Political sparks set to fly

The NPC is considered the highest organ of state power in China

(CNN) -- Despite the National Peoples Congress (NPC) reputation as a rubber-stamp, a spark or two should fly at the Chinese parliament's plenary session to open next Tuesday.

There are several reasons why the 2,000-odd legislators, who meet only once a year, should be firing off some rhetorical volleys.

For one thing, NPC deputies are selected once every five years to coincide with the inauguration of a new cabinet.

The current crop of parliamentarians started work at the first session of the Ninth NPC in March 1998, where newly named Premier Zhu Rongji laid out bold plans for economic and administrative reforms.

With the Zhu cabinet due to step down in 12 months, the deputies would have reasons aplenty to examine its track record.

Moreover, since this is also the last time that the full Ninth NPC gathers at the Great Hall of the People, the retiring legislators would feel less inhibited about speaking their minds.

While Zhu, 73, remains personally popular, several recent policies of his administration have engendered controversy -- and criticism.

Guoyougu

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Take, for instance, Beijing's handling of the planned sale of an estimated 300 billion yuan worth of guoyougu, or government-held shares in state-owned enterprises.

Since dumping such a huge amount of shares in the market would further dampen China's lackadaisical bourses, news about the impending move -- first leaked late last year -- has caused a precipitous drop in stock prices.

The million upon million of investors who have lost money are particularly mad because the strongest advocates of guoyougu offloading include senior managers in joint venture or multinational financial companies -- many of whom are also the sons and daughters of top cadres.

The argument goes that these joint ventures and multinationals would scoop up the shares on the cheap -- and make immense profits later when they succeed in using their global financial muscle to engineer a bull run.

Sensing trouble, the Zhu cabinet said earlier this month it would postpone the sale of guoyougu -- and that the matter would be referred to the NPC for deliberation.

"On the surface, the government seems to have handed the NPC a hot potato," said Liu Junning, a Chinese Academy of Social Sciences political scientist now doing research at Harvard University.

"However, this also raises the question of why such a major issue had not been debated in the legislature in the first place."

WTO ascension

Chinese ethnic minority delegates will also attend the NPC

For conservative economists such as Zuo Dapei, it was also strange that the administration of Zhu and President Jiang Zemin had not let the legislature discuss the even more crucial question of China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Last December, Zuo and several anti-WTO scholars toyed with the idea of circulating an open letter asking Beijing to let the NPC debate the pros and cons of WTO accession before submitting the final accession documents at the world body's Doha conference.

However, since the fundamental decision to join the WTO had already been made by heavyweight cadres such as Jiang and Zhu in 1999, very few parliamentarians have ever made known their reservations about the WTO entry.

Yet, as the official China News Service (CNS) pointed out in a commentary last weekend, WTO-related issues would be one of the hot buttons at this legislative session.

CNS said NPC deputies would be interested in hearing "concrete steps that central and local administrations are taking to meet the challenge of WTO accession."

In particular, lawmakers from regions and sectors that may be hurt by WTO entry -- for example, provinces dependent on agriculture and on industries that are vulnerable to foreign competition -- will be lobbying Beijing for more subsidies as well as social security benefits.

Sources close to the NPC say the Zhu cabinet might next week be questioned over matters pertaining to both the lowest strata of society -- cash-strapped peasants and laid-off workers -- and the richest, meaning the fast-emerging "new class'' of private businessmen.

Rural issues

Over 2,000 deputies will meet in the Great Hall of the People on Beijing's Tiananmen Square

Since the late 1990s, Zhu and co. have made repeated promises about improving the livelihood of farmers and laborers -- whose jobs are under threat post-WTO.

However, the spate of explosions, arson, and other violent crimes in the past year -- many of which were perpetrated by the unemployed to vent their frustrations at the authorities -- has shown that Beijing has hardly acquitted itself of this difficult task.

A related issue is Zhu's much-publicized pledge in 1998 to lope off the government's staff establishment by up to 50 percent.

While the premier was largely successful in trimming bureaucratic fat at the central level, the streamlining campaign all but petered out in the provincial and county levels a year or so ago.

Yet a key cause of rural hardship is precisely the fact that peasants have to support hordes of grassroots cadres, who live off the dozens of levies and charges that are slapped on the villages.

It is ironic that law and order has deteriorated to the extent that Beijing last week decided to call upon an unprecedented array of police and special units to protect the parliamentarians.

Even the newly set up anti-terrorist divisions within the paramilitary Peoples Armed Police have been deployed.

Red bosses

At the other end of the spectrum of NPC hot issues is the no less controversial empowerment of the nouveau riche private entrepreneurs.

Following Jiang's decision last July to allow red bosses to get into the Communist Party, businessmen are fighting for more political rights, including a larger number of NPC seats for themselves.

"This year, quite a few deputies will push for legislation to guarantee the rights of non-state businessmen, particularly the inviolability of private property," said business consultant and privatization advocate Cao Siyuan.

Given that the bulk of legislators owe their status to the Communist party's patronage, it is unlikely that the session next week will witness anything close to open confrontation between NPC members and ministers.

Political analysts say hopes for parliamentary reform, particularly rendering the NPC into a real supervisory organ, may lie with the likely next legislative chief, Li Ruihuan,

Li, 67, is expected to take over from incumbent Li Peng when the first session of the Tenth NPC opens next year.

Despite his seniority -- Li Peng is ranked second in the Politburo pecking order, just after President Jiang -- the NPC chairman has not been effective in grabbing more power for lawmakers.

Li, 73, is still dogged by his association with the Tiananmen Square crackdown -- as well as innuendo about the reportedly questionable business deals of his relatives.

Li Ruihuan, however, has a solid reputation for being a moderate reformer.

And in the nine years that he has headed the Chinese Peoples Political Consultative Conference, Li has successfully fought for more opportunities for members of the consultative body to participate at least in provincial-level decision-making.