China’s top leaders marked National Day yesterday with an appearance on Tiananmen Square in central Beijing after Prime Minister Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) pledged greater “democracy” and rights for the people.
Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), Wen and top Communist Party leaders descended on the vast square and bowed before the monument to revolutionary martyrs, as they marked the 62nd anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
In a speech on Friday night, Wen pledged to address China’s biggest social issues, including rising inflation, a yawning income gap, unemployment, food safety, corruption, environmental destruction and social injustice.
“We will make great efforts to guarantee and perfect democracy and resolve the problems that most concern the people and that most directly involve their interests,” Wen said in the speech posted yesterday on government Web sites.
“We will make great efforts to advance the opening and reform and continue to push forward economic, political, cultural and social system reform. We will make great efforts to safeguard social justice, and ensure the people’s democratic rights and judicial fairness,” he said.
However, by “democracy” China’s communist leaders do not mean multi-party competition for power at the ballot box, generally referring instead to discussions within the ruling elite.
During his speech, Wen insisted that the nation would adhere to “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” code for the one-party dictatorship’s refusal to countenance the separation of powers seen in governments around the world.
However, “we must ... dare to study and draw lessons from the outstanding achievements produced by every nation of the world and make contributions to the advance of human civilization,” Wen said.
In recent years, China has witnessed an unprecedented number of street protests often aimed at government graft and the widening wealth gap.
In response, Wen has repeatedly pledged to advance democracy and human rights, even as his government has cracked down on any sign of unrest since jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波) was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year.
The crackdown intensified in February, with leading activists and rights lawyers disappearing into police custody without being charged amid anonymous Internet calls for Arab-style protests in China.
Wen’s remarks also come as the nation’s parliament deliberates amendments to the criminal code that would allow police to secretly detain suspects for up to six months without charges and without notifying their families.
Activists and rights group have loudly decried the amendments as a blatant violation of human rights.
China’s crackdown on dissent is likely to continue until at least next year when a key party congress announces a new leadership, followed by the retirement of Hu and Wen in early 2013, said Willy Lam (林和立), a China expert at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
“Wen Jiabao remains a kind of minority in the leadership as far as political reform ... he is a voice in the wilderness,” Lam said. “Wen is determined to persevere until his term is up, but there is no possibility that the collective leadership will make a decision to revive or continue political reform ... in terms of facts there has been a retrogression on political reform.”
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