Xi to issue clarification on Third Plenum Decision
After a month of claims by pro-US liberal CPC members to sell and privatize China, 习近平主席 Xi Jinping steps in.
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BEIJING, Thu, Aug. 15 — President Xi Jinping shall tomorrow, Aug 16, issue a clarification on deliberations and decisions reached at the Third Plenary, July 15-18, of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), China’s news agency Xinhua has announced.
The clarification, to be published on Aug. 16 in the party’s magazine 《求是》/ Truth (image above) has a long title:《关于 〈中共中央关于进一步全面深化改革、推进中国式现代化的决定〉的说明》(above). In translation (mine), ‘Concerning the “Decision on Extending, Deeper Comprehensive Reforms and the Promotion of Chinese-Style Modernization”.’
That “Decision” was actually the communique issued on the Plenum’s last day, Jul 18.
Since then pro-US agents within the CPC, such as Hu Xijin, has gone all over town proclaiming the triumph of liberalism in the second phase, beginning 2025, of China’s economic and social reforms launched in 1980. (Hu has since been removed from the party and his position in the CPC’s Chinese/English daily Global Times terminated.)
The cause for their bragging? The communique, Hu and others said, was totally silent on the term “public ownership.” Not one word.
Which is true.
Because of that silence, they concluded, the party, had from the Plenum onwards, tilted in favor of private ownership at the expense of the State-owned businesses. This policy shift would have to be materialized with new laws, in particular, throwing up all rural land for sale to the highest bidder, including foreigners.
This, and similar liberal claims, nearly kicked off a riot and a revolt in the party. It very clearly implied that the CPC, which had made State ownership and control of the economy its reason for existence, was now working to end its raison d’etre.
It further meant destroying the party’s political base of peasant farmers who had provided every foot soldier, every dime, and all the muscle in China’s reconstruction, past and present. Once they sell, these farmers, under new laws promoting privatization, would lose all permanent rights to their land that had been part and parcel of China’s agriculture productivity gains the past 40 years.
It was the surpluses from those gains that provided both the space and the money for the Beijing central government to focus on and to shift funds to new infrastructure works, creating for example the glittering urban centres of Shenzhen, Shanghai and Beijing. Every brick, every T-bar were laid by those farmers and their children.
Adding to the confusion, none — not one — in the CPC senior echelons has come out, whether in cognito or in public, to even clarify those claims, much less refute it. There was only silence.
Xinhua’s announcement on the Xi clarification coincides with the 124th Anniversary, Aug 15, of the capture of Beijing by the western, eight-nation alliance jointly led by France and Britain. In that battle, a western force of 20,000 seized then plundered the capital of a nation of 400 million. (See, 太平天国和义和团被全部杀光是老百姓支持八国联军的根本原因. 复兴网, Revival, 2024 Aug 15.)
Questions into how that could have happened never ceased to be asked. The widely accepted answer blames the corrupt and supplicant pro-western Qing government that had instead deployed its 150,000 troops against Chinese resisting the western occupation, the Boxers 義和團運動, slaughtering 100,000 of them, then a further 200,000 to include the wives and children.
Many CPC rank and file members worry about a Qing government repeat from the seeds of betrayal within the party, and by its mid-level and senior echelons stuffed with pro-US agents.
Party vanguards have demanded for the heads of those agents as well as their ideologues in academia and media who were at the forefront of this post Plenum campaign to bring down the party and sell the nation. (Also see this, this, and this.)
Xi’s clarification on Aug 16 might calm tempers and blunt the sharp edges resulting from the liberal claims. The party might even sack a few more high profile members, or forestall any new laws changing the present land ownership structures, or halt plans to privatize State-owned enterprises (SOEs). But the fact that these proposals were even tabled at the Plenum’s table has been disconcerting: Since when does the CPC own the nation?
The party’s rank and file would have no truck for Xi interested only in pussy-footing or fudging those liberal claims. But, the fact that he is coming forward in person to stake his reputation over the fight means he is willing to be held personally accountable. If so, the Vanguards will have his fucking head hanging from a Tiananmen flagpole should he ever betray the nation and the people, like the Qing government on Aug 15, 1900!
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