Chongqing party secretary Bo Xilai has stepped up the rhetoric in his red-culture campaign before next year's key party congress, urging the southwestern city to reach the 'national moral high ground'.
In a speech to Chongqing's Communist Party committee, Bo revealed his plan to achieve the ultimate goal of the party: 'common prosperity'.
He said common prosperity was a goal of former leader Deng Xiaoping , former president Jiang Zemin and President Hu Jintao , but no province or municipality had achieved it.
Bo said the city must first narrow the gap between its rich and poor in the next five years and then achieve the goal by following socialist principles and strengthening state-owned enterprises, but not with a so-called market economy, the Chongqing Morning Post reported yesterday.
He said a market economy had failed to help Western countries recover from the 2008 financial crisis, and he attributed the wealth gap in Europe and the US to the market model and capitalism.
Bo, a well-known 'princeling' as the son of a former senior party leader, launched controversial anti-triad and 'red song' campaigns after taking up his post in Chongqing in late 2007. Political analysts have widely said those moves were tactics to earn him a seat on the new Politburo Standing Committee next year.