China’s ruling Communist Party has dropped its strongest hint yet that it will move in the direction of reform, removing a once standard reference to late leader Mao Zedong in statements ahead of a generational leadership transition.
Mao has always been held up as an ideological great in party communiqués, which also normally mention Marx, Lenin, one-time paramount ruler Deng Xiaoping, former President Jiang Zemin and President Hu Jintao.
The politburo, a powerful decision-making council with two dozen active members, said a party congressin November would discuss amending the party’s constitution.
Previous amendments, including one implicitly allowing party membership for capitalists, have formed the guidelines for important economic and political reforms in the world’s most populous country. But, crucially, the Politburo in its statement left out what had been standard wording citing Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong thought, which adapted the original theories of Marxism that grew out of industrial Europe to the conditions of largely rural China when Mao took over in 1949.
“It’s very significant,” Zheng Yongnian, director, East Asian Institute, National University of Singapore, said of the removal of a reference to Mao Zedong Thought and the implications of that for the direction leaders were taking. “Before the fall of Bo Xilai, that direction was not so clear. But now it’s become quite clear. I mean, less Maoism, but more Den-gism.” By removing Mao Thought, the top leaders were signalling a push for reforms, Zheng said, in the same way Deng introduced market reform.