Control tightens anyway

Chinese Advocates of Reform Seek Help From Deng's Spirit By JOSEPH KAHN. Commie

party elders have used the 100th anniversary of Deng Xiaoping's birth to emphasize the urgency of one great endeavor that Deng never embraced: overhauling the one-party political system.

In party political journals and interviews as the Deng centenary has neared, several retired leaders made unusually direct pleas to allow more media freedom and to introduce at least a measure of democracy, though all described their proposals as a way of improving rather than replacing Communist Party rule.

China's retired elders often are given latitude to explore delicate topics that incumbent leaders shy away from. But these comments by former leaders appear to reflect mounting internal pressure for Hu Jintao, the president and Communist Party chief, to put forward at least modest proposals for fighting corruption, introducing greater accountability and reducing censorship...

China has become something of a kleptocracy, with tens of millions of government and party officials using largely unchecked political powers to enrich themselves. Top leaders have called corruption a cancer that is eating away at the party's legitimacy and posing the greatest challenge since the street protests of 1989.

...the former party chief of Guangdong Province wrote, "Hasn't the central leadership repeatedly stressed governing according to law and protecting human rights?....But if we have laws and don't follow them, there can be no talk of the rule of law."

Nearly all of the recent commentaries on political change praised Mr. Hu as a potential standard-bearer and implicitly blamed Mr. Jiang for stifling change, both during his formal rule and now during his extended reign of influence.

Yet either out of caution or because he does not favor broad changes, Mr. Hu has tightened controls on the news media. He rarely allows discussion of sensitive issues, much less challenges to party policies.

It's not "replacing Communist Party rule". Well now my heart is at ease.