REMEMBER the “Scientific Outlook on Development”? Not many people do. Yet in 2003 when Hu Jintao, then head of the Chinese Communist Party, launched the idea, it seemed a big deal. Four years later the party even amended its constitution to enshrine the principle in its guiding ideology. Mr Hu’s successor, Xi Jinping, will hope his own new contribution to the party’s canon lingers longer in the public’s mind. But his newly unveiled theory—the “Four Comprehensives”—faces similar difficulties. Like Mr Hu’s bright idea, Mr Xi’s is not exactly a crowd-pleaser—more a vague and prosaic formulation of propositions with which it is hard to argue. Yet it starts life with some advantages, and those mean China may be studying it for years to come.
It may be beneficial that Mr Xi has rejected his predecessor’s outlandish precedent of not attaching a number to his doctrine. Before Mr Hu, Jiang Zemin went for the “Three Represents”, an opaque theory that seemed to boil down to the idea that it was possible to be both a successful entrepreneur and a good party member. Before Mr Jiang, Deng Xiaoping’s thinking was distilled in the phrase:...Continue reading
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