By YANG HENGJUN [China Media Project] – Today, thirty years on, China has reached another critical juncture. We have made wondrous achievements in economic development. But this development has, at the same time, exposed the unsuitability of our political system. Government controls are now seriously out of joint with China’s ever rising and expanding civil society.

In this moment, President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao, among others, have emphasized repeatedly that China must move forward with the process of opening and reform, and that China must also deepen political reforms. And also in this moment, so reminiscent of the clamor thirty years ago, we hear certain people standing up and saying we need to distinguish clearly between socialist democracy (社会主义民主) and Western democracy (西方民主).

What a striking echo of thirty years ago! Which should we accept, and which reject? Remember, Yang Hengjun has taught us that when we cannot see the road ahead, we must turn our gaze back on the past.

The difficulties facing us now are no less significant than those that faced us thirty years ago. It’s only that the problem now concerns political reform rather than economic reform.

Political reform is reform centering on democracy, freedom and rule of law. It is something that concerns the fate of 1.3 billion people, the fate of our nation, and the fate of every member of the Communist Party of China. If we lend any credence today to those vested power interests that would hold our nation hostage, if we listen to those people sitting in their rooms and relying on a book written by some German more than 100 years ago to chart a path along which 1.3 billion Chinese must travel, well then, the “dead end” that Premier Wen spoke about can’t be too far off….

Next year is the hundredth anniversary of the Chinese people’s pursuit of democracy and science. Over the past century China has traveled a winding and wicked path, one major reason being that our rulers have wielded false democracy to cheat the people, taking advantage of our lack of education and our economic frailty. Even today, this fraud is effective. But China has made progress toward democracy nevertheless, and we can see this in the progress the people of our country have made, in their ever-stronger sense of civic consciousness, and in the new appetite and understanding they have of democracy. They are no longer so easy to hoodwink.

And you choose this moment to reach under the bed and drag out this stinking pair of shoes. You say to the people of China, look, this is democracy.

I say to you as a Party member of twenty years, and as a citizen, that this “democracy” of yours will only bring chaos and destruction to us all.

Continued at the China Media Project | More Chronicle & Notices.