China Premier Promises a Century of Socialism

Richard Spencer
The Daily Telegraph
February 28, 2007

BEIJING — China's prime minister promised to maintain "socialism for 100 years" yesterday as the Communist Party tried to play down discussion of political reform.

"We must keep a firm grasp on the basic principles of the party in the initial stage of socialism, without wavering, for 100 years," Prime Minister Wen said in an article reproduced in the People's Daily newspaper and other centrally-controlled state news outlets.

Dampening hopes both of Chinese dissidents and of governments abroad that have called for faster political change, he said that while democracy was necessary, it could only come about on the party's terms and when the socialist system was "mature." He said that, in the meantime, China had to focus on economic development.

The publication of what was clearly intended as a heavyweight contribution to the country's political debates was unexpected, particularly since Mr. Wen is normally in charge of the day-to-day running of China rather than longer-term speculation about its future.

But the coming annual session of the Chinese parliament and expected changes to the top leadership in the autumn, at the five-yearly Communist Party Congress, have triggered speculation at home and abroad on the prospects for political change.

In contrast to the tighter rein imposed on the press in recent years, some liberal journalists, as well as academics, have been unusually open in calling for political reforms to match China's enormous economic changes.

Earlier this month, Zhou Ruijin, a retired deputy editor of the People's Daily, gave an interview to a provincial paper calling for the expansion of direct elections.

" China has been bogged down in a mess of contradictions and disputes," he said. "What I've proposed is that political reform should precede all other reforms of the government administration."

To some extent, the government has encouraged this openness, by describing corruption and other forms of illegal behavior by party officials as China's gravest social crisis and saying that they had to be made more accountable.

Leaving aside the billions of dollars embezzled and stolen every year by party cadres, illegal land grabs for development, and failure to implement government directives on the environment that threaten livelihoods spark tens of thousands of protests every year.

With a growing capitalist-style class system, there is also little evidence of socialism in current economic realities.***

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