A Critique of the Report of the 17th Congress of the CCP

Zhang Kai

The 17^th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) adopted the Report made by Hu Jintao. The 30,000-word report was full of nice cliché, and the new catch-phrase of Hu Jintao – the stress on a “scientific concept of development”, was written into the Party Constitution, to be parallel to the theoretical contributions of Marxism, Maoism, Dengism, and Jiang Zemin’s “idea of three representatives”.

While the Report admits that China “is and will for a long time remain at the preliminary stage of socialism”, it stresses scientific development for social harmony, and vice versa. Even if we do not contest it with the Marxist concept of class struggle in human history, we will see that the social contradictions are accelerating today on China’s reversion to capitalism. The Report acknowledges that China’s productivity level is not high, structural problems exist, the widening income gaps are not improving, there is a “considerable” number of rural and urban poor and low income population, reconciling various interests is difficult, the agricultural basis is weak, and the tasks for reducing the rural-urban gaps and the regional disparities are still arduous.

        The Report chooses to be ambiguous over the negative situation. For example, how big is the “considerable” number of poor population in China, will they move into a state of “well-being” in the next 13 years, can rural questions receive enough attention, and can differences and contradictions incurred by the market reform be dealt with? All these questions are left without solutions. The Report also points out further problems, including: excessive price paid by resource environment due to economic growth, labour security, income distribution, education and health, production safety, law and order, and among the party ranks, problems of formalism, bureaucratism, corruption, extravagance are still “relatively serious”. The Report pledges to actualize a general society of well-being by the year 2020, with a per capita income of USD 2400, which would be 200% that of 2000, which was USD 800. It is dubious if such a pledge to bring a general uplifting of livelihood for the entire population will come true, especially when the panacea for such a development is to further develop the market economy.

        In Guangdong, there has been continuing development of the privately owned enterprises, which now comprise two-thirds of all enterprises in the province. At the same time, state and collectively owned enterprises have been on the decline for nine years.[1] The Director of the State Council State-owned Assets Monitoring Committee said that the shareholding reform of central enterprises will be accelerated in the next three years, reducing the number from the current 155 to 80-100. Up to the end of 2006, these central enterprises had a total asset of 12.2 trillion yuan.[2]

        With their ascending economic might, capitalists would want more political power. A recent survey with private entrepreneurs indicates that 28.8% feel that the most urgent work is to become a people’s deputy or a consultative committee member. Many young entrepreneurs also strive to become CCP members. Of the 10,773 new party members in 2006, 1,554 were entrepreneurs. At the 17^th CCP Congress, the media noted 30 representatives of the “new economic and new social organizations” representing RMB 10 trillion private assets. Most of them hold huge assets, some up to several billion yuan.[3] Critics have pointed out that over 20 red capitalists or former bosses now converted to high ranking officials have become members or alternate members of the CCP Central Committee, and not one representative of workers or peasants have made their way into the central power.[4]. Statistically, the CCP has not revealed the percentage of such entrepreneur members. On the eve of the 17^th Congress, the composition of the CCP membership was announced by the CCP Organizational Division, that up to the end of June 2007, worker members numbered 7.96 million, and comprised 10.8% of the total membership, those from the agricultural, husbandry and fishery sectors were 31.5%, cadres, enterprise managers, professionals and technicians were 29.1%, retired persons were 19.4%...[5] Probably the entrepreneur members were included in the sector of enterprise managers, or under the category of 5% “others”.

        As for the question of democracy, the Report repeats the empty slogan of “firmly upholding socialist democracy”, while subordinating this to “firmly upholding the party’s leadership”. There is no change to the longstanding one-party dictatorship. However, there is more and more articulation of protest against the lack of democracy for the people. Mr Xie Tao, the former vice-president of the Renmin University of China, published an article in Yan Huang Chun Qiu, a magazine in China, in February 2007 to say that the political reform cannot be further procrastinated. Mr Wu Min, professor of the CCP Shanxi Province party School, wrote an article “There is no Communist Party without democracy”, and asserted that the “central root of the illness” lies in the over-concentration of power of the political system. Hence, despite some younger personnel being brought into the Party leadership, there will not be any fundamental change to the basic political line of the CCP, and its bureaucratic way of rule.

        There have been many reports of mass unrests and protests, resulting in confrontation with the police. Here are just a few examples of such unrests in the months preceding the 17^th Congress:

May 30: around 1,000 workers in Shenzhen went on strike, which spread and was joined by over 8,000 workers on June 2; this was the biggest strike in Shenzhen’s history;

June 1: about 20,000 to 30,000 citizens of Xiamen City took to the streets to protest the building of the PX chemical factory; forcing the government to cancel the project;

Early June: in Chongqing, an old flower hawker was beaten and seriously injured by the hawker control squads, causing a riot of several thousand people;

Early June: in Inner Mongolia, over 5,000 residents clashed with the police on removal issues;

June 18: 20,000 people calshed with the police in Zhejiang on removal issues;

June 29: in Sichuan Province, over 3,000 workers went on strike to protest the corruption and incompetence of the state-owned enterprise;

July 18: in Jinzhou City of Liaoning Province, over 1,000 workers of the public transport company went on strike to protest privatization of the company, causing a total paralysis of the public transport;

July 30: over 13,000 taxis went on strike for 5 days;

August 21: about 10,000 workers went on strike in Shenzhen to protest doubling of workload and reduction to almost half of their wages;

August 24: about 2,000 villagers clashed with the police when they tried to prevent the building of a power plant;

September 27: in Shanwei of Guangdong Province, several thousand villagers who had been conducting their struggle for two years, clashed with the police in their attempt to prevent the building of a power plant.

        Such incidents are many, and they are just the tip of the iceberg of the resistance of the masses in defense of their livelihood rights under the encroachment of so-called “development”. The CCP cannot be expected to give up its power or its privileges. Hoping that it will reform itself is an illusion. It is up to the masses to resist the current injustices, and fight for their own better future.

                                                                                        10 November 2007