The Mirage of Political Reform in China

Chinese Premier says China should consider political reform.
The Mirage of Political Reform in China
Chinese workers assemble electronic components at the Taiwanese technology giant Foxconn's factory in Shenzhen, in the southern Guangzhou Province, on May 26. (AFP/Getty Images)
Heng He
9/7/2010
Updated:
10/1/2015

<a><img src="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/09/101581865_small.jpg" alt="Chinese workers assemble electronic components at the Taiwanese technology giant Foxconn's factory in Shenzhen, in the southern Guangzhou Province, on May 26.  (AFP/Getty Images)" title="Chinese workers assemble electronic components at the Taiwanese technology giant Foxconn's factory in Shenzhen, in the southern Guangzhou Province, on May 26.  (AFP/Getty Images)" width="320" class="size-medium wp-image-1815032"/></a>
Chinese workers assemble electronic components at the Taiwanese technology giant Foxconn's factory in Shenzhen, in the southern Guangzhou Province, on May 26.  (AFP/Getty Images)
Last month, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao visited Shenzhen, the special economic zone in southern China that has been the symbol of the past 30 years of economic reform and opening. During his visit, he raised the most sensitive issue in China—political restructuring.

His remark seemed to resume a discussion that had stopped more than 20 years ago. His doing so has had a big impact both in and outside China.

Premier Wen said, “[China] should push forward not only economic restructuring but also political restructuring. Without the safeguard of political restructuring, China may lose what it has already achieved through economic restructuring, and the targets of its modernization drive might not be reached.”

Wen continued with more-specific goals that included “to guarantee people’s democratic rights and legitimate rights”; “to mobilize and organize people to manage state, economic, social, and cultural affairs in accordance with the law”; “to solve the problem of over-concentration of power without effective supervision by improving institutions”; “to create the conditions to allow people to criticize and supervise the government” and finally, “to build a fair and just society, in particular, to ensure justice in the legal system.”

Political restructuring, also called political reform, is one of the most confusing and misunderstood concepts in China. If what Wen said in Shenzhen is the content of political reform, all those rights are already in the Chinese Constitution and in numerous laws. If political reform is about having multiparty elections and the guarantee of the freedoms of press, religion, assembly, and speech, it has never been and will not be the ruling party’s consideration.

A Dropped Topic

Political reform is understood in at least two different ways. One is that political reform has been carried out along with the economic reforms and has never been stopped.

If we accept this idea, there is no need to talk about political reform today at all. In 2003, Wang Huaichao of the Central Party School wrote the article “Twenty-Four Years of Political Restructuring,” in which he divided the political restructuring into four stages: the primary pioneer stage, the full deployment stage, the adjustment stage, and the continuing political restructuring stage.

Even from this article, we can see that true political reform has never really happened. The second stage is said to have been the latter part of the 1980s. There was a lot of talk about political reform in the 1980s.



Hu Yaobang was general secretary of the Communist Party from 1980 to 1987. He talked about political reform, and for that reason he was forced to resign as General Secretary in 1987.

Zhao Ziyang was premier from 1980 to 1987 and helped put in place China’s economic reforms. He was General Secretary of the Communist Party from 1987 to 1989, and his sympathy for political reform was his undoing. After the Tiananmen Square massacre, he was sacked and endured 17 years of house arrest before his death.

According to the second explanation of political reform in China, it ended before it began.

In either case, political reform has only been talk and has never involved action. Wen has picked up the topic Hu and Zhao dropped.

The Documentary History


Since political reform is not in the traditional theory of the Chinese Communist Party, researchers can only pick up bits and pieces that fit the concept from the Party’s internal memos, leaders’ speeches, and documents. The economic reforms also did not have a theory, but they were relatively easy.

China had accumulated centuries of experience in capitalism. The clock simply had to be turned backward 30 years to the point before the CCP had taken over China.

Political reform is much more difficult. If CCP just simply borrows from the Western systems or from old China, there won’t be any room for the CCP’s continued existence.


One event considered as a milestone in political reform is the speech given by Deng Xiaoping in Aug. 18, 1980, at the extended politburo meeting: “The reform of the leadership system of the Party and the State.” This speech actually only focuses on how to solve the issue of the “over-concentration of power,” especially the “paramount leader’s personal super power.” Deng’s speech is mostly a response to the Cultural Revolution and the question of how to prevent if from happening again.

Another milestone is the Thirteenth National Party Congress report in 1987, which is the only one that detailed political reform and is considered the most important example of political reform. After the Tiananmen massacre in 1989, the Party totally gave up the goal of the Thirteenth CCP Congress and changed instead to “perfecting the system of the People’s Congress, the CCP-led multiparty collaboration and political consultation.”

These “new adjustments” were really just a repackaging to two old institutions. The Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and the National People’s Congress were established in 1949 and 1954 respectively and have been called the “vase” and the “rubber stamp” ever since. This new adjustment has not been changed for the past 20 years except in the Fifteenth CCP Congress, when “run the country by the rule of law” was added.

The documents show that political reform is under the CCP’s full control and is only raised in the CCP meetings. It is used to perfect the existing system, and its final goal is to enhance the CCP’s rule, not to weaken it.


The Rule of Law


Political reform is itself a paradox. Take the rule of law as an example. The biggest problem with the Chinese legal system is that it’s not independent from the CCP. If the CCP wants to change that, it doesn’t need political reform. What it needs is to dissolve the Political and Law Committee, which oversees the whole legal system.

Two weeks ago, about 50 lawyers gathered to discuss the violation of the law during the Chongqing “Hitting the Black” campaign. During one death sentence appeal, the alleged gangster Fan Qihang told his lawyer that all his confessions were made under torture. The video clip of the interview with him then circulated widely on the Internet.

After their discussion, the lawyers wrote an open letter to the President of the Supreme People’s Court and asked him to investigate the incident. However, Wang Shengjun, the President of the Supreme People’s Court himself is an example of breaking the rule of law.

Before he took the position, Wang was the secretary-general of the Political and Law Committee of the CCP Central Committee. He doesn’t have any legal background or legal education. He has never been a prosecutor, judge, or lawyer. His job is to make sure the whole legal system follows the CCP’s line. How could he know anything about the rule of law?

Fan was tortured by the members of the “Special Case Task Force,” which was set up for the Hitting the Black campaign. According to the official media, the task force was composed of the armed police, the public security personnel, the prosecutors, and even the lawyers.

Who has the authority to put these different offices together in a campaign that tortures people? Only the Chonqing CCP Committee and its Political and Law Committee have the authority. But the torture was carried out by the Public Security Bureau, which is part of the state, not part of the Party.

The Party’s Political and Law Committee, on behalf of CCP’s interest, interfered with the police work—the work of the Public Security Bureau. In other words, the rule of law was systemically broken by the Party.

The police force is under the Ministry of Public Security, which is under the State Council. It is much easier for the Premier, who is the head of the State Council and also the boss of all the police, to carry out a full investigation and punish whoever broke the law, than to carry out political reform.

If we assume that Wen really meant his talk about political reform, we also have to assume the Party won’t let him make any real changes. If he can’t enforce the existing law and administrative orders within his power, how can we expect that he can do anything about political reform, which is totally out of his jurisdiction?

Very likely, as the dissatisfaction has built up in Chinese society, some at the top of the ruling party, like Wen Jiabao, have felt that political reform is necessary. We may even expect in the future that some kind of real changes may happen in order to keep the Party in power.

This happened once before and could happen again. A little more than a century ago, when the rulers of the Qing Dynasty felt that a revolution was on its way, they started political reform, hoping it would save the dynasty. It didn’t. Even if Wen really wants to promote political reform, the obstacles that he is facing are much bigger than Empress Dowager Cixi faced.
Heng He is a commentator on Sound of Hope Radio, China analyst on NTD's "Focus Talk," and a writer for The Epoch Times.
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