The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) opens its 17th congress today. Expected to last approximately one week, the conclave will set Beijing’s policy agenda for the next five years. In the run-up to the congress, People’s Daily last week ran eight articles drawing on an online discussion with Chen Xiqing, deputy chief of the CCP’s United Front Work Department. The series covered topics ranging from the prospects for “multi-party cooperation” to the growing importance of the country’s “new social stratum.” During the online discussion, Chen Xiqing stressed that it is the CCP’s long-term policy to promote qualified non-party members to ministerial posts. This past June, Chen Zhu, who has no party affiliation, was named by Beijing to be the country’s health minister. The 54-year-old molecular biologist holds a doctorate from France’s Saint-Louis Hospital University. Two months earlier, Wan Gang, 55, was appointed minister of science and technology. Wan holds a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Germany’s Clausthal University of Technology. He is also the vice chairman of the China Zhi Gong (public interest) party, one of the country’s eight legally recognized minority parties. Its membership consists of more than 15,000 returned overseas Chinese and others with overseas ties. The appointments of Chen and Wan were hailed by People’s Daily as moves demonstrating the CCP’s “great vision as the party in power.” Moreover, the fact that Chen and Wan are members of the so-called “new social stratum” did not go unnoticed by the official propaganda machine. Most of the estimated 50 million people in the “new social stratum” are educated, high-income earners who work in the non-public sector. They include private entrepreneurs, technical professionals, managers working for foreign enterprises, the occupationally mobile self-employed, and members of the intelligentsia. They generate nearly one-third of China’s tax revenue and create more than half of the country’s new job opportunities every year. Worth noting is the fact that the majority of these individuals are not members of the Chinese Communist Party. Calling it “a force to be reckoned with,” last year the party’s United Front Work Department launched a column on its website specifically targeted at “people in the non-public economic sector.” Its purpose was to help shape their thinking in order to further the goal of constructing, in the well-known words of President Hu Jintao, “a harmonious society.” As the entrepreneurial spirit of the “new social stratum” continues making a critical contribution to China’s economic expansion–thereby giving legitimacy to the CCP as the ruling party–promoting members of this group to ministerial and other high-level government posts seems a practical recipe for the party to put forth. It serves a two-fold purpose. One is that it helps to meet the “increasingly greater political demands” of the “new social stratum.” And second, it helps Beijing project an image of openness as it strives to make progress “in the development of socialist political democracy.” But technocratic meritocracy is not to be confused with democracy. It remains to be seen how much decision-making power these non-CCP ministers can wield. For example, Gao Qiang, Chen Zhu’s predecessor as health minister, is now only a vice minister of health. Gao, however, remains the secretary of the ministry’s Communist party committee. In the ministry’s organizational structure, the party boss outranks the minister.
