When amendments to the disciplinary code of the Chinese Communist Party appeared in regime media on Oct. 21, they caused quite a stir.
The Party regulations, which were amended on Oct. 12, are equivalent in function to the criminal law of the Chinese civil government.
But it was one line in the amended regulations that jumped out, both for official media and for dissidents in exile. It was: “Party Organizations With Large Numbers of Party Members Guilty of Severe Disciplinary Violations To Be Disbanded.”
Political commentators and netizens jumped on the logical implications of the legislation, wondering if that regulation ought to be used to disband the entire Communist Party itself. That this was the intent is far from clear, but commentators could be forgiven for the interpretation: Chinese state media is known to make careful use of headlines and layouts so as to send politically charged messages intended for those well-versed in the ways of the Party.
Sun Guangwen, a retired professor from China’s Shandong University, told Epoch Times that while “disbanding” Party organizations implies surgical operations directed at individual institutions, the infamous corruption throughout the communist regime means that even such a “partial dissolution” would undermine the entire Party structure.
The issue of corruption has been brought to the fore in recent years, as China’s economy reaches an impasse, and with the rise of Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping. Coming to power in late 2012, Xi has carried out an anti-corruption campaign against the Chinese officialdom, with hundreds of thousands investigated or punished.
“Xi’s ’tiger hunt‘ (’tiger’ being a common euphemism for major corrupt officials) reveals the severe corruption of Communist Party members,” Sun said. “This [corruption] has already far exceeded the limits of the Chinese people’s patience.”
Goodbye Lenin?
According to political commentator Heng He, the Beijing Youth Daily may have neglected to consider the effects of the paper’s layout on the audience.
