16th Chinese Communist Party Congress
 

Hu Jintao is expected to become the new leader of the party. It will be interesting to see how much power Jiang Zemin is to retain. Jiang is forbidden by the Chinese Constitution from being President again, but that won't preclude him from remaining an important figure in the future (much as Deng Xiaoping was after he left the presidency).

Interesting that executions for criminal offenses has risen in the days leading up to the congress. However, note that the linked article mistakenly identifies Chongqing as a province (it is a centrally administered municipality formerlly part of Sichuan Province) and doesn't identify Hainan as a province (it has been once since 1988 when it was split from Guangdong Province). Gee, I wonder if a certain anti-China person in these boards is now going to come and say Hainan didn't become part of China until 1988?

http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapc...ute/index.html

Re: 16th Chinese Communist Party Congress
 

Did you get to cast an absentee ballot?

Does your average non-card-carrying Chinese person get to vote?

Does the Dalai Lama get to vote?
Does an Uighur get to vote?
Can a peasant from Sichuan Province making 2 bucks a month get to decide how his 6 children will live in the future?

CCP = FASCISM by any other name

Do they have champagne and caviar there, or is that just for welfare recipients?

Here is an article on the next generation of rulers, and the challenges they will face.

http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=...8-035321-8408r

Jiang made a strong warning against corruption at his speech opening up the Congress. The past few years have seen a crackdown on corruption. Media outlets throughout the country have been encouraged to investigate corrupt officials, and some have even resulted in death penalties. Official corruption is a capital offense in China.

A couple of other things. HE stated that China would not be open to a Western-style multi-party democracy, and that any interference in the Taiwan issue would lead to war (nothing really earth shattering here.)

I found a like in Chinese to the speech. If I find one in English, I will post it.

Of course the Dalai Lama can't vote. He doesn't even live in China. There are Uighurs amongst the delegates in Beijing as well as Zangzu (Tibetans). More trolls from the knowless one.

I haven't yet found the text of the speech in English, but here is a summary of his report.

http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/48244.htm

I also found this link that give a little information about the makeup of the delegates in Beijing for the Congress.

http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/45382.htm

This link doesn't mention this, but I know at the last Congress, there was at least one foreign-born (Caucasian-Australian) who was at the CPC.

So what do you think of the "dissidents" that were arrested outside of the "Congress".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/2429885.stm

Not enough information is given in this report to really make a judgement one way or the other. What did the leaflet say (for example)?