By Kristian Whittaker
The Eighth National People's Congress (NPC) opened on March 15 in Beijing. The NPC is China's constitutional equivalent to a "parliament".
The agenda includes the approval of a new government line-up and the passing of a record number of new laws, including many important financial laws. Other new legislation alters China's constitution, and approves the central government budget and revisions to the 1991-95 Five Year Plan. The National Security Act is amended to limit individual rights.
Jiang Zemin, appointed general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in June 1989 (the time of the massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators), is now appointed president. He retains his chair of the party's powerful Central Military Commission. Born in 1926 in Jiangsu Province, Jiang graduated with a degree in electrical engineering from Shanghai's Jiaotong University. He has spent much of his career in industry.
More recently, Jiang served as mayor of Shanghai (1985-89) and as Shanghai Party secretary (1987-89). He was first elected to the Central Committee in 1982, joined the Politburo in 1987 and became a member of the Standing Committee in 1989.
Qiao Shi, former security chief, is the new chair of the NPC. Qiao Shi was named a Central Committee member in 1982 and joined the Politburo in 1985. He joined the Standing Committee in 1987, also becoming secretary of the party's Central Discipline Inspection Commission. Since 1989, Qiao Shi has served as president of the Central Party School as well as on several important committees.
Traditionally, the NPCs have been rubber stamp affairs, but during the late 1980s, on several remarkable occasions voting did not go entirely according to the party leadership's wishes. This year, despite several isolated instances of party-endorsed candidates being overturned at the provincial congress level, the party is ensuring that NPCs will not become a potential alternative power base capable of threatening Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms.
The constitution is being revised to describe China as in the "primary stage of socialism". This slogan was promoted by former General Secretary Zhao Ziyang (deposed after the 1989 Beijing Massacre), and provides the ideological basis for the promotion of indigenous quasi-capitalist and foreign
corporations. As well, the phrase "socialist market economy" will replace the former "planned commodity economy".
Private farm plots based on peasant households become the model for rural development; "state-owned" rather than "state-run" public enterprises emerge; and the legal status of workplace democracy is overtaken by managerial autonomy.
Articles 11 and 15 of the revised constitution extend legal protection to the booming private economy together with foreign trade and investment, and institutionalise the mixed economy. These revisions clearly promote the authority of the "pro-faster pace reform" policy makers, led by Deng Xiaoping. They also allow far greater powers for the managerial layers of the state enterprises and private corporations.
Last year China's economy grew by 12.8%. Offsetting this staggering figure is the fact that growth has been extremely uneven. The market-centred quasi-capitalist corporations situated largely in the coastal regions have been praised by the Deng leadership as leading recent growth figures. At the same time, the leadership has viewed overall state expenditure as far too high, and this year promises to reveal another huge budget deficit.
A solution being enacted by the leadership is to further starve state-run enterprises of funding. In his keynote speech to the NPC, Premier Li Peng suggested that smaller state enterprises might be sold or leased out. During a later address to the NPC, finance minister Liu Zhongli remarked that the government will "resolutely stop subsidising those enterprises that have no prospect of making a profit".
In almost the same breath, Liu announced a 12.4% increase in defence spending. This is in addition to the profits the People's Liberation Army will accrue from its own massive business ventures. Of the total 2977 delegates to the NPC, the PLA's 267 deputies (formally including Deng Xiaoping) make it the largest delegation.
Li Peng also called for the removal of state control of grain prices and the removal of state subsidies for agriculture (ostensibly to be transferred into a natural disaster relief fund).
Continuing the political line set by the previous party congress, Li Peng emphasised that the iron rice bowl (the system of "cradle to grave" state-assured employment and welfare) is being smashed. No longer will workers be assured that they
belong to a specific sector of the economy. Instead, the system of "contract labour" is being legally entrenched.
Subsidies for housing and health care are to be removed, with real (and presumably more taxable) wages filling the gap. Meanwhile, State Council secretary-general Luo Gan envisaged that up to 200,000 of Beijing's 1 million public servants would lose their jobs within 12 months.
Nationwide, China's bureaucrats are estimated to total 31 million. At one stage during the 1989 student-worker movement, after workers from the Capital Iron and Steel Works state enterprise, shouting "Down with official corruption!" took to the streets in support of the students occupying Tienanmen Square, a Beijing worker told me that Premier Li became concerned enough to visit the steelworkers and address a mass meeting.
Li, with his black Mercedes entourage, arrived and proceeded to lecture the workers on the necessity of returning to work in order to strengthen the national economy. His speech was rudely interrupted by a shout from the back of the meeting: "If you're so serious about strengthening the national economy, why not start by selling off a few of your limousines?".
Recently a few dozen retired workers from the same factory staged a sit-in outside the central government leadership's headquarters at Zhongnanhai. The retired workers were pressing their pension claims. It was the first such demonstration in Beijing since 1989. According to a recent Workers' Daily report, more than 60% of those sacked from 1175 enterprises were women. Other sources put the proportion of women among sacked workers at more than 70% in some regions.