CHINA: China's parliament begins its annual meeting today in Beijing and, on paper at least, is promising to address many of the country's problems at a time of massive social and economic change.
The National People's Congress is expected to change China's constitution to protect private property. This is a revolutionary move that will give official sanction to the entrepreneurs and property owners who were once poison to the centrally planned economy.
The meeting will also address weighty issues such as fighting corruption, protecting the environment, boosting farm incomes, helping laid-off workers find jobs, improving social security and even safeguarding human rights. But it is the move to protect property rights that is seen as the most ground-breaking.
The parliament will amend the state constitution to include the key phrase: "Private property obtained legally is inviolable" - a major departure in a country where the 1949 revolution saw landlords jailed or executed and private property nationalised.
The new clause on property enshrines capitalism as the driving force in the Chinese economy. It puts private assets on an equal footing with public property, which is held to be "sacred and inviolable".
It is a quarter of a century since former leader Deng Xiaoping said: "To get rich is glorious", launching the 1978 open door policy, which kick-started capitalism in China. Analysts say that given the heady rates of economic growth since then, a legal framework giving constitutional guarantees for private property is long overdue.
Over the coming days these and other new laws will be ratified by delegates to the National People's Congress and its companion body, the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.
While the proposed changes mark a major shift, the basis of China's centrally planned market economy is unlikely to change much and the hundreds of millions of peasants granted long-term land leases from the state are unlikely to become land-owners overnight.
"The dispute over constitutional reform opens up a huge potential for political conflicts between the new rich, the leadership cadres of the Communist party and those income groups disadvantaged by the changes," said Sebastian Heilmann, professor of Chinese politics and economics at the University of Trier.
"The debate shows that the Communist Party has yet to find a way of dealing with growing social injustice in a socialist state without abandoning the ruling ideology," said Prof Heilmann.
The congress is expected to enact more legislation to restructure the economy according to World Trade Organisation rules and in true socialist fashion will also focus on China's 10th five-year plan for economic and social development. It will also rubber stamp former president Jiang Zemin's "Three Represents", theories which are supposed to underscore China's shifting economic and social values.
In a move keenly watched by human rights advocates around the world, the parliament will amend the constitution and add a proposal by the Communist Party, to "respect and safeguard human rights". China's human rights record and its highly politicised legal system has blighted its relations with other countries, particularly the US. But as the country moves towards greater economic and personal freedoms, analysts are debating whether the parliament's constitutional changes could rein in the powers of the Communist Party.