CHINA AWAITS DEEDS TO MATCH POLITICAL REFORM RHETORIC / THE FINANCIAL TIMES ( RECOMMENDED READING )

China awaits deeds to match political reform rhetoric


By Geoff Dyer in Beijing

Published: October 13 2010 17:23

As the 300-odd leading members of the Chinese Communist party prepare for their annual meeting to begin on Friday, one man and one issue are dominating discussion: Wen Jiabao, the premier, and his app­roach to political reform.


Over the past few months Mr Wen has made a series of ever bolder statements on the political system, prompting speculation he will use the party meeting to ignite a campaign for greater reform. Yet even if that is Mr Wen’s plan, some analysts believe, his prospects could have been made harder by the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo, the jailed dissident.


Mr Wen’s rhetorical foray started in April when he wrote an essay to mark the death of former Communist party boss Hu Yaobang, a supporter of economic and political reform who was pushed out of power by conservative opponents in 1987.


The potential symbolism was powerful, given that it was the death of Mr Hu that sparked the 1989 Tiananmen protests. “He spared no effort and used a lifetime’s vigour to fight for the nation,” Mr Wen wrote in an article in the People’s Daily of his former boss.


In August Mr Wen used a visit to Shenzhen, the city in southern China that is the spiritual home of economic reform, to push his message more firmly, saying that political reform was a necessary companion to economic modernisation. “Without the safeguard of political reform, the fruits of economic reform would be lost,” he said.


In an interview with CNN this month, Mr Wen’s comments were even blunter.


The Communist party should act “in accordance with the constitution and the law”, he said. “Freedom of speech is indispensable for any country” and “the people’s wishes and needs for democracy and freedom are irresistible”.


What is Mr Wen really up to? Jing Huang, a professor at the National University of Singapore, believes that Mr Wen has genuinely been trying to prepare for a big push on political reform. He is due to retire in 2012 and knows this is his last big chance to make an impact.


“Wen Jiabao is a very cautious man and he would not make such a bold move if he did not think there was considerable support from within the party and from society,” he says.


Yet not everyone is convinced. Some intellectuals in Beijing have grown frustrated at the slow pace of reform under Mr Wen and Hu Jintao, the president, and believe they are essentially conservative figures who pay only lip-service to shaking up the political ­system.


Yu Jie, a 37-year-old writer, recently published a book on Mr Wen entitled China’s Best Actor, a gibe at the premier’s sometimes theatrical scenes of empathy with the public. “Hu and Wen are two sides of the same coin: they believe in stability above all else,” he says. “Many writers and intellectuals have given up expecting much.”


Within the leadership there are also plenty of officials sceptical of reform. Zhou Yongkang, who is the country’s senior security official and who was standing beside Kim Jong-il at the weekend’s parade in North Korea, recently wrote an article attacking “erroneous western political ideas”.


As a result, some analysts believe, Mr Wen’s calls for political reform are a tactic designed to prevent liberal members of the elite, such as the former propaganda officials who wrote a public letter this week calling for more media freedom, from becoming too disenchanted.


There is also little detail on the substance of any reform. For some that would mean expanding the role of the National People’s Congress, the legislature that largely acts as a rubber stamp, or securing greater press freedoms. Yet when China’s leaders talk of democracy, as they sometimes do, they are often referring to more elections within the Communist party for positions, rather than votes involving the general population.

Prof Huang, who believes Mr Wen is sincere on political reform, also believes that in the short term support has been severely undermined by the award of the Nobel Prize to Mr Liu, viewed by many in Beijing as a calculated insult.


“Now the hardliners are laughing in his [Wen’s] face,” says Prof Huang. “There are a lot of people within the system who are now saying, ‘No matter how hard we work, there are people who always want to hold China down’.”


Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010.