China’s Newspapers Headline Communists’ Top 40 Slogans

BEIJING —  They aren’t the catchiest slogans in the world, even in the original Chinese. But China’s leading newspapers gave top-of-page-one display Sunday to 40 of them--some new, some old--selected to be official slogans of the 40th anniversary Oct. 1 of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

It may be difficult even for the Communist Party ideologues who compiled the list to envision enthusiastic repetition of such slogans as: “Enhance socialist democratic and legal construction and consolidate and develop the stable and unified political situation!”

Virtually every person in Beijing knows that China’s top leadership, far from being stable or united, is rent by a fierce struggle over succession to 85-year-old paramount leader Deng Xiaoping. That, in fact, is why claims of unity are necessary.

Almost no one, on the other hand, has any idea what “socialist democracy” means, if it means anything at all. “Legal construction” does at least have a meaning. It refers to China’s attempt to gradually rely more on the rule of law and less on the whim of administrators and Communist Party bosses. Progress in this direction is spotty.

Neat Summary

Despite their shortcomings, the slogans--some simplistic, some bombastic, some contradictory--give a neat summary of what preoccupies China’s leaders today. They form a kind of snapshot of Communist Party policies as the People’s Republic of China nears its 40th birthday.

The slogans reflect a recent shift toward more hard-line ideology, but most also address real problems. As in the case of references to stability and unity, however, the fact that a subject is embodied in a slogan usually means that it concerns an area where the government faces difficulties.

Near the top of the list is praise for the June 3-4 martial-law crackdown against pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing, during which soldiers killed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of students and ordinary Beijing residents who poured into the streets in a vain attempt to block the army’s advance.

The people of Beijing, and of all China, now are supposed to rally behind the slogan: “Warmly hail the successful quelling of the turmoil and counterrevolutionary rebellion!” Or: “Salute the People’s Liberation Army men, police and armed police who have performed remarkable feats in the struggle to defend the People’s Republic.”

In a rebuttal to Western condemnation of the brutal June crackdown, people are urged: “Maintain the sovereignty of the country and national dignity and firmly oppose any foreign interference in China’s internal affairs!”

Other slogans reflect the ideological and political tensions inherent in government policies that aim to open China to the world and introduce market forces, while at the same time trying to maintain a political dictatorship and elements of central planning.

“Adhere to the reform and open policies and accomplish the tasks of improving the economic environment, straightening out economic order and deepening reform,” proclaims one slogan, which strings together a series of familiar phrases.

Central Controls

“Straightening out the economic order” is a reference to reassertion of some centralized controls to cope with problems such as corruption and inflation. The official line is that this will lay the groundwork for further market-oriented reforms, but China’s most enthusiastic reformists and many Western analysts view this “straightening out” as actually being an attack on the reforms by hard-line advocates of central planning.

On the ideological front, the people of China must “adhere to the Four Cardinal Principles”-- which require support for socialism and the dictatorship of the Communist Party--and “firmly fight against bourgeois liberalization”--a reference to the spread of Western concepts of democracy and civil liberties.

At the same time, according to another slogan, China will “carry out the policy of letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend.” This slogan was introduced by the late Chairman Mao Tse-tung to encourage a period of intellectual liberalization in 1956, which was followed by the arrests of many critics. Since then, it has been repeatedly used during periods of relaxed political controls.

Such periods, however, have always been followed by renewed crackdowns during which some of those who spoke their minds were punished.

Some slogans stress the importance of education, science, culture and the role of intellectuals.

But in a throwback to the Maoist rhetoric of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, one slogan declares: “Wholeheartedly rely on the working class and consolidate and develop the worker-peasant alliance.”

The people of China also are to “enhance the construction of socialist ethics and be socialist citizens with ideals, morality, culture and discipline.”

Number of Recent Moves

This stress on “socialist ethics” is reflected in a number of recent policy moves, including a decision reported Friday by the official New China News Agency requiring all high schools and colleges in Beijing to cooperate with factories “to have students perform regular manual labor.”

For many years, some schools have required students, as part of their ideological education, to spend time in workshops. Beijing authorities are now determined to expand the practice. Hard-line Communist Party leaders have repeatedly claimed that students who participated in this spring’s pro-democracy protests were divorced from China’s social realities. The performance of manual labor--likely to be a few hours per week--serves both as punishment and re-education.

Rhetoric about tougher social and political discipline is also being paired with action. In the culmination of several years of preparation, a nationwide identity card system is to go into effect Friday, becoming a major new tool of authoritarian control. More than 570 million cards have been issued in the last few years, with more cards still due to be issued in some remote areas, according to Chinese press reports. Citizens over the age of 16 will be required to carry the cards at all times, the official China Daily reported Saturday.

Other slogans list a variety of additional tasks, none of them easy: a battle against government corruption, protection of the legal rights of women and children, population control, protection of the environment and the reunification of Nationalist-ruled Taiwan with the Chinese mainland.