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Setback for China's constitutional reform
By CNN Senior China Analyst Willy Wo-Lap Lam
HONG KONG, China (CNN) -- Former President Jiang Zemin's bid to dominate the process of constitutional reform is at the heart of the on-going crackdown on liberal intellectuals in China. Symptomatic of what some Beijing analysts call "a bone-chilling frost in mid-summer," secret police and thought-control apparatchiks are threatening free-thinking scholars and muzzling the media. This disturbing setback for reform has its roots in factional struggle within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which has recently centered on the outwardly academic issue of updating the 1982 Constitution, a major initiative of President Hu Jintao's. What new clauses should be added to the charter tops the agenda of next month's plenary session of the CCP Central Committee as well as the National People's Congress (NPC) scheduled for next March. Jiang and his aides' apparent monopolization of the revision exercise has stolen the thunder from Hu, who heads a CCP faction that rivals the ex-president's Shanghai Clique. After all, it was Hu who, shortly after becoming party General Secretary last November, started a high-profile campaign "to protect the constitution and the law." Apart from declaring their intention to modernize the charter, Hu and ally Premier Wen Jiabao have won the praise of intellectuals by abolishing laws and regulations deemed to have infringed upon human rights. Thus, Beijing abolished in June the regulation on detaining "vagrants and beggars" in urban areas after graphic designer Sun Zhigang was beaten to death in a detention center in the southern city of Guangzhou. Hu and Wen have also tried to uphold the constitutional rights of peasants to migrate to the cities. Limited changes
A party source in Beijing said Jiang, who retains the post of Central Military Commission Chairman, had tried to limit the scope of constitutional change. "Jiang said in an internal talk that the revision should only consist of two major elements: enshrining the 'Theory of the Three Represents' and protecting private property," he said. Jiang's pet "Three Represents Theory" (that the CCP represents the foremost productivity and culture as well as the people's interests) has been touted as the equal of the theoretical breakthroughs of former leaders Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. The source added that the 77-year-old patriarch had warned that avant-garde intellectuals' ideas about liberalizing the charter could foment political stability. "Jiang and his advisers have decried suggestions that the charter honor the people's right to know -- and that a special constitutional court be set up to examine violations of the supreme document," he added. "The former president has dismissed as 'bourgeois liberalization' efforts by scholars to put into the constitution clauses guaranteeing internationally acknowledged civil rights." Shanghai FactionWhile Jiang is no longer a member of the party Politburo or Central Committee, his associates occupy top positions in the party and government. For example, NPC Chairman Wu Bangguo, a former party boss of Shanghai, heads the secretive CCP Leading Group on Constitutional Reform. And Jiang underling Liu Yunshan, Director of the party's Propaganda Department, is enforcing the ex-president's directive that "bourgeois liberals" be barred from airing their views on constitutional matters. Cao Siyuan, a noted reformer who has lectured in leading American universities, has been put under tight police surveillance for aggressively lobbying to insert civil rights-related clauses into the constitution. A Cao friend said in Beijing over the weekend that the scholar had at least temporarily stopped talking to foreign media for fear of "even worse harassment." Equally significantly, Liu and conservatives in the Shanghai Clique have imposed a ban on press articles -- and academic conferences -- dealing with political reform. "The censors have ordered the media to steer clear of topics having to do with democracy and civil liberties," said a Beijing-based newspaper editor. "The media must also avoid mentioning 'sensitive' names including Shanghai real-estate speculator Zhou Zhengyi, surgeon Jiang Yanyong, and even the detention center victim Sun Zhigang." Zhou, detained by police in late May, is believed to be close to Shanghai Faction politicians, particularly the sons of powerful Shanghai-affiliated cadres. And Dr. Jiang's whistle-blowing efforts against SARS-related cover-ups this spring led to the dismissal of former health minister Zhang Wenkang, a protégé of ex-president Jiang's. Tactical retreatDiplomatic analysts in Beijing said the prestige of Hu and Wen had fallen due to the perception that they had at least acquiesced in the Shanghai Faction's suppression of liberal opinion. However, supporters of the Hu-Wen team have claimed the new leaders are making a tactical retreat to avoid a showdown with ex-president Jiang that they might not win. Hu, with the help of anti-corruption tsar Wu Guanzheng, another Politburo ally, is understood to have shifted his attention to fighting graft. This means the president may at the opportune moment use his dossiers of compromised members of the Shanghai Faction to bring Jiang's followers to heel. While investigation into "Shanghai tycoon" Zhou and his cronies seems to have stalled, Hu and Wu have recently brought to justice big shots such as the well-connected former party boss of Hebei Province Cheng Weigao. Last month, Jia Chunwang, the head of the Supreme People's Procuratorate, surprised observers by saying that a number of "major, earth-shattering cases" would come to light later this year. Should Hu be able to buck formidable pressure coming from the conservatives -- and succeed in nabbing an incumbent senior cadre -- the goodwill to be garnered could help offset the flak he has come under for going along with the blitzkrieg against reformist thinkers.
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