New Mission Statement Guides Political Reform: Opinion

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Sunday, December 01, 2002

New Mission Statement Guides Political Reform: Opinion

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The new mission statement passed by the 16th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), which concluded on November 14, will provide much-needed guidelines for the country's future political reform, said Zhang Zhiming of the CPC Central Party School.

Commonly called the "Three Represents," the mission statement requires the CPC be the representative of China's advanced productive forces, best culture, and the interests most widely-shared by its people.

While the "Three Represents" theory is clearly meant to offer an institutional framework to protect the productive forces unleashed by economic reform, Zhang, a political scientist and CPC history expert, told China Daily that they can also be of great use in China's political reform.

According to the "Three Represents" theory, which former Party General Secretary Jiang Zemin first proposed in his inspection tour of Guangdong Province in early 2000, the Party draws its legitimacy entirely from what it represents and how it does its job.

So the theory also serves as a guideline for a wide spectrum of political reforms, said Zhang, who added that in the Chinese context, political reforms should not be interpreted simply as Western-style multi-party parliamentary democracy.

Western democracy may be successful in Western countries, but many non-Western societies would only make poor copies of it, Zhang said. Throughout the 1990s, he added, "the more mainland political researchers looked at the so-called democracy in Taiwan, which frequently involved violence during parliamentary debates and seldom resulted in useful solutions to real problems, the less impressed we became."

Zhang listed the political blueprints possible in China after the success of its communists-led revolution: One was to jump-start Western democracy, which had never been put into effective practice in this large peasant society. The second was practically no democracy, or for the revolutionary party to serve as the State bureaucratic machine and that's all, as in the former Soviet Union.

Not satisfied with either, Mao Zedong opted to try the "cultural revolution" (1966-76), in which workers were encouraged to run their factories and students to run their schools. However, this wild experiment with direct democracy and ideological fervour failed bitterly when it made a complete mess of the economy.

"So, what are we going to do?" Zhang asked. "We do not want to make our country a simple copy of Western democracy. We do not want to follow Stalin's way. And we do not want to repeat Mao's loss of direction. But how can the CPC continue to offer respectable leadership to the nation?"

In the years immediately following the "cultural revolution," late leader Deng Xiaoping offered a solution to restore the economic and social order and to ensure that passion was no longer allowed to overrun basic rationality.

During the 1980s and 1990s, the CPC made serious efforts in this direction - such as promoting the role of the People's Congress as the nation's law-making body while opening up and revitalizing the economy.

"Now is a more favourable time for the CPC to tackle the democracy issue," Zhang said. "The successful economic reform has certainly helped the CPC win greater respect from society. Check the People's Daily, online, and check its forum, and you will see how many good suggestions have been put forward by its visitors. Some have graduate degrees from Western universities," Zhang said.

"In the meantime, the CPC does not lack successful pilot projects in political reform. The election of village leaders is widespread. The practice of inner-Party democracy, meaning how CPC members form their local chapters and elect their representatives, has also shown good results."

Zhang said more pilot projects concerning political reform were planned for after the 16th National Congress of the CPC.

The "Three Represents" theory will help speed up the process because it reminds Party members that, unlike during the revolutionary wartime when the CPC could grab power by concentrating on fighting enemy forces, it can now only earn its leadership by relating to citizens through a wider spectrum of matters, Zhang said.

Just as Deng once said, the CPC's greatest strength lies in its expertise in mobilizing society and social movements, Zhang pointed out. These social activities will allow the CPC to forge diverse democratic ties with the citizens.

"In the long run, such activities provide the ideal conditions for a working democracy in China, and hopefully the process will not take too long," Zhang said.

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