The Chinese Communist Party is holding its 17th Party Congress, a grand affair that happens every five years or so and produces a new line-up of top Party leaders and establishes a new Party line.  It’s a grand old time (mostly stage-managed) and an important moment for analysts of Chinese politics.  It’s still too early to know exactly what will come out of it (the highest leadership posts, the Standing Committee of the Politburo, will not be announced until later this week), but I can make some preliminary observations, drawing on some strands of ancient thought.

     Chuang Tzu is rather famously skeptical of language.  Way, he suggests, is always bigger and more complex than the words we try to use to capture it:

People think we’re different from baby birds cheeping, but are we saying any more than they are? (21)

      Much the same could be said of our inability to capture the magnitude of General Secretary Hu Jintao’s two and a half hour speech before the gathered, and almost certainly dozing, delegates.  (Someone needs to give him that great line from Stunk and White’s, Elements of Style: "brevity is the byproduct of vigor.")   This poses a particular problem for headline writers.  How do you summarize such a massive and meandering oration?  Surveying the papers, we can see just how vast Way is – it can simultaneously contain opposites:

China’s Leader Closes Door to Reform

Hu Pledges Changes to Election System

China Communists "Falling Short"

Hu Mentions "Democracy" More than 60 Times in Landmark Report

China’s Communists to Stay Course Despite Talk of Democracy

     I know, much of this is editorial license (I have been victimized by newspaper editors jealous to impose their headline on my writing…) with a little propaganda work thrown in.  But it also reflects the fluidity of the moment.  China, like Way, is always bigger than our theories or perceptions.  It can contain contradictions and seeming impossibilities.  Our words ultimately come up short.  And there sure are a lot of bird chirping there just now.

      It should be noted that a Mencian observing the Party Congress would be heartened by these stories:

Party too corrupt, Hu tells Congress

Hu Jintao pledges to tackle wealth gap and corruption in China

    It is always good, from a Confucian perspective, to hold those officials accountable and provide the average person with a secure livelihood.  Will the Party hold Hu to it?  Probably not, since power flows from the top down.  Mencius would thus be in opposition.

     But there’s something here for everyone.  Legalists would fully understand these stories:

Report: China Repression Worsening

China crackdown on dissidents before congress

     If you ask me, the PRC is now still more Legalist than it is Confucian (just look at the picture).  And the Taoists are chilln’.