CHINESE LEADERSHIP MULLS INCLUSION OF POLITICAL

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 BEIJING 016057

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 08/03/2031
TAGS: PGOV PHUM CH
SUBJECT: CHINESE LEADERSHIP MULLS INCLUSION OF POLITICAL

REFORM ON PARTY CONGRESS AGENDA

REF: BEIJING 3852

Classified By: Classified by Political Section Acting Internal Unit
Chief Susan A. Thornton. Reasons 1.4 (b/d).

Summary
--------------


1. (C) Party leaders appear to be laying the
groundwork for including the issue of political reform
on the agenda of the 17th National Party Congress next
year. Embassy contacts have told Poloffs that a
treatise on political reforms written by Central Party
School scholars and posted to the website of the Party
mouthpiece People's Daily has the backing of top Party
leaders. One veteran Party journalist maintains that
Party chief Hu Jintao would like to make political
reform the centerpiece of his legacy and that the
Congress political report, currently being drafted,
will be the vehicle to launch this process. Comment:
While publication of articles on political reform may
well signal leadership discussions of the issue,
leadership views are unlikely to track with proposals
made by scholars. Caution remains the watchword as
the leadership's focus on stability will likely yield
incremental moves, at best. End summary and comment.

Political Reform Treatise
--------------


2. (C) A 30-page treatise, entitled "A Plan for
Political System Reform From the Perspective of
Economic Development," by prominent Central Party
School political economist Zhou Tianyong was posted to
the People's Daily website on June 15 and is being
cited as an indication that the topic of political
reform is currently under discussion in leadership
circles. The essay was a condensed version of a much
larger Party School study on political reform
conducted by Zhou's Party School Research Office two
years ago. The popular reformist Guangdong party
paper, Southern Weekend, carried an interview with
Zhou a week later, further calling public attention to
his views. (Note: Zhou traveled to the United States
on the International Visitor Program in 2004. End
note.)


3. (C) While Zhou's article advocated some important
changes in governing structures such as the National
People's Congress (NPC),his approach hews to the
pragmatic Deng Xiaoping-era notion that reform of
political institutions must serve economic
development. His blueprint lays heavy emphasis on
incremental change and stability and seeks to make
government more efficient and public-service oriented
without relinquishing Party control. Zhou argues that
the sole purpose of political reform is to clear away
obstacles to continued economic reform, rather than
pursuing reform "for the sake of political reform
itself" or from the perspective of "good and bad
values." Critical of China's lack of "pragmatism" and
"entanglement in ideological issues" in the past, Zhou
advocates highly centralized political control
combined with economic liberalization. He argues for
Government retention of control over agricultural land
and for continued control of the media.


4. (C) Within this framework, Zhou proposed non-
interference in judicial proceedings, replacing
governmental institutions below the county level with
civic organizations and a series of reforms to the
NPC. Specific reforms to the NPC system would include
granting the NPC significant budgetary and fiscal
power, broadening the social representation of its
delegates, ensuring that legislation flows from NPC
deputies rather than government bureaucrats, and
instituting direct, competitive elections in which
"voters directly elect" NPC deputies who in turn elect
county magistrates and city mayors. "Future
generations can choose a more satisfactory socialist
political system after a few decades," Zhou concluded.

Central Leadership Backing
--------------


5. (C) Although differing in particulars, well-
connected journalists told Poloffs they consider the
appearance of Zhou's essay on the People's Daily
website an important development. At a minimum, this
signals tacit leadership agreement with Zhou's
approach to political reform, they said. Zhang

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Xiantang (protect),an editor and manager at the State
Council Development Research Center's influential
paper Economic Times said it is difficult to know
whether Hu Jintao or other top leaders had given
specific instructions to People's Daily to post the
essay. The People's Daily Online would not have
carried it, however, if Zhou's ideas were not in close
alignment with those of the leadership and if the
Party Center had not given some indication on the
timing of the essay's publication. In the opinion of
Dong Yuyu (protect),long time Embassy contact and
editor at the Party-controlled Guangming Daily, there
is no question that internet publication of the essay
indicates central leadership approval to give Zhou's
proposal a more public hearing.


6. (C) In a speculative aside, Zhang commented that
he and colleagues were not only surprised to see the
essay, but were surprised at its cautious tone,
particularly the advocacy of tight media controls.
Zhang said this did not track with Zhou's earlier
views on freedom of the media, which Zhang and his
editors had heard Zhou discuss several times in
person. Economic Times editors considered Zhou, who
is a frequent contributor to the paper, to be fairly
liberal and surmised that he had softened his tone to
conform more closely to central leadership thinking,
an indication in Zhang's view that People's Daily was
acting at the behest of the Party Center.

Laying the Groundwork for 17th Party Congress
--------------


7. (C) In the most sweeping assessment of the
significance of Zhou's article, Fang Jinyu, Beijing
bureau chief of Southern Weekly's parent organization,
the Guangdong Party Committee paper Southern Daily,
asserted that publication of the article was linked to
broader ferment on political reform in the top reaches
of the Party, including Hu Jintao's efforts to include
it on the agenda of the 17th Party Congress that will
be held in 2007. Fang said that the drafting of the
Congress political report to be delivered by Hu Jintao
is currently underway and will be discussed at the
annual leadership meetings being held in Beijing in
August. Fang said that the article was timed to
coincide with the run-up to these meetings, which will
begin to lay the groundwork for policy and personnel
changes at next year's Congress.


8. (C) Fang confidently predicted that the 17th Party
Congress political report would contain an important
statement on political reform. The need is so
obvious, said Fang, that Hu cannot avoid broaching the
issue. The main impetus, though, is Hu's ambition to
establish political reform as his legacy to the Party,
a goal which his predecessors Deng Xiaoping and Jiang
Zemin failed to achieve, Fang commented. Fang said
that Hu would use the 2007 Congress, the first under
Hu's stewardship, to shape the agenda in this
direction. The political report will therefore
reflect this goal.

Consensus Favors Reform
--------------


9. (C) Fang described what he considered several key
factors that indicate that political reform is on the
Chinese leadership's radar screen for the coming Party
Congress. First, in Fang's telling, there is a broad
consensus in the Party leadership that without
political reform, the Party will lose its grip on
power. The leadership both "desires and fears"
political reform, realizing that on the one hand the
Party may "fall from power" without it, yet fearing
that even small reforms will trigger a chain reaction
that the Party cannot control, Fang said. They
realize, though, that they will have to move at some
point.


10. (C) Second, a core group of highly respected
veteran cadres has been pushing for significant
internal Party reform for some time, and Hu and other
leaders cannot ignore them, Fang stated. This group
of veterans endorsed a comprehensive 8,000-character
proposal by Mao's former secretary Li Rui, which was
circulated at the 16th Party Congress in November 2002
and, contrary to Western news accounts, was "accepted"
by the new leadership as well as by outgoing Party
chief Jiang Zemin. The proposal called for genuine
bottom-up, inner-Party elections of the top Party

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leadership, with each successive layer (Central
Committee, Politburo, Standing Committee of the
Politburo, and the General Secretary),electing the
next layer through direct, competitive elections.
Among other things, Fang said, this would enable the
Party to "control" its top leaders. Li's proposal
also suggested transforming the Central Committee into
a deliberative body in continuous session with a real
voice in policy, in contrast to the current system of
top-down annual plenums that simply ratify leadership
decisions already made.


11. (C) More recently, key Party intellectuals have
raised the issue of meaningful political reforms in
the context of ongoing reform debates (reftel). A
provocative recent Internet essay by former People's
Daily deputy editor Zhou Ruijin advocated a system of
internal party elections not unlike those in Li Rui's
proposal. Internet sites have carried lively
discussions of Vietnam's inner-Party elections at its
Party Congress in April this year. A June meeting of
reformers in the Western Hills, reportedly approved by
Hu Jintao's staff, advocated far-reaching economic and
political reforms, with one participant even calling
for state, as opposed to Party, leadership of the
military.


12. (C) Another indicator of leadership intent to
move in this direction, according to Fang, is that Hu
Jintao himself gave an internal speech at the Second
Plenum of the 16th Central Committee in February of
2003 in which he signaled his intent to push ahead
with political reform. Fang did not elaborate on Hu's
exact words at the time, but seemed confident that
current discussions of political reform indicate that
the calculated progression toward this goal is
proceeding according to plan.

Comment
--------------


13. (C) When Hu Jintao became Party General Secretary
in 2002 amid speculation that he would advocate
political reforms, Chinese reformers were disappointed
when reality did not match their heightened
expectations. Faced with the first real opportunity
to put his own stamp on the important Party Congress
report, however, Hu will be looking to lay the
groundwork for his own legacy as he begins his second
and last five-year term as Party chief.


14. (C) Elements of Li Rui's or Zhou Tianyong's
proposals, while not disavowing Party control of the
Chinese state, would nevertheless be significant moves
toward altering China's political system. Caution
remains the watchword, however. Publication of
articles on political reform may well signal high-
level discussion of the issue and their content likely
reflects the universe of possible approaches. In the
end, though, the leadership's focus on stability will
likely yield incremental moves, at best.

RANDT