the one lingo bingo bonanza and the six closely revolve arounds

In its own way, though not in the way it has been reported so far, the final commnunique of the 3rd Plenum of the 18th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party is an astonishing document. It's basically a short course in the history of every single slogan the CPC has issued over the course of the past 35 years, all crammed surreally into about 3000 words.  Most of the other words that are not conjunctions seem to be commas. This is what happens when you issue a document whose main claim is that you were always right about everything in every particular and will continue to remain in that happy state.

The reason the plenum has been hyped so much among China watchers was that it was supposed to echo the 3rd plenum in 1978, which heralded the dawn of Dengism. As such, a couple of substantive statements stuck out:

We must unwaveringly consolidate and develop the publicly owned economy, persist in the dominant role of the public ownership system, give rein to the leading role of the State-owned economy, incessantly strengthen the vitality, control strength and influence of the State-owned economy.

And not only, but also:

closely revolve around raising levels of scientific governance, democratic governance and governance according to the law in deepening Party building systems and mechanisms, strengthen democratic centralism system construction, perfect the Party’s leadership systems and governance methods, maintain the Party’s advanced nature and pureness, and provide form political guarantees for reform, opening up and Socialist modernization construction.

My emphasis. Bill Bishop described this on twitter as the 'six closely revolve arounds', which is wonderful.

Anyway, DemCen and state-led development. This established, you have greater scope for the private allocation of capital among non-state actors and limited opening of the state sector to private investment, which is what most of the commentary will focus on. But that formula is pretty much what Dengism was, in practice, all about. So it's the Great As You Were as well.

Comments

[Alex]

Well, the flip side of "we were right all along" is "we're not changing a thing", right?

[Tom]

Sadly some of the more amusing implications (What do we want? Moderate prosperity! When do we want it? Within a reasonable timeframe!) are translation artefacts. One man's "middle-class society" is another's set phrase alluding to a period of peace and prosperity.

Regardless, it's still a grand array of goals sufficiently vague to render future success or failure unverifiable.

[Chris Williams]

Yet another triumph for the Party of Moderate Progress Within The Limits Of The Law. Score one more to Hasek.

PS Happy Birthday to you.

[Alex]

Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Forty pounds of human eyeballs
Happy birthday to you!

[Malcs]

Happy birthday! In line with previous seasonal offerings, here is some footage of Mao meeting Kim Il Sung in 1975 with small cameo by Deng:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MVqp2FEwIM

Doesn't look like Mao remembered who Kim was for the first two minutes or so of the handshake.