President Hu Jintao, center, at a legislative session on Saturday.
Claro Cortes IV/Reuters
Posted on 03/11/2006 10:22:53 AM PST by gogoman
BEIJING, March 11 — For the first time in perhaps a decade, the National People's Congress, the Communist Party-run legislature now convened in its annual two-week session, is consumed with an ideological debate over socialism and capitalism that many assumed had been buried by China's long streak of fast economic growth.
The roots of the current debate can be traced to a biting critique of the property rights law that circulated on the Internet last summer. The critique's author, Gong Xiantian, a professor at Beijing University Law School, accused the legal experts who wrote the draft of "copying capitalist civil law like slaves," and offering equal protection to "a rich man's car and a beggar man's stick." Most of all, he protested that the proposed law did not state that "socialist property is inviolable," a once sacred legal concept in China.
"Our government only moves forward when it feels there is a strong consensus," said Mao Shoulong, a public policy specialist at Tsinghua University in Beijing. "Right now, the consensus is eroding and there is a debate over ideology, which we haven't seen for some time."
The divide does not appear likely to derail China's market-led growth. President Hu Jintao, in what Chinese political experts and party members said was a clear reference to the debate, told legislative delegates last week that China must "unshakably persist with economic reform."
Legislative officials insist that the proposed property law, which has taken eight years to prepare and which is intended to codify a more expansive notion of property rights added to China's Constitution in 2003, will sooner or later be enacted, though possibly with some significant modifications.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Paging willie green.
Well I can honestly admit that I like the idea of a two week legislative session.
There's a trend of China becoming more socialist lately. Not good.
This guy, Gong Xiantian (¹®Ï×Ìï), has created a huge controversy the past couple of months in Chinese internet and newspaper discussions. There was one Chinese editorial I read a while ago, titled "Hero or Villain?", the editorial ended by concluding that the inflammatory professor was law-illiterate and ought to be stripped of his tenure at Beijing Univ Law School.
Do they have tenure arrangements in Chinese universities?
Yeah, university traditions haven't changed much for the last 100 years in china (except during the cultural revolution). Originally lifetime tenure was offered to associate professors too, that has since been removed, only full professors can have lifetime tenure now. Getting tenure in China is relatively easy today, because academia doesn't pay well compared to financial or engineering jobs.
Given the great success Chinese communists had managing the economy when 71 million starved while Mao fiddled, is it any wonder they are itching to try again?
China will fracture before it changes.
I doubt the reformists/moderates/right will let the leftists in the party make large scoping changes to the current path. The reformists might try to satisfy the leftists (to avoid a party split) with some token compromises, like providing cooperative health care coverage and education plans in the poorest provinces. The middle class would revolt if the leftists had their way, so there's no chance the leftists will get the entre of the meal. China's petit bourgeois middle class in the 1940s was under 10 million, today it's over 300 million, four times the size of Communist Party members. Nevertheless, socialism wasn't even discussed in the past decade, now it's slowly creeping back into political disccusion. Hopefully, it's just a corrective reaction to the decades of economic growth and reformist policies (like having Democrats come to power for a few years after say 20 years of Republican control).
Backlash was expected. The Chinese capitalist movement made several mistakes. One, the first ones who made tons of money made sure they would have no competition from behind as more peasants became encouraged to try. Forming corporate agreements, dividing the markets into areas, working with local officials (bribing) to make rules making it harder for new small businesses to form but protecting the established ones, reserving lucrative contracts and positions in companies for relatives and offsprings of CCP members, nepotism, social arrogance of the new rich (running over farmers with their BMW and squashing the criminal complaint by local officials who are beholden to their upper class status) and the poor having little or no recourse will create a backlash against capitalism in China. China needs social stability as they try to remedy the growing gap between the rural poor and wealthy urban classes. The last time this happen was during KMT rule which resulted in a Communist rural revolution that overthrew them. The CCP is mindfull of this historical situation.
Rush said yesterday that what China needs is their own version of the ACLU.
The difference?.. Not much.. So it is with democractic RINOS and Rinoistic democrats.. The malaise?.. There is no malaise its done on purpose.. And the washed and un-washed are oblivious.. and don't really care.. As the republican party leaders pander for Mexicanistic RINOs.. and Democratic Mexicans.. Did I say it was on purpose?.. Oh! yeah..
In other words, I view the current socialism debate as rather frank discussions regarding possible corrective measures (a CYA) to decades of (sometimes rather corrupt) growth, and not as a radical change to reformist policies. A backlash would imply a reversal, and that's not the case here.
A "sharp debate", huh? Right. And I'll take vanilla.
The writer of this article (or the headline, at least) seems to have forgotten that the "Great Cultural Revolution", with its oceans of blood, is still well within living memory.
They really don't get it, but that's okay, most capitalists don't get it either.
You knew this was MSM before opening it to read.
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