By Beth Main



Despite much posturing to the contrary, Xi Jinping has let it slip that he has no true intentions of implementing political reform… like, at all.

The new leadership have barely made their own marks on the seats of power before our illusions of their reformist credentials have been shattered. Xi Jinping’s ‘new southern tour speech’, made in December, had been making the rounds within the CCP this week and has now been leaked, read an extended commentary on the speech here.

Not only does Xi apparently have no plans for liberal political reform but in fact seems to want to take things back to “the the kind of authority and legitimacy Mao Zedong enjoyed at the beginning of the communist China” writes Gao Yu, commenting on the leaked speech.

In the leaked speech, Xi reemphasises communist ideology, calls on the party to learn from the experience of the Soviet Union and to go back to the teachings of Lenin and Stalin. He also advocates maintaining state control over the military in order to avoid a collapse like that of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Only socialism can save China. Only (economic) reform and opening-up can develop China, develop socialism, and develop Marxism.

There are things we have not changed, things we cannot change, and things we will not change no matter in how long a time passes. And it cannot be characterized as failure to reform.

Gao Yu is a well known independent journalist with access to the inner political circles of the CCP, she was arrested twice in 1989 for her involvement with the democracy movement.