China’s communist party liberalises to defer democracy

With little fanfare, the elite powerbrokers of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have outlined the reform agenda that will define Xi Jinping's 10-year presidency.

At the conclusion of the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee on Tuesday, the CCP issued a communiqué pledging to pursue 'comprehensively deepening reform' in the name of 'social harmony,' 'environmental protection,' and the development of a 'socialist market economy.'

Although the details of the Xi administration's reform agenda remain hidden for the moment, its rationale is clear: Securing the CCP's monopoly on power with pragmatic reforms to mitigate China's staggering social, economic, environmental and institutional strains.

The CCP knows that its political survival depends on addressing the grievances that fuel China's 90,000 annual cases of social unrest and protest. These range from chronic air and water contamination to severe inequality, and endemic corruption, as well as forced land seizures that have expropriated the property and destroyed the homes of as many as 64 million Chinese families.

Pew polling shows that 53% of Chinese consider corruption a 'very big problem,' while 52% and 47% feel that way about inequality and air pollution, respectively. And with 80% of Chinese expecting the nation's economic situation to improve in the next 12 months – the highest percentage among 39 countries polled by Pew this year – CCP rule will be jeopardised if the party is unable to engineer a rise in domestic consumption to offset cooling investment activity.

Aware that the stability of the one-party state is at stake, the CCP's Third Plenum communiqué shrewdly stressed plans to give farmers more property rights, better manage state-owned enterprises, spur consumption-driven economic expansion, address environmental degradation, and establish the rule of law.

At this stage, these undertakings are vague policy intentions rather than concrete initiatives. However, as the most effective means of staving off widespread discontent and pre-empting calls for regime change, the Xi administration is likely to actively pursue the reform agenda sketched by the Third Plenum.

Liberal reforms are partly motivated by the CCP's self-interested pursuit of power: Keeping its end of the grand bargain between people and party that promises rising wealth in exchange for acceptance of authoritarian rule.

Nevertheless, by using liberal reforms to minimise popular dissatisfaction, the CCP has taken yet another step away from its intellectually, morally and economically bankrupt Maoist past towards greater prosperity and expanded personal freedoms.

Benjamin Herscovitch is a Beijing-based Policy Analyst at The Centre for Independent Studies and author of Accountable Authoritarianism: Why China's Democratic Deficit Will Last, released on 31 October 2013.