DemocraCommunism: A changing China
- posted: 30 Oct. 2007
- scrollnews@byui.edu
Nearly twenty years after the bloody march on Tiananmen Square by Chinese students who protested the communist regime and united in favor of democracy, China appears to have taken a few baby steps in that direction.
Although China’s president, Hu Jintao, said nothing of turning over the rights of government to the people altogether, he did promise that his citizens would be more included in the decisions and policies made by the government, according to CNN.
“Contemporary China is going through a wide-ranging and deep-going transformation. This brings us unprecedented opportunities as well as unprecedented challenges,” Jintao said at a conference in Beijing, which addressed proposals for expanded democracy.
The plans for greater democracy come in the wake of China’s growing world economic status. International economic-analysis agencies predict that China’s economy will overtake Germany’s in 2008, making it the third largest in the world, according to the China Daily.
“Due to macro-economic controls, we have turned the economy from being an overheating one to one of speedy growth,” said Li Xiaochao, a spokesman for the China National Bureau of Statistics.
The specifics of the nation’s plan for democratic expansion have not yet been made public, but Jintao has promised “more extensive democratic rights by 2020,” which also happens to be China’s target year for establishing lasting economic stability, according to a CNN.
“Obviously we want to see China be able to move forward with political and economic reforms, but I don’t think I have heard or seen anything come out of this particular set of meetings that changes our basic views,” said Tom Casey, a U.S. State Department spokesman, in reference to the conferences held earlier this week in Beijing on democratic expansion.
These basic views are the assumption that, in spite of the growing economy, it will be hard for China to democratize due to the social-class problems and poverty that remain in the country.
“There are still a considerable number of impoverished and low-income people in both urban and rural areas, and it has become more difficult to accommodate to the interests of all sides,” Jintao said.
As the country pushes forward onto new terrain, the citizens are beginning to see what China actually means in the changing world.
One Chinese student, Hang Yu Jia, said, “Growing up in China, there were a lot of things that seemed very formal, but they were natural to me and I never saw them as negative.”
Jia said that it is difficult to desire a democracy when he has not lived in or experienced one at any point in his life.
“I do not know if democracy is the best thing for us as a people,” Jia said, “but it is good to see that they are starting to allow some more involvement from the people.” 
