WEN JIABAO AND REFORM

IS CHINA’S WEN BACKING AWAY FROM REFORM?

Russell Leigh Moses

China RealTime Report, October 28, 2010

Last week’s Communist Party plenum represented a clear victory for those who want to slow down any debate on political reform.

Cadres bent on deflecting discussion of the subject clearly won the weekend, which had been shaping up as a showdown between opposing forces in the Party. Instead, the plenum focused largely on securing consensus on China’s 12th five-year plan.

But the struggle is far from over. Politics is never a simple equation in China. As soon as plenum was over, state media launched an unrelenting series of assaults on reformist impulses within the Party. The vehemence of the attacks, led by the People’s Daily, suggests that those cadres urging actual political reform are not slinking away.

The big question now is how badly Wen Jiabao and the people whose platform he is sponsoring have been wounded. Wen himself made no mention of political reform on a recent inspection trip to Wuhan (report in Chinese), perhaps chastened by the absence of support in the leadership. Wen could well be backing away.

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