HONG KONG — The Chinese Communist Party has warned officials to combat
“dangerous” Western values and other perceived ideological threats, in a
directive that analysts said on Monday reflected the determination of
China’s leader to preserve top-down political control even as he
considers economic liberalization.
The warning emerged on Chinese news Web sites that carried accounts from
local party committees describing a directive from the Central
Committee General Office, the administrative engine of the party
leadership under Xi Jinping.
The central document, “Concerning the Situation in the Ideological
Sphere,” has not been openly published, and most references to it
disappeared from Chinese news and government Web sites by Monday
afternoon, apparently reflecting censors’ skittishness about publicizing
such warnings. But what did come to light in the local summaries exuded
anxiety about the party’s grip on opinion.
Mr. Xi has been credited with strengthening national cohesiveness since
he became general secretary in November, said a summary of a party
organization meeting last week of the Commission of Urban-Rural
Development of Chongqing, a municipality in southwest China.
“At the same time, the central leadership has made a thorough analysis
of and shown a staunch stance toward seven serious problems in the
ideological sphere that merit attention, giving a clearer understanding
of the sharpness and complexity of struggle in the ideological sphere,”
said the account, which later disappeared from the commission’s Web
site.
The Chinese government
has confronted demands
for democratic changes from activists emboldened by Mr. Xi’s vows to
respect the law. In recent days, some activists have cited rumors that
the party issued a warning against seven ideas that are considered
anathema, including media freedom and judicial independence. But the
official summaries did not include such language.
Officials must “fully understand the dangers posed by views and theories
advocated by the West,” said the account from Chongqing, which said
officials must “cut off at the source channels for disseminating
erroneous currents of thought.”
“Strengthen management of the Internet, enhance guidance of opinion,
purify the environment on the Internet, give no opportunities that
lawless elements can seize on,” it said.
Reports on other local party committee Web sites in northeast and
southwest China also described the directive, although in less detail.
The demands for ideological conformity show that Mr. Xi and other
leaders want to inoculate the public from expectations of major
political liberalization, even as they explore loosening some state
controls over the economy, several analysts said.
“If anything, there seems to be some regression in the ideological
sphere,” said Chen Ziming, a prominent political commentator in Beijing
who supports democratic change. “I think that there will be some steps
forward in economic reform, but there are no notions of political
reform. Such warnings reflect that mentality.”
Calls for orthodoxy from Chinese leaders are by no means new. But Mr. Xi
is caught in a sharpening conundrum, trying to satisfy widespread
public expectations for cleaner, more accountable government and a
fairer share of prosperity while also defending centralized control,
said Minxin Pei, a professor at Claremont McKenna College in California
who specializes in Chinese politics.
“I think in his mind he has two conflicting priorities,” Professor Pei said.
“The top priority is to maintain the party’s rule,” he said. “But he
also has this immediate political priority; that is, he wants to show he
will end this period of stagnation. But clearly the two priorities are
in conflict with each other.”
Mr. Xi has commissioned officials and researchers to study seven areas
of potential economic change, including loosening state controls on bank
interest rates and on resource prices, said a Chinese businessman with
close links to senior leaders, confirming a
report in The Sydney Morning Herald on Monday.
Some of the proposals are likely to be endorsed by a meeting of the
party’s Central Committee late this year, said the businessman, who
spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing concern about harming his
ties to leaders.
On Monday, the prime minister, Li Keqiang, reinforced the theme of
change, urging officials to cut red tape stifling market competition,
according to Xinhua, the state news agency. “The market is the creator
of social wealth,” Mr. Li said. “Let go of the powers that should be let
go.”
Yet Mr. Xi has accompanied such signals of change with the messages defending party tradition and control. In December,
he said China
must absorb the lessons of the collapse of the Soviet Union, for which
he blamed political ill-discipline and ideological laxity under Mikhail
S. Gorbachev.
More recently, Mr. Xi told officials that the Chinese Communist Party
might not have survived if it had disowned Mao Zedong in the same way
that the Soviet Union condemned Stalin, a party newspaper, The Guangming
Daily, reported last week.
If Mr. Xi is to advance some economic liberalization, he must first
convince potential opponents that he will not jeopardize one-party
control, said Robert Lawrence Kuhn, an American businessman who wrote an
authorized biography of the former party leader Jiang Zemin and has met
Mr. Xi and other senior officials.
“It’s not an irrational combination in the Chinese system,” Mr. Kuhn
said in an interview. “My guess is that some of the talk is designed to
consolidate a position so that he’s not attacked by the extreme left.
People can read into Xi what they like, because he gives each side the
opportunity to see what they like.”
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