It is a book promotion that puts Harry Potter in the shade: rave reviews, front-page headlines, lead stories on television and a must-buy recommendation by the president of the world’s most populous dictatorship.
Add the distinct possibility of demotion, imprisonment or the withdrawal of publishing licences for any critic, and there is every reason to believe that the Selected Works of former head of state Jiang Zemin will be at the top of the bestseller lists in China for many months.
Published in three tomes, the collection of 203 speeches, articles, letters and decrees is difficult to carry, let alone read. But since its launch last week, the work has been extolled as one of the three ideological foundations of the Communist party. Along with similar works by Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, it forms the closest thing the party has to a Bible, guaranteeing its place in every library, university and military barracks.
President Hu Jintao called a special meeting of the party’s central committee on Tuesday to discuss the book. He called on all party members to study Jiang’s words, saying the central committee had decided to push forward ”the great cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics”.
The Selected Works cover 1980 to 2004, when Jiang resigned his last important post. A 7 000-word summary issued by the Xinhua news agency suggests the former president is focused on protecting his legacy rather than re-examining contentious issues. Jiang claims credit for China’s accession to the World Trade Organisation, its successful Olympic bid and the economic growth that followed the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, about which there is almost no mention.
A large chunk is devoted to the Three Represents, a political theory espoused by Jiang that justifies the Communist party’s embrace of market economics.
On the day the book was launched, the Xinhua news agency reported queues at bookshops from Beijing to the Tibetan capital of Lhasa. Strangely, on the same day, foreign journalists at one of Beijing’s biggest bookstores expressed disappointment when the expected crush of customers failed to materialise.
Seventy-five thousand copies of the first print run were reserved for the military. The newspaper of the People’s Liberation Army said: ”Officers and men were absolutely elated to receive their elegantly bound copies … and one after another vowed to diligently study it in order to fully grasp its spiritual essence.”
The political significance of the publication is open to question. Several commentators believe Jiang is trying to reassert his influence before next year’s 17th party congress, when key personnel and policy decisions will be made. — Guardian Unlimited Â