On July 21, 2010, the "National Work Conference on the History of the
Chinese Communist Party" was held in Beijing's Great Hall.
Participating in the conference were Party and state leaders including
Chinese president Hu Jintao, Propaganda Chief Li Changchun,
Vice-President Xi Jinping, Secretary of the Central Commission for
Discipline Inspection He Guoqiang, Deputy Secretary of the Central
Commision for Discipline Inspection He Yong,  Director of the General
Office of the CPC Central Committee Ling Jihua, Director of Policy
Research Office Wang Huning, Secretary General of the State Counci Ma
Kai.  A meeting of this level has been rarely seen in recent years,
and featured an important speech by Vice-President Xi Jinping.

Boxun reporter Liu in Beijing noted the strange atmosphere of the
meeting, which focused on two important issues; oddly, these two
central issues were not listed in the meeting agenda.

The first issue was how to deal with the autobiographies and memoirs
of retired senior cadres.  The recently-published ��June 4 Diary,��
allegedly written by 4th Chinese Premier Li Peng, caused an uproar as
well as renewed attention to the Tiananmen Square incident.  Speakers
at the July 21 meeting discussed the implications of such memoirs and
in particular their feeling that memoirs could reveal ��top-secret
history�� of the Party.

The second issue was considered so sensitive that it was not raised in
the official speeches but was the nonetheless the constant subject of
conversation among meeting participants:  social unrest, and how to
control information about it contained in Party historical documents.
Again, the underlying theme was ��protecting the Party's image,�� and
the concern that information in historical documents could damage the
Party's image as well as potentially incriminate individual Party
members.  The suggestion was even made to set a self-destruct device
of some type which would be capable of eliminating the most sensitive
documents.

The conference also listed the important objective of strengthening
the education of personnel assigned to guarding the most ��secret��
documents, as well as raising their Party status, in hopes of
preventing ��fatally sensitive�� documents from being sold or leaked.

In stark contrast to the reporter's observations on the meeting's
somber mood, Xinhua reported a ��festive atmosphere.��

Full story in Chinese at:

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