China's leaders are resilient in face of change

As Beijing was starting construction on its main Olympic stadiums four years ago, China's vice president and leading political fixer, Zeng Qinghong, warned the 70 million members of the ruling Communist Party that the party itself could use some reconstruction.

Zeng argued that the "painful lessons" from the collapse of other Communist parties in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe could not be ignored. He said China's cadres needed to "wake up" and realize that "a party's status as a party in power does not necessarily last as long as the party does."

Zeng, who is now retired, was alluding to the pressures of economic liberalization, political stagnation and globalization that many analysts have argued would ultimately topple one-party rule in China. The Olympics also posed a pressure point, as some analysts wondered whether the expectations and international scrutiny brought by the Games might help crack open another authoritarian political system - as happened in Seoul in 1988.

But if the Olympics have presented unmistakable challenges and crises, the Communist Party has proved resilient. Public appetite for reform has not waned, but the short-term byproduct of the Olympics has been an upsurge in Chinese patriotism that bolstered the party against international criticism after its crackdown on Tibetan protesters in March and the controversy over the international Olympic torch relay.

Economic and social change is so rapid in China that the Communist Party is sometimes depicted as an overwhelmed caretaker. But in the seven years since Beijing was awarded the Games, the party has adapted and navigated its way forward, loosening its grip on elements of society even as it crushes, or co-opts, threats to its hold on political power.

The party has absorbed entrepreneurs, urban professionals and university students into an elite class that is invested in the political status quo, if not necessarily enthralled with it. Private capitalists may be symbols of a changing China.

"This is a very reflective party," said David Shambaugh, a political scientist at George Washington University. "They are adaptive, reflective and open, within limits. But survival is the bottom line. And they see survival as an outcome of adaptation."

The ultimate question is whether adaptation alone is enough. Many analysts say the lack of democratic reform is constraining China's economic efficiency and that reforms are needed to confront issues like stark inequality and environmental degradation. Thousands of protests erupt every year over illegal land seizures and official corruption.

For the Communist Party, China's selection in July 2001 as host of the 2008 Olympics was a political and historic coup: a gift they could deliver to a thrilled citizenry and a new focal point, seven years in the distant future, which could be used to rally national pride.

Inside the party, leaders were intently focused on the viability of their system. The party faced no organized opposition; none is allowed. But the leadership, fretting about historical trends, had commissioned exhaustive autopsies of the collapse of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. By June 2001, a month before the Olympic announcement, the Communist Party's Central Committee organization department, which oversees party promotions and training, published a blunt report that revealed deep public anger and recommended "system reforms" to address official corruption and incompetence.

China's economy was soaring, and the country was preparing to join the World Trade Organization. But if free trade could help China's exports, the party report also warned that deeper integration into the world economy "may bring growing dangers and pressures, and it can be predicted that in the ensuing period the number" of public protests "may jump, severely harming social stability."