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| East Asia | ||||||
| China Orders Halt to Debate On Reforms | ||||||
| 2003-08-27 | ||||||
| The title reminds me of Basil Fawlty saying to Manuel "Whatever you do,don’t mention the war" After several months of permitting China’s intellectuals the freedom to call for political reform, ponder far-reaching revisions to the constitution and consider changes in the official history of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, the Communist Party has ordered a halt to such debate, and security personnel have begun harassing leading academics, economists and legal scholars, sources here say.
Well thats progress for you, it used to be a list a mile long of unmentionables, now we are down to just three items. Participants in a conference on constitutional reform have been followed, interrogated or instructed to stop speaking about the issues. This month, security personnel began trailing and harassing the conference organizer, Cao Siyuan, one of China’s experts on bankruptcy and a leading advocate of political reform, Chinese sources said. The conference was held June 19-20 in the coastal city of Qingdao. Two other participants have also faced criticism from the authorities: Jiang Ping, a leading legal scholar and the former dean of the University of Politics and Law, and Zhu Houze, a former propaganda chief for the party. Separately, in internal meetings over the summer at universities and government institutes, some influential scholars have called for a reevaluation of the official position on the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. Lets see a show of hands for those who think it was a tyrannical bloodbath.... They questioned the government’s version that the party was right to open fire on students who marched for democracy. My Heavens Ethel!!, Get me the smelling salts, Quick!! Chinese sources said the number and vociferousness of these demands had worried party officials, especially those close to Jiang Zemin, the former Communist Party boss and president. Jiang rose to power after the Tiananmen crackdown, and any change in the official version would undermine his legitimacy and that of people he placed in power. More broadly, the effort to muffle debate about the three issues appears to be part of a broader struggle between Jiang and his successor, Hu Jintao, according to the Chinese sources and analysts. Jiang and his allies, the sources said, generally oppose any political loosening. By contrast, Hu has portrayed himself as a friend of reformers and other progressives, attempting to gain their support in his struggle against Jiang. Hu was appointed general secretary of the Communist Party last November and became China’s president in March. He had waited for more than a decade to succeed Jiang, 76. But on the Standing Committee of the Politburo, the party’s most powerful body, Jiang surrounded Hu with his old allies. Of the nine members of the Politburo’s Standing Committee, five are believed to be loyal to Jiang. The former leader kept for himself one of China’s most powerful positions, head of the Central Military Commission, which controls the army. His men also took prominent positions on the State Council, the cabinet, in a move to hamstring Hu’s main ally, Premier Wen Jiabao.
So SARS may have the same effect on China that Chernobyl had on the Soviets? Stay tuned...... Li said Hu also won points by doing away with the annual summer meetings of Communist Party leaders at the resort town of Beidaihe and the party’s tradition of elaborate send-offs for officials traveling overseas. All wearing little Fez’s and driving mini mustang cars in a parade too, I think.... Many of the recent calls for change appeared to be a throwback to 1988 and the Third Plenum of the 13th Congress of the Communist Party, when the party general secretary, Zhao Ziyang, advocated political reform and the separation of the party and the government, and direct elections for local union leaders, among other reforms. Zhao was later ousted from his party post after Tiananmen because he opposed the bloody crackdown. On July 25, the Workers’ Daily published a call by Su Liqing, a senior official in China’s government-controlled labor union, for direct elections of local union bosses by factory workers. More Smelling Salts Ethel! This proposal had not been broached officially since before the Tiananmen crackdown. Also, a group of five senior party elders, including Wan Li, Qiao Shi and Deng Lijun, wrote letters urging Jiang to step down from all his positions. And independent intellectuals began raising the idea of revising the official history of Tiananmen. Several other articles appeared in Study Times, a Communist Party publication run by the Central Party School. Over the past two months, the periodical has published six pieces advocating political reform. In early June, Seeking Truth, the party’s main theoretical publication Better than calling it "The Snipe Hunt Quarterly" I guess.... ran an article calling for more democracy within the party not for you jokers on the street of course, but for just us guys in the party mind you..... On Aug. 3, Study Times published an article urging party committees to stop interfering in the affairs of government departments — an idea last broached in 1988. The struggle has also stretched into the news media, which in recent months has been full of conflicting signals. Following an explosion of ground-breaking reports during the SARS epidemic, the Propaganda Ministry, led by a Jiang loyalist, Liu Yunshan, has issued a series of circulars banning reports on a variety of topics. This Just In Comrade!, Socialism found to be worst of all possible governments, Details at 11:00" At the same time, Liu’s ostensible boss, Li Changchun, a member of the Politburo’s Standing Committee, has been pushing a major reorganization of the state-run press that will result in the shuttering of scores of party newspapers and end the practice of forcing government units to subscribe to party newspapers. This reorganization, triggered by the increasing power of the Chinese media market, means that many party newspapers that previously enjoyed guaranteed circulation will have to compete to attract readers. Quick!, Lo Pan! get the flit, I see an outbreak of the evil market forces demon! At the Qingdao conference, 41 leading Chinese academics and a few government officials presented papers on constitutional reform. China is planning to revise its constitution next year. Wu Bangguo, the chairman of the National People’s Congress, is chairing a special committee on the issue. Chinese sources close to that committee said there are two main additions to the constitution being debated. One is a clause protecting private property Bingo! private property being the cornerstone of human liberty, that being if you cant own property you ARE property. , another sign of the increasing power of the market economy in China. The other is a clause enshrining the "Three Represents," a modification of Marxist theory developed by Jiang that says the Communist Party should represent the interests of all the people, including businesses, rather than just the working class. To paraphrase Capt. Yossarian, "wow thats some modification...."
Not to mention a boot in the ass of Lenin, Stalin and Marx "He might have gone too far," said one participant, who has been followed by security agents for several weeks. "But we all agreed with him." Boy, A written constitution, a guarantee of property rights and attempting to be free of ideology within the law? if this sort of thing catches on in Europe, what will be the state of world socialism then?
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| Posted by:Frank Martin |
| #7 I look at the handiwork of Deng and see pure mastery. Machiavelli would be proud. To my mind, part of what's going on is heading off a crisis over free speech. It's being kicked down the road until the next generation. At the same time, institutional changes are being put in place to give a firmer base for reform. Control is retained, but the institutional instruments of control are being removed. The institutions are being changed with amazing speed. The RAND study on regime change in war has a lot of thought I think applies here. The party elites have set up a tyranny system of sorts. Each generation of leaders weakens the entirety as a means of retaining control. Unlike a tyranny, it's not done through cruelty to the populace, but rather the populace is the threat held by the inner party against the outer party. The prize to be looted is not money or power, but immortality. In establishing the system and setting it in motion, Deng has secured his own immortality. Ziang is sticking around to ensure that his is secured as well, with including the 'Three Represents' in the constitution. |
| Posted by: Dishman 2003-8-27 9:08:00 PM |
| #6 "I wouldn't mind being pleasantly surprised again." Nor would I. In my case, "wouldn't mind" would be an understatement to put an Englishman to shame. |
| Posted by: Kathy K 2003-8-27 8:57:55 PM |
| #5 Good discussion, and interesting thoughts but I would say its a bit like the catholics excusing the inquisition by saying 'sure,bad things happened, but it wasnt really true christianity'. Socialism - rather done in small parts or in whole parcel, always leads back to the tyranny of the state over the individual. Whether or not its done for the peoples "own good" is never the question but it is always the answer given by tyrants to justify their inhuman rule. Socialism falls right after the idea of 'heaven on earth' or utopia as one of the most distructive ideas invented by mankind. In regards to China, I wouldnt say its capitalist, as it barely recognizes a market based economy, the fact that it uses money is inconsequential. I would say that it holds more true to fascism more than it does to communism, but I've always felt there isnt a whole lot of difference between those two in the first place ( fascist tyrants tend to insist on uniforms largely black with red piping while communist tyrants, tend to prefer more red devices and bigger hats, other than that, they use the same methods to control and kill their people. ) ( I really,really hate the Nazis, but they did have some sharp looking uniforms, democracies tend to make uniforms that look like bus drivers. ) My posting was in recognition that China appears to be at a crossroads, one that still catches me by surprise. But then again I was surprised when the soviet union collapsed largely because ( it seemed to me anyway) they all woke up one day and realized there wasnt any money in communism and it might be nice to have more than one brand of toilet paper. I wouldn't mind being pleasantly surprised again. |
| Posted by: Frank Martin 2003-8-27 8:28:21 PM |
| #4 whats going on in china has nothing to do with socialism. the proposed constitutional change by the "bad guys" says that the Communist party should be held to represent business, as well as workers (and peasants) How is this socialist? Any meaningful socialist party represent the interests of the working class, against all other interests. A social democratic party, functioning in a liberal society, accepts the existence of other interests, and represents the interest of the working class against them. The communist part of China, historically denied the rights of other parties to exist - they denied the rights of any interests other than workers and peasants to exist, - thus the Communist party, as purported defender of workers and peasants was the sole legitimate party. China today is capitalist - arguably one of the most Dickensian, capitalist states on the planet. The party thus faces a choice - to recognise the rights of other parties to organize - and thus to attempt to become a social democratic party - like some of the reformed Communist parties of eastern europe - or to try to represent all interests, thus becoming more or less a fascist party. the communist party is choosing to put absolute power ahead of socialism, and so is choosing the fascist model. (note well - in this discussion i have made no distinction between democratic socialism and social democracy - a distinction i consider important in other contexts) |
| Posted by: liberalhawk 2003-8-27 4:33:00 PM |
| #3 In the past weeks, party organizations, research institutes and universities have been instructed to stop all conferences and suppress all essays about those three topics, according to sources within the Communist Party. The next time any of the usual dumbasses complain about dissent in the U.S. being "crushed" by GWB and his administration, point them directly at China for a really good example on how such a thing is done and ask them: Is this really what's happening in the U.S.???? |
| Posted by: Bomb-a-rama 2003-8-27 3:31:44 PM |
| #2 The official word is that it really is old vladimir under glass in red square, but the word on the street has always been that its a wax dummy. ( How could Stalin allow forensic evidence that he had Lenin killed to exist? easy, put him on display and then not allow anyone to touch him. pretty clever, eh comrade!) Looks like a case where the corpse lasted longer than the ideas of the man himself. I cant think of a better totem of the failure of communism than either a rotting corpse kept preserved under glass or a wax dummy taking the place of a man to keep up the illusion. it works on so many levels. |
| Posted by: Frank Martin 2003-8-27 3:15:09 PM |
| #1 (Did they bury Lenin or is he still topside?) |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2003-8-27 2:50:53 PM |