CAMBRIDGE, England -- Now that the dust is settling after the Chinese Communist Party's 16th National Congress, we can begin to see the implications of the various decisions announced there.
There was a lot of rhetoric in the media, both before and after the congress, about the way in which the Communist Party has embraced the private sector. The CCP seemed to be struggling to give birth to an elephant over the last year or so as President Jiang Zemin called for it to welcome capitalists as members. There was even talk of private entrepreneurs being elected to the party's central committee and maybe even to the Politburo and its standing committee. The congress, however, gave birth not to an elephant but to a mouse.
No private-sector entrepreneurs were elected to the party's central committee, although the chief executive officer of Haier Corporation, Zhang Ruimin, was elected as an alternate, nonvoting, member. Haier Corporation is, however, not really a private enterprise: state bodies of one sort or another hold the majority of its shares.