A scripted feel for China's 17th Communist Party congress

This week Beijing is hosting the seventeenth Communist Party congress - an event gathering more than 2,200 party members from across the country. openDemocracy published an analysis of the global relevance of the event, in which Kerry Brown underlined the challenges which the new generation of leaders will have to face as China elevates its economic status to the third largest economy in the world. This problem was also picked up by The International Herald Tribune blogger Daniel Altman who remarked that "training new generations of regulators, business people and planners is a process that can’t easily be accelerated" and that changing culture is a long, difficult and complex job. [more]

As the world is watching in anticipation, China's most powerful politicians must be assured that their PR team will be able to handle any wrong note, and with the upcoming Beijing Olympics games looming in the distance the party is also surely trying to reassure the world on their democratic credentials. This may be why Xinhuanet reports that president Hu Jintao used the word "democracy" more than sixty times during his keynote speech:

Hu also said that the CPC will "expand intra-Party democracy to develop people's democracy" by increasing transparency in Party affairs and "opposing and preventing arbitrary decision-making by an individual or a minority of people."

Sadly some incidents have already taken place, as reported by Global Voices' blogger John Kennedy:

China's image of a sterile dictatorship remains secure, a delegate has been kicked out, an investigative reporter's career has turned into pulverized coal dust, and while Chinese media, desperate, might have hope of covering these nation-changing conventions one day, they're playing Spot the Difference with newspaper front pages from across the country on their blogs (...)

China Daily reports on Jintao's new stance on China's conversation culture, promising "an energy- and resource-efficient and environmentally-friendly structure of industries, pattern of growth and mode of consumption". This is a groundbreaking new stance for Chinese officials, which will surely be welcomed by our colleagues over at chinadialogue.net [see "a way forward for China's environmental movement", September 20, 2007].

Meanwhile, the Shangaiist takes a light-hearted stance on the event, reporting the great sense of expectation floating around on day one, only to note that "as the days go by, we will no doubt see more and more of these scenes instead". We shall see.

Elsewhere: The Wall Street Journal on the generational shift "likely to elevate younger professionals"; chinadigitaltimes is currently offline as of 16th of October at 14:55 London Time; the Times Online Q&A: what goes on at the Chine Party congress? proudly displays a somehow shocking question: "Do ordinary Chinese care?" [the answer sounds terribly patronising, but I shall let you be the judge].