From Chinaelections.org:

During a recent interview with foreign reporters, Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier, said “China’s economy has been growing at an average annual rate of over 9% during the past three decades. In the last three years, its annual growth rate has exceeded 10%. Many people are asking whether China can maintain sustained and long-term development. My answer is in the affirmative. The key is we have pursued the right domestic and foreign policy and we are well prepared to respond to new developments.” A key factor for this unprecedented economic success is the successful strategy of suppressing the ideological debate on the nature of the market economy to a minimum by the top leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Despite the fact that sustained economic growth has given China a new power status and a new voice at the global stage, the growing gap between the rich and the poor, the continuous deterioration of the status of the workers and farmers and rampant corruption within the Party and the government have provided a gaping hole for the army of the leftist theorists and defenders of Marxist, Leninist and Maoist orthodoxies to restart a new round of debate on the nature of socialism of Chinese characteristics. It is in this context that the Hu-Wen administration has to adjust its domestic policies. The shift in policy from GDP growth to people’s livelihood and social justice is a response to this emerging ideological challenge. This call for policy revision is ferocious in that it invokes the most stifling and untouchable ghost”the Chinese nationalism that sees the world in the light of an imperialist conspiracy to change the “color” of China and the Chinese effort to thwart it. In a sense, the legitimacy of the CCP is still immersed in this orthodoxy. As a result, what begins as an ideological battle can easily turn into a power struggle, as the CCP will convene a new national congress in the fall of 2007. [Full Text]