Communists
mark birthday with calls to fight graft,
regain Taiwan
2001-07-02 / Reuters
BEIJING
Chinese President Jiang Zemin marked the Communist Party's 80th birthday
yesterday vowing to fight rampant corruption threatening the regime
and throwing open the party's doors to China's newly rich.
In a nearly two-hour speech, Jiang, who is also party general secretary,
trumpeted the party's achievements in revolutionary warfare and in
post 1980s economic development, but made no mention of party-led
tragedies or of political liberalization.
Jiang's renewed pledge to clamp down graft drew the largest applause
from party cadres, soldiers and ethnic minorities in national costume
who filled the Great Hall of the People.
"Every corrupt act and every corrupt element must be thoroughly
investigated without pause and without tolerance," Jiang said,
stressing that members of the world's largest Communist Party must
be accountable as public servants.
"The party must not be a haven for corrupt elements," he
said to waves of applause. His speech was broadcast live on state
television as part of an 18-hour party birthday marathon.
The crowd's enthusiasm for a speech largely devoted to justifying
party rule in the 21st century also surged when Jiang said "no
person or force can stop" China's reunification with Taiwan,
the unfinished business of the civil war the Communists won in 1949.
Jiang repeated vows to recover Taiwan, the island Beijing views as
part of its territory. The party wants to use peaceful means to unify
Taiwan with the Chinese mainland "but we cannot promise to renounce
the use of military force," Jiang said.
In the weeks building up to the anniversary of the founding of the
party by Mao Zedong and others in Shanghai in 1921, state media and
museum displays have selectively focused on the party's heroic early
days and the economic achievements since the 1980s.
No
mention has been made of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre of pro-democracy
protesters. Also ignored were the Mao-inspired Great Leap Forward
in the 1950s, when millions starved to death, and the tumultuous 1966-76
Cultural Revolution.
In
a reminder of the Communists' penchant for ruthless campaigns against
its foes, as Jiang spoke, outside at Tiananmen Square two Falun Gong
protesters were detained after unveiling the banner of the spiritual
group Jiang outlawed two years ago.
While avoiding reflection on party errors, Jiang made a clear effort
to remove political hurdles to accepting as members private business
owners, classified as "exploiters" under the Marxism-Leninism
the party formally still espouses.
Two decades of economic reform had raised living standards, created
an economy of varied forms of ownership and generated disparate levels
of wealth -- "circumstances far different than those the founders
of Marxism faced and analyzed," Jiang said.
"Under these circumstances, whether or not one has wealth or
how much one has cannot crudely be used as the standard for whether
that person is politically progressive or backward," he said.
"What is important is the state of political ideology, how wealth
was obtained, and how it is managed and utilized and what contribution
has been made to socialist modernization," he said.
Jiang devoted a large section of his address to the "Three Represents"
theory, which analysts say is his effort to keep what is formally
a workers and peasants party relevant in the era of multinational
firms, entrepreneurs and a shrinking state sector.
The theory holds that the Communist Party represents the interests
of advanced productive forces, advanced culture and a wide sector
of the population.
With official statistics showing that workers and peasants -- upon
whom the pain of economic reform has fallen most heavily -- now make
up just over 49 percent of the party's 64.52 million members, Jiang
reached out to traditional supporters.
He said economic and technological change in China "did not
change the importance of the working class." He also stressed
the need for the party's "absolute control" over the military.
He urged the party faithful to recognize that "achieving Communism
is a very, very long process."
Jiang is expected to intensify the focus on broadening the party's
support base and policing itself to fight corruption in the 15 months
leading up to the 16th Communist Party Congress late next year.
The gathering is expected to see Jiang and many other top leaders
step down to make way for the "fourth generation" of Communist
rulers, following Mao, economic reform architect Deng Xiaoping, and
Jiang and his contemporaries.
Jiang Places Himself Next to Mao, Deng,
Vows to Strengthen Party
Agence France Presse, July 1, 2001
Chinese President Jiang Zemin Sunday put his leadership on par with
the late Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping by vowing to build a strong
and modern Communist Party (CCP) capable of leading China well into
the next century.
In a speech marking the 80th anniversary of the founding of the CCP,
Jiang expounded a broad agenda for building a "democratic dictatorship"
more responsive to the modern needs of a population in full throes
of capitalist market economic reforms.
While
praising Mao for unifying China and establishing the People's Republic
in 1949 and Deng for opening up and starting the economic reform program,
Jiang offered up his own blueprint for making China a "modern
and prosperous" country during this century.
"Long
live our great motherland, long live the great Chinese people, long
live the Chinese Communist Party," Jiang said to thunderous applause
from the gathered delegates at the cavernous Great Hall of the People
in central Beijing.
In the 90-minute speech, Jiang, dressed in a western suit with a
red tie, said the "great historical tasks" facing the party
would be to continue the nation's economic development and modernization,
reunify the country and maintain global peace.
The president and party boss further reiterated Beijing's refusal
to renounce the use of force in reunifying the province of Taiwan
and in an implicit jab at the United States, vowed to fight "global
hegemonism and power politics."
After
a 5,000-year history, the CCP has allowed the Chinese people to finally
become "the masters of their own country" and lead them
to "great historical achievements," Jiang said.
While calling on upcoming Chinese leaders to never forget the party's
past mistakes, Jiang himself did not address the catastrophic years
for tens of millions of Chinese during the "Great Leap Forward"
or the "Great Cultural Revolution" under Mao's rule.
He vowed to fight "money worship" and "personal gain"
within the party, and was roundly applauded for pledging to strictly
investigate corruption in the party "without tolerance or leniency."
"All party members must be clean and just and withstand the
tests of reform... and the tests of power, money and material gains,"
he said.
While playing lip service to "Marxist-Leninism, Mao Zedong thought
and the theories of Deng Xiaoping," Jiang spent much of his speech
explaining his own theory of the "three represents" which
maintains the CCP represents the production forces, culture and the
interests of the people.