Expectations for the CPC’s New Third Plenary Session

Many foreigners that have visited China claim they were amazed by the Chinese people’s familiarity of history; it seems everybody — a senior citizen or a child they chatted with in street, or an official or businessman they met on official occasions, or even a taxi driver — could readily quote historical facts, sometimes anecdotes, in any talks related to history.

Qin Xiaoying

That’s true. China indeed is a nation with a strong sense of history. And that’s why the announcement that the Third Plenary Session of the 18^th Central Committee would be convened at the end of this year has triggered so much historical association and expectation among the public.

The memory of the 1978 Third Plenary Session of the 11^th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China is the primary driver of this conjecture. At that conference of historical significance, Deng Xiaoping and other veteran leaders of the Party categorically abandoned the Soviet-style economic development model, and launched the reform and opening-up drive to start three-decades of high-speed growth of the economy. China resolutely broke with self-seclusion to merge into the globalization process, and has since played a pivotal role in international affairs.

The fact that the “Third Plenary Session” initiated this crucial turn in China’s course of development helped the 1978 conference go down in history.

Now, China seems to have come to another crucial moment. Will the new “Third Plenary Session” prescribe another vital change for system reform? This is everybody’s expectation.

At the start of his term of office, President Xi Jinping said: “The people’s pursuit of a good life is our goal.” This statement can be interpreted from another angle. That is, the ruling party must take it as its statutory responsibility to stamp out all that has caused public resentment.

What the public resents most is the social inequity they see in the rampant corruption, widening poor-rich disparity, and growing unemployment. They are also dissatisfied with the worsening environment pollution and the chaotic social management service. It was such chaos in management that generated so many safety problems – in manufacturing, civil engineering, transportation, food and medicines. The degradation of moral standards and professional ethics, and the collapse of traditional values has also contributed to the public’s dissatisfaction.

Analysts said that, despite their multiplicity, the above-mentioned grievances of the public and their expectations for reform reflect just one thing. That is, China is experiencing a massive political and economic transformation. The transformation is needed because China has fallen into an awkward state after it has lost labor dividends. It can neither compete with lower-income countries in labor cost, nor rival developed countries in hi-tech innovation. If it cannot get out of this awkward state as soon as possible, it may become further mired in the so-called “middle-income trap”. This grim situation has forced China’s ruling party and government to wage a large-scale economical restructuring campaign, re-arrange industrial distribution and seek a system renewal.

Another development that cannot be neglected is the public’s ever-growing demand for democratic participation in state affairs. This demand has arisen as a result of the dramatic improvement of people’s material life and education, and the increase of their knowledge about the outside world, especially because of the emergence of a middle class in Chinese society. The frequent occurrence of incidents involving confrontation and their quick circulation on the internet has hastened this growing demand. Therefore, how to respond to these requests for democracy is an urgent task for China’s decision-makers.

Scholars have pointed out that after 35 years of fast growth, China inevitably has to enact a economic and social transformation. They said such a forced transformation was also what most developing-turned-industrialized nations once “encountered” after the high-speed growth of the economy. China will greatly impress the world if it can effectively reconcile the needs to strengthen social control and liberalize the economy, and succeed in meeting the challenges in this new development model.

As they speculated on what may be the core content of the Chinese Communist Party’s new Third Plenary Session, observers from Chinese and foreign media outlets seem to have ignored two pieces of the speech that Xi Jinping made recently. One is “Stoppage and retrogression will lead us nowhere. Reforming and opening-up can only be in continuous tense and never in perfect tense” The other is “China is a large country; it cannot afford to make a subversive mistake on the fundamental issue.” What was he saying? He was demonstrating his determination for reform and also showing the policy, speed and limit set for the reform.

Qin Xiaoying is a Research Scholar with the China Foundation for International and Strategic Studies.

Qin Xiaoying, Research Scholar, China Foundation For International and Strategic Studies via CHINA US Focus http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ChinaUsFocus/~3/NH4ICWbESKM/