Chinese President Hu Jintao declared yesterday (December 18) that China would never turn back from its policy of reform and opening up, but it would also not go down the path of a Western liberal democracy.
Amid the worst global financial crisis since the 1930s, Hu identified maintaining social stability as the most pressing task for the Chinese government, reviving official slogans used after the 1989 Tiananmen protests and the fall of the Soviet Union.
The exhortation reflects a certain anxiety among the Chinese leaders, say analysts, even as Hu presented a glowing 30-year report card showing average annual growth of 9.8 per cent, China’s hosting of the Olympics and its ascent into space.
“Development is the overriding principle,” he said, repeating a famous slogan of the late patriarch Deng Xiaoping to turn China into a market economy after a party meeting on Dec 18, 1978.
But Hu added: “Stability is the overriding task“–another slogan by Deng, which was used only after the end of the Cold War and the turmoil of the student protests in 1989, when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) feared for its future.
“If there is no stability, then nothing can be achieved, and what achievements we have made will be lost,” Hu told a gathering of party leaders and others in the Great Hall of the People to celebrate 30 years of economic reform in China.
The reform policy put an end to decades of command economy, isolation and chaotic political struggles under Mao Zedong–a change which China celebrated yesterday with variety programmes on China Central Television and photo exhibitions.
Hu stressed that there would be no return to those autarkic days, but in unusually strong words, he said that China will never deviate from socialism and go down a “evil path”.
“We must draw on the beneficial fruits of humankind’s political civilisation, but we will never copy the model of the Western political system,” he said.
Renowned China economist Wu Jinglian told The Straits Times outside the Great Hall that the main message from Hu was that reform will continue.
Official news agency Xinhua in its reports stressed Hu’s message that China would adhere to its own social system and development path and “never bow to foreign pressure”.
But Hong Kong-based political analyst Willy Lam read Hu’s defence of the system as betraying nervousness about pressures that could appear because of the economic downturn.
“The financial crisis has surprised the leaders and they are genuinely afraid that the migrant workers who lost their jobs would cause social unrest,” he said.
After 30 years of economic reforms, questions about political change have also surfaced.In the recent Charter 08 movement, for example, more than 300 intellectuals, journalists and activists, from across the country, put their names to a document asking for more rights, freedom and democratic elections for all levels of government.
While Hu mentioned democracy several times yesterday, it was in the context of “inner party democracy” and “democratic socialism”.
He made plain that the CCP must remain the vanguard of the Chinese people and stay true to its origins as a Marxist-Leninist party.
Rather then the usual perfunctory reference to Marxism that is typical of Chinese leaders’ speeches in recent years, Hu mentioned it 34 times in his 90-minute speech–about once every three minutes.
The route ahead, he said, was continued economic reform, along the lines of the last three decades.And Hu, who was watched on stage by his predecessor–third-generation leader Jiang Zemin–elevated the status of the reform policy by calling it China’s “third revolution” in the 20th century.
The first two are the overthrow of the imperial system in 1911 and the triumph of the communists in 1949.
He also said repeatedly that among the ideologies the CCP must adhere to, it is the Deng Xiaoping Theory–economic development in socialism–that deserves greater emphasis.It was a nod to his patron Deng, who handpicked him to be the fourth-generation leader, and indirectly, an affirmation of his own legitimacy as party leader.
Hu also issued a subtle warning to the party rank-and-file that the CCP’s power should not be taken for granted.
“Possession in the past does not mean that you would still have it today.Possession today does not mean that you would have it forever,” he said.
These words will be ringing in alot of ears for awhile, not least of whose our MM LKY’s.Like it or not, MM LKY has shaped Singapore in exactly the two dictums said by Deng Xiaoping.In fact I’ll willing to wager it was LKY who shared this principle with Deng when they met in 1978 although it could be the other way around, but it matters not because both DXP and LKY went through similar trials by fire through their own country’s political turmoil and emerged as political leaders later on, and could have come to the same conclusions separately or were students of the same philisophy of collectivism.
The implicit social contracts of Singapore and China, have in their pursuits towards a position in the global stage, stressed collectivism over individualism, where the needs and priorities of a nation are stressed over those of the individual.This is the direct opposite of liberal democracies like the UK and US, the two being of such extreme examples of societies that stress individualism, till the point where certain individuals have nearly full reign over their host nations.Look at where that has brought them; double-edge sword no less.
Both methods have, if left unchecked, their extreme forms.Too much control or collective thought and it becomes an oppressive totalitarian regime.Too much freedom and it becomes an anarchy.While opponents have argued that the governments of Singapore and China are restrictive regimes with oft-reported cases of bankruptcy cases and civil crackdowns, it is to my mind a delicate balance of individual freedoms and a collective purpose that is needed.I am no student of such philosophies or theories but it does seem to me that Singapore has been trying to balance this for the last 40 years.I believe it has more or less found a nice balance.
More or less.Personally I’m for having a livelihood and being able to continue being a citizen of a country that exists (instead of burning in ruinous flames) than being able to run around naked.
