Rising social problems over the past decade have led China into a critical era in civil rights protection, with the establishment of a democratic government being the only way out for the ruling Chinese Communist Party, according to Bao Tong , a former top aide to the late deposed leader Zhao Ziyang .
In his book, A Collection of Essays, published on Tuesday, the former political reform director in Zhao's administration in the 1980s advises the party leadership to learn from Taiwan's late president Chiang Ching-kuo and end one-party rule and media censorship to help it deal with the current political and social crises.
Bao says the party's legitimacy is now being challenged by the same kinds of political and social crises that faced the Kuomintang before it lost power in 1949. Worsening social and economic conditions, he says, have forced all kinds of people - landless farmers, homeless people, underpaid manual labourers, religious activists, victims of pollution and petitioners - to join a huge civil rights movement across the country.
'In this country, leadership belongs to the [communist] party which seized political power [by force]. People must obey the party's orders absolutely, while the right to decide ownership of land remains with party leaders [because] civil rights were just some words written on paper,' writes Bao, who is partially blind and will turn 80 in November, in a preface ghostwritten by the editor of the publisher, New Century Press.
'Freedom of speech has been silenced ... while freedom of assembly has been throttled by 'stabilising forces' [armed police established by the party to suppress dissent and silence people in a bid to maintain a 'harmonious society'].'
In another preface, Bao reminds the Communist Party that it only rose to power by hitching itself to popular democratic movements such as the students movements of 1919 and 1935, and the great labour strikes of 1923 and 1925. Only then was it able to defeat Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang in 1949.