China's reforms stalled again

Orville Schell, Dean, School of Journalism, University of California Berkeley, Project Syndicate

As the 82nd anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party approached last July, the Party's new General Secretary, Hu Jintao, seemed on the verge of announcing a whole new range of reforms. In a ceremony celebrating the promulgation of the current 1982 constitution, Hu reportedly expressed interest in strengthening constitutional protections against official intrusions in people's lives and in promoting extensive legal reform. Indeed, he was even rumored to be considering more inner-Party democratization, greater press freedom, strengthening non-Communist political parties, and permitting exiled dissidents to return home.

Such optimistic views were reenforced when Chinese intellectuals -- even some official scholars -- began writing and speaking out in favor of re-evaluating controversial Party verdicts on historical incidents (such as the Tiananmen Square massacre). Similarly, there was an increase in public advocacy on behalf of rural workers (who have been migrating by the tens of millions into China's cities), as well as calls for significant constitutional changes.

For example, legal scholar Cao Siyuan began writing on, lobbying for, and organizing conferences about constitutional reform. The fact that Cao was detained after the 1989 Beijing Massacre, expelled from the Party, spent time abroad lecturing, and now runs a research consulting firm, seemed no impediment. Cao was careful to stay within the bounds of moderate reformism, yet he openly called for reform within five areas of governance: The constitution, separation of powers, elections, political parties, and the culture of politics.

For their part, Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao were even reported to have authorized a top-level body, "The Leading Group On Revising the Constitution," to draft "sweeping changes" that would be considered in March 2004 when the next plenary session of the National People's Congress met.

The proposed changes were reported to include an amendment that would guarantee the same rights to property for private entrepreneurs as for state-owned enterprises, the constitutional right of Party members to choose their leaders, and even some steps toward a multi-party political system.

The Party's evident tolerance toward these ideas was assumed to emanate from Hu Jintao himself. When Hu also canceled the traditional closed-door summer caucus of old Party elders that takes place each year at the beach resort of Beidaihe, hopes were raised that political reform might actually burst forth.

However, when none of these issues were raised in Hu's July 1st speech to the nation, reform-minded Chinese were palpably discouraged. To the disappointment of many, Hu ended up giving a lackluster oration that, instead of extolling political reform, re-emphasized the dreary notion of the Three Represents -- the banal theory advanced by former Party chief Jiang Zemin, which allowed businessmen to be included in the Party.

Then reform-minded intellectuals like Cao Siyuan began to be trailed by Public Security Bureau goons, and members attending a conferences on legal reform organized by Cao were admonished by the Propaganda Department (China's censors) to stop discussing the "three unmentionables," (political reform, constitutional revision, and reversing the verdicts on historical incidents).

It was clear that the reform bandwagon had hit a wall. Indeed, the Party soon issued a document to think tanks, media outlets and universities banning all public debate on these issues.

What happened? As so often in the past, this latest reform effort hit the limits of permissible Party tolerance almost before it got going.

It is an old story in China: Calls for reform by liberalizers end up antagonizing conservative Party members -- in this case, the political faction of Jiang Zemin, who, although not on the Politburo standing committee, still heads the powerful central Military Commission and wields substantial influence. The reformers were silenced in the name of maintaining stability.

Since the early 1980's China has experienced many iterations of this dynamic. While it is true that some modest residue of progress often remains after these episodes end, China's current political environment is far more censorious and intolerant now than it was in the mid-1980s.

Indeed, this most recent example of reformus interruptus once again raises the all-important question of whether China can actually undergo a "peaceful evolution," at least so long as the Chinese Communist Party remains in control. What this pattern suggests is that the Party can rarely choke down more than the smallest dose of political reform, much less outright criticism before reacting in an almost autonomic fashion against it.

While a process of "peaceful evolution" offers the best prospect for change in this mutating "people's republic," the Party's demonstrated inability to countenance even the most modest quotients of political challenge -- even with a new generation of leaders in power -- does not inspire confidence in the prospect for piecemeal reform.

The failure of this latest mini-reform movement suggests that when it comes to politics, fazhi, or the rule of law, has still made relatively little progress in eclipsing renzhi, the rule of men.

China may be something of a miracle of economic reform, but until changes come in its Leninist governmental system, borrowed from the USSR during the Stalinist era, a truly new New China will never arise.

While one hopes that China will find some way to continue transforming itself peacefully, the Communist Party's continuing intolerance of free expression, and its refusal to allow its people even to discuss in public how their government might be reformed, does not bode well for the future.