In his address to the party Congress, Chinese president Hu Jintao laid down his vision for the future. But his vision seems to be slightly myopic as he has practically ruled out any political reform. In his speech he called for ‘incremental’ political change. Whatever that means, however, there are indications that the monopoly of the communist party of China would remain. In a nut shell no reforms, no democracy.
Chinese leaders are not contemplating multi-party democracy even in their wildest dreams. This was clear when Li Dongsheng, spokesman for the Communist Party’s 17th congress quashed any idea that China could eventually become a multi-party liberal democracy.
Many elements in the communist party have been calling for democratization of the party. It seems that too remains a pipe dream. Democracy and elections were conducted as an experiment by Chinese leaders at lower levels of government. But even here candidates lacked a free hand. Those elected had a clash of power with local communist party functionaries. The central leadership intervened in the matter to declare that party men would have the last say. Thus this experiment too ended in failure and it is back to square one again.
Chinese leaders will have to seriously think about political reform. Though the masses are presently too busy chasing material goals in the age of economic freedom; once satiated their thoughts will turn towards democracy and a desire to have a say in governance.
China today is ruled by diktats from a powerful few. This will breed resentment in the future. Many more ‘Tiananmen Square’ are bound to occur. Hu Jintao has failed to precept this possibility in his vision for China’s future.
