There is naturally a lot of guesswork going on in the run up to the 17th Party Congress. But there is one thing we can say with certainty already — the most important document to come out of the 17th Party Congress will be Hu Jintao’s political report (政治报告). [The front page of yesterday’s Southern […]

Whenever party congresses roll around, pundits focus on the background of key officials and their connections to power centers inside the CCP. Potential picks to enter the succession group are often dissected in terms of the “Youth League faction” and the “princelings” — what we call in Chinese the tuanpai (团派) and the taizidang (太子党). […]

Remarks made recently about Bo Xilai and political reform by the son of Hu Yaobang, the senior Party leader whose death in 1989 catalyzed students protests in China, have fired across Weibo. But they are now being removed.

Past remarks by China’s supposed next president have caused some to speculate whether he might push ahead on political reforms.

On May 14, the Party’s official People’s Daily newspaper offered the first hints of how the top leadership might approach the key issue of political reform ahead of the 18th Party Congress. But substance is not forthcoming.

Wen Jiabao’s political reform remarks have hardly brought action. But what China’s leaders say right now could be as important as what they do.

A new book edited by Qian Gang compiles key commentary this year from a range of writers on the topic of political reform in China.