There has been much speculation that the Chinese Communist Party’s central committee, which is in a four-day meeting, could discuss political reform.
A genuine debate on freedom and democracy in China, as well as what changes are needed to the country’s peculiar mix of capitalism and communism are, of course, long overdue, but if they do take place, they should be greatly welcomed.
Everyone acknowledges that while China has made great strides forward in economic reform, the pace of political reform has been very slow. It is true that each country’s particular circumstances and history need to be taken into account when promoting political reforms, but I have never accepted the argument that “China is different” or that “Asia and democracy are incompatible” in defence of Chinese authoritarianism.
A sizeable number of Asian countries have democratic or semi-democratic systems in place, such as Japan, India, South Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia, so why can’t China embark on a gradual process of political freedom?
Of course, one has to take into consideration the fact that China has no history of democracy, and nobody expects a Western-style pluralistic democracy to be introduced overnight. However, progress can definitely be made in respecting human rights, which after all, are universal rights.
Last week, China’s political system was very much under the international media spotlight after the Nobel Peace prize was awarded to Liu Xiaobo, a dissident jailed for 11 years for “inciting subversion” after drafting Charter 08 – which called for multi-party democracy and respect for human rights in China.
China denounced the choice of Liu and a Foreign Ministry spokesman said: “Liu Xiaobo is a criminal who violated Chinese law. It’s a complete violation of the principles of the prize and an insult to the peace prize itself for the Nobel committee to award the prize to such a person.”
Last Tuesday, however, 23 former Communist Party officials published a letter demanding an end to censorship in China. In an open letter to the standing committee of the National People’s Congress, the group called on the legislative body to pass laws entrenching freedom of speech and publishing, both of which are guaranteed in the country’s constitution but which are denied in practice.
“The ‘socialist democracy’ with Chinese characteristics propagated by our country has become just too embarrassing,” the letter said. It called for publishers and editors to control book and newspaper content, and demanded an end to pre-publication screening by government censors and an end to internet censorship.
The letter was published on the blogging platform of sina.com, China’s largest news portal, and was removed by the authorities a few hours later, but its publication is still significant.
China’s reformers, however, are pinning their hopes on Prime Minister Wen Jiao, who commented about the need for political reform on a number of occasions this year. On his rise to power, Wen was associated with two reformers of the 1980s, party leaders Hu Yaobang, whose death sparked the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy demonstrations of 1989, and Zhao Ziyang, who was purged for refusing to suppress the protests.
In April, Wen praised Hu , who was forced out as Communist Party general secretary in 1987 and helped bring about China’s early market-oriented economic changes, promoted many people purged under Mao and pushed political liberalisation as a vital component of economic reform.
He was once considered as the most likely successor to Deng Xiaoping as China’s leader, but was removed from office by party conservatives who claimed his “bourgeois” leanings threatened the country’s stability.
In August, Wen went further saying: “Without political reform, China may lose what it has already achieved through economic restructuring.” And in an interview with CNN earlier this month aired in the US, but not in China, he said democracy and freedom were “irresistible”.
The Communist Party’s central committee meetings are closed-door affairs, and all the international community knows is that this meeting is expected to approve an economic plan for 2011-2015 to bridge the gap between rich and poor and encourage consumer spending.
However, Wen’s comments about political reform are bound to be discussed and we will only know if any concrete political measures were taken once the meeting has been concluded.
Analysts say the Communist Party is also preparing for a new generation of leaders in 2012 and Wen’s comments could be seen as an invitation to party members to take sides between liberals and hardliners.
“Wen’s calls are clearly making some people nervous,” said Ding Xueliang, a China expert at Hong Kong’s University of Science and Technology. Whatever the outcome, China cannot put off debating political reform and implementing change to its political system indefinitely.
As its economy continues to grow and develop, more and more calls for the introduction of democratic reforms will be made, and rightly so.