In China a call for democracy stirs secretive storm

By Staff
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Google Oneindia News

BEIJING, May 6 (Reuters) A veteran Chinese Communist's call for democracy has stirred a secretive campaign of condemnation from the party, wary of fanning disputes over political reform before a congress to cement President Hu Jintao's grip on power.

Xie Tao, 85, made his plea for ''democratic socialism'' in the magazine China Across the Ages (Yanhuang Chunqiu), a monthly backed by reformist party elders.

''Political system reform can no longer be delayed,'' Xie wrote in his essay published in February. ''Only constitutional democracy can fundamentally solve the ruling party's problems of corruption and graft, only democratic socialism can save China!'' Twentieth-century history had been a contest between capitalism, communism and Swedish-style democratic socialism, with its stress on equality and political rights, Xie wrote.

''The outcome of the contest was that democratic socialism won, transforming both capitalism and communism.'' While welcomed by liberal thinkers in dozens of Internet essays, Xie's essay has recently become the focus of a mostly unpublicised campaign of official denunciation, according to several officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

''This is one of the main present dangers to our country in the political and ideological sphere,'' according to notes shown to Reuters of a recent official meeting to condemn Xie's ideas.

''The struggle against the democratic socialist wave of thought is a harsh theoretical and sharp political struggle.'' CONFRONTING DICTATORSHIP Chinese Communist leaders' desire to defend their Marxist pedigree may appear archaic to an outside world focused on the nation's market boom. Yet protecting those ideological moorings remains crucial for leaders who fear the economic tide threatens one-party rule.

The vehement internal criticism of Xie has underscored how raw those fears are ahead of a party congress later this year that is set to give a cautious Hu five more years as party general secretary.

''Xie's essay confronts the fact that one-party dictatorship isn't mandated by Marxism,'' said Li Datong, a Beijing journalist who was shunted from his job for criticising party controls.

Xie struck a nerve by tracing his country's political oppression not only to Mao Zedong and Stalin but Lenin himself, shaking nearly the whole shelf of party icons, said analysts.

''Previous criticisms of China's political evolution haven't been so systematic and penetrating. Xie raises questions about the legitimacy of the entire system going back to its roots,'' said Xu Youyu, a think-tank researcher who advocates reforms.

Provincial party organisations and state think-tanks have held meetings to condemn ''democratic socialism'', officials said.

''TAKING THE CAPITALIST ROAD'' In words echoing ideological purges after the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown on pro-reform protests, the recent official meeting accused advocates of democratic socialism of ''bourgeois liberalisation'' and ''taking the capitalist road''.

They were also charged with helping ''hostile foreign forces'' by offering ''an ideological weapon for Western 'peaceful evolution' of China''.

But the party leadership has so far avoided publicly condemning Xie or shutting the magazine that published his essay, and officials said they had not heard of any comment from Hu.

One source said party officials were in a dilemma -- open discussion of the essay would undermine authority at a sensitive time, but ignoring it could suggest ''tacit support''.

Propaganda chiefs had said there should be no public criticism of Xie's essay but officials could ''express their stance'' in internal settings, said two other sources.

''Before the congress, the party doesn't want to break out into open ideological warfare,'' said an editor at a party journal.

Leaders are also reluctant to court accusations of repression ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, he added.

Xie, reached by telephone, declined to comment on his essay, but confirmed details of a life shaped by the political repression he decried.

Born in 1921, the year China's Communist Party was founded, Xie joined it in 1946. His career as a party theorist was derailed in the 1950s, when he was jailed for a decade for contacts with Hu Feng, an intellectual who fell out with Mao and became the focus of a sweeping purge.

Xie weathered the Cultural Revolution as a target of radical Red Guards, was politically ''rehabilitated'' in 1980 and later became vice president of the People's University of China.

A source familiar with the controversy said many ordinary party members had voiced support for Xie's ideas and he expected further calls for reform in the sensitive months to come.

REUTERS AGL ND0924

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