As the 17th Congress of China's Communist Party approaches this autumn, party organizations in Beijing are abuzz with talk of democracy. Expect lots of "democracy" initiatives at the Congress. Some of these were signaled in an important speech by the party general secretary, Hu Jintao, to Politburo members and others at the Central Party School on June 25th.

While these initiatives do not constitute democratic institutions and procedures as recognized in real democracies, they nonetheless represent serious efforts to broaden what the Chinese describe as "inner-party democracy," "electoral democracy," and extra-party "consultative democracy." All of these forms go under the broad rubric of "socialist democracy" or "democracy with Chinese characteristics," as described in Hu's speech.