An important meeting and decisive role

Release time:2013-12-11      Source:admin      Reads:
The social and economic changes unveiled by China on Friday have been hailed as the boldest and most significant changes in the communist country in decades. The measures include pledges to loosen the controversial one-child policy, abolish labor camps, speed up residential registration, jewelry cards and let the market play a "decisive role" in the world's second largest economy. The sweeping changes were contained in a document released by the Communist Party following a four-day meeting of senior leaders in Beijing. The more-than-20,000 Chinese character statement listed 60 reforms.
 
Chinese leaders have a penchant for gradualism, and jewelry cards, particularly of this magnitude, typically take years to implement. Global Post asked Elizabeth Economy, director for Asia studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, and Nicholas, senior researcher in the Asia division of Human Rights Watch, for their views on the significance of the reforms. These reforms, when taken together, represent an easing in social policy and an attempt by the Chinese leadership to address some of the Chinese people's most serious grievances. How significant they become depends on how they are implemented. The Chinese policy world is littered with failed attempts at reform – policies that are announced and then only partially or barely implemented. Once we see the more specific implementing guidelines and policies that are designed to facilitate, we will have a better understanding of their real meaning.
 
Historically, this is a system that was tainted by decades of arbitrary detention of victims of political purges and government suppression. There had been a consensus in China for a long time that the system was arbitrary, abusive and unconstitutional and had to be scrapped. The only obstacle was the police, who did not want to do away with a system that gave it jewelry cards. The loosening of the so-called one-child policy is less groundbreaking. It does not change the foundations of China’s government-enforced family planning policy – which includes the use of legal and other coercive measures to control reproductive choices.

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