More than 2200 delegates wined and dined while the Party hacks ground out incredible formulae to explain what could otherwise not be explained: how the party of revolution and the workers and peasants now rested on the shoulders of bourgeois capitalists giving the regime its only purpose for holding on to power, a rapidly expanding the economy at whatever cost.

The paucity of official propaganda before the Congress suggested – as rumor also had it in Beijing – that last minute deals had to be sweated out right down to the wire. [That’s better than the Vietnamese Communists, of course, who never seem to be able to get their Congresses going until after years of postponement. It’s easier in North Korea where only the Dear leader seems to have much of a say.]

But the fact that Hu & Co. appeared to nominate his successor in five years’ time, one of the princelings, sons of former high officials of the Party when it was struggling to take power, made the Congress a “success”. With a past history of nominations for “the paramount ruler” repeatedly falling by the wayside, five years is a very long time and this “fix” may only be temporary.

Hu also performed another function at the Congress, required by the traditions of the Party. He made his contribution to the body of dogma which is supposed to guide the Party and the country through the toils and tribulations of achieving “socialism with Chinese characteristics” and enshrine him among the immortals. Each of the former leaders has piled on their accretions, whether they were meaningful or even whether they could be interpreted by any sane practitioner of the otherwise sophisticated Chinese language. No one has yet been able to make much of Jiang’s clumsily labeled “Three Reconstructs”, except that it was used as cover to explain why China’s new billionaires and millionaires should be given seats at the head of the table of the Party of revolution. Now Hu has contributed “scientific outlook on development”. That seems to have somewhat replaced an earlier slogan of “harmonious society” which was supposed to explain what was being attempted -- and to reassure foreigners, especially Americans and Japanese, about the growing military outlays.

Hu’s speech of almost three hours that mentioned “democracy” dozens of times was part of the drill. [One delegate told an observer she hadn’t any idea how she had been chosen as a delegate; neither did anyone else outside the Party.] The Chinese Communists have pretty much given up the convoluted arguments that haunted European socialism and Communism for a hundred years on how you could have a “dictatorship of the proletariat” but maintain “democracy” within the ruling party. [“You need a new dictionary to understand these concepts in China,” a retired senior official recently told The Financial Times’ Richard McGregor.]

Now the Chinese seem willing just to accept the representative governments’ interpretation of what democracy might be, but promise it at some future stage while they ostensibly maintain it meanwhile within the Party. [Meanwhile, they are not permitting a broadening of the franchise in Hong Kong, one of the promises made in the Basic Document when Deng Xiaoping, the former “paramount ruler”, announced the formulation that the British colony would join China as “one country, two systems”.]

As he told Alice in Wonderland, “’When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,' it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.” Hu’s “scientific outlook on development” is Jabberwocky for what might be claimed to be sustainable, balanced and environmentally friendly economic policy. That is increasingly a big menu

But now Hu and the leadership, presumably having cooled the intra-Party rows for a time, turn back to the real world of problem solving. And despite the enormity of the economic success and the increasing international acceptance of “a rising China” as one of the chief players, China’s issues are as monumental:

Inflation. The last two months have seen the highest inflation rates for a decade. The most important component in the rising prices is food, which touches the lives of all Chinese, those living in the booming coastal cities and the 800 million relatively untouched by the growing export drive. The primitive financial system – hollowed out by corruption and inefficiency which has already absorbed $500 billion in government funds in an effort to bail out banks that would be called failed in other economies – has none of the tools with which Western and Japanese central bankers attempt to level off such currents. Ironically, the increasingly rate of growth of exports and therefore of the gross national product which has piled up almost $1.4 trillion in reserves. There counterpart in the system is feeding the speculation in real estate and the roaring stock markets. The last time inflation threatened to get out of hand, it played a role in the agitation leading to the Tien An Mien demonstrations and massacre of 1989 which the leadership believed threatened the regime. It was put down with maximum force, but almost produced a schism in the Party.

Civil Unrest. Illegal strikes, protests against land grabs by the new entrepreneurs and their local henchmen in the Party, demands for action in pollution of local drinking water and the environment generally, clashes with the police, have become an almost weekly occurrence throughout the country. “Mass incidents”, the term the Chinese government uses to describe demonstrations, riots, and group petitioning, totaled 87,000 in 2005, a 6.6 percent increase over the previous year, according to official statistics. Although the Party claims a downturn in more recent months, it seems more likely that there is creative accounting in what are always dubious statistics in China. There is no evidence of any organized, national conspiracy against Communist leadership. That may be because repression, if anything, has increased under Hu from under the previous Jiang leadership. But despite sophisticated government counter measures – aided alas! by U.S. and European technology companies seeking profit in the exploding Chinese telecommunications market – the internet and cell phones have introduced new weapons against the government. But the combination of the privatization of parts of the economy and the loss of control and benefits to local Party cadre and government officials are loosening central government control – essential in any authoritarian system. Hu and Prime Minister Wen Jiatao have had to acknowledge the growing level of disaffection and some action is going to be necessary to either stem it or find new ways to channel it.

Income disparities. The differences between urban and rural living standards, between the coastal boom cities and the rest of the country, within the major cities where hundreds of thousands of migrant part-time workers live in pitiable slums within the shadows of the new skyscrapers, has become a major subject of political discussion. The differences divide Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzen, with little more than 2 percent of the population, but an income per capita of a middle-income country; second, a group of large and middle sized cities and higher income provinces with over a quarter of the population; and fourth, the poor provinces of the west and central PRC that take up half of the total population. Government programs to stimulate development in the “rust belt” – but highly politically potent – old manufacturing areas of the northwest are failing as are the effects of projects to extend the boom inland toward the West.

Corruption. The all pervasive corruption of life in China has reached such proportions that it could threaten the system of controls of the Party as well as the progress of the economy. Estimates run the gamut but corrupt practices may be costing the economy as much as $100 billion annually or nearing 5 percent of the gross national product. One of the aspects of this perversion of orderly markets is that the central government finds it increasingly difficult to collect revenues at the local revenue and to assign them through the Party to the regional and local officials. And this has led to the inability of the central government to enforce its strategies and policies at the lower levels. Repeatedly central government announcements and edicts are simply ignored by the local officials. In a country such as China, with his long history of separatism and implosion from regional revolt the loss of prestige and control to any degree by the central government is a major concern.

Environment. It is virtually impossible to exaggerate the extent of the environmental disaster which has overtaken China. Less than half of China’s population has access to safe drinking water. Less than one percent of China’s 560 million urban dwellers breathe air acceptable to European air quality standards. The world learned of the contamination of China’s food supply through, ironically, the discovery of poisons in pet food. But even the official media is replete with reports of food adulteration. Furthermore, Chinese environmental agency officials frankly admit that programs to bring the forces of contamination and poisoning under control are not effective enough to roll back the problem. Disputes over environmental problems, according to official media, have been rising at 30 percent annually. Pursuing environmental goals, however, often pits the central government authorities against local Party and government officials who are in the pay of the polluters. And the end result of those few whistle-blowers, proved correct, is that they end up in prison for alleged violations of the law.

Military control. When Mao Tse-tung made his famous statement about “power comes out of the barrel of a gun”, he spoke as a self-anointed military person. He and the other early leadership of the Party were part and parcel of its military organization. But the civilian leadership of Jiang ushered in a new period, along with the growing professionalization of the military in a time when it has chosen not only for a vast expansion but one based on high technology. Jiang bought the allegiance of the military through appointments of his favorites to high office. Hu is matching Jiang’s effort. Not only does Hu appear to be continuing to give the military a vastly disproportionate share of the nation’s resources, but the new configuration of the Party’s Central Committee has allocated 20 percent of its 204 seats to military personnel. Many of these new appointments are younger officers, presumably those with credentials for the new high technology military jobs Beijing is trying to construct. Neither Hu, nor few of the Young Communist League members which have been his base in the Party, have military experience or strong ties to these young officers. “Bonapartism” in a system that produces a constant intra-Party struggle for influence and power is bound to be a threat.

All these growing problems are the shadow behind the mishmash of slogans and clichés of the Party Congress. Orwell’s naked truth about this little piece of theater in Beijing would be: “The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.”