Chinese Communist resort losing its red cachet

BEIDAIHE, China, Aug 28 (Reuters) Sea, sun and intrigue. Northern China's down-at-heel beach resort of Beidaihe has it all.

Chairman Mao Zedong loved the place so much he was moved to poetry. Every summer, top leaders come to the resort town to hash out leadership changes and policy direction in their secluded, well-guarded villas.

But Beidaihe, just under two hours east of Beijing on a new express train, is no longer the exclusive Communist resort of yesteryear.

An imposing statue of Soviet writer Maxim Gorky has been moved from its former seafront pedestal -- nobody knows to where, nor do they seem to care. A downgrade of Beidaihe's status by current party chief Hu Jintao, who scrapped formal annual leadership meetings at the resort, doesn't seem to have helped.

Almost all the hotels, which are mostly state-owned and have stodgy names like ''Hebei Province Coal Miners Sanatorium'', are happy to take all paying guests, including foreigners.

There's even a ''Bar Park'', where for a somewhat expensive 120 yuan (15.80 dollars) entry fee, patrons can enjoy a range of bars and dancing Russian go-go girls.

''It was much better in the old days,'' lamented Wang Ruiqi, as a horde of platinum-blond Russian tourists in ill-fitting bikinis walked by.

''Deng Xiaoping used to come for the whole summer. He loved the beach here,'' Wang added, referring to China's diminutive late paramount leader.

As salaries rise on the back of China's economic boom, making foreign holidays more affordable and Communist themed ''red tours'' less appealing, Beidaihe has largely been ignored by the country's newly affluent.

Over the past few years Russian tour groups on cheap packages have flocked to the town to take up the slack, and Cyrillic is more commonly used as a secondary language on signs than English.

SUMMER HANGOUT The resort started as a spot for Western missionaries and traders to escape the summer heat in the late 19th century, though few of those buildings still stand.

After the Communist takeover in 1949, it became a venue for leaders to relax with family members and talk in private with peers. Mao's poem lauding the place appears all over town, on billboards and fake rocks that sit awkwardly by the sea.

Beidaihe, which calls itself ''China's summer capital'', still harkens back to China's Communist past. There are no luxury hotels, no boutiques and no Western fast food restaurants, unusual in a country where Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonald's are hugely popular.

Local people say the top leadership has been this year, as they do every year, though they can't say how they know this.

''Chairman Hu came, but Jiang didn't. He had to stay in Beijing for the 80th anniversary of the People's Liberation Army,'' said Liu Yongnian, confidently, referring to Hu's predecessor and political rival Jiang Zemin.

''But we never see them. They don't come out. We see the cars go past and into their private villas with their private beaches,'' he added, as cars with blacked-out windows and government number plates sped by.

POLITICAL INTRIGUE Often the only public signs that the top leadership is in town are articles in the state press from Beidaihe detailing mundane meetings between a vice president or premier and an obscure foreign official visiting from abroad.

Though the resort is not as well loved by today's leaders as those of the past, it is still a scene of political intrigue.

In 2004, Vice President Zeng Qinghong, a Jiang ally, visited Beidaihe in defiance of Hu's decision to scrap annual leadership meetings there, sources said.

Hu and his cabinet have all been this summer, the sources added, though so far state media have carried few Beidaihe datelined stories, aside from those about a visiting group of model workers and teachers.

Hu will be trying to cement his authority over the party at a key congress to be held in Beijing this autumn.

One of Beidaihe's most historically interesting sites remains firmly shut, though -- the villa of Mao's heir apparent, Lin Biao.

Lin was army chief until he died mysteriously in a plane crash in 1971, apparently fleeing the country after his plot to assassinate Mao was uncovered.

The villa is just visible above a line of trees and a tall wall guarded by soldiers and covered by security cameras.

A peak through a gap in a heavy metal gate reveals a carefully manicured garden and crumbling buildings, an eerie reminder of the pitfalls of Communist succession politics.

The masses, in whose name the Communists claim to rule, are kept away from the best beaches too. Lithe soldiers wearing white gloves sit to attention by the lapping waves, stopping curious onlookers taking pictures or crossing the rope barriers.

''The beach is open to everyone,'' said beach vendor Liu Qin, plucking bottles of the local brew, Bull Beer, out of the fridge.

''It's just there are different levels of treatment.'' REUTERS RC ND0900