Thursday, 27 September, 2001, 18:29 GMT 19:29 UK http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/monitoring/media_reports/newsid_15670 00/1567221.stm
Chinese party told to shape up ===================== Party officials warned against temptation China's party officials have been warned against fooling around with women and not doing their jobs. The dressing down came after a party plenary session in Beijing. BBC Monitoring's Charis Dunn-Chan looks at how the Chinese Communist Party needs to change. As Chinese troops were reported to be streaming westwards to reinforce the Xinjiang border region with Afghanistan and Pakistan, national and regional leaders met for three days in the quiet, willow-fringed lakeside villas of Beijing to discuss party issues. "We must not only talk the talk, more importantly we must walk the walk." Party daily The past few weeks of frantic international diplomacy may have been discussed at the meetings, but they were not mirrored in the document produced at the end of the sixth plenum of the 15th Central Committee on 26 September. Instead, the communiqu� was issued in the usual opaque and coded Communist officialese. It carried a clear message on how the party must shape up to survive, but there was no hint on how international events or imminent entry into the World Trade Organisation were shaping the dynamics of party change. 'Re-connect with the people' The communiqu�, and the ensuing party paper editorial, focused unwaveringly on the theme of "party style". This is a mantra telling the party to reconnect with the people and fight corruption within its ranks. "The biggest danger that a Marxist ruling party faces is detachment from the masses," the communiqu� warned. The meeting made a move to substantiate that message by announcing that two senior regional officials, Shi Zhaobin from Fujian and Li Jiating from Yunnan, had lost their jobs. They have also been expelled from the party and now face prosecution on corruption charges. Cadres - party officials - were being given a wake-up call. Jiang wins the day at a party meeting The party paper editorial on the plenum told cadres to cut back on wining, dining and womanising, and get down to hard work: "Leading cadres at every level must practise what they preach and take the lead in setting examples. "We must not only talk the talk, more importantly we must walk the walk." In the ideology arena, Chinese president and party chief Jiang Zemin won the day in obtaining backing for his ideological drive to open up party membership to the new entrepreneur class. Leftists under attack The communiqu� also carried a sideswipe against die-hard leftists who had been opposing change. Cadres were told to "consciously emancipate the mind from the bind of outdated ideas, practices, and systems, and from a wrong and dogmatic understanding of Marxism, and from the shackles of subjectivism and metaphysics." The theme was clear, these are new times and Marxism must adapt or become fossilised. But Jiang did not entirely carry the day at the plenum. China analysts had been watching keenly to see if Jiang's prot�g� Zeng Qinghong, who currently has alternate member status in the Politburo, would get full membership. But there was no promotion this time for Zeng, who could be described as the architect of the new ideology drive. The communiqu� also produced a new piece of jargon called the "eight adherings and eight opposings" setting out work style principles. They contained fine sounding phrases, but there is deep scepticism amongst ordinary Chinese about whether another list of do's and don'ts will do the trick. The scepticism was articulated by a Beijing-owned Hong Kong newspaper Ta Kung Pao. It welcomed the new "adherings and opposings" but was clear-eyed about the realities of getting the party to clean up its own act. "The supervision of leading cadres is weak and lacks force," it said adding the "more senior the cadres, the greater the lack of effective supervision and management". BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.
