[Absolutely Right!]--INTERVIEW-China wants political reform, but not chaos
Thu Mar 9, 2006 9:38pm ET
today.reuters.com
By Benjamin Kang Lim
BEIJING, March 10 (Reuters) - China's Communist Party is not stalling on badly needed political reform to curb chronic corruption, but any change must not bring chaos, a vice-president of the school which trains up-and-coming party officials said.
Alarmed by rampant graft, which succeeded in toppling many imperial dynasties, the party has been searching for checks and balances and sought to instil greater accountability.
But the party is determined to avert the kind of popular protests which brought down dictatorships in post-Soviet Ukraine and Georgia in recent years.
"The ultimate goal of political reform is to make the country strong, the society stable and the people happy," Li Junru said.
"Political reform must not bring chaos. Exercising democracy in a country of 1.3 billion is different from exercising democracy in a country with a population of tens of millions or a few hundred million."
Li's position gives him access to top national leaders' thinking, and he often advises them on ideology. And strikingly he appealed to Chinese tradition, not Marxism, to justify the party's grip on power.
Asked why India, with 1 billion people, can be a democracy, he said India had religious traditions to rein in disorder.
"China has no religion to control 1 billion people," he said.
Pressed why China cannot be more tolerant of religion, Li said most Chinese traditionally did not believe in ghosts or gods.
When reminded religion flourished during China's Han and Tang dynasties, Li said China was an ethics-based, not a religion-based, society.
The Communist Party has monopolised politics since 1949 and its flirtation with political reform ground to a halt after the army crushed the Tiananmen pro-democracy protests in 1989.
But Li argued that political reform had never ended and that it had transformed society, with individuals enjoying wide ranging freedoms, including studying and sight-seeing abroad.
While conceding that U.S.-style multi-party election "has its advantages" by giving people equal voting rights, the 58-year-old said elections had their problems.
"We are seriously considering borrowing from it, but elections contradict traditional Oriental culture which opposes money politics -- the buying or selling of government posts," Li said, adding that elections favoured those with money.
Li said China would choose a system that encompasses the traits of modern democracy and traditional culture -- grassroots elections and political consultations with non-Communists.
China would not introduce presidential elections in the near future. "How do you organise an election of this scale?" he said.
China would be better off spending election money on building schools, roads and hospitals for hundreds of millions of farmers, 70-80 percent of whom still live in poverty, Li said.
The party's graft busters, government auditors, the judiciary and the media would serve as checks and balances to rein in corruption, the one-time party theoretician and historian said.
Li defended an intensified media crackdown, saying the government was trying to "regulate the media to restore order".
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