China’s Communist Party chief is expected to have his collected speeches and policies elevated to the formal status of ‘Jiang Zemin Thought’, putting his wisdom on a par with that of the late Mao Zedong. It would also leave Jiang’s ideology one notch above the title of ‘theory’ accorded to the ideas of the late patriarch, Deng Xiaoping. The move indicates an attempt by Jiang and his supporters to entrench their people in key posts at the party’s 16th congress in 2002.

_Far Eastern Economic Review_ vol 163 no 52

This article is from the May 2001 issue of New Internationalist.

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