Last May, the independent socialist magazine Monthly Review devoted the commentary section of its website to ‘A Struggle Within the Chinese Communist Party’, brought to theby Jiang Zemin’s Call for admission of capitalists to the Chinese Communist Party in a speech he made on July 1, 2001. The centerpiece of MR’s presentation of this stuggle consists of translations, initially made available by associates of CSG, of two letters, Letter of the Fourteen and Letter addressed to the Central Committee, both signed by prominent older party members, all in their eighties. CSG is now making available here for the first time translation of A statement on issues of major importance relating to the 16th Party Congress by Mr. Zhou Xiubao, who has emerged as the most outspoken and fearless voice of the left opposition within the party. Mr. Zhou, in his fifties, hails from Taiyuan, Shanxi province, a research staff in the provincial party committee’s agriculture office. He wrote a fiery letter, denouncing Jiang’s July 1 speech, which was circulated around the same time as the afore - mentioned two letters by older party members, but went much further than voice opposition to further extensions of capitalist social relations in China, as did the two letters. He was taken away, sometime in July 2001, to a secluded location to “explain” his conduct - a party disciplinary move but detention nonetheless - for a few days. He was again taken away for “explanations” in July 2002, more than a month after he mailed to the central Party leadership the following statement on 16th Party Congress, dated June 12, 2002. About the same time, in Zhenzhou, a city in the Henan Province, Ms. Ge Nixin and her husband, Mr. Zhang were also taken away ostensibly in connection with circulation of Zhou’s statement. Mr. Zhou was released more than two month later. The couple, as of this writing, remain in custody, while no charge was known to have been filed against them.

After this episode, I sent many letters to county, provincial, and central authorities; and repeatedly went to the provincial admin office, but I was always told to go back to my village to wait for an official reply. I had waited for more than nine years now. Still, there is no official reply. In recent years, the situation in the rural area has actually grown worse than the early 90s. Already 68 years old, I probably have only a few years to live. There are so much injustices and so many wrongs done to the peasants . I only have limited ability . I will stop this account right here. I hope people can take some time to read it in order to decide who is right and who is wrong. This is also a good way to know what it is really like in today’s rural China. If this is of some value to you, I will have peace of mind, regardless of whether an official reply may come to render an verdit in my favor. A final note: I have offered a truthful account of what actuually happened, accurate dowm to every minute detail, without any exaggeration or embellishment.

The renewal of socialist development requires courage, new ideas and recognition of the specificities of the Chinese society and economy. The key is the courage to systematically reject the premises, language and concepts of globalization and neo-liberal ideology. The key to renewal is based on starting from the basic idea that the new strategy must be based on development from below and directed to the domestic economy. This involves a period of transition which must take drastic socialist shock policies to undermine the current elite structure and reverse the regressive allocation of income, investment and ownership. Shocks must include fixed prices on basic commodities, freezing bank accounts and investment of the wealthy classes, appropriation of profits, seizure of the commanding heights of the economy. These policies will likely provoke crises and panic among the elite, investment boycotts and protests form abroad

This piece offers a look at a succesful publicity campaign, led by Focus on Globalization, a labor right group in Taiwan, in support of Salvadoran workers, against the Tainan Enterprises, a Taiwan based manufacturer with factories in Central America, as well as in Taiwan, Indonesia, Cambodia, and China, which closed its factory in El Salvador in April, 2002, after the union asked for negotiations for a collective bargaining agreement. Thanks to a tri-national campaign, with the workers in El Salvador persisting in refusing to accept the meager severance pay, and …

In the five decades of its rule, the Chinese Communist government has adopted and implemented two diametrically different models of rural education systems. These two different educational models are no doubt the brain children of two different political paradigms. But that the two different educational models also significantly impacted China’s rural development trajectories with very different results has to be recognized. One of these two models can be conveniently named “the popular model” since it was a response to popular demand. This system expanded educational opportunities to a greater rural population, allowed greater input from rural population and depended to a greater extent on the financial support of the rural communities. The other system can be designated the professional model simply because it was managed mostly by professional educators at the different levels of the government and its goal seems almost always to limit rural population’s access to educational opportunities in the disguise of quality control. How these two different educational models came into being, how they impacted Chinese rural development, and how China’s rural people view these two different models of rural educational system are important questions. This paper is a case study of Lechang County in Henan Province in an effort to examine the aforementioned questions.