Not a great leap forward but a considerable lurch leftward. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership seems to have decided to end this millennium not with a bang but a cop-out: shelving market reforms and playing up stability and 'proletarian dictatorship'.
Future historians could trace the start of this fateful swerve to conservatism to the Central Economic Work Meeting earlier this month, when top cadres and their advisers were supposed to thrash out reform programmes for next year.
According to a source close to the meeting, the mood shifted halfway through the three-day conclave. 'Suddenly, the theme changed from economics to politics,' the source said. 'Senior cadres including most Politburo members were no longer interested in the next step forward for reform. They only wanted ways to uphold political stability and to boost CCP leadership.' President Jiang Zemin issued a long homily on the need to ensure that every worker must have rice in their bowls. He said he was disturbed by the growing militancy of laid-off workers from state-owned enterprises (SOEs).
'Workers are no longer as docile as before,' Mr Jiang reportedly said.
'In many cities, they barge into government offices, smash things up and paralyse local administrations.' The party chief, who is obsessed with the dynastic phenomenon of biantian ('changing of the heavens, or regimes'), conjured up apocalyptic nightmares about a replay of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations of 1989.
'Should the disturbances recur, the party and state may be dealt a fatal blow,' he reportedly said.
