Yet it has ignited a raging controversy over the issue of political reform and reformist and hardline publications are engaged in an open dog-fight about the future of democratisation in China.

On the day of Wen’s speech, the progressive paper affiliated with the Guangdong government, Southern Daily, came out in open support of Wen and urged Shenzhen to set an example for the country to follow in the arena of political reform. China Youth Daily also editorialised in favour of political change. The very essence of China’s reform policy, it said, is to free people from shackles of the state and unleash their creativity and productivity. Holders of power under the current political system are enriching themselves under the banner of reform. But ultimately these vested interests won’t hold back the tide of reform..

Other, more conservative media like Guangming Ribao and People’s Liberation Army Daily waged a thinly veiled attack on Wen’s speech. They extolled the virtue of ‘socialist democracy’ and pleaded China’s ‘special circumstances’ as defence against the introduction of liberal democracy.

In the middle of this powerful political undercurrent, President Hu Jintao opted for a cautious response to Wen’s daring call to arms on political reform. He alluded to the need for political reform and talked vaguely about the need for greater participation by the people in the democratic process.

Whatever the opposition, China has reached a cross-road in its development.

Hu Shuli, China’s most outspoken and influential media entrepreneur, wrote in New Century that China has reached a critical moment when political reform must be not be delayed. Major taxation and price reforms in China have been stalled due to lack of political reform. Breakthroughs in cultural and social development are impossible without political change. The fact that the Chinese leadership urged the necessity of political reform at China’s moment of economic triumph in surpassing Japan as the pretender to the throne of world’s largest economy, she said, is sad reflection of ‘diminishing marginal utility’ of China’s current reform program.

In the early years of Chinese opening up, with economic reform there was attendant political progress. The Maoist personality cult was dismantled; there was partial separation of the party and the government; political struggle was eschewed in favour of technocratic competence and, for a brief moment, the Democracy Wall even sprang to life in Beijing. But the pace of political reform has slowed over the past decade.. Some leaders in Beijing, drunk with the success of China’s economic miracle, started to believe the myth of the system’s invincibility. They started to believe, Hu Shuli wrote, in the perverse logic that China’s economic success was proof of the political vitality of the CCP’s authoritarian grip on power. Some were lulled into a false sense of security as the idea of the ‘Beijing Consensus’ and the relative decline of Washington in the aftermath of the global financial crisis blossomed.

Three decades of economic reform have delivered huge dividends not only for those who toiled hard but also those who are well-connected, argued an editorial in China Youth Daily. A large number of red capitalists have flourished within the Party system. The opposition to political reform no longer comes from Maoist ideologues but red capitalists with vested interests in status quo, though the debates about reform are still tailored impeccably in the cloth of political correctness.

The current debate on political reform is, of course, replete with déjà vu.

After the Tiananmen Massacre in 1989, there was strong opposition to engage in further reform from within CCP. Deng’s credibility suffered a significant blow and his authority as a reformist champion was dented. The conservatives came back to power with vengeance; the principal party mouthpiece The People’s Daily came out strongly against idea of capitalist liberal democracy.

Unable to find a ready audience in Beijing, Deng ventured on his historic Southern Tour and fought the battle of reform at the front line of Chinese economic change in Shanghai and Guangdong. Southern based reformist papers rallied to Deng’s call and openly espoused not only the virtues but the necessity of further reform.

Is Wen, on political reform, actually imitating Deng’s tactic on economic reform? Where better to champion the reformist cause far from the centre of political power in Beijing than Shenzhen, a booming metropolis that was created as China’s window to the world?

So, what is the prospect for Shenzhen becoming a Special Political Zone?

Shenzhen is one of China’s very first Special Economic Zones and a testimony of the success of China’s reform and opening door policy. The city boasts country’s highest GDP per capita, at US$ 13,600 last year. It seems that a lot of people also place great faith in this dynamic city as China’s first Special Political Zone.

In 2008, the Party Committee in Shenzhen publicly touted an audacious plan to empower the local legislative body with people directly elected to District People’s Congress. The plan sparked a nationwide excitement. But the plan has been quietly shelved.

Li Luoli, a former high-ranking party official in Shenzhen, in an interview with a Caixin journalist, observed that political reform is a hot potato. Many officials simply see Shenzhen as a stepping-stone to climb up the bureaucratic ladder and are unwilling to commit to a risky program of political reform. The current Party-Secretary of Shenzhen has side-stepped the issue of political reform. The only chance, Li reckons, for Shenzhen to become a Special Political Zone is for risk-taking leaders like those who were there from the early days of Shenzhen’s creation to grab the initiative.

There is certainly no shortage of outspoken champions of political reform in China, sometimes from the most unexpected quarters. Lieutenant General Liu Yazhou, a well-connected senior political officer with an impeccable party pedigree warned his comrades ‘that China must either embrace US-style democracy or accept Soviet-style collapse.’ Qin Xiao, former Chairman of China’s Merchants Bank and a member of the National People’s Congress, also declared in a speech at Tsinghua University that it s unacceptable to use pretexts ‘such as nationalism and stability to smother universal values such as liberty, individual rights and democracy.’

A sign of the strength of support for political reform in China is that political, military and business elites openly champion its cause. Popular opinion is on their side. Only political liberalisation can ease China’s fermenting social tensions around the issues of income disparity and rampant corruption.

No one better appreciated the inter-dependence between political and economic reforms than the chief architect of China’s reform’, former paramount leader Deng Xiaoping. ‘The final success of our reform will be decided by political reform’ he concluded. This is advice that Beijing could do well to heed — if it is to avoid undoing the achievements of the past three decades of economic reform.

Justin Li is principal in the Institute of Chinese Economics and an associate of EAF.