CHINA: China issued its first-ever progress report on democracy and political reform yesterday. It was a weighty document reiterating Beijing's commitment to improving human rights and fighting corruption, but also stressing that single-party rule by the Communist Party is here to stay.
While the 74-page White Paper contained few new insights into the plans of the Communist Party to maintain its grip on the country it has held since the 1949 revolution, the fact it has been published at all is significant.
Some of the language is extremely familiar, telling how China was following a path of "socialist democracy with its own characteristics". China has no direct elections and the Communist Party is really the only show in town.
At the same time, Building of Political Democracy in China was candid in underlining how the mechanism of supervising the use of power needed improvement. "There is still a long way to go in China's building of political democracy," it said.
The report was characterised by a combination of Soviet-era Communist-speak and market-led jargon, concluding that socialist political democracy "was the apt choice suited to China's conditions and meeting the requirement of social progress".
"China has always adhered to the basic principle that the Marxist theory of democracy be combined with the reality of China," it said.
While some of the language was familiar, the report testifies to China's growing desire to present a reform-minded attitude to the outside world.
It comes amid widening criticism from abroad about the relatively slow pace of political reform compared with the heady pace of economic growth.
As the country gets richer, Chinese people are becoming more and more aware of their rights, and the Communist Party has made strong efforts to boost transparency and fight corruption.
China is regularly criticised for human rights transgressions, but the Communist Party insists it needs to ensure the economic well-being of its citizens first before it can start introducing greater levels of representation.
The report's launch was given lengthy coverage on the official state news agency, Xinhua.
Coinciding with some high-level visits from Washington, including by US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the paper urged America to moderate its criticisms of China, saying each country should be permitted to pick its own path to democracy.
"Because situations differ from one country to another, the paths the people of different countries take to win and develop democracy are different," the white paper said.
The document was issued just one day after World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz urged China to give more power to the people to help sustain strong economic growth. He said China needed to do much more on issues such as the rule of law and the role of civil society.