The Three Represents campaign: reform the party or indoctrinate the capitalists?

• Author: Hepeng, Jia
• Position: People's Republic of China

The newly amended Constitution of the People's Republic of China enshrines the "Three Represents" as one of the ruling theories of China. Accordingly, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) must always represent the development trend of China's advanced productive forces, the orientation of China's advanced culture, and the fundamental interests of the overwhelming majority of the people. The Three Represents Campaign has long been considered to ensure that the Party expand its membership to include private entrepreneurs, redefine its societal role, modify its core tenets, and institutionalize its rule. The constitutional status of the slogans seems to corroborate that conclusion. The assertion, however, overlooks another side of the ideological movement: the CCP's desire to absorb capitalists into a preexisting Party line and to indoctrinate them with the Party orthodoxy. By doing this, the CCP is in fact strengthening its orthodox ideology so as to increase its authority and legitimacy.

Campaign to Defend Ruling Rationale

Initially brought forward in February 2000, the Three Represents theory was highlighted in Jiang Zemin's July 1, 2001, speech, which was delivered to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the CCP. In the speech, Jiang also urged that capitalists and other elites be allowed to join the Party (Jiang 2001a). Since then, explanations that the CCP would change its proletarian nature have abounded both in the media and academia (Paltiel 2001, Lawrence 2002, Saich 2002, Fewsmith 2002b). Those explanations continue to dominate academia as the new CCP leadership headed by Hu Jintao further promoted the Three Represents theory after it took power at the 16th National Party Congress in November 2002 (Dickson 2003, Mulvenon 2003). Commentators also argue that the decision to admit capitalists into the Party and institutionalize the Party's rule downplays the ideological role of the CCP. According to some experts, a natural outcome of the fading importance of ideology is that the CCP will become more authoritarian rather than totalitarian, commonly thought as the eve of democratization (Guo 2000: 1-32).

But a prudent reflection on the speeches of Hu and Jiang, a critical analysis of the development tracks of the Three Represents Campaign, and a systematic observation of the CCP's new policy orientation will lead political students to reach somewhat different viewpoints. It is clear that the Party's ideological role has not been reduced at all. Indeed, Zhang (1996:2) has shown that since the CCP launched its economic reform movement in late 1978, ideology has become an important vehicle for communicating regime values to the Party rank and file and to the whole population. The logic is continued as the CCP adapts its traditional ideology by assimilating new elements of China's modernizing society through the Three Represents Campaign.

New Leadership's Enhanced Ideological Efforts

The performance of the new leadership since 2002 illustrates its eagerness to maintain the dogmatic Party lines. On December 5, just days after being elected as the general secretary of the CCP, Hu Jintao went to inspect Xibaipo, a holy revolutionary land of the CCP. The trip was highly symbolic, representing the new general secretary's zeal to embrace the traditional Party line. The speech Hu made in Xibaipo, which was published one month later, emphasized that the Party leadership must keep a humble attitude and a hardworking spirit, which are called two musts (wubi). In the speech, Hu linked the Three Represents to the hardworking attitude and the so-called fish-water connection between the Party cadres and the masses (Hu 2003a). He did not mention the reform aspects of the Three Represents.

The disastrous severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which broke out in November 2002 in Guangdong Province and spread to Beijing and other Chinese cities in the first half of 2003, gave the new leadership another chance to highlight its image of caring for the people. On April 28, during the peak of the fight against SARS, the Politburo met to discuss the Three Represents. The theory was apparently linked to anti-SARS efforts, in which one of the Three Represents--representing the basic interests of the majority of people--was highly stressed (Qiushi 2003). This move was also aimed at resuming the injured legitimacy of the Party after the government's poor response to SARS in the early period of the epidemic that deprived hundreds of their lives.

Starting in June 2008, the Chinese media have been promoting a new campaign to study the Three Represents. In Hu's speech on July 1, 2003, to mark the 82nd anniversary of the CCP, the essence of Three Represents was explained to mean that the CCP should dedicate itself to the interests of the public and govern for the benefit of the people (Hu 2003b).

Hu Jintao's highlight on studying the Three Represents has been considered by political researchers as a way to weaken the legacy and authority of Jiang Zemin (Miller 2003) or as an attempt to interject his own ideas into Jiang's theories (Fewsmith 2003).

But the conclusions are partial in that scholars have neglected Hu's emphasis on the dogmatic Party line. It is true that the new leadership launched some reform measures, such as the enactment of the Law on Administrative Licensing in August 2003 that nominally limits the government's power, the release of the Regulations of Internal Supervision of CCP in 2004, and the constitutional amendments. (1) But these reform policies, aimed at meeting new demands of the advancing market economy, are done in the pretext that the Party's monopoly hold on political power has not been weakened. The nominal limitation to the government revealed in these reform measures is aimed at limiting the abuses of power by individual officials or government organs, rather than restricting the CCP's dominance over political power. In fact, the limitation does not contradict the dogmas of a Leninist Party, which are major legitimatization resources for the CCP, because a Leninist Party must represent the people and receive the people's supervision. This view is consistent with the dogmatic side of the Three Represents theory.

But how are we to understand the protection of private property that has been written into the amended Constitution? Clearly, we should not think the new leadership has succumbed to the demands of rising capitalists. The constitutional revision has been explained mainly--both by researchers and the official media--as a way to protect the property of average people, as most urban residents now own their housing and other valuable belongings. (2) In addition, the constitutional revision is at most symbolic, as the Chinese government always keeps a blind eye on appeals that certain policies or laws violate the Constitution, and the courts never use the Constitution as a basis for ruling (The Economist 2004). The new stipulation that the state shall make compensation for the land expropriated or requisitioned is also aimed to offer nominal protections to average people's properties. Thus, the added constitutional article on private property rights is naturally connected with the Three Represents theory, which is also written into the amended PRC Constitution.

The new leadership's emphasis on socialist ideology is a continuation of the policy of Jiang and other leaders who proposed the Three Represents Campaign.

In Jiang's July 1, 2001, speech that first clarified the Three Represents, certain theoretical shifts are apparent, such as the substitution of "the majority of the people" for "working class." Nevertheless, the tone and the expression of the speech were still identical to...