BEIJING, Sept 25 (Reuters) - China"s Communist Party Central Committee.....
...will hold its annual plenary session from October 9 to 11, the official Xinhua news agency announced on Monday. Xinhua said the session would focus on examining the proposals for China"s 10th five-year plan for economic and social development covering 2001-05, but gave no further details.
The semi-official China News Agency quoted President Jiang Zemin as saying this month that the central task of the next five years would be economic development and reform, driven in part by China"s imminent accession to the World Trade Organisation. State media have run a series of articles trumpeting the success of the previous 1996-2000 five-year plan, during which China"s economy grew an average of eight percent each year. Many economists are looking to the plenum for signs China will follow through on previous pledges to allow a bigger role in the economy for private and foreign companies.
China has launched an ambitious plan to pour billions of dollars into infrastructure projects to develop its impoverished hinterlands, which lag far behind coastal provinces which have grown relatively fat in two decades of economic reforms.
WTO CHALLENGE LOOMS Beijing faces daunting challenges preparing its workforce for entry into the WTO, a major achievement of China under Jiang expected to take place in the next few months. China has come to view WTO membership as a catalyst for reform a command economy producing many sub-standard goods, cementing in international commitments a move to an open, market-based economy begun two decades ago by Deng Xiaoping. But the creation of a more competitive China will throw millions of Chinese out of work on factories and farms -- shaking the main pillars of Communist Party rule. The removal of high trade barriers will be especially painful for the Chinese working class, adding to the pains of domestic reforms and threatenening to multiply the incidents of unrest China has experienced over the past decade.
Jiang has mounted an intensive ideological campaign this year stressing the Communist Party"s continued relevence to its traditional grassroots power bases while attempting to show it represents "advanced productive forces" in modern sectors.
SCANDAL, TAIWAN, SUCCESSION? The announcement of the much-anticipated party session came as five cities in the southeastern province of Fujian conducted trials in the biggest and far-reaching corruption scandal in 51 years of Communist rule. A provincial prosecution spokesman said on Friday that verdicts in trials which began on September 13 were not expected for a week or two. But diplomats following the secretive trials in the multi-billion dollar smuggling case centred on the wealthy Fujian port city of Xiamen said they expected the party would seek a conclusion to the trials before the plenary session. The Xiamen scandal -- in which senior officials are accused of helping Xiamen"s Yuanhua Group smuggle nearly $10 billion worth of cars, luxury goods, oil and raw materials -- has embarrassed the party, highlighting presistent graft despite anti-corruption campaigns and executions of scores of corrupt cadres.
There has also been speculation that the plenum may produce new statements on Taiwan policy from Beijing, which has ignored months of goodwill overtures from Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian while demanding he accept its terms for talks and better ties. Analysts said they also expected extensive discussion of leadership succession matters at the secretive meeting, which falls two years before a party congress at which Jiang is slated to retire from his post of Communist Party chief. |
