THE FIRST Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since the collapse of the Stalinist systems in the USSR and Eastern Europe began on October 12. There were many fewer foreign delegations and solidarity messages from abroad than in the past.
The gathering was notable for a degree of ideological flux, if not disIntegration, The CCP has a membership of about 50 million (greater than the population of England) but If the statements of delegates and Chinese commentators are any: thing to go by, the CCP Is numeri. cally the largest pro-market organisation in the world.
On the opening day of the Congress, Reuters reported that CP General Secretary Jiang Lemin gave a blessing lo economic of state planning. ""The CCP and the Chinese state apparatus are so keyed in to the market that a rally by the Chinese stock exchange on the 12 was officially attributed to the CCP Congress, which had provided a'shot in the arm for nervous investors.
It would, however, not be true to say that the Congress and China's ruling bureaucrats all have unmixed feelings about the market. Market forces are particularly strong in southern China, near Hong Kong and Canton where there is particular access to the oulside world and a particular fondness for economic reform But northern China has far more state-owned enterprises, which employ vast numbers of people but do not show a profit. Since Tienanmen, the Chinese authorities have gone in mortal fear that social and economic discontent might lead to the concerns of working people. A Though less ethnically tragmented than the Soviet Union was, China is a far from homogeneous country and there is concern that it might break apart into different bits as it has done at earlier periods in Its long history If social and economic stresses should prove too strong.
The Congress has seen the enshrinement of a vaguely defined concept called the socialist market economy. This concept, sociated with the 88 year-old Deng Xiaoping, is supposed to be a compromise between a market economy pure and simple and a planned socialist economy advocated by those cadres and bureaucrats most concerned about the tole of state enterprises The tuture is highly uncertain. China is not immune against the collapse of Stalinism in other parts Bush. He exhe chose as cadres and stale bureaucrats are not all that much younger than Deng.
This has resulted in several cases where the children of leading bureaucrals have been appointed to positions in the CCP, undoubtedly as a means of training up replacements. However, this has not been as common a oractice as some rumours in Hong Kong newspapers had alleged - probably because charges of nepotism can be used as political weapons.
A symptom of the uncertain state of the CCP bureaucracy as been the increased repression of dissent. The September 1st edition of the Hong Kong paper Cheng Ming reported crackdowns on a number of dissident organisations Including the China Free workers' trade union and the China Social Democratic Party, The Free Workers union was Hinton leaflets earlier this year drawing attention to the fact that the living standards of ordinary workers in China were lower than the country s economic development would suggest, and was apparently suppressed by the authorities as it was preparing to mark the third anniversary of tenanmen the Social Democratic Party was apparently founded in 1991 by people involved in the 1989 movement and supported democratic socialism' and the Socialist International. This network too was rolled up by the police, Both examples show that workers and students repelled by Stalinism can, in the absence of a clear revolutionary alternative, be attracted to the soiled banner and bankrupt politics of social democracy.