Thanks to Josh Chin for submitting the following post to CDN:
Lu Yuegang, a reporter for the China Youth Daily who writes often about the plight of the country’s have-nots, has just fired off an open letter demanding political reform to the secretary of the Communist Youth League, according to a recent post on Radio Free Asia that cites a report from HK-based Ming Pao.
In the letter, Lu partially blames a People’s Daily editorial from April of 1989 for the Tian’anmen Square bloodshed and said political reform was a matter of “extreme urgency…not just related to the destiny of the Chinese Communist Party, but also to the prosperity and happiness of the Chinese people.”
Lu is apparently no stranger to taking a public stand against Party policy, having signed an open letter in November of last year protesting government control of the Internet. But this is a much bolder statement, especially given the well publicized trouble Jiang Yanyong recently got into by asking for an official reassesment of the Tian’anmen incident. Has Lu gone crazy? Or is he gambling on the notion that the Party wouldn’t dare imprison a second high-profile figure with global media access in so short a period of time?
Also, do the Jiang Yanyong and Lu Yuegang stories signify a reawakening of political boldness on the mainland? And, given all the talk (in the New York Times and elsewhere) of Jiang Zemin’s continued strangehold on decision-making in the Party, does this have anything to do with trying to sway the balance of power at the top away from Jiang towards Hu Jintao?
