ishing growth of a cult in the 1990s, the Falun
Gong which mixes Buddhist and Taoist beliefs
with traditional physical involvements, to lead
people on the path of enlightenment. It is a peace-
ful spiritual movement which, according to some
estimates, at its height gained 60 million follow-
ers. They protested and ‘exercised’ in Beijing’s
parks when the party ordered their suppression.
The basic consensus among the party leaders
did not exclude rivalries between them over the
spoils of office, of power and material benefits.
The price of one-party rule over the decades has
been endemic corruption reaching down to the
lowest party officials in the countryside. Periodic
campaigns to eradicate it have only temporary
beneficial effects while the cronies of those in
power continue to enjoy protection. Thousands
less fortunate were sent to trial and labour camps.
In China the movement has been destroyed in the
open and only persists underground among the
most determined of its followers. The cult,
however, is popular especially among ethnic
Chinese, in the US attracting devotees who pub-
licly exercise in parks without hindrance.
Internationally Taiwan remained a focus of
conflict. The US is anxious to restrain both sides
from turning a war of words into real conflict.
Taiwan invests indirectly in business ventures in
mainland China and personal contacts, people to
people, are growing. Taiwan as an economic
model of success has much to offer mainland
China. For the People’s Republic good relations
with its two most powerful neighbours Russia and
the US are essential to ensure its economic
progress. The People’s Republic has become
an influence for peace in the region out of self-
interest. A good example was Beijing’s efforts to
facilitate a resolution in 2003 over the clash
between the US and North Korea when its
leaders announced their nuclear weapons pro-
gramme. In the midst of momentous change,
China’s leaders are haunted by the fear that they
could lose control, and instability and chaos
would result. They certainly look like being able
to maintain the edifice in the forseeable future. At
the top there is a consensus on China’s priorities:
first comes the need to maintain unity of this vast
and varied country which looks back on the first
half of the century as the disastrous era of divi-
sion and foreign domination, decades of misery.
During the four months between the Com-
munist Party Congress in November 2002 and
the (State) National People’s Congress in March
2003 there was a change in the leadership, less
complete than it appeared. Jiang Zemin stepped
down as secretary-general of the Communist Party
and his deputy Hu Jintao replaced him. All but
one member of an increased nine-member
Politburo Standing Committee were newly pro-
moted. Jiang hung on to power ensuring that
two-thirds of the Standing Committee were his
allies and he remained head of the Party Central
Military Commission, in fact, supreme head of the
army. Jiang had the party adopt his addition to its
ideology, his theory of the ‘Three Represents’,
which for the first time allowed private business-
men to join the party. In March 2003 at the
National People’s Congress, the State Presidency
passed from Jiang to Hu, in 2004 Jiang gave up
his remaining positions of authority. Zhu Rongji
who had experience at directing the economy was
replaced by Wen Ziabao as prime minister. Wen
owed his appointment to having shed the pre-
Tiannanmen Square sympathy with reform. Aged
seventy-six, Jiang remains the paramount leader
seeking to follow the example of Deng without
enjoying anything like Deng’s standing. The
new team has to face the formidable problems of
an economy that grows fast, unevenly on a weak
infrastructure, with an inadequate commercial
legal system, state banks overloaded with loans in
default and non-performing state industries.
There is corruption that is hard to limit, a rural
population that is backward and will have to face
world competition in foodstuffs, whose standard
of living has advanced little if at all, and a middle
class on the coast, which in cities such as Shanghai
can consume luxuries ordinary Chinese people can
only dream about. In recent years a new problem
that has to be faced is the spread of AIDS.
China cannot at the same time follow an aggres-
sive international policy that would jeopardise
investment from abroad and hinder trade. The
rhetoric is fierce about Taiwan, the ‘renegade’
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