Beijing, (DPA) Chinese President Hu Jintao opened the five-yearly congress of the ruling Communist Party Monday with a call to its 73 million members to support his “scientific outlook on development”.
“The scientific outlook on development takes development as its essence, putting people first as its core, and comprehensive, balanced and sustainable development as its basic requirement,” Hu said in his opening speech to 2,200 top provincial and military delegates at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People.
The seven-day congress is expected to strengthen the position of Hu, who also leads the party, and amend the party constitution to incorporate his “scientific outlook”.
Delegates will also endorse the leaders who could succeed 64-year-old Hu after 2012, when he must retire from the party leadership under its age and tenure-linked rules.
His new ideology requires China to move toward more sustainable growth and create a “harmonious society” by reducing the economic inequalities that have resulted from 25 years of its “development first” strategy.
“A relatively comfortable standard of living has been achieved for the people as a whole but the trend of a growing gap in income distribution has not been thoroughly reversed,” Hu said.
“China is still in the primary stage of socialism and will remain so for a long time to come,” he said.
Hu said China’s modernisation drive under the party would need “unremitting efforts by several, a dozen or even dozens of generations”.
He promised to expand democracy and transparency within the party, but made no mention of any wider democratic reform.
China’s leaders have said that any kind of political reform must take place under a continuation of the “people’s democratic dictatorship”, led by the party.
Hu also made a “solemn appeal” to Taiwan’s leaders to “discuss a formal end to the state of hostility between the two sides” of the Taiwan Strait and reach a peace agreement.
He appeared to take a softer line towards the island that China sees as its breakaway province to be “reunified” than his predecessor, Jiang Zemin, at the last congress in 2002.
Hu did not repeat China’s usual threat to use force, which Jiang had issued, if Taiwan stalls on talks indefinitely or declares formal independence.
But he said “Taiwan independence forces” were “stepping up their secessionist activities, seriously jeopardising the peaceful development of cross-strait relations.
“We are willing to make every effort with the utmost sincerity to achieve peaceful reunification of the two sides, and we will never allow anyone to separate Taiwan from the motherland in any name or by any means,” Hu said.