Posted on 11/07/2002 8:42:02 PM PST by TLBSHOW
China's Jiang Opens Communist Party to Capitalists
Nov. 7 — By Jeremy Page
BEIJING (Reuters) - President Jiang Zemin called on China's Communist Party to open its doors to the new capitalist rich on Friday at the opening of a watershed congress expected to usher in a new generation of leaders.
But Jiang, speaking before a backdrop of a giant hammer and sickle, also stressed the China would not follow Western-style multi-party democracy or abandon its traditional support base of workers and peasants.
Jiang told the 2,114 delegates in Beijing's cavernous Great Hall of the People the theme of the congress was modernising the party to adapt to the wrenching social and economic changes as China opens its potentially vast market to the world.
Outside, streets lined with glitzy office blocks and shopping malls were splashed with red flags and slogan-bearing banners highlighting how China's Socialist political system lags far behind its breakneck capitalist-style economic development.
Vice President Hu Jintao, 59, is expected to take over as party chief after the congress as head of the new "fourth generation" of leaders after Chairman Mao Zedong, paramount leader Deng Xiaoping and Jiang.
But Jiang, 76, is expected to pull the strings from behind the curtain by installing allies in the new leadership and having his "Three Represents" political theory, which sanctions admitting capitalists, written into the party constitution.
Jiang offered no clues about the personnel changes, which have been kept under tight wraps. The final line-up will not be known until the chosen ones emerge from behind a screen in the Great Hall a day after the congress ends on November 14.
But in a break from precedent, he reviewed the 13 years since he took power after the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations ended in bloodshed and a leadership purge, rather than the usual five since the last congress.
REVAMPING THE PARTY
Jiang said the party should recruit "mainly from among workers, farmers, intellectuals, servicemen and cadres, thus expanding the basic component and backbone of the party."
"We should admit into the party advanced elements of other social strata who accept the party's program and constitution in order to increase the influence and rallying force of the party in society at large."
He also urged party delegates to act fully on his "Three Represents" theory.
"We should never copy any models of the political system of the West," he said.
Jiang echoed Chairman Mao Zedong's refrain "Let 100 flowers bloom and 100 schools of thought contend" in an apparent appeal for academic and political openness.
But police have thrown a tight security cordon around Beijing and detained a prominent democracy activist, while censors have threatened Chinese reporters with jail sentences for leaks about the highly secretive meeting.
Just before delegates arrived for the opening session, police detained two women who threw leaflets in the air outside the Great Hall of the People and grabbed the flyers from reporters before they could be read.
Moments earlier, they detained three women who tried to push their way to the entrance of the Great Hall in what appeared to be another protest.
POLICY SHIFTS
Jiang's speech was filled with political rhetoric but delegates, diplomats and China watchers scrutinized it for the slightest hint about the leadership change or a subtle shift in language which could indicate a major policy change.
Jiang said China and rival Taiwan should put aside political differences to resume talks, but upheld Beijing's right to use force against the island.
"On the basis of the one-China principle, let us shelve for now certain political disputes and resume the cross-strait dialogue and negotiations as soon as possible," he said.
Taiwan has been self-ruled since 1949, when the Nationalist army led by Chiang Kai-shek fled there to escape Mao Zedong's Communist forces, which seized control of mainland China.
Beijing regards Taiwan as a rebel province that must be brought back into the fold, with force if necessary.
"Our position of never undertaking to renounce the use of force is not directed at our Taiwan compatriots. It is aimed at the foreign forces' attempts to interfere in China's reunification and the Taiwan separatist forces' schemes for 'Taiwan independence'," Jiang said.
On the economy, he said China should expand reform of state companies, introducing more competition and keeping only a handful of firms under total government control.
The government would encourage urbanization and agricultural investment to help people in the countryside -- where the majority of Chinese live and where the income gap with urbanites is gaping dangerously -- make more money, he said.
He also pledged to fight terrorism, official corruption and "evil cults," a term used before to describe the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement.
--but it's all so much bullshit.
He pretends to "liberalize" the regime--but soldiers arrest democracy advocates.
He pretends to resign his three positions, but will install his Shanghai puppets.
He pretends to the Mao crap of let 100 toilets flush--
--but China is everywhere cracking down on internet access by censoring the truth.
He pretends to welcome capitalism--but free market capitalism must go hand in hand with free democratic governance.
He pretends to "crack down on terrorism" while everywhere cutting deals with terrorists, from arming the Taliban/al Qaeda to Cuba, North Korea and the usual suspects.
He must arrest journalists--let a thousand censorships blossom.
He cannot duplicate Hong Kong's prosperity so must subjugate it--
Seeing that tragedy/outrage, Taiwan will never acquiesce to unification.
Eyeing Taiwan's prosperity, he must buy billions more in Russian warships and submarines--
He is an old, brittle beetle--
Viagra and Moskit missiles--
A paper tiger.
Who cannot feed, clothe and house his thirteen hundred millions--
Only blast gas at 2100 captive puppet delegates.
Ah, Communism, the breeze off the sewage treatment plant is always the same.
China's president, Jiang Zemin, has told the world's last thriving Communist Party to prepare for greater changes ahead, saying it must "keep pace with the times".
At the opening of the 16th Party Congress in Beijing, Mr Jiang, 76, the party's general secretary, looked back at his 13 years in power, saying the party had survived the upheavals that brought down the Soviet Communist Party and other revolutionary movements around the world.
In a 90-minute speech, Mr Jiang described how the party could continue in power. He called for political reforms, although he ruled out the possibility that China would follow a Western model of democracy.
Police arrested five women who, despite intense security, had managed to get close to the congress at the Great Hall of the People in Tiananmen Square. The five were trying to distribute leaflets.
Mr Jiang, standing beneath the red hammer-and-sickle flag, warned that the party must adapt or die. "We must move forward or we will fall behind," he said. "Whether we can persist in doing this bears on the future and destiny of the party and state." Although Mr Jiang stressed that the party must maintain its iron grip on all areas of the state to guarantee "social stability", he dropped vague and tantalising hints that he recognised that the party needed to change the way it ruled.
He called for "developing socialist democracy" saying it was "essential to expand citizens' participation in political affairs" and necessary to ensure that human rights were respected. "We should establish and improve an inner-party democratic system," he urged the rows of handpicked delegates. "Political restructuring ... must help enhance the vitality of the party and state."
However, Mr Jiang also praised the People's Liberation Army, which brought him to power when it quelled the nationwide pro-democracy protests in 1989. "The party's absolute authority over the army is the eternal soul of the army," he said.
Mr Jiang outlined a plan to keep the party in absolute power, which consisted of broadening its power base so it would represent all classes while jettisoning Marxism as quickly and as decently as possible. The speech was noticeable for the sparse references to Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao and, instead, Mr Jiang often lapsed into fashionable management jargon. He said he foresaw the country "blazing a new trail to industrialisation" by relying on new technologies, above all information technology, to lead the way. He promised to do more to help the losers in the economic reforms, the tens of millions thrown out of work by the restructuring of state-owned industries and the hundreds of millions of peasants still mired in poverty.
Yet the speech gave few clues as to how China would create a functioning welfare system or create more social equality. An engineer by training, like most of those around him, Mr Jiang's greatest enthusiasm is reserved for hi-tech venture capitalism on the American model. "It is like a religion for him," a diplomat said.
This congress will formally endorse the entry into the party of "new social strata", including private entrepreneurs, and will retire the "third generation" leaders, including Mr Jiang. His speech gave no clues about the new leadership although this has been decided.
Mr Jiang also struck a more relaxed tone than in the past. There was less talk of the external threats facing the party and, unexpectedly, he proposed resuming reunification talks with Taiwan, which were broken off three years ago.
Yes, yes. Pay no attention to the fact that the Chinese people have no free speech or free press and BS can be fed to the masses. Doesn't matter to you.
look at what they have done and what they are planning to do.
Who are "they"? Communist party? You think government's run and cause everything?
The Chinese are adopting capitalism very agressively.
Adopting capitalism? Chinese have been capitalist for millenia. These communist party despots tried to stamp it out and killed almost 100 million Chinese people trying to do it. Of course they failed. Now they want to pretend they are bringing it to China when they just want to be saved and hold on to their absolute power.
Just visit Shanghai and you get a vision of the future, replete with a big dose of McDonalds and KFC - it makes Hong Kong, the former gleaming Asian capitalist center, look tired and obsolete.
Well, since 1997, this was inevitable, especially with the Shanghai clique in power in Beijing.
Yet, there is a preoccupation with pretty shiny objects...which are not always as well made or valuable as they are said to be.
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