China Gets Down to Business at Party Congress

In his keynote political report opening an important Communist Party congress here Friday, President Jiang Zemin portrayed a new, business-minded China that can accept private ownership, individual wealth and even worker layoffs--but not Western-style democracy.

As expected, Jiang’s speech at the 15th national congress of the Chinese Communist Party announced an economic program allowing the sale of troubled small and medium-size state industries to shareholder groups or private owners.

But Jiang, who is also general secretary of the party, failed to mention any of the political reforms that some here had hoped for.

“It is imperative,” Jiang said, addressing more than 2,000 delegates assembled before a gilded 50-foot hammer and sickle in the red-flag-draped Great Hall of the People, “that we should uphold and improve this fundamental political system instead of copying any Western models.”

Jiang cited corruption as one of China’s major problems and listed three others: a largely inefficient national economy made up of state-owned enterprises that “lack vitality”; inequalities and disparities in economic development among regions and between urban and rural residents; and the strains of overpopulation and development on the environment.

Although no mention was made of key personnel changes expected after the congress, in his praise of the economy Jiang appeared to pave the way for the eventual elevation of Zhu Rongji, the country’s economic chief, to the Chinese premiership.

Incumbent Premier Li Peng will complete his second and final term in March. Zhu, a former dean of the management school at Qinghua University, is widely credited with controlling inflation and guiding the overheated economy to a “soft landing” after more than a decade of double-digit growth.

As premier, Zhu would oversee the difficult process of selling off or closing the country’s huge array of inefficient state-owned industries. Officials in the government have said they intend to retain full ownership of only 3,000 of more than 370,000 state-owned firms.

Breaking with the Communist tradition of collective ownership or public ownership of industry, Jiang said Friday that the party and the party-controlled government will now officially permit “diverse forms of ownership.”

By employing such euphemisms as “diverse” and “different” forms of ownership, the party leader carefully avoided the word “privatization”--a term still anathema to some party hard-liners--in describing the sell-off of state industries. However, the message was still clear.

The Chinese leader was more direct when it came to additional layoffs in state-owned industries that are expected if the party makes good on its pledge to sell or dump its poorly performing businesses. Unemployed workers, particularly in the cities and northern Rust Belt, have become a serious problem for the government. Several demonstrations by laid-off workers have been reported in recent months.

In one remarkably Darwinian section of his speech, Jiang said the party “should encourage merger of enterprises, standardize bankruptcy procedures, increase efficiency by downsizing staff and encourage reemployment projects so as to form a competitive mechanism selecting the superior and eliminating the inferior.” The party and government, he said, should show “concern” for the laid-off workers.

But, Jiang added, the workers also have a responsibility for their plight. “All workers,” he said, “should change their ideas about employment and improve their own quality to meet the new requirements of reform and development.”

The Chinese system of cradle-to-grave employment--known colloquially as the “iron rice bowl”--apparently is a thing of the past.

Although Jiang never mentioned the United States by name in his 2 1/2-hour speech launching the weeklong congress, he made several oblique references essentially telling Washington to keep out of Chinese affairs, particularly in areas involving Taiwan or human rights.

Regarding Taiwan, Jiang said China stands for “peaceful reunification” with the mainland but decries “the schemes of foreign forces to interfere with China’s reunification and bring about the ‘independence’ of Taiwan.”

The speech, the result of months of work and consultations among party leaders, contained few surprises. However, some diplomats said they were puzzled by the relatively few references made to the Chinese military, arguably the country’s most powerful institution. In one of the few mentions, Jiang announced that the army, the world’s largest, with 3 million men and women in uniform, will be reduced by 500,000 over the next three years.

Other observers were impressed by the similarities between certain sections of Jiang’s speech and the speech made 10 years ago by the subsequently ousted party secretary Zhao Ziyang, a leader of the reform faction, at the 13th party congress. Jiang repeatedly employed a Zhao rhetorical device, describing China as being in a “primary stage of socialism” to explain the need for liberalizing the state-dominated Chinese economy.

“We are destined to go through a rather long primary stage of socialism,” Jiang said Friday. “During this stage we shall accomplish industrialization and the socialization, market orientation and modernization of the economy. This is a historical stage we cannot jump over,” he said.

“If I had my eyes closed,” said one young Chinese journalist covering the event, “I could have been listening to Zhao Ziyang in 1987.”

Much of the 59-page speech was devoted to the canonization of China’s late “paramount leader,” Deng Xiaoping, who died in February at age 92. Mentioning Deng at least 67 times, Jiang elevated “Deng Xiaoping Theory” to the same lofty ideological level previously occupied by Marxism-Leninism and “Mao Tse-tung Thought.”

“Deng Xiaoping Theory is the Marxism of present-day China,” Jiang said.

Jiang, who observers said showed more confidence Friday than he did five years ago when he made his first political report as party chief at the 14th party congress, was fairly blunt about the country’s problems, including widespread corruption in the party and government.

“Corruption, extravagance and waste and other undesirable phenomena,” Jiang said, “are still spreading and growing.”

He urged the party to be strict with corrupt and wayward members, “leading cadres in particular.”

In a plenum meeting leading up to the congress, party officials expelled former Politburo member and ex-Beijing Mayor Chen Xitong on corruption allegations.

The candor Jiang showed in his speech has not made him very popular among China’s working class, and a popular ditty reflecting this sentiment has been making the rounds of Beijing.

Under Mao, the ditty goes, the people were sent “down to the countryside.”

Under Deng, the people were sent “down into the sea of business.”

Under Jiang, it says, the people were “sent down into the ranks of the unemployed.”