THE wooden choreography of the Chinese Communist Party’s 18th congress, now under way in Beijing, strikes Chinese and foreign observers alike as an oddity in a country that in many other ways is changing so fast. The ritual of the week-long event, from the stodgy report delivered by the general secretary on opening day (see our report, here) to the mind-numbing repetition of identical views by the more than 2,200 delegates, has hardly changed in decades. Reuters news agency, whose reporters in Beijing are among the most numerous of any foreign media organisation, said its team in the Stalinesque Great Hall of the People heard no dissent during an entire day of group “discussions” about the state-of-the-nation address presented by the president, Hu Jintao. Journalists can console themselves that things have been worse. In the days of Mao Zedong, party congresses took place in secret, with no news released until they were over. It was not until the 12th congress in 1982 that the party began to arrange press conferences about the proceedings, but it still did not let foreign journalists into the Great Hall of the People. At the 13th congress in 1987 the foreign media were allowed in to watch the opening and closing ceremonies for the first time. Ten years later, at the 15th congress, they were finally allowed to observe some of the delegates’ discussions. These excruciatingly dull events, however, provide almost no useful insights into the party’s workings. As a veteran of Chinese party congresses (having covered one third of them since the party’s founding in 1921) your correspondent delights in the memory of one rare exception to the tedium. It was at the congress in 1987, a year when China was gripped by a struggle between hardliners and reformers in the party. At the end of the congress, after the newly appointed central committee had rubber-stamped the line-up of a new Politburo, journalists waited in a side room of the Great Hall of the People to meet the new leaders. In walked Zhao Ziyang, the just-confirmed general secretary, along with his four colleagues in the Politburo’s standing committee. Zhao looked triumphant. He clasped his hands together above his shoulders in what looked like a gesture of greeting, mixed with one of victory. His reformist faction had come out on top. What followed was the most casual encounter anyone could recall between China’s most powerful men and the foreign media. Separated from them only by narrow tables, Mr Zhao walked slowly in front of the journalists with his fellow leaders, raising glasses with them and appearing relaxed and jovial as he answered unscripted questions; see the photo above. “It is my hope you can send a dispatch saying all my suits are made in China and all of them are very pretty…so as to promote the sale of Chinese garments in international markets,” Mr Zhao said (see this dispatch by the Associated Press). Not exactly side-splitting, but it was remarkable just to hear an attempt at humour by a member of the Politburo. The government’s news agency, Xinhua, engaged in a little openness of its own that day, by revealing Zhao’s age for the first time. It was said he was 68. Many had thought he was 69.

Such a freewheeling event has never been repeated. The bloody suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 put an end to any thought of giving foreign media greater access to the leadership. After the next party congress, in 1992, journalists were kept at least a few paces away from the new leaders who walked in to meet them. Jiang Zemin, the general secretary, took only six minutes to introduce his fellow members of the Politburo’s standing committee, before walking out again. No questions were allowed. The format has been the same at all subsequent congresses. Xi Jinping, who will be named the party’s new general secretary on November 15th, is unlikely to try to emulate Zhao’s informality. A congress functionary, asked whether journalists would be allowed to put questions to the new leaders, said simply: “No”.

Another high point of the 13th congress that has never been attained at subsequent such meetings was its emphasis on the need for political reform. Mr Hu paid lip-service to the notion in his opening address last week, but most Chinese agree that political liberalisation has been in a virtual deep freeze since Tiananmen. The 13th congress marked the first time that the number of candidates for seats in the central committee exceeded the number of seats. Remarkably a hardliner who was thought to be in line for a seat in the Politburo, Deng Liqun, got so few votes that he failed to make it onto the central committee. This made him ineligible for Politburo membership. In an autobiography published in 2005, Mr Deng accused Zhao (who died that year under house arrest) of trying to persuade delegates to vote against him. Officials are well able to manipulate the outcomes of inner-party elections (see this article in Chinese in Nanfeng Chuang, a magazine, describing how it is done at lower-level party congresses). But at the time of the 13th congress, reformists believed that inner-party democracy was on the verge of a breakthrough.

Bao Tong, who served as Zhao’s secretary and was imprisoned for seven years for his role in the Tiananmen unrest, says that liberal officials close to Zhao envisaged at the time that subsequent congresses would see competitive elections introduced at increasingly high levels (see our story here). By the time of the 16th congress in 2002 there could be multiple candidates for the post of general secretary, they thought. No such reforms have occurred. Reuters says there could be changes afoot this time, however. If Mr Xi and Mr Hu have their way, the news agency says, there could even be competitive elections for seats in the Politburo. If so this would be a step forward. Mr Bao, however, says the Zhaoists reckoned in 1987 that such elections for the Politburo could be held at the 14th congress in 1992. A quarter-century on, the party is still dithering.

(Picture credit: AFP)