DOES CHINA NEED ANOTHER DENG?
Lance L.P. Gore – Research Fellow at National University of Singapore

When Jiang Zemin started to push for an all-out ‘three emphases’ (sanjiang) ideological campaign at the beginning of 1999, not only outside observers but most people inside China, including high-ranking cadres, were puzzled by the enormous energy and recourses the top leadership threw behind it, by the scope and the magnitude of the campaign, and by the ‘Yanan Rectification’-style methods used.

People are justifiably puzzled, for the campaign, which has by the time of this writing expanded from the center, from the provincial/municipal levels to county level party-state organizations, seems so far removed from China’s reality and so out of tune with the daily pursuits of the people in China’s bustling capitalistic market economy. The three emphases are on ‘politics, study, and moral integrity’ (jiang zhengzhi, jiang xuexi, jiang zhengqi). With all the ambiguities typical of the political language of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the ’emphasis on politics’ roughly means to renew Marxist faith, to stay vigilant against any attempts to undermine the communist party rule and socialism, and to maintain the unity of the CCP and the authority of the party center. The emphasis on study roughly means to keep abreast with the developments of the world, learning new knowledge and technologies, and changing leadership style and methods accordingly. The emphasis on moral integrity means roughly to stay morally upright and be resilient against the corrupting influences of the capitalist world economy. The campaign consists of systematically engaging cadres full-time in protracted political study sessions, criticism and self-criticism, ‘confessions to the party’ of one’s own wrongdoings and reporting of others’ misdeeds, group assessments of progresses made by individual cadres, and topical discussions that supposedly lead to new political and ideological consensus and renewed revolutionary spirit. Continue reading →