Chinese Communist Party

NEW YORK -- With a clear head and voice, Wei Jingsheng, who spent almost all of the past 19 years in Chinese prisons, said yesterday that his recent release was "only a small victory" in a much larger battle for democracy in the world's most populous nation."

O ne of the few incontrovertible assertions one can reasonably make is that no one supports forced abortion. Yet, coerced abortions, as well as involuntary sterilizations, are commonplace in China, Beijing's protestations notwithstanding. While the Chinese Communist Party insists that abortions are voluntary under the nation's one-child policy, electronic documentation recently smuggled out of the country tells a different story. Congressional members of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission heard some of that story Tuesday, two days before President Barack Obama was slated to leave for Asia, including China, to discuss economic issues.

BEIJING -- The Chinese Communist Party, riddled with corruption and increasingly isolated in a world moving away from socialism, celebrated its 70th birthday yesterday with a good deal of fanfare aimed at buttressing its sagging legitimacy."

Demonstrations at Tiananmen 20 years ago grew out of a paradox that had been building in China since 1978, all through the era of rapid economic reform. To achieve its aims, the Chinese Communist Party wished to liberate people economically while continuing to constrain them politically. A version of this same tension persists today. Following the disastrous Cultural Revolution (1965-1970s), the party no longer could base its legitimacy on Maoist socialism. Marxist-Leninist ideology was virtually dead.

BEIJING -- Having stifled potential urban unrest for now, Chinese Communist Party leaders are turning their attention to shoring up their traditional base of support among the more than 800 million peasants in China's vast countryside.Ending a five-day plenum in Beijing yesterday, the party's Central Committee called for stepped-up party-building and socialist education efforts in rural areas, as well as increased investment in rural economic development and critical water control systems.

IN IMPERIAL China, one of the first acts of new dynasties was to rewrite the history of the last dynasty. The minimal notice so far by China's state media of the death of former reformist leader Zhao Ziyang speaks volumes about the feudal strains in modern Chinese authoritarianism - and gives life to the nightmares haunting an insecure single-party state trying to control rising aspirations and a vast potential for unrest. Within China, official mourning for the ousted former premier and party secretary, under house arrest since right before the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, might unleash welled up cries for the long-denied reappraisal of that watershed slaughter of unarmed demonstrators - and highlight the lasting damage wrought by those murders on the Chinese Communist Party's claims to legitimacy.

BEIJING -- The Chinese Communist Party appears ready to formally enshrine patriarch Deng Xiaoping's full-speed-ahead approach to economic reform as China's direction for the next five years.Capping months of speculation, the state-run Xinhua news service yesterday announced that the 14th national party congress will open Oct. 12 and will "take as its guide" Mr. Deng's dramatic drive this year for stepping up China's market-style economic reforms.Xinhua said that the key meeting, held every five years, will mobilize the Chinese people "to further emancipate their minds and seize the opportune moment to accelerate the pace of reform, opening to the outside world and modernization."

BEIJING -- The Chinese Communist Party's national congress, which opens here today, will put out to pasture many of China's old-guard, conservative revolutionaries by abolishing a key advisory body for retired leaders.During its six-day meeting, the congress will change the party's charter in order to eliminate its Central Advisory Commission, a congress spokesman, Liu Chongde, announced yesterday.The commission -- composed of about 200 members, many well into their 80s -- was created 10 years ago by Chinese patriarch Deng Xiaoping as a way to gracefully move many other elderly party leaders out of the political limelight.

BEIJING -- One of the biggest guessing games here ended yesterday when the Chinese Communist Party announced that it would open its most important meeting in years Sept. 12.In most countries, such information would have been a matter of public record months, if not years, ahead of the event. But until yesterday, the timing of China's 15th Party Congress was something of a state secret.The congress -- which is part convention, part national election -- is the first since the death of paramount leader Deng Xiaoping.

One of the few incontrovertible assertions one can reasonably make is that no one supports forced abortion. Yet, coerced abortions, as well as involuntary sterilizations, are commonplace in China, Beijing's protestations notwithstanding. While the Chinese Communist Party insists that abortions are voluntary under the nation's one-child policy, electronic documentation recently smuggled out of the country tells a different story. Congressional members of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission heard some of that story Tuesday, two days before President Barack Obama was slated to leave for Asia, including China, to discuss economic issues.

IN IMPERIAL China, one of the first acts of new dynasties was to rewrite the history of the last dynasty. The minimal notice so far by China's state media of the death of former reformist leader Zhao Ziyang speaks volumes about the feudal strains in modern Chinese authoritarianism - and gives life to the nightmares haunting an insecure single-party state trying to control rising aspirations and a vast potential for unrest. Within China, official mourning for the ousted former premier and party secretary, under house arrest since right before the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, might unleash welled up cries for the long-denied reappraisal of that watershed slaughter of unarmed demonstrators - and highlight the lasting damage wrought by those murders on the Chinese Communist Party's claims to legitimacy.

FEW CENTERS of political machination are more closely watched and still less known with certainty than Zhongnanhai, the central Beijing Kremlin where the top leaders of the Chinese Communist Party have tended to live and work. Yes, by fits and starts, China and its ruling party are moving - at times painfully - toward a bit more open governance. But even the best outside analysis often remains riddled with speculation. Take Sunday's major news at the end of CCP's annual secret party plenum: Immediate past party chairman and national president, Jiang Zemin, stepped down from his last important position as head of the party's powerful Central Military Commission - marking the final formal step by his successor, Hu Jintao, in taking over as head of China's party, state and military.

TODAY, CHINESE officialdom will unleash a notable degree of fanfare to commemorate the 110th anniversary of the birth of Mao Tse-tung, the founder of modern China and for a quarter-century its omnipotent Helmsman. In honor of Mao -- whose corpse still is on view in a mausoleum in the symbolic heart of China, Tiananmen Square -- a new symphony has been composed from that old Communist standby, "The East Is Red." And there's a flurry of Mao books, art, stamps, TV shows and even rap recordings.

BEIJING -- Near a stretch of beach on Macau's island of Coloane sits Fernando's, a small, Portuguese restaurant with red-checked tablecloths, pitchers of sangria and some of the tastiest garlic prawns in South China. At midnight tonight, Macau -- the last Western colony in Asia -- will return to Chinese rule after more than four centuries under Portuguese control. And while restaurant owner Fernando Gomez will miss his country's red and green flag flying over the governor's mansion, he is looking forward to other changes.

NEW YORK -- With a clear head and voice, Wei Jingsheng, who spent almost all of the past 19 years in Chinese prisons, said yesterday that his recent release was "only a small victory" in a much larger battle for democracy in the world's most populous nation."

BEIJING -- One of the biggest guessing games here ended yesterday when the Chinese Communist Party announced that it would open its most important meeting in years Sept. 12.In most countries, such information would have been a matter of public record months, if not years, ahead of the event. But until yesterday, the timing of China's 15th Party Congress was something of a state secret.The congress -- which is part convention, part national election -- is the first since the death of paramount leader Deng Xiaoping.

TODAY, CHINESE officialdom will unleash a notable degree of fanfare to commemorate the 110th anniversary of the birth of Mao Tse-tung, the founder of modern China and for a quarter-century its omnipotent Helmsman. In honor of Mao -- whose corpse still is on view in a mausoleum in the symbolic heart of China, Tiananmen Square -- a new symphony has been composed from that old Communist standby, "The East Is Red." And there's a flurry of Mao books, art, stamps, TV shows and even rap recordings.

BEIJING -- While Chinese Communist Party leaders meet here this week to endorse a rapid acceleration of China's economic reforms, a high-level delegation from the People's Liberation Army is in Hong Kong seeking foreign investment in Chinese military industries.The overlapping efforts reflect the long symbiotic relationship between the party and China's military. This relationship is growing even closer these days, likely leading to more power and money for the PLA and to greater fears in Asia about China's growing ability to project itself as a regional military power.