Thursday June 12 1997
Jiang Theory placed on backburner
WILLY WO-LAP LAM
President Jiang Zemin has decided to temporarily stop making Jiang Theory propaganda to preserve party unity.
Chinese sources said the latest draft of his political report to the 15th Communist Party Congress made no reference to either Jiang Thought or Jiang Theory.
As late as spring, key members of his inner circle had hoped to highlight the President's edicts as a "further development of Deng Xiaoping Thought".
"Jiang has opted for the safe course of reviving some of the reformist teachings of Deng Xiaoping ," said a party source.
"He has been accused of trying to promote himself by upstaging Deng."
At the same time, the President's aides are busy preparing a defence of the economic reforms that Mr Jiang is expected to introduce at the Congress.
Leftists, or remnant Maoists, have openly attacked two concepts that will be given pride of place in the report: that China is at an "early stage of socialism", and that the shareholding system will be popularised.
The conservative ideologues have prepared a series of articles that claim such concepts will undermine the country's "socialist base". They have insisted that the idea of the "early stage of socialism", first raised by disgraced party chief Zhao Ziyang in 1987, smacked of privatisation.
Sources close to the President's camp said Mr Jiang's aides had compiled a thick volume of the writings of Marx, Engels and Deng that would justify market reforms, including the shareholding system.
Mr Jiang had made available such reference material to leftist think-tanks and publications.
It is understood that so far the President has been able to prevent the Maoists from having an input in the drafting of documents for the Congress.
Meanwhile, Mr Jiang is preparing a new campaign against corruption after the 15th Congress, including the arrests of "tigers", or senior officials.
More effective means to rid the country of graft will be a key item on the agenda of the conclave.
Analysts in the capital said Mr Jiang could use the official conviction of disgraced Beijing party chief Chen Xitong soon after the Congress to show "he really means business".
They said a number of "red capitalists" in southern China had temporarily closed business operations to avoid being implicated in the fresh battle against graft.
