Reading the minds of Beijing leaders is always a daunting task. Non-Chinese speakers often find themselves lost in a tangle of communist jargon. Native Chinese may also fail to grasp the underlying message even though they know what each word means. Even before his keynote speech to the 17th congress of the Communist Party last week, the party's general secretary and national president, Hu Jintao , was getting a mixed build-up.
The Economist magazine, for example, predicted he would offer little in the way of new ideas, and challenged the party to open itself for a genuine clash of ideas. But that prediction was only partially successful, the observations incomplete.
Although Mr Hu's speech may have seemed conventional, he nonetheless gave the first comprehensive articulation of his 'scientific development perspective' theory, which he called a continuation of Marxism and Leninism, of Mao Zedong thought, Deng Xiaoping theories and the 'three represents' theory coined by his predecessor, Jiang Zemin . It was also an important extension of old thinking to suit a new era.
After the speech, mainland analysts suggested it implied a policy shift from his previous administration, and a subtle criticism of the relentless pursuit of growth in the Jiang era. If a 'scientific' approach is called for, then that itself is a disapproval of the 'unscientific' - or unsustainable and single-minded - approach adopted by former leaders.
Both the magazine's view and that of the mainland analysts have some validity. Mr Hu's speech hinted at a subtle change in how he would manage China's steaming powerhouse of economic growth, but dressed it in old ideological suits. If that sounds peculiar, his comments have to be understood in the context of a dispute raging outside and inside the Communist Party over the pace of economic development. For five years, a war of words has pitted sociologists and culturists, on the one hand, against economists on the other. The former, labelled the 'new left', call attention to the huge social cost of marketisation and the state's dwindling powers. Their opponents, simply called 'the right', advocate continued liberalisation.
The war among scholars spread into the party, and an intra-party fight intensified this year. This time, the intellectual divide was further complicated by ideologies. The 'new left' cadres, backing a reformist agenda, armed themselves with the scientific development perspective theory. They called for democracy within the party to remedy its flaws.