China’s ruling Communist Party on Thursday issued an amended version of its charter enshrining the slogans and enhanced influence of President Hu Jintao after its Congress last week.The Party “constitution” is less a legal document and more an organisational guide and compilation of the ideological justifications that China’s Communists have accumulated in their 30-year evolution from a party of Mao Zedong and mass revolution to one of mass markets and dynamic growth.Hu’s vow of a society cleansed of conflict by combining rapid economic growth with environmental safeguards and social equity was introduced into the charter after ritual approval by a five-yearly Party Congress last week, the official Xinhua news agency reported. The revised text acclaims Hu’s slogan of a “scientific outlook on development” as “an important guiding policy for our country’s economic and social development.” Referring to Hu’s promise to ease social inequality and tensions, it says: “The Chinese Communist Party leads the people in building a socialist harmonious society”.The charter and Hu’s speech to the Congress have become the focus of a nationwide propaganda campaign that shunted even China’s launch of a lunar orbiting satellite to a bottom corner of the official People’s Daily front page on Thursday.The charter now also mentions “religion” in what Xinhua earlier said was a first. The amendment is not a promise of religious freedom, but of recruiting believers to serve state policy. “Fully implement the party’s basic policies on religious work and unify believers to make contributions to economic and social development,” the charter tells party members.
