CPC key session to push forward political restructuring

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CPC key session to push forward political restructuring

(Xinhua) 18:31, November 04, 2013

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With many expecting China's ruling party to kick off more intensive and tougher reforms at a key meeting this week, political analysts believed that the gathering will push forward the country's political restructuring.

The upcoming Third Plenary Session of the 18th Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, scheduled between Nov. 9 and 12 in Beijing, is expected to study how to comprehensively deepen reforms and roll out a comprehensive reform package.

The reform package will concern economic, political, cultural and social systems, as well as those on ecological progress and the institutional construction of the CPC.

COMPREHENSIVE REFORM

Calling political restructuring "an important part" of China's comprehensive reform, Yan Shuhan, a professor with the Party School of the CPC Central Committee, said the country's political restructuring should be advanced according to national conditions.

"Only through incorporating political restructuring into economic restructuring, can political structural reform in China achieve historic success," he said.

Indeed, putting political system reform in an important position in the overall reform and development agenda has summarized the experiences drawn from China's reform and opening-up in the past 30-odd years.

Since the Third Plenary Session of the 11th CPC Central Committee 35 years ago, political restructuring of China has been strengthening along with the progress of China's economic restructuring.

China has successfully created the path of political development with Chinese characteristics. It has eliminated de facto life tenure for leading officials, and realized orderly succession of state leaders.

As late leader Deng Xiaoping, the chief designer of China's reform and opening-up strategy, put it, "the success of China's reform lies in its political restructuring."

The Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee has the potential to be a landmark event, if it charts out a plan of China's political restructuring so as to propel the world's second-largest economy on a more sustainable growth path, analysts said.

In addition, the political restructuring to be mapped out in the meeting will also play an important role in steering China's reform into a historic turning point, for transferring China's growth pattern and helping realize the Chinese dream of national rejuvenation.

At present, China needs further reform in difficult areas and the leadership has compared the difficulty to "storming a fortification." Owing to the combination of various complicated factors at home and abroad, the difficulty and workload in resolving contradictions and problems in the fresh round of reform is unprecedented.

"China's next round of reform should put more emphasis than before on the features of systematicness and coordination, including in the political aspect, in terms of the top-hierarchy design and the comprehensive reform plan," said Dai Yanjun, another professor with the Party School of CPC Central Committee.

POLITICAL SYSTEM REFORM

Over the past year since the 18th National Congress of the CPC, which was held last November, the CPC new leadership rolled out a series of measures to usher in a new round of political reform, including the CPC leadership's "eight-point" rules issued for bureaucratic reform late last year. The order issued in June is to eliminate the four "evil winds," (formalism, bureaucracy, hedonism and extravagance) transformation of government functions, and efforts to improve democracy and the legal system.

"These fall into the category of political system reform. Developments and achievements so far are impressive," said Xu Yaotong, a professor of political science with the Chinese Academy of Governance. "The CPC leadership has sent out a clear signal on the faith, determination and courage which are needed in the political reform."

Political analysts expect the central leadership will make important arrangements on political system reform, in such aspects as power constraint and supervision, democracy and the rule of law, streamlining administration and delegating powers to lower levels, cadre promotions and appointments, and broadening channels for people to express their interests.

Analysts also expect that Party building and reform will be the top priority of future political system reform and development of intra-Party democracy will spur progress of people's democracy.

Yan believed that the session is likely to take new measures in Party building and reform.

Meanwhile, Yan also maintained China's political system reform would continue striking a tone of "pushing forward actively and steadily," so as to reduce cost and risks as much as possible. The ruling party is expected to avoid any possible losses and destruction caused by instability.

China is open to make use of the fruits of Western political civilizations, but it will not simply copy a political system established in Western countries, the analysts said.

NO SUBVERSIVE MISTAKES

President Xi Jinping told the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit in the Indonesian resort of Bali on Oct. 7 that China, as a big country, should never make any subversive mistakes over fundamental issues. "In case of making such a mistake, it can't be redeemed or made up," Xi said.

Xin Ming, another professor with the Party School of the CPC Central Committee, said "fundamental issues" included political system reform, while "subversive mistakes" included the old and rigid closed-door policy and any attempt to abandon socialism and take an erroneous path.

"China's future political system reform is set to stick to the bottom-line thinking, which means the CPC will continuously press ahead with the reform while keeping a correct political direction," he said.

The CPC has been learning lessons of the collapse of the Soviet Union and its communist party.

One of the major lessons, Xin said, was that the leadership of the Soviet Union Communist Party had confused the fundamental systems with the general and concrete political systems. At first, they had refused any reform because they believed their systems were perfect. At the end, they mistook the shortcomings of the general and concrete systems as the flaw of the socialist system itself, which they believed should be scrapped and started all over again.

"The Soviet Union had made subversive mistakes one after another, from one extreme to the other extreme, over the fundamental issues. As a result, the reform ended up with changing direction, and collapse of the Soviet Union Communist Party was inevitable," Xin said.

China's political system reform should uphold the Party's role as the core of leadership in directing the overall situation and coordinating the efforts of all quarters. Its goal is not to weaken or abandon the Party's leadership. It should aim at improving the art of the Party's leadership and strengthening the Party's governance capability, the analysts said.