Attracting the greatest amount of media attention, however, has been Wang Yang 汪洋, the secretary of the Guangdong Provincial Committee, who upon assuming his post immediately called for "a new round of liberation of thought" (新一轮思想解放) without fear of getting one's head chopped off (不怕杀头). In response, Ren Jiantao 任剑涛, the president of the College of Public Administration of Sun Yat-sen University, even revived the call for "Shenzhen to boldly plan a special political zone" (深圳应大胆筹划政治特区), voiced by former Guangdong party secretary Ren Zhongyi 任仲夷.
As party boss from 1980 to 1985, Ren Zhongyi led "the transformation that has today made Guangdong the richest part of China and the source of one third of the exports that constitute China’s growing footprint on the global economy." Ren, however, also became one of a handful of senior Communist cadres who strongly supported political reform, along with Li Rui 李锐, former private secretary to Mao Zedong, and Hu Jiwei 胡绩伟, former editor of the People’s Daily.
Ren Zhongyi accompanying Deng Xiaoping in attendance at Spring Festival celebration in Guangzhou, February 1984
In 2000, Ren Zhongyi wrote an editorial in Southern Daily, the official paper of the Guangzhou party committee, in which he subtly called for an end to the monopoly of power held by the Communist Party: "Improving the leadership of the party means establishing a system that can effectively supervise and constrain the party. . . . Absolute power corrupts absolutely. The Communist Party is no exception to that rule. The Communist Party supervising itself is like having the left hand supervise the right hand. That just won't do. The party needs to be supervised not just by the party but by the people." One year before Ren's death in 2005, he went even further in an interview with a Guangdong magazine, “We cannot just set up special economic zones but must create special political zones as well. We must experiment by allowing the direct election of leaders at the county and city levels in certain areas, and then move on to provincial leaders.”
If Ren Jiantao's revival of Ren Zhongyi's call for special political zones is indicative of a new political wave, then Guangdong may once again be One Step Ahead in China (title of Ezra Vogel's book on Guangdong under reform in the 1980s).
A January 19, 2008 editorial on the liberation of thought [ch] in Guangzhou Evening News 羊城晚报 identifies 3 earlier phases of the liberation of thought after the Cultural Revolution. The first came in 1978, when a Guangming Daily editorial espousing "Practice is the Sole Criterion of Truth 实践是检验真理的唯一标准" set in motion an ideological debate that liberated the Chinese people from the dogmatism of Mao Zedong Thought, and paved the way for the return of Deng Xiaoping to power and the beginning of economic reform. The second phase came in 1992, when Deng Xiaoping's strong affirmation of economic reform on the Shenzhen model during his Southern Tour liberated the Chinese economy from the worship of the planned economy model. In 1997, the 15th National Party Congress endorsed the selling off of state-owned enterprises and the transition from socialist-style state ownership to a system of share-holding. This marked the liberation from the worship of the system of state ownership.
In his Jan. 12, 2008 speech [ch] at Guangzhou, Ren Jiantao pointed out that in thirty years of reform, economic achievements far outstripped social and political progress, and the focus on promotion of material well-being has been accompanied by spiritual impoverishment. Reform has depended only on the words and actions of a small number of the elite. To achieve a breakthrough against the limitations of reform, the Chinese people must liberate their thinking, become actively engaged in exercising their civic duties and responsibilities, and contribute towards the building of a civic society characterized by democracy, rule of law, and constitutionalism.
In a similar vein, the Guangzhou Evening News editorial [ch] calls for the liberation of the citizens and public servants of Guangdong from the blind worship of growth while paying little attention to its attendant costs. The leadership must free itself from single-minded focus on growth in per capita GDP to guide the cadres to consider how to contain or manage the negative impact of economic policy on the people's quality of life, including environmental costs, demand for social welfare, and growing crime rates.
This liberation of thought is consonant with the policies of the party leadership under Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao to promote scientific development and social harmony. According to China Times [ch], the call for "a new round of liberation of thought" from the local leadership (the highest ranking of whom, including Wang Yang, Yu Zhengsheng and Bo Xilai, are also members of the Politburo of the Central Committee), is also echoed in some commentaries from the party center. For example, Shi Zhihong 施芝鸿, the vice-director of the Policy Research Office of the Central Committee (中央政策研究室), which is the principal think-tank of the Chinese Communist Party, penned a Jan. 5 2008 editorial in the Liberation Daily 解放日报, in which he identified the liberation of thought as one of the magical weapons (法宝) for developing socialism with Chinese characteristics. Given the special status of Liberation Daily among the party newspapers and the role of the Policy Research Office in drafting documents for the Central Committee, Shi's editorial is likely to be an authoritative statement from the center supporting initiatives from local party leaders in South China, in particular Guangdong Province.
According to Ren Jiantao [ch], Guangdong enjoys various advantages in striving towards a new breakthrough in reform in comparison to other provinces. Because of the proximity of the province to Hong Kong and Macau, the social psychology of the Cantonese is receptive to reform. Moreover, Guangdong has thirty years of achievements and experiences in reform to draw on, and possesses substantial economic wealth and resources. Indeed, Guangdong has the responsibility to be the leader in the next phase of reform in China.
No comments:
Post a Comment