Far Eastern Economic Review, 9 Jan 2009, Willy Lam
Hu Jintao is presiding over a Great Leap Backward in China’s ideology and statecraft. This was made clear by the president’s much-anticipated speech on Dec. 18, 2008, marking the 30th anniversary of Deng Xiaoping’s reform and open-door policy.
Publicists for the Chinese Communist Party had earlier in the year indicated that Mr. Hu—a protégé of the late patriarch and “chief architect of reform”—would unveil an ambitious blueprint to take Deng’s reform one step forward. Yet the party general-secretary not only failed to enunciate new liberalization measures, he turned back the clock by reviving an ideal first raised by Chairman Mao Zedong 70 years ago: the “Sinicization of Marxism,” or how to adapt Marxist dogmas to Chinese reality. It was the first time since Mr. Hu came to power in 2002 that he had so nakedly identified himself with what even ordinary CCP members would deem the outdated shibboleths of the Maoist epoch.
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