When Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao urged for political reform in the country last month, it did not create too much of a stir here. The feeling: same old, same old.

For years now, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders have taken turns to sing the tune of political reform, but much of the rhetoric has gone nowhere.

What is more, what Wen and others have proposed -- cutting back on the excessive concentration of power, curtailing corruption and allowing people to criticize and supervize the government -- is circumscribed by a cardinal condition: They must all operate within the larger framework of the CCP.

As former party chief Zhao Ziyang wrote in his memoirs about late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping: “In Deng’s political reform, dictatorship was the one thing that was not allowed to be changed.”

Yet, given the track record of the CCP, one wonders how effective it would be in checking itself. Despite the years of exhortations, even threats of execution, corruption has not eased. The party remains reluctant to force officials to make their assets public. Abuse of power has grown, especially at local levels.

And while the Internet has ushered in an era of freedom unseen in Chinese history, a verbal challenge deemed too robust by the CCP could still easily land a citizen in jail for a lengthy sentence.

Without an external force bringing pressure on the party, it is hard to see CCP leaders ever seriously taking the whip upon themselves.

This, after all, is a political culture where change is usually introduced by an external party, and usually through violent means. Chinese scholar Xiao Han calls it an ‘ax gang’ (fu tou bang) tradition. Using Stephen Chow‘s movie, "Kungfu Hustle," as a metaphor, he likens the rulers of China since ancient times to the film’s axe-bearing triad members -- seeking and holding on to power solely through force.

“Throughout China‘s 4,000 years of history, from the first Shang dynasty to the most recent axe-gang regime (the CCP), all dynasties have made their regimes using axes,” he writes.

In such a culture, there is little possibility of political reform -- only political revolution.

If the CCP wants to truly create a ’New China,‘ as it declared upon taking power in 1949, it needs to break out of this tradition. It has to launch meaningful reforms. It has to institutionalize peaceful transfers of power. And it has to do it before a rival ax gang is in sight.

There are no lack of suggestions on how to go about this. One came recently from a prominent member of the People’s Liberation Army, General Liu Yazhou, who is the political commissar of the National Defence University. He has in mind an American-style democracy, which he has urged the CCP to embrace, or face collapse.

“In the coming 10 years, a transformation from power politics to democracy will inevitably take place,” he told Hong Kong‘s Phoenix magazine.

The son-in-law of former Chinese president Li Xiannian said: “The secret of the United States’ success is neither Wall Street nor Silicon Valley, but its long-surviving rule of law and the system behind it.

”The American system is said to be ‘designed by a genius for the operation of the stupid’. A bad system makes a good person behave badly, while a good system makes a bad person behave well. Democracy is most urgent; without it there is no sustainable rise,“ he added.

Others have offered less radical measures. Zhao, in his biography, suggested the end point of a Western parliamentary democracy for China, but with the CCP in charge for a ‘considerable period of time’ during the transition. Democracy would be phased in with the introduction of multiple-candidate party elections, greater press freedom and the establishment of other political parties.

”We should not rush to copy wholesale (a new political system) all at once,“ he wrote. ”However, we must march towards this goal, and absolutely should not move in the opposite direction.“

One way to go about this would be to replicate in politics what the CCP did with economics in the 1980s.

After Wen‘s comments in Shenzhen on the urgency of political reform, the Hong Kong media speculated that the CCP might have plans to convert Shenzhen into a special political zone (SPZ). Just as the Guangdong city blazed a trail when it was chosen as China’s first special economic zone, it could do the same in the area of politics.

This new SPZ could be a laboratory for the CCP to build on the village elections and participatory budgeting it has introduced, and later broaden reforms to include multiple-candidate polls for Shenzhen‘s top leaders, such as mayor or even party secretary.

Observers have said that comments by Wen and Gen. Liu indicate that some liberal-leaning figures in the CCP are eager to speed up political change. They are worried that if political reforms do not keep up with economic developments, the country could once again be ruptured by internal conflict. If that day comes, all that would be gleaming in this proud nation would be the blade of an ax.

Next year, China will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 1911 Xinhai Revolution, an epochal event that saw the country finally discarding centuries of imperial rule. The timing may be just right for a serious attempt at change -- and to make a break from China’s long-running bloody narrative.

By Peh Shing Huei

(The Straits Times)