Qian Gang: Party report suggests old guard is strong

By Dilip -

I have not yet had time to go carefully through the entire 64-page report delivered by President Hu Jintao earlier today, but I have studied a number of the key points. Here is the situation in Hu’s political report to the 18th National Congress with respect to the 10 terms I focused on in my series.
1. The “Four Basic Principles” (including “Mao Zedong Thought”). I have said before that this term, as a banner for the Maoist left in China, can be seen as a strong political indicator. In my series, I said that if both of these terms were abandoned, this would signify the leadership’s intention to push ahead with political reforms. But if the phrase Four Basic Principles is used to the extent that we saw in 2007, or its frequency is reduced only slightly, this signals a perpetuation of the status quo, with no substantive progress on political reform. Any increase in the frequency of use of either term would suggest a political turnabout.
In this political report, both the “Four Basic Principles” and “Mao Zedong Thought” continue to appear.
2. “stability preservation”. As I pointed out in my series, the appearance of this term in the political report to the 18th National Congress would mark a serious turnabout for China politically.
In this political report, the term “stability preservation” does not appear in the main points (要点).
3. “Cultural Revolution”. We want to look for any signs of soul-searching about the Cultural Revolution in the political report, which would be a positive sign pointing to possible political reform. This would mean emphasis of the term, but not simply in the context of praise for China’s progress (which would not be significant).
In the main topics of this political report, “Cultural Revolution” does not appear, in either its full or shortened forms (文革/文化大革命).
4. “Political reform”. As I pointed out, a positive sign would be the appearance of this term in a section header (章节标题) of the political report. The term did appear in a section header in every political report from the 13th National Congress to the 16th National Congress, but this did not happen in Hu Jintao’s 2007 political report. We also want to look at the term’s frequency — has it gone up? And have related negative signals gone down in frequency? The appearance of the phrase “protecting rights, checking power” would be a positive sign. The appearance, on the other hand, of hard-line language such as “opposing Westernization” or the “Five Will Nots” would be a negative sign.
In this political report, “political reform” is written into a section header. The header of the fifth section is: “Continuing on the Political Development Road of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics and Promoting Political Reform” (坚持走中国特色社会主义政治发展道路和推进政治体制改革). I will look later at the frequency of use of the term “political reform” in the report. We do not see terms in the report like “opposing Westernization” or the “Five Will Nots”. But we do see the appearance of “[we will] resolutely not follow Western political systems” (绝不照搬西方政治制度模式), which did not appear in the 2007 political report. We also see a new term: “[We will] not take the wicked [or "heretical"] way of changing our banner” (不走改旗易帜邪路).
5. “Intraparty power separation” or the “Power of Decision-Making, Power of Administration and Power of Monitoring”. I said before that full 2007 phrase to look for in this report was: “[The Party] must build and improve power structures for mutual conditioning and mutual coordination of the powers of decision-making, administration and monitoring, improving oversight mechanisms” (要建立健全决策权、执行权、监督权既相互制约又相互协调的权力结构，完善监督机制). If we did not see this phrase repeated in this year’s political report, I said, this would be a negative sign. On the other hand, if the phrase was altered to include the idea of these powers operating independently of one another, this would be a positive sign.
In this political report, the 2007 does appear, but there is no further language to suggest powers operating independently of one another.
6. “Power is given by the people”. As I explained in my fifth article in the series, Xi Jinping introduced this phrase after the 17th National Congress. I argued that any appearance of this term at all in this year’s political report would be a positive sign. In this political report, the term does not appear

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