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Hu Jintao
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It's democracy, with Chinese characteristics

Hu Jintao
Ting Shi

Hu's 'reforms' keep grip on power

President Hu Jintao wound up his first term as the head of the world's biggest political organisation yesterday by promising to make it rule the rapidly changing country more efficiently.

Mr Hu told more than 2,200 delegates at the opening of the party's 17th National Congress of his plans to expand democracy within the party and his determination to maintain its grip on power.

'We must uphold the party's role as the core of leadership in directing the overall situation ... improve its capacity for scientific, democratic and law-based governance to ensure the party leads the people in governing the country effectively.'

Analysts say that Mr Hu's talk of democratic reforms - embodied in the 'intra-party democracy' slogan - was aimed at raising the party's capacity to govern a changing and complex society troubled by rampant corruption, decay of grass-roots party structures and growing cynicism with its rulers.

The Communist Party would, Mr Hu pledged, ensure the Politburo reported its work regularly to the Central Committee and accept its supervision. This system would also be applied at local levels.

Mr Hu vowed to broaden the direct elections of grass-roots party leadership. 'We will ... explore various ways to expand intra-party democracy at the grass-roots level,' he said.

He also acknowledged growing demand among party members for a say in politics. Ordinary members would be allowed greater rights in internal procedures, including a system of voting by party committees, he promised.

Mr Hu proposed that some party congresses convene each year to 'create a sound environment for democratic debate'.

He devoted much of his 150-minute speech to topics related to democracy, ranging from socialism to grass-roots change. But 'democracy' in party language has quite a different meaning from the one understood in the outside world. Mr Hu's speech set clear boundaries. The party's leadership must be upheld and reform must adhere to the 'correct political orientation', he explained.

Steven Tsang, a China scholar at Oxford University, said intra-party democracy was an unhealthy concept. 'You're just choosing better cadres to do the job ... and you're not going to have a system under which senior leadership is periodically held accountable to ordinary party members, which is the very basic idea of democracy,' Dr Tsang said.

Mr Hu, 65, who had tightened control over the media and dissidents in his first five years in power, had no intention of sharing power beyond the party, he said.

Edward Friedman, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin, said intra-party democracy 'has nothing to do with democracy'. 'It's just making the party technically efficient,' Professor Friedman said. 'Its real purpose is to institutionalise an authoritarian regime.'

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