General urges shake-up of China politics John Garnaut, Beijing
May 23, 2011
.
A SENIOR general has called for a major shake-up of Chinese politics, including allowing open debate and ushering in a form of democracy within one-party rule.

Chinese leaders since 1989 have successfully presented a disciplined and united public face, in the knowledge that airing their differences could be collectively fatal.

General Liu Yuan, Political Commissar of the General Logistics Department and the son of a one-time successor to Chairman Mao, Liu Shaoqi, jokingly acknowledged that his essay breaks all the rules.

''It's like playing broadswords in front of Guan Gong,'' he writes, referring to a Han dynasty warrior-hero. ''Death is certain, it's like self-mutilation, and even deserved.''

General Liu says the Communist Party needs to reform to save China and itself. ''We are with the officials, cadres, scholars, media, in and outside the mainstream, who oppose crony capitalism and want to resolve polarising inequality and corruption,'' he writes.

His essay is the preface to a collection of political essays, Changing Our View of Culture and History, by a left-leaning intellectual called Zhang Musheng, whose father was also a senior cadre.

General Liu backs Mr Zhang's call to save the party by turning the ideological clock back by more than 60 years, to the philosophy of his father.

''If we are trying to blow the whistle for 'democracy', with its global enchantments, will only make a poor imitation,'' says General Liu. ''So why don't we proudly raise high the new democracy socialist theory, which is indigenous, much-tested, initiated by party member Mao Zedong and practised by Liu Shaoqi?''

Mr Zhang's subsequent media interviews describe a country that has been led by weak and bloodless leaders into a political and societal crisis.

''There is one year until the succession and we are playing pass-the-parcel with a time bomb,'' Mr Zhang told an interviewer last week. ''The next generation of leaders will not allow this situation to continue.'' General Liu supported Mr Zhang's call for open debate within the confines of one-party rule.

''Since government and the people have become more tolerant, we should say goodbye to the era of 'no debate','' wrote General Liu, referring to the policy expounded by Deng Xiaoping in 1992.

Mr Zhang's book was banned on the mainland until its publication by a company affiliated with the Academy of Military Science, where General Liu used to be political commissar. One general at the book launch, Luo Yuan, has suggested punishing the United States by dumping US bonds. Another, Major-General Zhu Chenghu, has called for China to scrap its ''no first strike'' nuclear weapons policy.

The book launch was also attended by arguably China's most important liberal editors, Wu Si of the political and history magazine Yanhuang Chunqiu and Hu Shuli of the Caixin Media.


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/general-urges-shakeup-of-china-politics-20110522-1eyvv.html#ixzz1N94ZtP12

China will eventually become unionised, this will weaken them.