by Xinhua Writer Cheng Yunjie
SHENZHEN, Aug. 29 (Xinhua) -- Politicial system reform has always been a sensitive issue, revolving around the redistribution of power and vested interests of government.
Rather than copying the prevalent multi-party system in the West, China aims to blaze a different trail by expanding democracy and autonomy for its 1.3 billion people based on existing political framework.
The reform is aimed at securing the governing party status of the Communist Party of China (CPC), under whose leadership other parties jointly participate in state affairs through political consultation.
The National People's Congress functions as the parliament, supervising the State Council, the goverment's administrative arm, while the Party's leadership is prevailing under the most senior decision-making body, the CPC Central Committee.
This framework, established shortly after the New China was founded in 1949, is viewed by the CPC Party authorities as the precondition to realizing a "Socialist democracy".
The core of the reform is to optimize rather than topple then rebuild, to political restructuring in China has appeared less exhilarating than economic reform, which brought world-shaking changes from a planned shortage economy to robust market economy.
Tan Gang, vice president of the Party School of the Shenzhen Municipal Committee of the CPC, however, insists political reform is breath-taking in a different way.
"Every nudge toward more extensive democracy will require reformers to have enormous political courage to not fear making mistakes. But without support from and tolerance by higher authorities, reformers will get hardly anywhere with their experiments," he says.
PREMIER'S WARNING
The latest comfort to reformers came from Premier Wen Jiabao who reiterated the difficulties and significance of optimizing the Socialist system during a tour of Shenzhen, China's first economic zone, this month.
Wen said China should push forward not only economic reform, but also political restructuring.
"Without safeguarding political restructuring, China may lose what it has already achieved through economic restructuring and the targets of its modernization drive might not be reached," he warned.
Wen made it clear that the Chinese must be mobilized and organized, in accordance with the law, to deal with state, economic, social and cultural affairs while democratic and legitimate rights must be guaranteed.
He said the government should create conditions to allow the people to criticize and supervise.
The remarks came right before the 30th anniversary of the establishment of economic zones -- a "significant signal" that the CPC expects Shenzhen to continue spearheading the reform by advancing political system reforms, says Zhao Zhikui, a researcher with the Marxism Research Institute of the China Academy of Social Sciences.
"If China wants to seek a bigger role in the global arena, it must get stronger by expanding democracy and automony to better address thorny domestic concerns and to close the ties between the government and the people," says Zhao.
CONSTRAINING AUTHORITY
A closer look at Shenzhen, bordering Hong Kong, highlights political system reform involving the Party, the administration and the public.
Lai Yukun, deputy chief of the organization department of the Shenzhen Municipal Commitee of the CPC, said one innovative reform was to adopt increasingly competitive elections for leadership positions.
