SUN WUKONG China's 'cats' mistake cream for mice
By Wu Zhong, China Editor
HONG KONG - This year marks the 30th anniversary of the launch of the economic
reforms and open-door policy in China by late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping.
Nationwide commemorative activities will be held this year, with some regions
already getting their celebrations underway.
There are good reasons for China to hold grand commemorative activities. In
Chinese tradition, the age 30 is of special significance. Confucius said in the Analects:
"At 30, I became well established." Thus, 30 years of age indicates maturity or
establishment, for a historical course as well as for a person.
China indeed has established itself as a reformed economy in the
past three decades. Real gross domestic product climbed 43-fold to 24.66
trillion yuan (US3.5 trillion) by last year from about 570 billion yuan in
1978, according National Bureau of Statistics data.
How to sustain such remarkable growth has now become a huge challenge to
China's leaders, who are also concerned with how they will be viewed 30 years
on.
In President Hu Jintao's words, all achievements in the past 30 years have been
attained through reforms and opening up the economy, and any further
advancement can be made only though deepening reforms and further opening of
the country. To do so, he has repeatedly called officials "to further
emancipate their minds".
"To emancipate the minds" was a slogan Deng used at the plenary session of the
Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in December 18-22, 1979,
which endorsed his idea of reforms and opening up as the party line. With the
slogan, Deng wanted to urge officials to break the ideological shackles of
Maoist dogmas and the command economy and change their mindsets to embrace
capitalist-style economic reforms.
In Deng's times, "to emancipate the minds" was meant to conceive of novel ideas
and make breakthroughs in theory and practice to turn the socialist command
economy into a one that was market-oriented. This often involved breaking
existing laws and violating policies that had been established to preserve and
safeguard the command economy. Thus many of Deng's reforms were revolutionary
in nature. As such reforms were unprecedented, progress could be made only
through trial and error. Deng's famous words, "A cat that catches mice is a
good cat, be it is white or black," became a guiding motto.
The result is a relatively mature market-oriented economy today, one which to a
certain extent is also integrated into the world economy. Improving what has
been achieved will be a tougher challenge, which really requires creative
thinking.
Answering Hu's call to further emancipate minds, many regions have looked for
new ways to boost their local economies. Guangdong province, for example, under
its new party secretary Wang Yang, intends to adapt its economy to globally
accepted practices so that it can compete internationally. Officials in other
regions apparently lack such insight into modern realities and turn to blind
imitation of what has already been tried.
On May 22, the local party committee and government of Shangqiu city in central
Henan province unveiled new policies, in the name of "greatly emancipating
minds", to stimulate the local economy and encourage residents to start their
own businesses. Shangqiu is a prefecture-level city with a population of 8.2
million.
One policy offers an attractive carrot to encourage civil servants to resign
and start their own businesses. A formula sets compensation at five times the
number of years he has served times his average monthly salary in the previous
year. The resigning civil servant will be allowed to register a business with
"zero capital".
The thinking may be that talented civil servants should be encouraged to join
the business sector as they have greater chances of success. This is
reminiscent of a fashion in the late 1980s and early 1990s in many coastal
cities for civil servants who wanted to become rich to quit their jobs and
start doing business. The trend was called "jumping into the sea (of
commerce)". The "creative aspect" of the Shangqiu leaders' thinking is to offer
financial incentives.
But such "creative thinking" has not gone down well with the general public. A
commentary by Li Shaoguo on the Xinhua News Agency website says the Shangqiu
policy will result in taxpayers' money being used to subsidize retiring
officials. According to the formula, officials near the age of retirement could
get huge compensation. Li says "emancipation of minds" must not become an
excuse to abuse public funds.
Another commentator, Xiao Hua, writes on Xinhua's website that the Shangqiu
policy may violate civil service regulations. These forbid a resigned or
retired civil servant from becoming engaged in profitable activities in any
enterprise or organization whose business is related to his job in the civil
service, in the first three years after his resignation or retirement.
Xiao says Shangqiu's policy virtually opens the door for the corruption that
such rules are designed to prevent. The civil service regulations also have
strict stipulations covering the resignation of civil servants, such as the
length of their services. Shangqiu has totally ignored such restrictions.
Public criticism of the Shangqiu policy suggests that not all novel ideas are
"creative thinking", and nowadays "emancipation of minds" must be done within
the framework of the law. In other words, no illegal or evil thing should be
allowed to prevail in the name of "emancipation of the minds". It seems that 30
years after Deng's launch of reforms, the color of a cat may still not be
important, but the manner in which it catches mice is.
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