China's annual National People's Congress (NPC,
Since they are occasions at which all Chinese politicians congregate in front of the cameras, anyone observant enough should be able to detect the subtle and sophisticated signals being sent by those politicians.
Because the meeting of the 16th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China
In fact, Jiang's long-time political rival Li Ruihuan (李瑞環), CPPCC chairman and member of the standing committee of the CCP politburo, attacked Jiang. Li made his criticism just the night before the political consultative conference began. He stressed that although it was necessary to have a series of activities to celebrate the new millennium, it is more important to continue promoting actual reforms; that although it is necessary to criticize Western capitalist democracy, it is even more important to build China's socialist democracy. Jiang's overly ambitious and unrealistic ideas and plans were quite clearly the target of Li's criticisms.
Meanwhile, the CPPCC defined its primary goals as promoting unity and democracy for the next year under Li's leadership. Thus, Li is now trying to emphasize his liberal image in order to distinguish himself from Jiang's conservativeness.
Just before these two conferences, a speech by Wan Li
The timing of the emergence of these two different voices -- just before these two conferences -- is significant.
One other thing that attracted much attention was the Chinese leaders' body language during the two conferences. After the NPC's opening ceremony, while Jiang was slowly gathering all the documents on his table, both former premier Li Peng (
People who are familiar with the CCP's rules and traditions know that Chinese leaders always pay particular attention to the order of entry and exit on such official occasions. The head of state always walks in front of everybody else. Some reporters, for example, also noticed that Wei Jianxing (尉健行), Li Lanqing (李嵐清) and Vice President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), along with other Politburo standing committee members, followed the tradition and waited for Jiang to leave first. Apparently, Li and Zhu neither took Jiang seriously, nor thought they should follow him.
As a matter of fact, rumor has it that Chinese leaders have had serious quarrels during the Politburo's meetings. Certain political heavyweights have reportedly even banged on the table during the meetings. The body language of the officials during the conference was proof that though Jiang may be the president of the PRC, the secretary-general of the CCP and the chairman of the Central Military Commission, his authority is far less than that of the late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平). Even in Deng's dotage, no other leader dared to walk in front of him on any public occasion.
Wang Dan was a student leader during the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations. He is a graduate student at Harvard University and a columnist for the Journalist magazine.
Translated by Eddy Chang
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