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Party’s Agenda in China Seems to Fall Flat
BEIJING — China’s Communist Party elite had billed its four-day strategy session as an attack on “acute problems” that threatened the party’s political standing, like official corruption, China’s yawning gap between the rich and poor, and the lack of democracy within the party’s own ranks.

But besides an anticorruption directive that would force officials and their families to disclose their property holdings and investments, initial reports from the meeting last week suggested that the Central Committee’s members either were reluctant to make major changes, or disagreed over how those changes might be made.

State news media reports of communiqués issued Friday and Saturday, after the Central Committee and subcommittee meetings ended, said little that differed from past policy sessions on the need for party democracy, which had been cast as the major theme of the session.

Nor did the Central Committee act, as many had expected, to appoint Vice President Xi Jinping to a key military post, an act that would have all but ensured Mr. Xi’s ascension to general secretary of the Communist Party in 2012, when President Hu Jintao is supposed to step down.

One major theme of the plenary session communiqué emphasized a well-known party position, the need to crack down on ethnic separatists to keep China unified and relations between its ethnic groups harmonious.

Mr. Xi could still win the appointment, as vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, at a later date. And the Central Committee meeting could prove to be more productive than it now appears when a full report on the group’s closed-door deliberations is made public, presumably soon.

“It’s difficult to know what happened — whether something funny happened on the way to the plenum, as it were, or whether there were high hopes that got dashed, or whether it was all smoke,” Russell Leigh Moses, a Beijing-based analyst of Communist Party policies, said in an interview on Sunday. “But it seems that maintaining stability within the party trumps a lot of concerted efforts to solve these very difficult problems.”

One likely explanation, Mr. Moses said, is that party rulers agreed on the need for changes but, as in many entrenched political systems, disagreed over how to execute them.

The plenary session communiqué minced few words about the nature of the challenges to the Communist Party’s continued control of China, saying it faces “long-term, complicated and draconian tests” in a time of tumultuous change.

The party’s own internal problems “are severely weakening the party’s creativity, unity and effectiveness in dealing with these problems,” the statement said.

Corruption, the communiqué stated, has “seriously damaged the party’s flesh-and-blood bond with the people and seriously affected the solidity of the party’s ruling status.” Graft is rife, particularly at local government levels, and is at the root of many of the thousands of street protests that occur in Chinese cities each year.

Should the party genuinely force disclosure of officials’ assets, “It’s a big step,” David Shambaugh, a longtime analyst of China’s Communist elite at George Washington University, said in a telephone interview. But the effectiveness of such a reform would depend on the extent of the disclosure and the level of government at which it was required.

Local corruption is a major issue with ordinary citizens, but kickbacks and favoritism are widely acknowledged to be widespread at the highest levels of government, where the rewards can be much greater and prosecution much harder.

But the party’s internal bureaucratic workings are equally in need of reform, the communiqué stated, implicitly acknowledging the problems lower-level officials face in selling their superiors on innovative ideas and the opaque way in which leaders are chosen. The meeting statement called for more merit-based selection of leaders and new ways to make lower-level voices heard in higher party councils.

But it offered few details on how that might be done. China has long held competitive elections for some posts in a number of villages, the lowest level of government, with what some scholars call mixed results.Party’s Agenda in China Seems to Fall Flat
BEIJING — China’s Communist Party elite had billed its four-day strategy session as an attack on “acute problems” that threatened the party’s political standing, like official corruption, China’s yawning gap between the rich and poor, and the lack of democracy within the party’s own ranks.

But besides an anticorruption directive that would force officials and their families to disclose their property holdings and investments, initial reports from the meeting last week suggested that the Central Committee’s members either were reluctant to make major changes, or disagreed over how those changes might be made.

State news media reports of communiqués issued Friday and Saturday, after the Central Committee and subcommittee meetings ended, said little that differed from past policy sessions on the need for party democracy, which had been cast as the major theme of the session.

Nor did the Central Committee act, as many had expected, to appoint Vice President Xi Jinping to a key military post, an act that would have all but ensured Mr. Xi’s ascension to general secretary of the Communist Party in 2012, when President Hu Jintao is supposed to step down.

One major theme of the plenary session communiqué emphasized a well-known party position, the need to crack down on ethnic separatists to keep China unified and relations between its ethnic groups harmonious.

Mr. Xi could still win the appointment, as vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, at a later date. And the Central Committee meeting could prove to be more productive than it now appears when a full report on the group’s closed-door deliberations is made public, presumably soon.

“It’s difficult to know what happened — whether something funny happened on the way to the plenum, as it were, or whether there were high hopes that got dashed, or whether it was all smoke,” Russell Leigh Moses, a Beijing-based analyst of Communist Party policies, said in an interview on Sunday. “But it seems that maintaining stability within the party trumps a lot of concerted efforts to solve these very difficult problems.”

One likely explanation, Mr. Moses said, is that party rulers agreed on the need for changes but, as in many entrenched political systems, disagreed over how to execute them.

The plenary session communiqué minced few words about the nature of the challenges to the Communist Party’s continued control of China, saying it faces “long-term, complicated and draconian tests” in a time of tumultuous change.

The party’s own internal problems “are severely weakening the party’s creativity, unity and effectiveness in dealing with these problems,” the statement said.

Corruption, the communiqué stated, has “seriously damaged the party’s flesh-and-blood bond with the people and seriously affected the solidity of the party’s ruling status.” Graft is rife, particularly at local government levels, and is at the root of many of the thousands of street protests that occur in Chinese cities each year.

Should the party genuinely force disclosure of officials’ assets, “It’s a big step,” David Shambaugh, a longtime analyst of China’s Communist elite at George Washington University, said in a telephone interview. But the effectiveness of such a reform would depend on the extent of the disclosure and the level of government at which it was required.

Local corruption is a major issue with ordinary citizens, but kickbacks and favoritism are widely acknowledged to be widespread at the highest levels of government, where the rewards can be much greater and prosecution much harder.

But the party’s internal bureaucratic workings are equally in need of reform, the communiqué stated, implicitly acknowledging the problems lower-level officials face in selling their superiors on innovative ideas and the opaque way in which leaders are chosen. The meeting statement called for more merit-based selection of leaders and new ways to make lower-level voices heard in higher party councils.

But it offered few details on how that might be done. China has long held competitive elections for some posts in a number of villages, the lowest level of government, with what some scholars call mixed results.