Political Reforms in China

Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao presented his government work report recently at the 3rd session of the 11th National People's Congress (NPC). In this report, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao emphasized the importance of political reform for China. He also referred to the need for people to criticize as well as to keep watch on the government. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao's report has aroused a high degree of attention from the local and overseas media.

Factor in National Building
In a gist, this is what Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao tried to express in his government work report: "China's reform is a comprehensive reform that includes the reform of economic system, the reform of political system as well as reform in other fields. Without the reform in political system, it is impossible to carry out reform in the economic system and to come out with modernization structure." From here we can clearly see that Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has put political reform as top priority among other reforms. As such public opinions usually view that through Prime Minister Wen Jiabao's work report, China has sent out a message that it would push forward the reform of its political system.

In fact, political reforms in China are not something new. The need to carry out political reforms have mentioned by former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping during the early stage of New China. China has long put reform of political system as a decisive factor in the national building. As early as in 28 June 1986, Deng Xiaoping has, at the Standing Committee of the CPC Central Committee Political Bureau mentioned that: "The success of economic reforms will have to depend on the success of political reforms. If we only do economic reform without going for political reform, economic reforms cannot be carried through. This is because in the first place, economic reforms will encounter many man-made human blockages."

From here we know that the political reform spirit as expressed by Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao in his work report and Deng Xiaoping's political reform spirit is but a continuation of the Chinese leaders' political ideology. However, the significance of Prime Minister Wen Jiabao's expression of political reform lies in the fact that this is the first time the Chinese Government has used such a clear format to put in a government work report that the reforms of China's political system is the decisive factor for China to open up reform in other areas of national development. In other words, political reforms in China will not stop at the theoretical level, now, but must work through the government to put it into practice.

Implementation Stage
In accordance with Deng Xiaoping's original design, political and economic reforms are the two interdependent legs that must go together in order to achieve reformation in China. However, after the 1989 Tiananmen incident, reforms of China's political system, was not mentioned by the Chinese leaders for a long time. What we heard was but the one-sided result of its economic reforms. It was also during this period that while China was going through a rapid economic development and economic prosperity era, China has, at the same time, also experienced unprecedented intense societal conflicts of many kinds. As an editorial of the Lianhe Zaobao that came out on the eve of China's CPPCC and NPC joint session said: The Communist Party of China (CPC) has already well-aware of the pending societal issues and has in 2007 and made major preparations aimed to correct these societal conflicts at the NPC. What Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao did this year was to put forward part of the political reforms as mentioned at the 2007 NPC into government's implementation stage.

However, one must take note that even the Chinese Government is determined to promote political reforms, now, the type of political reforms the Chinese Government has in mind is by no means the type of political reforms ordinary people has in mind. In China's political reforms, the "four basic cardinal principles" of the CCP will not be changed. In other words, the CCP's political life and leadership in China will not be changed even if it has carried out political reforms. At the opening CPPCC session, CPPCC Chairman Jia Qinglin has stressed strongly that China would resist the multiparty system and the two house system of the West. From what Jia Qinglin said that it was suffice to reflect the CPC's firm stance to adhere to its basic party principles.

New Political Environment
In modern political life, good political systems must be subordinated to the public. Public authority must also be subjected to checks and balances. In a democratic country, this is achieved through the elections of political parties to represent people's voices. The difficulties of China's political reforms are that under the premise of CPC's unwavering ruling status, the Chinese leaders must ensure that the CPC can still strengthen its self-restraint and self-monitoring power.

In his government work report, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao mentioned that the Chinese Government would create the conditions for people to criticize and supervise the government operations. Such statement by Wen Jiabao has shown that the top Chinese leadership, in fact, knows very well that if the government ruled by the CPC moves toward the alienation direction goes against the wish of the people because of the lack of a monitoring mechanism in the government, the consequence can be extremely worrisome to the CPC leaders. The question is: How can China create such conditions for political reforms? What are the conditions for China to create such a new political environment?

CPPCC-NPC Joint Sessions
In recent years, the democracy networks that prevail in the internet and the internet media have to a certain degree, have criticized the Chinese Government and served a watchdog role to check on the Chinese Government. However, there are limitations for these internet bodies to serve the watchdog role for the Chinese Government because they cannot serve the check and balance role to confront the political systems of the ruling party as well as for the ruling government.

The only way for China to have a watchdog mechanism on governmental affairs is to go back to the basic solution to carry out reforms in the government. If the CPC and the Chinese Government can create conditions to allow the CPPCC-NPC joint sessions to maximize the role to carry out some political reform, to certain extent, China can solve this problem. For example, China can explore if it can allow CPPCC to reassume some of its earlier functions when it was newly formed.

China should also explore if it can allow certain members of the CPC that hold strong democratic principle to form a real political party with substance? Within the NPC framework, China should also see if the NPC can truly represent the largest representation of public opinions, so that the NPC can truly exercise the power to present the will of people.

For decades, we have not heard the type of intense and vigorous debates in the CPPCC as we used to hear during the early days of the CPPCC when Mao Zedong and Liang Shuming used to voice out their different opinions at the CPPCC. We also notice that at the local level, it has now become the norm for the CPC secretary general to concurrently also taking up the role to become the organization CPPCC chairman.

Legislative and Supervisory Powers
Regardless of what innovation the Chinese leaders want to carry out political reforms, but if the CPPCC and NPC cannot fully and effectively exercise their legislative and supervisory powers stipulated under the Chinese Constitution, and turn China's political reforms into a true democratic and representative of public opinion mechanism that can monitor government operations; and if the CPPCC and NPC continue to become a tool for the CPC to carry out the will of the ruling party, there is no point to talk about political reforms in China. Without substance, political reform will be something that China cannot achieve at this very moment.