CCP Plenary fights corruption, softpedals the rest

Yesterday’s annual summit of the Chinese Communist Party was expected to produce a wide range of reforms over the country’s political and economic system. But despite Hu Jintao’s statement that China still faces an "arduous" journey to economic recovery, and a disturbing report that profits at state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are down some 20% since last year, the CCP decided to punt on almost everything. There were almost no new policies announced, just a lot of grave consideration of existing risks to the CCP’s mandate. However, the Party did decide to finally commit to a long-expected policy requiring officials to disclose their assets. This is good news, undoubtably, but hardly a radical restructuring of the incentive system that encourages officials to risk expulsion and jail in exchange for sacks of filthy lucre. Given that officials have so far managed to smuggle some US$50 billion out of the country since 1997 (according to Ministry of Finance statistics), there seems little reason to believe that they will have much difficulty fiddling the reporting system. The Party is concerned about how little confidence the citizenry seems to have in its honesty, and rightly so, but it can take comfort that in certain areas Chinese people still subscribe wholeheartedly to the official line. For example, Taiwan decided to reschedule its showing of a film about reviled Uighur exile activist Ribeya Kadeer after thousands of mainland tourists threatened to cancel their trips in Taiwan in retaliation. When it comes to issues of raw nationalism, at least, it seems that the CCP has firm control of the storyline. How much longer the CCP can keep on drawing on this particular account depends on its ability to keep the other part of its bargain – the economic growth contract – intact.