The following post by Fan Lixiang (范利祥), a commentator for the Nanfang Daily Group Management School, was deleted from Sina Weibo sometime before 9:07 p.m. yesterday, September 25, 2012. The post is a Photoshopped image of U.S. President Barack Obama and China’s presumed next president, Xi Jinping, walking together as Obama leads his dog, which has the face of Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda. Fan Lixiang currently has more than 200,000 followers, according to numbers from Sina Weibo. [More on deleted posts at the WeiboScope Search, by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre].

In the above photo, Obama’s dialogue bubble reads: “Brother Xi, show some mercy. There is a saying that striking a dog falls to its master.” To which Xi Jinping responds, a clear reference to the ongoing row between Japan and China over the Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands, and to U.S. involvement as Japan’s ally: “Let me warn you: go back home and go to sleep. Otherwise, I’ll strike the dog and his master.”

NOTE: All posts to The Anti-Social List are listed as “permission denied” in the Sina Weibo API, which means they were deleted by Weibo managers, not by users themselves.

By QIAN GANG
Keywords: power of decision-making, power of administration and power of monitoring
If I suggested to my audience that “separation of powers,” the tripartite model of state governance common to many of the world’s democracies, exists in the Chinese Communist Party too, they would probably revile me. “You must be dreaming!” they would scoff, sliding off their shoes to use as projectiles. I’ll leave that thought hanging in mid-air for a moment as I indulge in a bit of background.
In March 2011, at China’s annual National People’s Congress (NPC), Wu Bangguo, the NPC’s chairman and a member of the powerful Politburo Standing Committee, made a statement that later became shortened and popularized as the “Five Will Nots,” or wu bu gao:

China will not do rotational multiparty rule; will not do diversity of guiding ideologies; will not do “separation of powers” and a bicameral system; will not do privatization [of property].

In fact, this idea comes from Deng Xiaoping. In 1987, when Deng had a mind to promote political reform, he stressed that China would not follow a multiparty system and separation of powers, or san quan fen li. When Deng opposed “separation of powers” — in Chinese, literally “separation of three powers” — he was referring broadly to the Western sense of the idea, Montesquieu’s division of political power into the executive, legislative and judiciary.

[ABOVE: Wu Bangguo addresses the NPC in 2011 and rules out Western-style separation of powers.]
It may or may not surprise readers to know that the Chinese Communist Party has its own version of “separation of powers.” This is the idea of a tripartite functioning of power within the Party itself, the three powers being: power of decision-making; power of administration; power of monitoring.
In theory, the highest decision-making organ of the Chinese Communist Party is the National Congress of the CCP. This power is exercised, or administered, by the Central Committee, Politburo and Politburo Standing Committee on which the congress decides. The Central Commission carries out monitoring for Discipline Inspection.
Back in the 1950s, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union sought to cleanse itself of the tyranny of Joseph Stalin. At the Chinese Communist Party’s 8th National Congress, held two and a half years after Stalin’s death, it was decided that a permanent body would be constituted to exercise decision-making power while the congress was not in session. At the same time, a secretariat would be formed to execute these decisions. Finally, oversight committees would be set up at various levels to monitor the Party’s work.
It was just a year later, however, that Mao Zedong fomented his Anti-Rightist Movement, re-centralizing and monopolizing these three powers. The tragedies of the Great Chinese Famine and the Cultural Revolution followed over the next two decades. When Deng Xiaoping rose to power after the end of the Cultural Revolution he singled out over-concentration of power as the root sickness of the old political system under Mao. In the Deng Xiaoping era, through the efforts of Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, there was some progress in building mechanisms to check power, but that progress was slow.
In today’s Chinese Communist Party the root of decision-making power is somewhat obscure. National congresses are held only once every five years, but these are carefully scripted events, everyone clapping at the right moments, raising their hands to approve matters that have already been decided. After this staged event, the responsibilities of the Party “delegates” are at an end.

[ABOVE: Wen Jiabao addresses the National People’s Congress in 2010, photo by Remko Tanis, available at Flickr.com under Creative Commons license. While the NPC is supposed to have substantial lawmaking powers, the real power lies with the Central Committee’s Politburo.]
The Party’s administrative power is massive. Both decision-making power and administrative power are in fact concentrated in the hands of the Central Committee — more precisely, in the hands of the Politburo Standing Committee.
The monitoring of power is a difficult proposition: the Central Committee for Discipline Inspection is controlled by the Central Committee, which means essentially that the sick patient is also the doctor.
The idea of “three powers” within the Chinese Communist Party dates to the era of state-owned enterprise reform in the 1990s. On November 27, 1995, the People’s Daily reported the remarks of the boss of one state-owned enterprise, who said there was a need to create “scientific management systems in which the powers of decision-making, administration and monitoring and their related mechanisms were mutually independent.”
If applied to political power, this idea of “mutually independent mechanisms” is quite significant. Later, however, when the Party introduced the idea of “three powers” into the political sphere, the word “independent” was left out.
Corruption has steadily worsened in China under the leadership of Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. In the five years between the 15th National Congress (1997) and the 16th National Congress (2002), the Party investigated at least 98 provincial and ministerial level officials. The first high-level official to be pulled from his perch during Hu Jintao’s term in office was Cheng Weigao, the top leader of Hubei province.
In 2003, as there was increased discussion about “corruption among principles” — meaning officials with chief responsibility for particular offices — the phrase “three powers within the Party” began appearing in the media. But if anyone at the time had tried to elevate the debate by using the phrase “separation of powers within the Party,” or dang nei san quan fen li, they would have been stepping into a forbidden zone.
On November 3, 2004, a brand new weekly publication in Hubei province called the New Weekly Report, or Xin Zhou Bao, ran a gutsy report called, “New Trends in Official Corruption.” The report argued that without the proper monitoring mechanisms, the institutions of power inevitably become hotbeds of corruption. It suggested further that there be “separation of power” within the Party, that the powers of decision-making, administration and monitoring be entrusted to different branches.

[ABOVE: Hubei’s New Weekly Report runs a daring article on separation of power and gets shut down in 2004.]

When this report was re-published by other media, some editors decided to include “separation of powers within the Party” in the headline. The report quickly drew fire from officials in the Central Propaganda Department. Under pressure, provincial officials in Hubei moved immediately to shut down the New Weekly Report, which had published only seven issues. All at once, the phrase “separation of powers within the Party” became taboo.
The phrase “power of decision-making, power of administration and power of monitoring,” however, became more and more popular. The following is a graph of articles on People’s Daily Online using the term “three powers,” or san quan, in recent years:

A meeting of the Central Committee for Discipline Inspection in early 2006 marked an intensification of the official campaign against corruption. Conveying the “spirit” of the meeting, an article in the People’s Daily listed out for the first time the “three powers”:

. . . [The Party] must build and improve power structures for mutual conditioning and mutual coordination of the powers of decision-making, administration and monitoring, improving oversight mechanisms . . .

[ABOVE: A 2006 article in the People’s Daily lists out the “three powers” for the first time in central state media.]
Notice that the report refers to “conditioning” — or restriction — and to “coordination,” but not to “independence.” This phrase was destined to become a formal phrase, a new watchword, making it into the political report to the 17th National Congress in 2007.

[ABOVE: The People’s Daily mentions the “three powers” in an article about the 17th National Congress in 2007.]
The term “three powers” appeared more frequently in the wake of the 17th National Congress. There were two peaks of use, the first in 2008, when the State Council pushed a program of institutional restructuring (and the term “separation of powers” actually appeared in the official Xi’an Daily). The second peak came in 2011, when the fourth full meeting of the Central Committee again appealed for a tough stance on corruption. Clearly, the phrase “three powers” is directly associated with administrative restructuring and anti-corruption.

[ABOVE: The official Xi’an Daily uses the term “separation of powers” in a headline dealing with the “three powers.”]
As the 18th National Congress approaches, some language in the official press has linked the “three powers” of the Chinese Communist Party with political reform. People’s Forum, a magazine supplement of the People’s Daily, ran an article in its July 2012 edition by Xu Yaotong, a professor at the China National School of Administration. Professor Xu wrote: “In its top-level design, political reforms must take reasonable steps to separate the power structure into separate institutional structures [exercising] the ‘power of decision-making, power of administration and power of monitoring,’ so that these ‘three powers’ can operate on their own and mutually check [one another].'” This idea of three powers that are “separate” and “operating on their own” was a step closer to the idea of independently operating powers or branches.
There have also been increasingly bold calls for reform of the Party power structure from Party insiders. Unpublishable in China’s mainstream media, these have been passed along privately, through e-mail and social media. One of the most notable examples has come from Cao Siyuan, a well-known constitutional scholar in China. In a piece called, “Three Suggestions for the 18th National Congress,” Cao argued that the most serious issue for the Party was the concentration of the powers of decision-making and monitoring in the hands of those also charged with implementing policies. He offered a proposal for the separation and mutual balancing of powers within the Party.
According to Cao’s proposal, the number of delegates to the National Congress, which exercises decision-making power, should be trimmed down. This smaller, more streamlined body would then serve a permanent role for the five-year duration of each congress. Delegates to national congresses, now numbering more than 2,000, would be reduced to around 500 permanently serving members who would be salaried and meet on an annual basis. This body would have the power to elect or remove officials in administrative and monitoring organs, but they would not have the power to interfere in these activities.
The delegates in Cao’s proposal would elect from among themselves seven to nine committee members to form an Executive Commission (like the present Standing Committee) to serve an executive function. The Executive Commission would report on and be responsible for the work of the National Congress, offering opposing opinions and prompting reconsideration of policy decisions.

[ABOVE: Flowers outside the Communist Party Museum are formed in the shape of the Party’s flag. Photo by z_fishies available at Flickr.com under Creative Commons license.]
The National Congress would also, under Cao’s plan, select five to seven members to form a Discipline Inspection Commission to exercise a monitoring role. The primary responsibility of this commission would be to monitor the conduct of Party officials of approximate rank (including delegates to the National Congress and members of the Executive Commission). They could not, however, interfere in the daily business of the congress or other officials.
Importantly, officials serving as delegates to the National Congress, or as members of the Executive Commission Discipline Inspection Commission, would not be permitted to hold other positions concurrently.
Cao believes that his plan could ensure that decision-making power in its present form could be made substantial instead of empty, and at the same time elevate the power of monitoring to an independent status, so that the three institutions provide separate checks — and so that the executive institution, the most easily abused, can be effectively monitored.
This is one form of intra-Party reform as proposed by a moderate within the Party. Nevertheless, for many within the Party, this proposal is revolutionary if not outright subversive.
If separation of powers occurred within the Party, this would effectively mean victory over the existing, entrenched system of concentration of power within the executive. That is something that won’t happen at the upcoming 18th National Congress. Nevertheless, the watchword “three powers” is one to watch carefully at the 18th National Congress. Will the phrase that was included in the political report five years ago make it into the upcoming political report? If it does, will the phrasing change in any way, and how? Will the idea of three powers edge closer to the idea – and perhaps even the likelihood – of their independent exercise? Is there any possibility for the implementation of a permanent body of delegates such as that envisioned by Professor Cao? And if this does not become an agenda for the moment, will there be any mention of a timetable for such reform?

By QIAN GANG
Keyword: power is given by the people
President Hu Jintao had scarcely settled into office in 2002 when he introduced his own signature watchword to the Party vocabulary. On December 5, 2002, just three weeks after the close of the 16th National Congress, Hu Jintao declared during a visit to Xibaipo, a village with symbolic importance as a Chinese Communist Party base in the late 1940s:

“Leading cadres at all levels must continue to work at the grassroots level, going among the masses, listening to the call of the masses, tending to the hardships of the masses, exercising power for the people, empathizing with the feelings of the people, and working for the well-being of the people.”

This utterance was quickly seized upon by Hong Kong media, which summed it up as the “new three principles of the people,” or xin san min zhuyi, a reference to the political philosophy of Sun Yat-sen, dating to the late 19th century.
In June 2003, the full-length Hu Jintao phrase was written into a policy document calling for renewed study of the political theories of Hu’s predecessor, Jiang Zemin. Four years later, the new three principles — the longhand form, that is, and not the “new three principles” catchphrase originated in Hong Kong — were included in Hu Jintao’s political report to the 17th National Congress.
On September 1, 2010, Xi Jinping, assumed to be Hu Jintao’s successor ever since he was promoted to the Politburo Standing Committee at the 17th National Congress, called on Party members in a speech at the Central Party School to have a “correct view of the world, of power and of their work.” He said:

. . . The Marxist view of power can be summed up in two phrases: power is given by the people, and power is used for the people.

[ABOVE: The headline on this Xinhua News Agency piece posted to QQ.com reads: “Xi Jinping Describes His View of Power at the Central Party School: Power is Given By the People.”]
We should note the timing of Xi Jinping’s remarks, which come right in the midst of Premier Wen Jiabao’s burst of statements in 2010 about political reform. Prior to Xi Jinping’s speech, Wen had already made two important speeches on political reform, and he would subsequently discuss political reform on five other occasions through October 2010.
Xi Jinping’s use of the phrase “power is given by the people,” or quan wei min suo fu, is a conspicuous reference to Hu Jintao’s so-called “new three principles of the people.” What’s more, Xi’s statement builds on Hu’s formula by dealing with the question of the origin of power. Guangdong’s Southern Weekly, one of China’s more outspoken newspapers, seized on this Xi Jinping moment as one of the current affairs bright spots of 2010 in China.

[ABOVE: An online article at Southern Weekly defines Xi Jinping’s remarks on the origin and meaning of power at a “bright spot” of 2010.]
Across the border in Hong Kong, commentators were more openly sanguine, certain that this comment from Xi Jinping signaled that the Party’s fifth generation of leaders would jump-start political reform.

[ABOVE: A blog in Hong Kong argues in September 2010 that Xi Jinping’s remarks on the origin of power signal that the “fifth generation” of Party leaders will jumpstart political reforms.]
Xi Jinping’s speech was reported by both the People’s Daily and People’s Daily Online:

[ABOVE: The Party’s official People’s Daily runs a front-page report on Xi Jinping’s speech at the Central Party School.]

But the phrase “power is given by the people” is not yet a mature watchword in the Party media. The phrase has never appeared in a headline at the People’s Daily — a coming of age ritual for any Party phrase — and it has appeared in just 11 articles in the People’s Daily in the past two years (to July 2012).
President Hu Jintao’s exact attitude toward this phrase is a matter of speculation. In June 2003, Zhu Houze, a known reform advocate who once served as head of the Party’s Central Propaganda Department, openly elaborated on the “new three principles of the people” at a Party meeting, saying:

Party leaders have demanded that cadres at various levels ‘exercise power for the people, empathize with the feelings of the people, and work for the well-being of the people’ . . . What are we supposed to rely on to make this happen? Is it a matter of consciousness, or of conscience? I think the crux still lies in ‘endowment of power by the people’. This, still, is the system’s most fundamental security.

The phrase used by Zhu Houze, quan wei min suo shou, is identical in meaning to quan wei min suo fu, the phrase Xi Jinping used in 2010. It is rumored, however, that Hu Jintao was displeased with Zhu Houze’s outburst, which went beyond the Party’s responsibilities, to the very root of its legitimacy.
Neither Hu Jintao nor Jiang Zemin have ever uttered language of this kind — raising so directly, in the roundabout world of the watchword, the issue of legitimacy of power. For Xi Jinping to make such a remark about power being “given” by the people was something remarkable.
What had Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao said? In his report to the 15th National Congress, Jiang Zemin said: “Our power is vested in us by the people, every cadre is a public servant of the people, and they must be monitored by the people and by the law.” The difference, which might seem trifling rendered into English, is in fact politically significant.
Jiang repeated the language in his report to the 16th Party Congress five years later, saying: “[We must] ensure that the power vested by the people is used to seek the interests of the people.” And Hu Jintao’s phrasing in his report to the 17th National Congress, parroted Jiang Zemin: “[We must] ensure that the power vested by the people is used, from start to finish, to seek the interests of the people.”
These three instances are in fact far weaker than the idea of power being given by the people as a supplement to the so-called “new three principles of the people,” which spell out the spirit in which power must be exercised and sidestep the legitimacy issue.
While President Hu has not invoked the phrase “power is given by the people,” he has on a number of occasions addressed the issue of the Party’s “ruling status,” or zhizheng diwei. Released by the central Party leadership in 2004, the breathlessly named “Decision on the Strengthening of the Chinese Communist Party’s Ruling Ability” said that “the Party’s ruling status is not a birthright, nor is it permanent.”
In 2008, a lead editorial in the People’s Daily quoted Hu Jintao as saying: “The Party’s core ruling status is not permanent, possession in the past does not equate to possession in the present, and possession in the present does not equate to possession in the future.” In his speech to commemorate the Party’s 90th birthday in 2011, he again emphasized: “Leading cadres at various levels must bear in mind that the power in our hands was vested by the people.”
The appearance of “power is given by the people” in the political report to the 18th National Congress is virtually assured. But will this phrase be repeated and emphasized? This question, which will ultimately be decided by internal power plays, is a matter of wordplay that directly concerns China’s political future.

In early September 2012, Japan’s government announced its intention to buy the uninhabited Senkaku Islands, which China claims and calls the Diaoyu Islands, from a private owner. The move sparked anger across China, and by September 15 protests in many cities across China had grown violent. Mobs attacked Japanese factories, Japanese-brand stores and even stores stocking Japanese products. Images of Japanese-brand cars smashed and overturned — cars purchased by China’s newly rich — were shared widely on Chinese social media. Even more disturbing were the extreme messages. Many images showed protesters holding up banners reading: “Even if all China becomes a grave, we must kill all Japanese.” The madness of nationalism seemed to override the instinct for self-preservation. In this cartoon, posted by artist Kuang Biao (邝飚) to Sina Weibo on September 18, 2012, a figure with a hammer for a head and sporting a bandana like that worn by some Chinese protesters in recent days, sits on the Chinese mainland, slashing itself violently with a knife. It screams across the East China Sea to a clearly Japanese figure standing atop a tiny island, symbolizing the Senkaku Islands: “I’m looking into this case of self-mutilation! How things develop depends on what you do!” The Japanese figure looks utterly flabbergasted at the behavior he sees across the water, his expression seeming to say, “WTF!”

By QIAN GANG
Keywords: Cultural Revolution (文革 or 文化大革命)
Anyone who regularly observes the topsy-turvy world of Chinese politics understands that the past, even the remote past, can exert a powerful influence on the present and future. Major historical anniversaries — like that of the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre or the founding of the Chinese Communist Party — can send either perennial chills or doctrinal fevers through China’s political culture and media. In China, the past is always present, even if, as in the case of Tiananmen, it cannot be readily talked about.
As we train our eyes on the 18th National Congress with a mind to reading China’s future, therefore, one of the most important signs to watch will be how China’s leaders deal with the country’s past. Specifically, how will the political report to the 18th National Congress deal with the Cultural Revolution, that period of political and social upheaval from 1966 to 1976 in which millions of Chinese were persecuted?

[ABOVE: Does the Cultural Revolution still loom behind contemporary Chinese politics? Wen Jiabao’s remarks at a press conference in March 2012 suggested tragedies like the Cultural Revolution could happen again in China if political reforms are not pursued.]
Several variants of the term “Cultural Revolution” are used in Chinese. The longest form, seldom used, is the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution,” or wuchan jieji wenhua dageming. More frequently used is the phrase “Cultural Revolution,” or wenhua dageming, and its shortened form, wenge. Originally, this term appeared quite regularly in the media, but in recent years it has become sensitive, and therefore rare.
In early 2012, as China edged closer to the 18th National Congress and leadership struggles came to a head in the ouster of Bo Xilai, an influential “princeling,” Politburo member and top leader of the municipality of Chongqing, more attention was paid to the Cultural Revolution in China’s media, and in society generally. Bo Xilai’s populist campaign of “red songs”, which some saw as a key part of his bid for a spot in China’s powerful Politburo Standing Committee, had seemed to invoke the Cultural Revolution — its aesthetic exterior if not its core principles. With Bo apparently swept from contention, the question was now open: how would Hu Jintao and his successors deal with the history of the Cultural Revolution and Mao’s leftist political line?
On March 14, 2012, before Bo Xilai’s fall was assured, and as the curtain closed on the National People’s Congress in Beijing, Premier Wen Jiabao held a press conference to answer reporters’ questions. This was Wen’s last press conference as premier, and he came prepared with some of his heaviest remarks yet on political reform.
A reporter from Singapore’s Straits Times asked, “In recent years you have raised the issue of political reform numerous times in various forums, and this has drawn a lot of attention. I’d like to ask why it is you continue to raise the issue of political reform. And where does the difficulty lie for China in carrying out political reforms?” Wen Jiabao responded as follows:

Yes, many times in recent years I’ve talked about political reform — already quite comprehensively and specifically, it should be said. As to why I’ve given so much attention to this, it is a matter of responsibility. After the breaking up of the ‘Gang of Four,’ our Party issued its [1981] Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party since the Founding of the Republic and instituted economic reform and opening. But we have not yet fully rooted out the evil legacy of the errors of the Cultural Revolution and the influence of feudalism. Along with economic development, we have also had such problems as unfair distribution of income, a lack of credibility and corruption. I know only too well that resolving these issues means not just carrying out economic reforms, but also means carrying out political reforms, especially reforms to the system of Party and state leadership.
Right now our reforms have come to a key stage. Without successful political reforms, we cannot possibly carry out full economic reforms, the gains we have made so far in our reform and construction could possibly be lost, new problems emerging in society cannot be fundamentally resolved, and tragedies like the Cultural Revolution could potentially happen again. Every responsible Party member and leading cadre must have a sense of urgency about this.
We should, through reforms, gradually institutionalize and legalize socialist democracy in our country. This provides the basic guarantee that we can avoid a replay of the Cultural Revolution and realize long term peace and stability in our country.”

Responding to a separate question about the so-called “Wang Lijun Incident” of that February, in which the former top police official in the city of Chongqing — who had been spearheading Bo Xilai’s campaign against organized crime in the city — entered the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu apparently seeking protection, Wen Jiabao said sternly that the Party and government leadership of Chongqing “must engage in reflection.”
For Wen to talk about the Cultural Revolution, political reform and other sensitive issues at such a sensitive time drew great interest from media outside China. Ta Kung Pao, the Chinese Communist Party-aligned newspaper in Hong Kong, splashed a large, red headline across the top of its page-four special coverage of the NPC: “Failure of Political Reform Could Mean Repeat of Cultural Revolution.”

[ABOVE: Hong Kong’s Ta Kung Pao splashes Premier Wen Jiabao’s remarks about reform and the Cultural Revolution across page four.]
Even some mainland media dared prominent headlines. An article at QQ.com, one of China’s most popular internet news portals, read: “If Political Reforms Do Not Succeed, Cultural Revolution Tragedy Could Be Repeated.”

And the New Express, a leading commercial newspaper in the southern city of Guangzhou, ran a large picture of a waving Wen Jiabao on its front page. The headline to Wen’s left read: “Without Successful Political Reform the Historical Tragedy of the Cultural Revolution Could Be Replayed.” The phrase “Cultural Revolution” was bolded for emphasis in the headline.

[ABOVE: Wen Jiabao’s comments on the Cultural Revolution and reform make the front page of Guangzhou’s New Express.]
After 1976 in China, assessments of the Cultural Revolution were closely tied to political struggles within the Chinese Communist Party, struggles that of course determined what direction the country took.
The 11th National Congress in 1977 was the first major political meeting to be held following the death of Mao Zedong, the collapse of the Gang of Four, the end of the Cultural Revolution and the political comeback of Deng Xiaoping. Not only did this National Congress fail to deny the Cultural Revolution, it defined the fall of the Gang of Four as one of the great victories of the Cultural Revolution, and it continued to criticize former chairman Liu Shaoqi, who had been persecuted by Mao Zedong.
In fact, it took reformists in China, led by Deng Xiaoping, three full years to issue a full-fledged condemnation of the Cultural Revolution and its excesses. First, in the wake of the ouster of the Gang of Four, came the so-called “debates over the criteria for testing the truth,” a kind of mass movement of introspection arising from vehement objections to the words of then-Chairman Hua Guofeng, who remained supportive of Mao Zedong’s policies in spite of the havoc they had wrought, saying: “We will firmly uphold whatever policy decisions Chairman Mao made, following Chairman Mao’s instructions without hesitation.”
There was the rehabilitation of those involved in the 1976 Tiananmen Incident, in which thousands had mourned the death of former Communist Party leader Zhou Enlai in April 1976 (Zhou had passed away in January that year) against the wishes of top leaders like Jiang Qing and other members of the Gang of Four. There was the sentencing of the members of the Gang of Four, and of the clique of Marshal Lin Biao. Finally, there was a protracted discussion within the Party of the breathlessly named Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party since the Founding of the Republic, which grappled with important questions lingering from the Cultural Revolution.
It was not until the end of 1981 that the Party issued a full condemnation of the Cultural Revolution. At the 12th National Congress in 1982, Hu Yaobang‘s political report criticized the Cultural Revolution. Five years later, Zhao Ziyang‘s political report to the 13th National Congress connected the issue of political reform to the prevention of further tragedies in China like the Cultural Revolution:

. . . [We must] through reforms ensure that socialist democracy gradually moves toward systemization and legalization. This is the most basic guarantee that we can prevent a replay of the Cultural Revolution and achieve long-term peace and stability.

In the 1980s it was essentially not sensitive to talk about the Cultural Revolution, although a small number of creative works and theoretical writings were suppressed because they directly criticized China’s political system. In fact, discussion of the Cultural Revolution was beneficial to Deng Xiaoping as he sought to consolidate his power and push ahead with his reform agenda.
After the June Fourth Incident in 1989, there were far fewer references to the Cultural Revolution in the speeches of Party leaders. In his political reports to the 14th and 15th National Congresses, when President Jiang Zemin praised Deng Xiaoping’s legacy and placed it in its historical context, he made passing mention of the Cultural Revolution. In his report to the 16th National Congress in 2002, Jiang Zemin made no mention at all of the Cultural Revolution.
Since coming to office, President Hu Jintao has mentioned the errors of the Cultural Revolution on at least five occasions. One was the commemoration in 2003 of the 110-year anniversary of Mao Zedong’s birth. Next came the 50-year anniversary in 2004 of the founding of the National People’s Congress. That was followed by a speech to a special topic discussion among provincial leaders in 2005, a speech celebrating the 110-year anniversary in 2008 of the birth of Liu Shaoqi, and, finally, his speech to commemorate the 30th anniversary of economic reforms in 2008. In his report to the 17th National Congress in 2007, Hu Jintao mentioned the Cultural Revolution in explaining — as Jiang Zemin had — the historical context of Deng Xiaoping’s achievements. But in none of his speeches has Hu Jintao summarized and reviewed the lessons of the Cultural Revolution.
The sense in China’s media over the past few years has been that the space for discussion of the Cultural Revolution is actually diminishing further. When the 40th anniversary of the onset of the Cultural Revolution rolled around in 2006, many Chinese media had planned to do retrospective reports, but these were stopped across the board by a ban issued from the Party’s Central Propaganda Department.
There is a close match between the determination to forget the Cultural Revolution and the present stagnation of political reform in China. The Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao eras have spanned the 70th, 80th and 90th anniversaries of the founding of Chinese Communist Party, crucial milestones for the Party leadership.
In his speech to commemorate the 70th anniversary in 1991, Jiang Zemin did mention that “for a period of time, under the influence of the left, a number of mistakes were made, particularly such serious setbacks as the Cultural Revolution.” Ten years later, commemorating the Party’s 80th anniversary, Jiang Zemin made no mention at all of the Cultural Revolution. President Hu Jintao similarly absented the Cultural Revolution in his 2011 speech to commemorate the 90th anniversary.
Since 2009, in fact, Hu Jintao has made no mention of the Cultural Revolution in any of his publicly available speeches. It was in that year that Chongqing’s charismatic top leader, Bo Xilai, launched his nationally popular campaign against organized crime in the city, along with his mass mobilization movement of “red” culture promotion and its Cultural Revolution-style nostalgia. Events in Chongqing emboldened China’s Maoist left, which has been more active and influential since 2009.
Progress on the issue of political reform in China has already become inseparable from reckoning with the Cultural Revolution. That decade touches directly on what is now most central to China’s development: creating checks and balances as restraints on political power. At its most basic, the question is this: does China move forward to establish a system of constitutional governance, or does it slide backward into a new era of Mao-style political movements, fanning populism, breaking and remolding society, wiping away competing ideas?
It was against this backdrop that Wen Jiabao’s remarks about political reform and the Cultural Revolution created such a stir in China in 2012. In a sense, Wen was breaking through a taboo about discussion of this historical tragedy that has prevailed in recent years. He was using the opportunity presented by dramatic events in Chongqing to raise again the point Zhao Ziyang made in his political report to the 13th National Congress in 1987, that political reform was necessary to prevent a replay of the Cultural Revolution.
One issue to watch at the 18th National Congress is whether and how China’s past will be dealt with in the political report. Will the phrase “Cultural Revolution” make a more prominent showing? How will it be talked about?

By QIAN GANG
Keyword: political system reform (政治体制改革)
Ever since the 17th National Congress in 2007, the Chinese Communist Party has shilly-shallied on political reform. For advocates of political reform who see it as essential to China’s continued development the signals emerging from the leadership have brought constant disappointment.
Searching the phrase “political system reform” — which can more simply be translated as “political reform” — in the official People’s Daily since the beginning of the 1980s, one derives a surge and sag pattern that mirrors quite closely the history of the Party’s engagement with this issue. Usage of the phrase surged before and after the 13th National Congress in 1987, during which time political reform was integral to the agenda. But the phrase fell precipitously in the wake of the June Fourth crackdown on protests in 1989, and has never recovered.

This is the historical pattern drawn by Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, whose efforts to promote political reform in the 1980s ultimately failed, and by Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, who in the years that followed were unable to move out of the shadow of June Fourth and take steps in the direction of political reform.
But China’s premier, Wen Jiabao, has called repeatedly in recent years for political reform, and popular voices clamoring for political reform have by some measures grown more insistent. The pattern emerging from a search, using China’s domestic Baidu search engine, of uses of “political reform” in news headlines since 2003 is quite different from the People’s Daily pattern above.

The graph shows that before and after the 17th National Congress in 2007, the term “political reform” rose generally in China’s media. These results are for all media, including Party-run newspapers, market-driven metro newspapers and magazines, and websites. The pattern may reflect broader expectations of political reform at the time. In 2009, however, China’s leaders introduced a concerted campaign to propagate the so-called “China Model,” and this clamor was accompanied by new attempts to stifle discussion of political reform. As China proclaimed that it had arrived at a glorious new model of development, it would certainly have been untimely to suggest there was an urgent need to reform.
In 2010, Premier Wen Jiabao made seven important references to political reform in within a period of weeks. He remarked in a CNN interview that “the people’s wishes for, and needs for, democracy and freedom are irresistible.” But another bump in the “political reform” curve followed, and once again, the discussion was quickly muffled.
During the first half of 2012, there were just 31 articles in the People’s Daily making use of the phrase “political reform,” a sign that Party media remained cold on the issue. But online articles using the term during the same period totaled 781, suggesting that the issue of political reform was enjoying a new high, surpassing even the bump in 2010.
Over the years of the Hu-Wen administration, Wen Jiabao has consistently been the leader within the Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party who has spoken out most insistently on the issue of political reform. Premier Wen has made eight government work reports to the National People’s Congress since taking office, and in every single one he has spoken of political reform. He has held eight press conferences for each of these NPC sessions, and at all but two of them (2005 and 2006) he has spoken directly about political reform. In 2007, in particular, he was insistent on the issue, exploiting each question raised by reporters as an opportunity to discuss his political reform views.
Fielding a question from a report in 2007, Wen Jiaobao said: “Things like democracy, rule of law, freedom, human rights, equality, universal love, these are not unique to capitalism. These are fruits of civilization that have emerged in common across the world through a long historical process, and they are values humanity pursues in common.” These remarks occasioned a series of fierce exchanges that year between liberal intellectuals and hardliners in China.
In October 2008, Wen Jiabao was interviewed by CNN’s Fareed Zakaria while on a visit to the United States. When Zakaria asked Wen what lessons he had taken from the Tiananmen Square crackdown on protests in 1989, the premier responded: “I believe that while moving ahead with economic reforms, we also need to advance political reforms; as our development is comprehensive in nature, our reform should also be comprehensive.” He added that in addition to greater rule of law, and more oversight exercised by the Chinese people, “We need to gradually improve the democratic election system so that state power will truly belong to the people and state power will be used to serve the people.”

[ABOVE: The China Media Project’s book on Premier Wen Jiabao and the political reform discourse in China in 2010.]
Wen again raised the political reform issue in 2010. In his government work report to the National People’s Congress in March that year, he said: “Without political reform, our economic reforms and modernization drive cannot possibly succeed; fairness and justice are brighter than the sun in the sky.” Five months later, he used the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone and other events of moment, such as his presence at the United Nations General Assembly, to further press the issue of political reform. His remarks seemed to become heftier with each utterance. He said on one occasion: “If we run counter to the will of the people, then the road ahead is a blind alley.”
In these instances, what have since become known in China as Wen Jiabao’s “seven mentions of political reform,” the thrust was that without political reform China’s economic reforms, and the gains they have brought, will ultimately fail. Further, he said, the problem of over-concentration of power and insufficient checks and balances had to be dealt with. The ruling party had to abide by the nation’s law and govern according to the Constitution. Finally, he emphasized that fairness and personal freedom were the ultimate measure of democracy and rule of law in a country.
Wen Jiabao’s political reform remarks were supported by many Chinese, but they were resisted by the Party’s upper ranks. The Central Propaganda Department responded by issuing stiff restrictions on coverage and discussion of political reform. On China’s Twitter-like Sina Weibo, then just over a year old but already a crucial platform through which millions of Chinese gathered with a thirst for information, both of the long and shortened forms of the term “political reform” were blocked.
Premier Wen was undeterred. On September 14, 2011, attending the World Economic Forum’s Summer Davos held in the Chinese city of Dalian, Wen delivered a speech in which he said, “We must continue to promote economic reform and political reform.” He added that China must “adhere to national governance by rule of law, reforming on an institutional level the over-concentration of power and [the problem of] insufficient checks and balances, protecting the democratic rights of the people and their legal rights and benefits, preserving fairness and justice in society.”

[ABOVE: Wen Jiabao addresses the Davos forum in 2009. Image from Flickr.com, shared by the World Economic Forum under Creative Commons license.]
Again, on June 15, 2012, Wen said as he addressed the Counselors’ Office of the State Council: “The goal we are pursuing is not just the development of the economy, but freedom and equality for the people, and comprehensive development.” He spoke again about democracy, both so-called intra-party democracy – essentially, more shared decision-making within the Party – and the “institutionalization and legalization of democracy in the political and social life of the country.”
Wen Jiabao’s most recent appearance was a speech delivered at Tsinghua University on September 14, 2012. Addressing the issue of universal values, Wen said that “democracy and rule of law, fairness and justice, freedom and equality, are ideals and goals for which all of humankind were striving.” He again called on China to be “unswerving in carrying out political reform, developing socialist democracy and rule of law, promoting social fairness and justice, and realizing freedom and equality for all.”
The scores of speeches in which Wen Jiabao has addressed political reform during his 10 years in office have come to form a kind of peculiar garden within the terrain of contemporary politics. Within the upper echelons of the Chinese Communist Party, he has gone the farthest in voicing his hopes and expectations for political reform. Based on his remarks, his political ideals can be distilled by two simple ideas: protecting civil rights and checking government power. While Wen’s ideas have met resistance at every turn, the Chinese media have done their utmost, against the odds, to utilize and pass along these “Wen-style utterances”:

[ABOVE: A headline on the front page of the March 15, 2012, edition of Shanghai’s Oriental Morning Post reads: “Reform Requires the Awakening and Support of the People.”
On May 14, 2012, the People’s Daily devoted an entire page to a special series of articles under the main headline, “Advancing Steadily on Political Reform.” The series purported to catalogue China’s progress on political reform since the 16th National Congress in 2002, the year Hu Jintao stepped into the presidency. There was nothing at all momentous about the content. Most interesting, however, was the page’s design, in which a pair of phrases were emphasized boldly with a traditional block-style print. “Protecting rights,” read the first. “Checking power,” read the second. Whatever the back-story on this People’s Daily page, this pairing of phrases was distinctly Wen.

[ABOVE: The May 14, 2012, edition of the People’s Daily. The birth of a new pair of watchwords?]
One important, recurring idea in Wen Jiabao’s remarks on political reform has been that the Party must act within the scope of China’s Constitution and its laws. This idea, acting within the law, first appeared in Zhao Ziyang’s political report to the 13th National Congress in 1987. It has since traveled an uneven road, disappearing in the report to the 14th National Congress in 1992, reappearing with newfound emphasis at the 15th National Congress in 1998, disappearing yet again five years later, and finally re-emerging in 2007 in Hu Jintao’s report to the 17th National Congress.
At the Summer Davos in 2011, Wen Jiabao said: “The most important task of a ruling party is to handle matters according to the constitution and laws, operating strictly within the scope of laws and the constitution. This means we must change the Party’s proxy control of government affairs, and the state of absolutization and over-concentration of power.”
One thing to watch at the 18th National Congress will be the leadership’s position on governance and law. Will the political report emphasize the idea that the Party must operate within the law, or will this phrase once again do a disappearing act?
Another political catchphrase that has become a familiar “Wen-style utterance” is “judicial independence,” or sifa duli. In fact, judicial independence is not a particularly sensitive phrase in China’s media. Every political report since 1987 has incorporated the concept of judicial independence, though the specific phrasing has differed in every case, and sifa duli has not expressly been used. On April 14, 2011, in a speech to newly-appointed members of the Counselors’ Office of the State Council, Wen Jiabao said: “We must uphold the rule of law, building a socialist nation of rule of law, in particular ensuring judicial independence and fairness.”
This is another watchword to watch closely at the 18th National Congress. Is it possible that “judicial independence,” or sifa duli, could sneak into the political report?
President Hu Jintao is far more ambiguous than Premier Wen Jiabao on the issue of political reform. While Hu Jintao has mentioned political reform, it is important to note that in the 13 plenary sessions of the Central Committee he has convened since coming into office, he has not once put political reform on the agenda for a “topic discussion”, or zhuanti taolun. In all his most important documents and speeches — from his “decision” on building a harmonious society in 2006, to his July 23, 2012, speech during a topic discussion with provincial-level leaders — Hu Jintao’s remarks on political reform have occasioned disappointment.
Hu Jintao has avoided singling out the issue of political reform. He has tended to lump political, economic, social and cultural reform together, so that no single priority is emphasized, and political reform fades into the larger pattern. Most importantly, Hu has said again and again that political reforms “must be unified with adherence to the leadership of the Party, the people as the masters of the country and governing the country by rule of law.” This phrase, a legacy of the Jiang Zemin era, is in fact meant to restrain political reform.
In my analysis of Hu Jintao’s political report at the 17th National Congress in 2007 I found that Hu had actually backpedaled on political reform. The principal sign of this was that the phrase “political reform” was not included in a section heading in the report, the first time this had happened since the 13th National Congress in 1987. Secondly, Hu Jintao made more frequent use of the “Four Basic Principles” in his own report than Jiang Zemin had in his report to the 16th National Congress in 2002.
The following graph can serve as a benchmark against which to measure “political reform” as it appears in the political report to the 18th National Congress.

Is there hope for political reform in China? This is of course a complex question. But the watchwords used in the political report to the 18th National Congress may give us some clue to related trends within the Party leadership. Will the phrase “political reform” appear more frequently, or more prominently, than it did in 2007? And will “Wen-style utterances” like “judicial independence” make their way into the Party agenda?

After two days of violent anti-Japanese protests in China stemming from a territorial dispute over a chain of islands in the East China Sea, media in China are now calling on the public to remain calm and “rational,” apparently concerned about how violence at home might play internationally over the sovereignty issue.
Over the weekend, hundreds of protesters surrounded Japan’s embassy in Beijing, some reports calling the action peaceful and others saying protesters had tried to break through police barricades. Protesters in the northern Chinese city of Qingdao set fire to a factory run by Japan’s Panasonic as well as a Toyota dealership. Protests turned violent in other cities too, with police in the southern city of Shenzhen, across the border from Hong Kong, reportedly dispersing crowds with tear gas.
Images of protests across the country proliferated on Chinese social media as well. In this photo, shared on the popular Sina Weibo platform, protesters in Inner Mongolia are shown marching with a banner that reads: “Even if all China becomes a grave, we must kill every Japanese” (哪怕华夏遍地坟, 也要杀光日本人).

[ABOVE: Protesters in China’s Inner Mongolia region march with a banner pledging to kill Japanese.]
An editorial on the front page of today’s official People’s Daily newspaper had the audacity to suggest Chinese protesters “did not lose restraint” and had “remained calm.” But the editorial, which emphasized the need for “civilized” and law-abiding conduct as Chinese asserted their territorial sovereignty, was at the same time a tacit admission that events over the weekend had been anything but calm.

[ABOVE: In this photo of anti-Japanese protests in China posted to Sina Weibo, a Chinese protester holds a sign that reads, “Oppose Violence, Love Your Country Rationally.”]
This week’s push for “rational patriotism,” mirrored also in commercial media like Guangzhou’s Southern Metropolis Daily, is a reminder once again of the razor’s edge China’s Communist Party leadership has walked in mobilizing jingoistic nationalism to legitimize its power, in the process creating further sources of domestic unrest that can be difficult to manage politically.
A full translation of the editorial in today’s People’s Daily follows:

“Use Civilization and Rule of Law to Gather the Force of Patriotism” (用文明法治凝聚爱国力量)
September 17, 2012
People’s Daily
“The Diaoyu Islands are China’s!” For days now, people in places across the country have shouted this across the waves of the East China Sea. In their fury they did not lose restraint, in their enthusiasm they remained moderate, expressing themselves in a civilized and orderly manner, voicing the determination of the Chinese people in protecting their sovereign territory, forcefully opposing the drama perpetrated by the Japanese government in “purchasing” the Diaoyu Islands, and winning the respect and understanding of the international community.
When the sovereign territory of the Mother Country is subjected to provocation, our anger is irrepressible, and the enthusiasm of the youth of China must have release. These patriotic feelings are precious, and they must be cherished and protected. But, a civilized attitude abiding by rule of law should be the basic conduct of the citizenry. Doing damage to the legal property of one’s countrymen and venting one’s anger on the heads of Japanese citizens in China is extremely inappropriate.
Protection of sovereign national territory of course requires fierce assertion, but at the same time it demands that we act in a civilized manner and abide by the law. In today’s China, we are far from the era of weakness and poverty, no longer a China carved up by others at will. Protecting national interests, acting in a civilized manner and giving priority to rule of law, these are the marks of a powerful country and crucial guarantees of national revival. We must use civilization and rule of law to gather the force of patriotism, transforming our ardent love for our nation into the driving force of a powerful country. In today’s globalized world, we should let the world see a China that is developing peacefully, in which governance is progressing and the character of the people is rising. Therefore, safeguarding our national sovereignty and territorial integrity, and protecting the dignity of our people, requires that we act in a civilized manner and abide by rule of law, remaining cool and calm, expressing our patriotism in a legal and orderly way.

By QIAN GANG
Keyword: stability preservation (维护稳定/维稳)
On July 21, 2012, torrential rains devastated China’s capital, Beijing. The ensuing floods claimed at least 77 lives, according to official numbers. The tragedy, which state media were quick to characterize as a “natural disaster,” in fact exposed the extreme deficiencies of Beijing’s municipal administration. In a panic, leaders leapt onto the defensive, and the phrase “stability preservation” came leaping into the headlines:

[ABOVE: The front page of the July 23, 2012, edition of the official Beijing Daily. The top headline reads: “The Focus of Work Has Now Shifted To Stability Preservation in the Wake of Disaster Relief.”]
The two-character Chinese phrase weiwen is an abbreviated form of the full phrase, weihu wending, meaning to preserve or safeguard stability. The Chinese Communist Party has many such shortened phrases, compact verbalisms that pack a political punch, invoking whole histories of policy and practice. For those versed in China’s political vocabulary, these are important shibboleths.
In the phrase “stability preservation,” stability is a coded reference to social disorder — which is to say, social disorder must be avoided at all cost.
In the chaos that followed the Cultural Revolution, Mao Zedong talked about the need for “tranquility and unity.” In the 1980s, as social tensions became more acute, Deng Xiaoping first used the word “tranquility,” or “anding,” and later opted instead for “stability,” or “wending.”
Meeting with U.S. President George H.W. Bush on February 26, 1989, Deng Xiaoping said: “Before everything else, China’s problems require stability.” In the aftermath of the Tiananmen crackdown just over three months later, Deng again stressed this point in what quickly became a hardened phrase: “Stability is of overriding importance.”
The phrase “wending yadao yiqie” could also be translated as “stability above everything else.” This term’s coming of age, you might say, was heralded when it became a headline in the People’s Daily on the one-year anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown in 1990.

[ABOVE: In June 1990 the Party’s official People’s Daily includes the phrase “stability above everything else” in a headline.]
“Stability above everything else” is a slogan much beloved by Party leaders associated with the conservative faction, or baoshoupai, who oppose reforms in China. When Deng Xiaoping used this phrase, however, he used it in conjunction with his advocacy of reform and development.
When Jiang Zemin passed the baton on to Hu Jintao in 2002, a careful balance of these three ideas — stability, reform and development — was maintained. The full phrase, “Stability above everything else,” this hard-edged watchword, did not appear at all in either of Jiang Zemin’s political reports to the 14th and 15th national congresses in 1992 and 1997. The phrase did sneak into the political report to the 16th National Congress in 2002, the year when Hu Jintao took the presidency, but it was dropped again in the political report five years later.
Unrest in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China’s remote northwest, in the summer of 2009 brought a momentary change in this watchword’s fortunes. For some time after Urumqi, “Stability above everything else” made a strong showing in China’s media.
Over time, the phrase “stability preservation” has been used with greater regularity in the Chinese media. From June 1989 to July 2012, there were three peaks in the use of the phrase. The first was in 1990, the year after the Tiananmen crackdown. The second came in 1999, as the Party launched a concerted campaign against the Falun Gong religious sect. Finally, there was peak in use in 2009, which marked the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

Terms like “stability preservation” and “incident handling”, or chutu, short for “handling sudden-breaking incidents” (such as mass riots), are now used as a matter of routine by armed police divisions in China. The shortened form of “stability preservation,” weiwen, was used for the first time in the official People’s Daily in 2002, in the explanation accompanying a photograph of armed police. The term reached new heights of popularity in 2008 and 2009, and has maintained a high rate of use in China’s media ever since.
In this way, a term that had been used routinely only inside China’s police system became one of the Party’s key political watchwords. There are now many related buzzwords, phrases like “stability preservation work,” “stability preservation outlays,” the “stability preservation office,” and “stability preservation teleconference.”
In China’s Hunan province, one county has even come up with a “stability preservation security deposit.” Party leaders throughout the county now have 150 yuan withheld from their monthly wages, and if there are no so-called “mass incidents,” or cases of unrest, on their watch, this money is paid to the officials at year’s end.
As the phrase “stability preservation” has risen in prominence, so has the influence of officials associated with the Central Politics and Law Commission, the Party organization that takes charge of political and legal affairs in the country.
The People’s Daily has even applied the term “stability preservation” to international affairs, as in this article dealing with the recent Libyan civil war, which bears the headline: “Libya Faces ‘Stability Preservation’ Challenge.”

[ABOVE: A headline in the official People’s Daily uses the Party notion of “stability preservation” to frame unrest in Libya.]
Some within China have referred to the 10 years of President Hu Jintao’s leadership as the “stability preservation decade.” During these years, political reform has stalled as an agenda item, and powerful interest groups have hijacked politics and the economy.
As China’s national strength has advanced, China’s population at large has paid a heavy toll. Social inequality in China has worsened substantially. Facing a growing tide of rights-defense movements by disenfranchised Chinese, the response by Party authorities has been to apply pressure on top of pressure. This has sometimes been called “maintaining a high-pressure environment.” Its net result has been a constant outbreak of violent incidents. When thousands of residents in the Sichuanese city of Shifang took to the streets in July 2012 to protest the building of a copper alloy plant close to residential areas, the local government responded by mobilizing armed police, who sought to clear the streets in tightly advancing formations, even firing stun grenades at protesters.
When Hu Jintao came to power in 2002, China was already experiencing a worsening social crisis. In 2004, President Hu offered a rhetorical response to growing internal instability, trumpeting what he called a “harmonious society.” For some time, this new watchword burgeoned, becoming visible everywhere in the Party’s propaganda. But by 2007 it was already on the decline, as “stability preservation” made its rapid ascent. Here you can see both terms as they appeared in the People’s Daily from 2003.

Together, these contrasting pictures of the “harmonious society” and “stability preservation” form a portrait of the real predicament facing President Hu Jintao. A “harmonious society” may be a pleasing idea, but it’s the iron will behind “stability preservation” that packs the real punch. This fact was brought home for many Chinese internet users by the following photograph in which men in fatigues march bearing a red sign that reads: “Building a Harmonious Society.” The appended caption, as the photo was shared online, became: “Who Would Dare Be Unharmonious?”

[ABOVE: A photograph circulated widely on Sina Weibo, a leading social media platform in China, depicting riot police marching with a red sign that reads, “Building a Harmonious Society.”]
In the midst of the 2012 Bo Xilai Incident, as the actions of police in the city of Chongqing — hitherto treated as principled, resolute and efficient heroes — were scrutinized and tainted with allegations of corruption, China’s entire police bureaucracy was subjected to criticism. This leaves open the question of how influential the forces of “stability preservation” will remain within the mix of China’s Party politics. We will have to wait and see how the 18th National Congress deals with the issue of “stability preservation.” In terms of Party watchwords, this leaves us with two important questions:
1. Will the phrase “stability is of overriding importance” appear in the political report?
2. Will the phrase “stability preservation” appear in the political report?
If these terms do appear, this will signal that the Party intends to perpetuate the political line of “stability preservation,” and maintain an atmosphere of high pressure on all perceived forms of unrest, regardless of how legitimate the claims of those carrying out rights defense may be. If these terms do not appear in the political report, the question will be how the report deals with the agenda of social stability, and whether there are watchwords of change to read between the lines.

Guangzhou’s Southern Metropolis Daily reports today that Peng Hong (彭洪), a Chongqing resident sentenced to two years of re-education through labor in 2009 for an online re-posting of a satirical cartoon about the city’s anti-crime campaign, has received a formal document annulling his original sentence. The government’s decision, dated September 7, 2012, comes almost exactly one year after Peng’s release from a labor facility on September 10, 2011.
Peng Hong posted a cartoon titled “Umbrella of Protection” (保护伞) to China’s popular Tianya chat forum in September 2009, in the midst of Bo Xilai‘s well-publicized campaign against crime in Chongqing. The cartoon depicted a man (apparently a criminal) running with a knife in one hand while holding an umbrella in the other hand that is topped with the head of a policeman and emblazoned with a golden coin and a government seal. The clear implication was the the anti-crime campaign was a sham in which certain criminals were actually receiving protection from the government, police and financial interests.
Peng Hong’s online post came at a highly sensitive time, as former Chongqing police chief Wen Qiang — eventually tried and executed — faced corruption charges. Chongqing authorities accused Peng with defamation (诽谤) for re-posting the critical cartoon and sentenced him to two years of re-education through labor.

[ABOVE: The cartoon posted to Tianya by Peng Hong in September 2009, shared widely on Sina Weibo today.]
The decision to annul Peng Hong’s original sentence, handed down by Chongqing’s Re-education Through Labor Committee (劳动教养委员会), states that is “was determined through re-investigation that the original decision on Peng Hong’s re-education through labor was inappropriate.”
Peng Hong received legal aid in his case from rights defense lawyer Pu Zhiqiang (蒲志强), a former CMP fellow.