QINGDAO, Oct. 15
In addition, media inside and outside China have focused on what personnel changes will take place among the top Party leadership during the Congress. There have been all kinds of conjectures and rumors as to who will be the future president and the members of the standing committee of the Politburo.
The reason media pay so much attention to changes among the CCP leadership is that the top Party authority operates from within a black box, which increases the curiosity of the media. Second, it has been widely said that the battles between President Hu Jintao, former President Jiang Zemin and vice President Zeng Qinghong are very fierce. These are the battles between the Party League faction, the Shanghai gang and the "princelings," or children of senior Party leaders.
Third, many people believe that Chinese politics are controlled by a small number of people and that different leadership will produce different policies. Therefore, personnel changes among the top CCP leadership touch the nerve of the media. However, in my opinion, personnel changes will not have much substantial impact on China's political trends after the 17th Congress.
No matter who is elected to the Politburo, it will not change the confirmed path of the CCP. That path is determined by the nature and the collective interests of the Party -- the 17th Congress will remain in the middle, rejecting both left and right, and continue with limited reforms coated by socialism with Chinese characteristics.
From the collective view of the CCP, no matter who among the competing groups is elected to the Standing Committee, they will have no choice but to follow the confirmed direction. Even if the school of Mao Zedong took the top position, they could not reverse the vehicle of history. They could not put an end to the reforms of the market economy, or they would not be able to take a single step forward.
Mainstream Party members are worried that the extreme leftists will reverse the trend and destroy their future, or that the liberal rightists will destroy their legitimacy. So they are blocking both. Hu Jintao's speech at the Party School on June 25 set the tone for the 17th National Congress. That speech did not reflect Hu's own will; it represented the only choice based on the collective interests of the Party.
If the nature of the CCP remains unchanged, no matter who is in the top leadership, the Party will not deviate from protecting its collective interest. Therefore, generally speaking, personnel changes and the choice of a successor to Hu Jintao will not be key issues that can influence the whole situation.
Since the start of the reforms and opening the gate of China's economy, the gap between rich and poor has grown larger and larger; government corruption and the imbalance between supply and demand in terms of consumer products, education, medical care and social security are becoming more and more serious.
The media in China have made various remarks on these issues. Since the meeting of the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference earlier this year, the extreme leftists have taken the position of opposing the reforms by attacking the problems they have created. Recently they issued a statement called the "ten thousand words" criticizing the reforms. The leftists have never been this active since Deng Xiaoping made his famous "southern tour" in 1992, which started the reform movement.
The CCP's 17th Congress has been subject to pressure from both the leftists and the rightists. But what matters most is the political path the Party decides to take after the congress.
Actually, the CCP's choice of political path has been obvious. In February this year, Premier Wen Jiabao published an article titled "The Historical Tasks in the Preliminary Stage of Socialism and Some Questions Regarding China's Foreign Policy." Moreover, on June 25, the eve of the 86th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party, Hu Jinao gave a speech proposing the "four firm persistences." These two articles of Wen and Hu reject both left and right and set the political direction of the CCP's 17th Congress.
Hu Jintao used his speech to clearly respond to the conservative socialists. On the other hand, he denied democratic socialism and social democracy and would certainly not accept liberal democracy. "The People's Net" commented that the purpose of the speech was to unify the thinking of high-level CCP officials before the 17th Party Congress began, so that the Congress would be lead under the unified thought of the whole Party.
Among the "four firm persistences" outlined by Hu, "liberating one's thinking" is on top. Additionally, Wen Jiabao recently published a poem named "Looking Up at the Starry Sky", which also implied the need to liberate one's thinking. Then will there really be a movement of liberated thinking after the 17th Party Congress?
(To be continued)
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(Mu Chuanheng is a freelance writer and a former lawyer. He has published a number of books on trade negotiations and democratic politics. He is included in the book "World Celebrities (China Vol. 2) published in Hong Kong for his new theory of culture. This article is edited and translated from the Chinese by UPI Asia Online; the original can be found at www.ncn.org. ©Copyright Mu Chuanheng.)
http://www.upiasiaonline.com/politics/2007/10/16/commentary_political_trend_of_the_communist_party_congress_part_i/
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