SUN
WUKONG Xi
to guide CCP from revolution to
rule By Wu Zhong, China Editor
HONG KONG - The Chinese Communist Party
has began idealizing plans by Vice-President Xi
Jinping to transform the CCP from a
"revolutionary" into a "ruling party" weeks before
his expected elevation to the position of
president at the party's 18th National Congress,
Xi mentioned the strategy as early as
September 2008 at the opening ceremony of a new
academic year for the Central Party School - the
CCP's top training center of which Xi is
president.
He said the CCP had matured
from a party of revolution into one which "holds
the power to rule the country in the long term".
He called on all party members, especially
officials, to adapt themselves to this fundamental
change. At that time, many hailed
his remarks as a
significant theoretical breakthrough for the CCP
to explicitly bid farewell to "revolution" and
"class struggle" - the core ideas of Marxism and
Maoist thought. [1]
However, the CCP has
waiting until weeks before Xi is endorsed as the
No 1 party to elaborate on his ideals. The
congress is scheduled to be held on November 8.
The October 11 issue of People's Tribune,
a biweekly magazine published by the People's
Daily - the party's flagship newspaper, carried a
special package of seven articles that discussed
the importance of establishing a "modern" or "new"
political outlook.
People's Tribune claims
to be the most influential political periodical in
China, with "every issue sent to central,
provincial, municipal and county leaders". Hence
it can be certain that the unusual call for
establishing a "new political outlook" has had a
green-light from the very top.
An
introduction to the special package says that upon
the 63th anniversary of the founding of the
People's Republic of China (PRC) and right before
the 18th party congress, an urgent problem facing
the party is how it could escape the fate of the
"historical periodicity" [of one dynasty rising,
then decaying and dying] to continue to lead the
Chinese nation on a course of revitalization.
The first article of the package, written
by Gong Fangbin, a professor with the National
Defense University of the People's Liberation
Army, frankly admits that the Chinese people do
not feel any happier today despite great
achievements in economic development made through
reform and opening up in past three decades. On
the contrary, social conflicts seem to have
escalated. There are many reasons. But the
fundamental one is stagnation in restructuring the
political system. As a result, the currently
political system no longer fits to the economic
system that has undertaken fundamental changes in
past 30 years.
Everyone is aware of the
problem. So why has political restructuring not
been launched so far? Gong blames this on the
CCP's failure to establish a "new political
outlook" in keeping with for its transformation
from a "party of revolution" into China's "ruling
party".
There are great differences
between leading a revolution and ruling a country.
"The language of revolution is violence, while
ruling a country stresses on balance and
compromise. Fighting a revolution needs to
highlight and even intensify class struggle, but
ruling a country must eliminate [social] conflicts
and narrow differences… Fighting a revolution is
to safeguard the interests of one class by
depriving the interests of another class, but a
ruling party must satisfy the interests of all
social strata and groups... etc.," Gong writes,
adding that therefore it is impractical and
non-operational to use theories for a revolution
as the party's guidance after it comes in power.
Another writer Wang Changjiang, a
professor with the Central Party School, points
out that the mentality of being a party of
revolution still influences the CCP's perception
of today's problems. One reason for its failure to
change this mentality is due to vested-interest
groups' striving to safeguard their vested
interests.
Xu Yaotong, a research
professor with the National School of
Administration, maintains that for the mentality
change from a revolutionary party to a ruling one,
the CCP must establish and respect the rule of
law, give up ideology-led propaganda and cease to
launch political movements targeting certain
groups of people in society. For a ruling party
must work and be responsible for all people in
society, not a certain part or parts of them.
The seven writers, all known scholars in
China, stress the importance for the CCP as a
ruling party to establish and respect the rule of
law. A revolutionary party means to destroy the
existing social order and rule of law, but a
ruling party must build and maintain these. They
all agree that for the CCP to truly behave as a
ruling party, it must put itself and all its
officials under the law instead of above the law.
Their sharp remarks pinpoint the problems
facing today's China. How to deal with them? They
all agree that the CCP must start political
reforms, and introduce and expand democracy if it
wants to continue remaining the ruling party of
China. But like Xi, the democratization they talk
about seems to improve CCP's rule so that it
could, hopefully, remain as China's sole ruling
party forever. Democratization to pave the way for
a multi-party politics is out of question, since
multi-party politics imply that the CCP may lose
its ruling status. So what such democratization
will achieve is still anyone's guess.
Gong
says the establishment of a "new political
outlook", ie discarding a revolutionary mentality
to become a ruling party, will mark the third
major theoretical breakthrough in the CCP's
history. Mao Zedong made the first breakthrough to
win the victory of the revolution. Deng Xiaoping
made the second breakthrough to pave way for
reform and opening up. Now the rise of the Chinese
nation in the world relies on the third
breakthrough. Gong himself stops short of saying
it, but his argument clearly implies that if Xi
could achieve this, he would become the third
monumental leader in CCP history.
Changing
the CCP's revolutionary mentality is itself a
revolutionary move, which will require political
wisdom and courage. This is the case as the shift
implies giving up the orthodox definition of a
political party by Marxist, Leninist and Maoist
thought - that political parties are products of
class struggles with each party representing the
interests of a certain social class, and the
communist party is the vanguard of the working
class. The CCP constitution still stipulates just
that: "The CCP is the vanguard of the Chinese
proletariat ... The highest ideal and ultimate
goal of the party is to achieve communism."
This despite in fact the CCP has already
become an "all-people" party since 1997 when it
began to recruit "red-capitalists" as its members.
The CCP boasts to have 80 million members today.
Hence one out of 10 people aged 18 or above in
China is a communist party member (about a quarter
of the 1.3 billion Chinese population are below
18). Surely, they must come from various social
sectors. Apparently theorization of this change in
the nature of the party far lags behind practice.
The mentalit
UA-3625887-1area shape= SRC=0/lileft/tdBRy shift is also meant to give
up certain principles currently adopted by the
CCP, for example, the "four cardinal principles"
set by Deng himself. These four principles are
stipulated in the party constitution: the CCP
"must "uphold [the] socialist road, uphold
people's democratic dictatorship, uphold the CCP's
leadership, uphold Marxism, Leninism and Mao
Zedong thought ... and oppose bourgeois
liberalization". Giving up these principles is
meant to open the door for political and
ideological liberalization.
Obviously,
changing the "revolutionary mentality" and replace
it with a "new political outlook" is an arduous
task. Will its not certain if Xi and the new CCP
leadership can succeed in this challenge, the
discussion of a "new political outlook" suggests
Xi wants to chart a different path than his
predecessor.
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