Print

Mail

wiki links

Party elite draw veil over key meeting

The Communist Party's ruling elite entered their second day of a key annual meeting yesterday with a silence that extended even to the party's own newspaper, which let the event pass without a single official mention that it had convened at all.

Nor did state television's midday newscast take note of the plenum of the 16th Party Congress. Party leaders are expected to approve putting former president Jiang Zemin's (江澤民) theories of entrepreneurialism -- and possibly notions of private property ownership -- into the country's constitution.

Such moves would push the ostensibly communist system even further toward the capitalism that its founder, Mao Zedong (毛澤東), scorned to the day he died.

But unlike the pomp and fanfare that accompanied last autumn's party congress meeting, this year's plenum of the inner leadership, a lesser meeting, is shrouded in secrecy and is being oddly lowballed by the state-controlled media. One possible reason: The outcome might not be entirely certain.

The party newspaper People's Daily made no mention of its meeting in yesterday's editions. It opted instead to use the top of the front page for a picture of the town where China's first manned space capsule will be launched this week and articles about reform in central Henan Province and re-employment efforts in Fujian Province. Reform and employment are both major party issues.

One rather staid paper, the China Youth Daily, ran a report from the official Xinhua News Agency touting, essentially, the party's official message -- that "improvement of the socialist market economy is a major issue."

"After 25 years of practice and development, China has effectively set up a socialist market economy. Now improving that is the next major task," the newspaper said. "People believe that this meeting will push forward the development of our economic system in the new century."

It recommended restructuring of sluggish major state-owned enterprises, long a goal of economic reform.

The meeting takes place at a crucial time for China's new generation of leaders. While economic growth continues, millions of Chinese -- particularly in the industrial northeast -- are out of work. Rural poverty remains endemic.

The new leadership, under President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), has spearheaded the notion of creating a "well-off society" that allows most Chinese to benefit from the experiment in market forces that Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) unleashed 25 years ago.
This story has been viewed 1428 times.