VZCZCXRO6544
RR RUEHCN RUEHVC
DE RUEHGH #6460/01 2850429
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
R 120429Z OCT 06
FM AMCONSUL SHANGHAI
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 4651
INFO RUEHOO/CHINA POSTS COLLECTIVE
RUCPDOC/USDOC WASHDC 0093
RHEHNSC/WHITE HOUSE NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL WASHINGTON DC
RUEATRS/DEPT OF TREASURY WASHINGTON DC
RUEHGH/AMCONSUL SHANGHAI 4936

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 05 SHANGHAI 006460 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPT FOR EAP/CM, INR/B AND INR/EAP 
STATE PASS USTR FOR STRATFORD, WINTER, MCCARTIN, ALTBACH 
TREAS FOR OASIA - DOHNER/CUSHMAN 
USDOC FOR ITA/MAC - ADAS MELCHER, MCQUEEN 
NSC FOR WILDER AND TONG 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL:  10/12/2031 
TAGS: PGOV PINR EINV ECON CH
SUBJECT: SHANGHAI CHINA CONFERENCE A PRELUDE TO 6TH PLENUM 
 
REF: A) SHANGHAI 6459; B) SHANGHAI 3843; C) SHANGHAI 155; D) SHANGHAI 3844 
 
SHANGHAI 00006460  001.2 OF 005 
 
 
CLASSIFIED BY: Simon Schuchat , DPO, U.S. Consulate, Shanghai, 
Department of State. 
REASON: 1.4 (b), (d) 
 
 
 
¶1.  (C).  Summary.  During an international conference of China 
Studies, top Chinese scholars discussed China's political 
development and foreign policy, in  a prelude to discussions at 
the October 2006 Plenum and even the 2007 Party Congress. 
Chinese scholars characterized China as committed to the 
concepts of "Peaceful Development," "Peaceful Rise," and a 
"Harmonious World."  They also noted that Chinese economic 
development was intertwined with political reform, that China 
was promoting its own style of "consultative democracy," and 
would not adopt Western-style democracy.  End Summary 
 
 
 
--------------------------------------------- -------------- 
An Authoritative Prelude to the Plenum for Foreign Scholars 
--------------------------------------------- -------------- 
 
 
 
¶2.  (C) From September 20-22, the Shanghai Academy of Social 
Sciences (SASS) hosted the Second World Forum on China Studies, 
with the theme "China and the World: Harmony and Peace."  The 
timing of the conference and the constant barrage of propaganda 
left little doubt in the minds of many conference attendees that 
the meetings were meant to showcase and explain to the foreign 
scholarly community party doctrines that would be discussed at 
the upcoming Plenum.  As Fudan Public Affairs School Researcher 
and conference attendee Hu Xiaoxiu said, there was no mistaking 
that the conference theme was related to the Plenum (which in 
fact showcased the concept of a "socialist harmonious society") 
and President Hu's continued stress of the "Harmony" theme in 
the run up to next year's 17th Party Congress. 
 
 
 
¶3.  (C) Underscoring the importance of the conference was the 
fact that both senior foreign policy advisor and China Forum on 
Reform and Opening Up President Zheng Bijian and Central Party 
School (CPS) Vice President Li Junru delivered remarks at the 
conference.  Zheng developed the "China's Peaceful Rise" and 
"Harmonious World" concepts (Ref A).  Li is China's leading 
expert on "consultative democracy" and a close advisor to both 
Vice President Zeng Qinghong and, more recently, President Hu 
Jintao, according to George Washington University Professor 
David Shambaugh who also attended the conference.  The CPS was a 
silent co-sponsor, further highlighting the conference's 
importance in the run up to the Plenum.  Although there were no 
outward signs indicating CPS involvement, CPS Politics and Law 
Professor Liu Yongyan told Poloff that the CPS had selected the 
conference theme and helped SASS pull together the invitees name 
list. 
 
 
 
--------------------------------------------- ------------- 
Zheng Bijian: China Seeks for Peace and a Harmonious World 
--------------------------------------------- ------------- 
 
 
 
¶4.  (U) In his opening speech to the conference, Professor Zheng 
stressed that China's development had been and would remain 
peaceful.  China insisted on peaceful development, refused to 
seek hegemony, and was looking for "cooperative development," 
explaining that this was "China's Road" to building a 
"harmonious, civilized, and democratic society."  Zheng 
explained that China's road toward peaceful development had five 
elements: 
 
 
 
-- China's development stage would last 70 years, from the end 
of the 1970s to the middle of the 21st Century. 
 
 
 
-- During this 70 year period, China would be focused on 
 
SHANGHAI 00006460  002.2 OF 005 
 
 
resolving the questions of the right to exist, the right to 
develop, and the right to education. China was busy with its 
domestic issues and had no time, energy, or need to threaten 
others.  Of course, Zheng added, even after it was developed, 
China would continue in its peaceful ways. 
 
 
 
-- China would stress self-reliance, developing its internal 
market, promoting domestic science and technology development, 
rejuvenating Chinese culture, and transforming and increasing 
its industrial capacity, even while globalizing its economy and 
striving for "win-win" international relations. 
 
 
 
-- China would strive for harmony at home and peace abroad 
through its international commitments and domestic covenants. 
 
 
 
-- Finally, over the next 50 years, China would seek to restore 
Chinese civilization through an unceasing spirit of rejuvenation. 
 
 
 
¶5.  (U) Zheng elaborated on the "Chinese Dream," which, he said, 
determined China's path of peaceful development.  The Chinese 
people deeply understood the evils of rule by force and the 
value of peace.  To that end, China sought first to protect its 
national sovereignty and maintain its territorial integrity. 
Second, China sought to realize national development and 
modernization through peaceful and civilized means.  "China's 
Road" and the "Chinese Dream" led to what Zheng referred to as 
the "Chinese Heart," which was 1.3 to 1.5 billion Chinese people 
actively establishing a "harmonious China" while simultaneously 
seeking the establishment of a "harmonious world"   Developing a 
"harmonious world", Zheng said, was a precondition for China's 
peaceful development (Ref A). 
 
 
 
--------------------------------------------- ------ 
Li Junru: Political Reform Is And Has Been Underway 
--------------------------------------------- ------ 
 
 
 
¶6.  (U) In his address to the conference, CPS Vice President Li 
Junru said that there was a "big misunderstanding" that China's 
reforms had only been economic and that China had avoided 
political reforms.  In fact, there were at least eight areas on 
which the Party had focused over the past 20 plus years as it 
implemented political structural reform. 
 
 
 
-- The use of economic reform to promote reform of the political 
system. 
 
 
 
-- Combining democracy with the legal system, stressing that 
democracy needed to be institutionalized and legalized. 
 
 
 
-- Combining reform of the political system with improvement of 
people's lives, to ensure that the people benefited directly 
from political reforms. 
 
 
 
-- Building grassroots self governance and thereby strengthening 
the rule of law nationwide.  (Li cited the establishment of 
village, and neighborhood committees, professional 
representation conferences, and direct village elections in the 
countryside as examples of grassroots self governance 
initiatives.) 
 
 
 
-- Improving the "political and party system with Chinese 
characteristics" by allowing other parties to participate 
 
SHANGHAI 00006460  003.2 OF 005 
 
 
lawfully with the ruling party. 
 
 
 
-- Strengthening inner-party democracy to promote "people's 
democracy."  Li said that along these lines, the Party had 
abolished the life-long tenure system, creating job 
opportunities for capable people through fair competition. 
 
 
 
-- Combining legal supervision and administrative supervision 
with direct supervision by the people and improving the public 
supervisory and letters and visits systems (Ref B).  Li said 
that the media's participation in the supervisory system had 
also been instrumental in China's democratic development. 
 
 
 
-- Finally, combining election-based democracy with consultative 
democracy and improving people's "orderly participation" in 
politics. 
 
 
 
-------------------------------------- 
Get off Our Backs, We've Got Democracy 
-------------------------------------- 
 
 
 
¶7.  (U) During a panel entitled "The Goals and Trends of 
Contemporary Political Development," CPS Professor Liu Yongyan 
asserted that China had democracy, based on the work of the 
Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), an 
appointed body whose job it was to understand grassroots issues 
and recommend solutions and policy adjustments (Ref C). 
According to SASS Deng Xiaoping Theory Institute researcher 
Cheng Weili, the CPPCC was instrumental in helping subordinate 
the individual interests of the various parties to the overall 
national interest.  Cheng explained that a consultative 
democracy required equal status for all participants, free and 
open discussion, the right to criticize others' opinions, and 
consensus to be reached after negotiations and consultations. 
This kind of democracy emphasized procedure and equality before 
the law, including leaders of the ruling party.  Cheng, himself 
a CPPCC member, noted that some within the Party who wanted to 
"avoid" democracy.  Those Party members failed to understand 
that "without the consultative democratic system, there could be 
no Socialism in China," according to Cheng. 
 
 
 
¶8.  (U) Liu argued that there were many different types of 
democracies and all were legitimate.  Although China was 
committed to reform of its People's Congress system, it would 
not copy Western democratic practices, since those practices did 
not conform to China's reality.  Li Junru then chided some 
Chinese scholars for always clamoring for Western-style 
multi-party democracy, adding that it was ludicrous to presume 
China could adopt another country's system.  Li joked that the 
population of all the developed countries combined was 1.3 
billion; when they could all get together and elect a president, 
then China could do so too. 
 
 
 
--------------------------------------------- -------- 
Scientific Development and Harmonious Society Are Key 
--------------------------------------------- -------- 
 
 
 
¶9.  (U) According to Chinese scholar Jia Jianfang, to safeguard 
China's political system, China needed to focus on building a 
"Harmonious Society."  He explained that past economic reforms 
had produced growing societal conflicts in China arising from 
corruption, uneven distribution of income, and unbalanced 
development.  Jia said that the "Harmonious Society" concept was 
aimed at resolving these conflicts by establishing harmony 
between people, between people and society, and between people 
and nature.  To achieve a "Harmonious Society," the Party needed 
a "human based approach" that utilized Scientific Development to 
balance regional disparities and address the rural/urban divide. 
 
SHANGHAI 00006460  004.2 OF 005 
 
 
 Such a society needed to be constructed on the basis of 
equality and the rule of law, requiring transparency, elections, 
public participation, and protection of human rights, according 
to Jia.  He also said that societal "harmony" required a society 
to have a shared set of values and applauded Hu's proposed 
Socialist concept of the "The Eight Honors and Eight Shames" for 
inculcating such values (Ref D). 
 
 
 
------------------------------- 
Papa's Got a Brand New Ideology 
------------------------------- 
 
 
 
¶10.  (U) Central Party School researcher Dai Yanjun explained 
the importance of ideology for any country and the specific 
ideological work China faced.  Dai claimed that a ruling party 
could not remain in power if its ideas were not in harmony with 
the people.  If, however, the ruling party's ideology correctly 
represented the interests of the majority, the ruling party 
could do its job well.  The CCP, Dai said, was facing new 
challenges regarding its ideological work: 
 
 
 
-- competing ideologies seeping in from the outside world; 
 
 
 
-- the shift toward a market economy from its traditional 
socialist planned economy; 
 
 
 
-- social disparities and conflicts arising from reforms; 
 
 
 
-- and a freer flow of information due to the development of 
information technology. 
 
 
 
¶11.  (C) To face these challenges, the Party needed to adapt. 
It needed to better understand the needs of the new classes that 
were emerging as a result of reforms and be applicable to every 
person in every condition.  It needed to be practical, easily 
understood, and widely disseminated.  To that end, propaganda 
officials needed to better understand the Internet in order to 
expand the Party's influence online and control the guidance of 
web pages.  (Comment: We took the subtext of Dai's speech to be 
the claim that in order to remain relevant, the Party needed a 
new ideology that truly reflected the needs of the people, such 
as the "putting people first" mantra of Hu's Harmonious Society. 
 End comment.) 
 
 
 
----------------------------------- 
China's Peaceful Place in the World 
----------------------------------- 
 
 
 
¶12.  (SBU) During a panel on "China's Peaceful Development and 
the International System" Renmin University International 
Relations School Professor Jin Canrong claimed that the Chinese 
government had struck the term "rise" from its vocabulary, 
noting that China would stick to "peaceful development."  (Note: 
Although the government had struck "rise" from its vocabulary, 
scholars, including those at the conference, continued to use 
it.  See Ref A.  End note.)  China was still a developing 
country, according to Jin, not a "superpower" as some Western 
academics believed.  Peking Normal University History Professor 
Zhang Hongyi argued that China was "not capable" of aggression 
and was dedicated to peace.  China would be able to make a 
positive contribution to the world if it was able to rise 
peacefully, but to do so China first had to solve its internal 
problems. Chinese Academy of Social Sciences History Professor 
Cai Penghong added that the Chinese government's position was 
that China was an active participant and actor in the 
international system.  China's rise was impacting the world 
 
SHANGHAI 00006460  005.2 OF 005 
 
 
order.  Although the United States was still dominant, it had 
benefited from China's growth.  Cai said that China was seeking 
a "win-win situation" and opined that there should not be one 
single country that takes the lead on everything. 
 
 
 
------------------------------------------- 
Comment: Ignore the Man Behind the Curtain! 
------------------------------------------- 
 
 
 
¶13.  (C) The Party devoted a lot of resources towards trying to 
convince the international scholarly community that it was an 
internationally benign democratic dictatorship focused on making 
life better and "harmonious" for its people and the world. 
Chinese scholars' claims that China's gradual rise since the 
beginning of the reform era has been peaceful, and that the PRC 
was incapable of aggression, however, appeared to turn a blind 
eye towards its history of violent border conflicts, not to 
mention continued internal repression of its own population. 
Moreover, scholarly insistence that China had its own form of 
democracy and that Western-style democracy was simply not suited 
for China appeared to us a mere rationale for continued CCP 
rule.  However, calls for greater transparency, public 
participation, and strengthening of the People's Congress system 
suggest the direction that some, at least, within the Party hope 
to take. 
 
 
 
¶14.  (C) It is difficult to assess the personal commitment of 
the scholars at the conference to the Party line which they were 
spouting.  Some, no doubt, fully believe what they say.  But 
others may not.  For instance, on October 6, Wenling City Deputy 
Propaganda Chief Chen Yiming (protect) who is formulating 
grassroots democratic reforms in Zhejiang Province, told Poloff 
that CPS Vice President Li--whom Chen has interacted with in the 
past--was actually supportive of genuine Western-style 
democratic reform, but was unable to discuss such things 
publicly.  In an aside, CPS Professor Liu also confided to 
Poloff that she admired U.S. democracy and had studied the works 
of the American founding fathers.  End comment. 
JARRETT