China Party Leaders Issue Call for Ethics

In a dress rehearsal for an important Communist Party congress next year, the central party leadership emerged from four days of secret meetings Thursday with a moralistic call for “socialist ethical and cultural progress” amid the chaotic scramble to get rich that has marked the recent period of economic reforms.

This “spiritual civilization” campaign is a pet project of Jiang Zemin, China’s president and Communist Party general secretary, as he attempts to solidify his position as heir apparent to Deng Xiaoping. China’s ailing, 92-year-old paramount leader has not been seen in public since 1994.

Late next year, after the historic July 1 hand-over of British Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China, the party will convene the 15th National Party Congress, a once-in-five-year meeting of the main party membership.

At that meeting, which the party formally announced Thursday will be held in late 1997, several key leadership adjustments are considered possible, prompted in part by the expiration of hard-line Premier Li Peng’s term.

One much-rumored possibility, widely reported in the hyperactive Hong Kong press, is that Jiang will assume the title of chairman--a position that has not been used since the 1976 death of Mao Tse-tung--and appoint Li and National People’s Congress Chairman Qiao Shi as vice chairmen with equal powers.

No significant leadership changes were announced Thursday at the conclusion of the sixth plenary session of the 14th party congress. The meeting was held under strict secrecy in the Jingxi Guest House at the western end of Beijing’s Avenue of Eternal Peace.

Instead, the party communique issued by the official New China News Agency on Thursday concentrated on setting a high moral tone for the country as it continues with its sweeping economic reforms. They have brought double-digit annual growth to the country but also have produced greatly increased crime and widespread corruption.

If anything, the meeting of the Central Committee this week was an effort by the party to reassert itself as the moral standard for China and to reinsert itself in aspects of society from which it had withdrawn. Ethics, the party stressed, should take precedence over economics.

“It should be clearly seen that in the work of the leadership in some places and departments,” the party document noted sternly, “the problem of neglecting ideological education and ethical and cultural progress has not been solved. There are still quite a few problems, some quite serious, which exist in social and cultural life. . . . While firmly keeping to the central task of economic development and promoting material progress, ethical and cultural progress should be given a higher, eminent status.”

In the days leading up to the plenum, which opened Monday, front pages of the main party newspapers featured long, glowing profiles of model workers and heroes, including Beijing bus conductor Li Shuli. According to the accounts, Li rises at 4 a.m. to review the bus route so that she can inform passengers of changes and developments.

The wave of hagiographic profiles followed a visit last month by Jiang to offices of the People’s Daily, mouthpiece of the Communist Party. Following the tradition of Chinese leaders Mao and Deng, Jiang urged journalists to “correctly guide public opinion.”

The party document on Thursday urged the leadership to “strengthen macro-control of the press and publications.”