The 17th Communist Party Congress began with a blast. President Hu Jintao, who delivered his keynote address on Monday, said that China will expand on people's democracy to prevent arbitrary decision making by an individual or a minority group of people. In fact, he said that about 60 times in a variety of ways in the same speech. He stressed on the importance of public hearings for lawmaking and a voting system for appointing cadres to important decisions.
Other significant things Hu mentioned were: scientific and transparent decision making, quadruple GDP per capita in 2000 by 2020, make the RMB gradually convertible under capital accounts, more competition in financial and insurance industries, forming an energy and resource efficient (environmentally friendly) economy, policies to battle corruption on a grassroots level.
You might argue that Hu mentioned every possible policy to fix everything that may be wrong with any arbitrary developing economy in the world and was completely vague about it. And you may be right. To quote Bloomberg: "This is Hu's view of how to deal with social instability - to get people more involved," said David Zweig, director of the Center on China's Transnational Relations at the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology. "The problem is, any time we see people getting more involved, the party gets
scared and backs off."
Update: Youtube is now blocked in China. So much for democracy.
But as I said before, China is definitely doing its part to fight pollution (they're trying as hard as the US, which you may again argue that that amounts to nothing), and its economic growth record is undeniable. If I were to talk about democracy, it would be a more philosophical argument of whether an increase in market participation will inevitably revolutionize China into a democratic republic. I think those two entities are separate, that is, socialism can coexist with a market economy and profit from economic growth (look at Scandinavia). What do you think?
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