Oct. 28: China’s main Communist Party newspaper bluntly rejected calls for speedier political reform on Wednesday, publishing a front-page commentary that said any changes in China’s political system should not emulate Western democracies, but “consolidate the party’s leadership so that the party commands the overall situation.”
The opinion article in People’s Daily, signed with what appeared to be a pseudonym, appeared at least obliquely aimed at the Prime Minister, Mr Wen Jiabao. He has argued in speeches and media interviews that China’s economic progress threatens to stall without systemic reforms, including an independent judiciary, greater oversight of government by the press and improvements in China’s sharply limited form of elections.
It also may have been directed at countering recent demands for democratic reforms by Chinese liberal intellectuals and Communist Party elders, spurred in part by Mr Wen’s remarks and timed to this month’s award of the Nobel peace prize to an imprisoned Chinese democracy advocate, Liu Xiaobo.
Mr Wen’s comments have fuelled a debate among analysts over whether he is advocating Western-style changes in China’s governing system or merely calling for more openness inside the ruling Communist Party.
“The idea that China’s political reform is seriously lagging behind its remarkable economic development is not only contrary to the law of objectivity but to the objective facts,” it stated.
It later added: “In promoting political reform, we shouldn’t copy the Western political model; shouldn’t engage in something like multiparty coalition government or separation of powers among the executive, legislative and judicial branches. We should stick to our own way.”