Chinese leadership signals support for further reform

China’s party newspaper People’s Daily carries an editorial today urging members to “unwaveringly uphold reform”. This is supposed to silent the rising leftist advocates and disassociate and distance the top leadership from conservative old guards. The editorial is signed by a famous pseudonym “Zhong Xuanli”, in Chinese rhyming “Central Propaganda Department’s Theoretic  Research Division”

For background of the heated debate, please refer to a previous post in the Bulletin: “Socialism or capitalism? New turning point in China?”

Financial Times:  Chinese leadership signals support for further reform

"The mouthpiece of China’s Communist party on Monday urged that members “unwaveringly uphold reform” in a call seen as an attempt by Beijing’s top leaders to silence opposition to wider foreign and private involvement in the economy.

A People’s Daily newspaper article that received extensive attention from other state media and was clearly intended to represent party policy, said China had no choice but to deepen market reforms and open further to the outside world.

“If we do not drive ahead with reform, not only will we be unable to win new achievements, we will also find it hard to maintain the progress we have made in the past,” the article stated.

Its publication follows unusually open and heated criticism during the past year of government policies on issues such as foreign takeovers of Chinese companies and management buy-outs of state-owned enterprises, all set against a backdrop of rising social inequality."

Other media coverage (more will certainly follow; I am particularly interested in how several major U.S. newspapers will interpret the story tommorow):

Times (U.K.) China's secret row bursts into the open