meeting that launched the country on its modern-day path toward opening. More surprisingly, the 69-year-old premier also touted the need for political reforms, saying they must go hand in hand with economic ones—although he did not specify what those political reforms should entail.

But what really caught observers’ attention: Wen’s raised the topic of the decade-long tragedy of China’s Cultural Revolution, long a taboo subject, and warned its excesses could return.

[...] The latest Wen surprise: his call, made in a broadcast April 3 on state-run China National Radio, for a breakup of the monopoly of China’s state-owned banks, saying it is crucial that the financing system start to serve private and smaller companies more fairly rather than just cater to the giant state-owned corporations. “Let me be frank. Our banks earn profit too easily. Why? Because a small number of large banks have a monopoly,” Wen said. That echoes a call made earlier this year by the World Bank and the Development Research Center of the State Council, China’s cabinet, which argued that foot-dragging on financial reform is choking off China’s economic vitality.

International economic bodies are expected to advocate such dramatic change, but Wen’s usually blunt criticism of the financial system that underpins party control of China’s economy—where state-owned banks distribute largesse to state-owned companies—was unusual for a top party leader, to say the least.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: banks, political reform, Wen Jiabao
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Yu Jianrong (于建嵘), one of China’s most outspoken intellectuals, yesterday posted a ten-year plan for social and political development in China on his Tencent microblog account. The plan called for a three-year initial phase of concerted social and judicial reforms, including the abolishment of the petitioning and household registration systems, followed by a second phase of political reforms moving China toward constitutional democracy.

Yu’s plan gives readers a general idea of many of the concrete changes proposed in China by pro-reformers under the auspices of “political reform”.

Read also a translation of a lengthy speech by Yu Jianrong titled, “Maintaining a Baseline of Social Stability,” via CDT.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: political reform, social reform, Yu Jianrong
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Another key question is how much internal unity there really is, given that the Communist Party is splintering into unofficial groupings. Xi Jinping is from the princeling faction — the children of the communist elite. The man tipped to be his premier, Li Keqiang, is from the more populist faction, who hail from humbler backgrounds and may have risen up through the Communist Youth League.

Brookings’ Li describes the new reality as “one party, two coalitions” — in other words, “populists versus elitists, or Communist Youth League versus princelings” — requiring leadership by consensus. Political analysts frequently cite Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party — in which the factionalization has become institutionalized — as an example of how China’s Communist Party could develop.

“You do see this kind of factional infighting become increasingly transparent, and Chinese society, Chinese intellectual community and Chinese leadership becoming more diversified or pluralistic,” says Li. “That’s a welcome development, but it also poses serious challenges.”

In Part 2 on Tuesday, Lim traces Xi’s princeling roots from his ancestral family home in Shaanxi province, where his father, Xi Zhongxun, suffered for many years amid China’s Mao-era political turmoil before rising as the architect of Deng Xiaoping’s special economic zones:

His son, Xi Jinping, also suffered: He was labeled a “reactionary student” when he was just 14 years old, according to the state-run Shaanxi Farmers’ Daily newspaper.

Despite that, the younger Xi — China’s current vice president — spent much of that time trying to join the very Communist Party that was persecuting his father, applying as many as 10 times before his application was accepted in 1974, according to the Hong Kong newspaper Ming Pao, citing an article said to be written by Xi himself.

“At that time, if you want to have a career, you do need to have that ticket,” says Cheng Li, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, explaining how joining the Communist Party was the only chance of social mobility in the political context of that era.

From age 15, Xi Jinping was sent to live in the countryside, spending seven years in a remote Shaanxi village, first as an ordinary farmer, then as a low-level official.

“He told Chinese official media many times that was his formative experience. He learned a lot of things: humanity, humility, adaptability and endurance,” Li says. “Certainly it also gave him a chance to understand rural China.”

See also a rundown of profiles published about Xi Jinping in the lead-up to his U.S. trip, and read more about the 5th generation of CCP leaders that he belongs to, known as “princelings,” via CDT.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: CCP 5th generation, Hu Jintao, leadership transition, political reform, princelings, Shaanxi, Xi Jinping, xi jinping u.s. visit 2012
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Most intellectuals in China today are not the same as those radicals in 1989 who clamored for the adoption of a Western style political system, but instead fully recognize there is no prospect for China to copy a Western path. A “Jasmine revolution” could only drive China into chaos.

Most Chinese intellectuals and the majority of Chinese society don’t expect a Western style government at the current stage of development, but want stronger supervision on power through political reform.

China’s development needs a new authoritarianism. The government has a firm foundation, and the new authoritarian politics should be strongly adapted to the times and have greater flexibility. They must better respond to social demands and institutional changes.

In the past 10 years, some have become rather frustrated by the stagnant process of reform. Some are calling for a second “southern tour” with the purpose to urge China to seek the direction of future reform, political reform in particular.

I entirely understand the public demand for this, but I am more hopeful to see institutional innovation created by the forthcoming 18th CPC National Congress, which will enhance the new authoritarianism and provide a stronger driving force for a democratic construction.

A Caixin editorial painted a less optimistic picture, declaring Deng’s reform movement “dead” and attempting to reposition the aim of reform in today’s China:

Reform’s objectives, targets, approaches and pathways have changed over the past 20 years. And today we have a fresh impetus for change: Reform is needed to prevent powerful interest groups from taking advantage and prospering by means of market distortion.

We can no longer expect a lone hero to ride to the rescue. A single tour by a dynamic leader cannot be expected to forge a new consensus by one of even several city tours. Rather, a consensus for action must come from party leaders that’s based on sound political judgment, genuine concern for society, and an accurate reading of the people’s will.

China is at a crossroads. Party leaders are being tested, and all of us are being challenged. There is broad agreement in society about the many problems China faces. There is also renewed determination to push for more reform, and supporters of this initiative are gathering strength.

But the urge for ongoing reform is running way ahead of action. We need the opposite. Like Deng on his tour, an exceptional leader must take a stand with a vision that’s ahead of the times, not behind, and lead China’s forward.

See also recent CDT coverage of Deng Xiaoping’s legacy.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: authoritarianism, democracy, Deng Xiaoping, political reform, southern tour
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

What a course it has been, as the record speaks for itself. Since 1978, China’s economy has grown more than 100-fold, while per capita GDP has risen roughly 80 times (not adjusted for inflation or exchange rate differences). It has far exceeded Deng’s expectation of reaching a per capita GDP of $4,000 by mid-21st century–a milestone that was achieved forty years ahead of schedule. China’s steel output is now north of 600 million tons, an incredible feat considering that the Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s mobilized nearly 100 million Chinese only to end up with 11 million tons of steel.

I recount this snapshot of history on the anniversary of the southern tour not for its own sake, but because I believe it is instructive for observing China today. As China proceeds through a political transition, culminating in the new 18th Party Congress this fall, there are echoes of 1992. The Jasmine Revolution, Arab Spring, Wukan violence, increasing civil disobedience, and pluralism on social media, are new manifestations of peaceful evolution, as Hu Jintao’s culture essay elliptically warned against. The unusually public campaigns for political office–primarily construed as a two-way contest between Bo Xilai and Wang Yang–appear to be fundamentally about a referendum on the direction of reforms.

…

The political status quo in 2012, unlike the early 1990s, isn’t resigned to narrow ideological trench warfare. Rather, it is about monied elites who are largely concerned with enriching themselves and those in their circles, exacerbating inequality in a country that has yet to create a broad-based middle class. But just as China requires the equivalent of an LBJ-like “great society” transformation, forces are arrayed against it, leading to wayward and dispirited reforms.

What’s more, the great helmsman Deng Xiaoping is no longer around to right the course. A new political consensus will have to be forged by a new cohort of leaders. Whether they can coalesce around a social agenda as ambitious and transformative as Deng’s and inject energy into flagging reforms are ever more pertinent questions. They will get an opportunity come this fall–to complete Deng’s unfinished business of heralding sociopolitical change for the sake of nation building.

Minxin Pei of Claremont McKenna College, on the other hand, wonders why China bothers to remember Deng’s southern tour given the irony that pro-market economic reform in China does not exist. From The Financial Times:

Evidence of the demise of economic reform is easy to spot. The Chinese state has reasserted its control over the economy. Big state-owned enterprises dominate nearly all the critical sectors, such as banking, finance, transport, energy, natural resources and heavy industry. The private sector, a victim of persistent official discrimination, is in full retreat. Critical prices, such as interest rates and land, are officially controlled and severely distorted. Foreign businesses, once welcomed with open arms, are getting squeezed with protectionist measures. The overall orientation of the Chinese economy has veered so much off the reformist path that foreign business leaders who have long been supportive of China are now voicing their bitter disappointments, some publicly. China’s main western trading partners do not need to read scholarly analysis to know that there is no pulse in its reform. All they need to do is to listen to their business community, check their trade statistics with China, and take a look at Chinese economic policy.

A China Daily commentary by Chi Fulin of the Hainan-based China Institute of Reform and Development also notes the need for reform:

Deng’s confirmation of reforms aimed at facilitating the establishment of a socialist market economy released a vitality that has propelled the fast and long-term development of the country. Deng’s remarks enabled the country to embark on a socialist market economic road and it has taken the perfection of such a market as its supreme target.

The reform and opening-up policy has enabled some regions and some people to get rich earlier than others, which has led to powerful groups with vested interests. To maintain their established interests, these groups have become a barrier to further reforms, which has resulted in the interests of some middle and low-income people being marginalized, fermenting social discontent.

China should wholeheartedly endeavor to overcome this barrier so that it can realize Deng’s vision of common prosperity . This will help the fast-growing nation release its huge consumption potential and lay a solid foundation for its sustainable and rapid development in the years ahead.

China’s economic and social development now requires a social transformation and reforms targeted at equality and sustainable development. To facilitate this, the country should embrace a consumption-driven, green and market-regulated development model, prioritize increasing people’s wealth and push for government transformation. To this end, China should push forward overall reforms of its economic and social institutions as well as governance changes during the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-15) period. While giving the market a full role in the distribution of resources, the country should step up the establishment of a public service system and a service-oriented government. A systematic foundation should also be laid for the expansion of domestic demand and the establishment of social justice and sustainable development.

See also a Global Times editorial discussing Deng Xiaoping and the need for a steady and unified course of political reform.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: CCP 5th generation, Deng Xiaoping, economic reform, ideology, leadership transition, political reform, southern tour
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

A lengthy summary of the Tsinghua University report was published in the January 9 edition of China Youth Daily, and was quickly posted to a number of major Chinese web portals, including People’s Daily Online. But within hours, links to the article were disabled.

By mid-day the link to the China Youth Daily version at People’s Daily Online called up a warning page that read: “The page you are looking for does not exist. You will be automatically re-directed to the People’s Daily Online homepage in 5 seconds.” A similar warning from the popular Netease web portal read: “We’re sorry, the page you are visiting does not exist or has already been deleted.”

For several hours, users on the popular social media platform Sina Weibo shared a link to a cached version of the China Youth Daily report at Baidu.com, as well as news that the article had been deleted from sites like Netease. By day’s end the Baidu version had been pulled down as well. The page now linked only to the electronic edition of China Youth Daily, where an unreadable image of the original newspaper page could be found but the text to the right only read: “This article has been deleted.”

CMP also translates the China Daily summary of the report.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Internet censorship, political reform
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

“It’s in China’s interest for Myanmar to end its isolation,” said Zhao Daojiong, an international economist at Peking University. “An isolated Myanmar is an unstable Myanmar. It’s in China’s interest that Myanmar internationalize and stabilize ….”

Zhu Feng, international relations scholar at Peking University, …said he believes international media often plays up power struggles between the United States and China that don’t really exist.

“I don’t think Myanmar is of great significance strategically to China,” said Zhu. “It’s not bad in the eyes of China for Clinton to visit, for Myanmar to be more open, and it could be in the interests of China ….”

Zhu said there are fears that Burma will open too fast and violently, with something like a color revolution that fueled the Arab Spring. That kind of instability on China’s borders would inevitably create consternation here.

See also Reuters’ catalogue of Burma’s promised reforms and earlier coverage of Burma on CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Arab Spring, Burma, Hillary Clinton, Myanmar, political reform, United States, Zhu Feng
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Mr Mao lamented China’s backsliding on economic reforms and its recent surge of political repression.

He dismissed the country’s incoming leaders as being beholden to the current ones and for being focused only on protecting the Communist Party regime.

And he said officials and wealth have fused together into formidable vested interests that resist reform.

But he is nevertheless convinced that the country is on the brink of democratic change. ”I don’t know how it will happen but I feel confident,” he said. ”We will witness reform in the next five to 10 years.”

Read more about Mao Yushi’s essay about Mao Zedong which sparked such controversy:
* “Forces of Darkness” Bring Down Nationalist Chinese Website
* Boundlessly Loyal to the Great Monster
* Mao’s Legacy Still Divides China

Read all of CDT’s coverage of Mao Yushi.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: leftist, Mao Yushi, Mao Zedong, political reform
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall