BEIJING President Jiang Zemin's speech on the Chinese Communist Party's 80th birthday was a staggeringly bold bid to keep the party in control of a fast-changing country by coopting capitalists, analysts said on Friday. Despite old-school communist trappings -- a two-hour speech studded with references to Marx and Lenin delivered against a huge hammer-and-sickle and red flag followed by the singing of the "internationale" -- Jiang turned a new page on July 1, they said. "He banged on and on about Marxism, but every time he talked about it he qualified it in such a way as to make the educated reader understand that Marxism is basically out the window," said a Western diplomat, according to Reuters. In his sharpest break from the Marx-Lenin-Mao canon, party chief Jiang rolled out the red carpet for entrepreneurs to join the formally worker-peasant party. Classified as "exploiters", they were banned from joining under 1989 party orders. In a long-delayed gesture to a middle class created by predecessor Deng Xiaoping's 1980s economic reforms, Jiang also opened party doors to non-state sector technical professionals and managers, employees of foreign firms and the self-employed. The feat was accomplished by defining those new ways of making a living in China as forms of labour that are "also working for building socialism with Chinese characteristics". ---- To the Museum for Marx, Mao ---- To be sure, Jiang disappointed anyone hoping for talk of political liberalization, an amnesty for political prisoners or even mere mention of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre. Party rule will remain enforced by firm control of the army, courts and media. And much of Jiang's breakthrough on the theoretical plane merely catches up with facts on the ground, where fewer than half of the 64.5 million party members are workers or peasants and tens of thousands of cadres have become businessmen. The fast-growing private sector accounts for more than half of economic activity in China, reckons the International Finance Corporation, the World Bank's private sector lending arm. But diplomats, economists and reform advocates say China's history shows that new phrases often spawn policy changes -- much in the same way that Deng's vague "Socialism With Chinese Characteristics" formulation cleared the way for a shift ---- Toward a Market Economy ---- "Effectively, everything pre-1978 has been relegated to museums. It's really quite staggering," said the diplomat. Chen Xingdong, executive director and chief economist of BNP Paribas Peregrine, said Jiang "set a lot of direction". "If the party line changes, then you will see the next change -- the policy will be very different. In the next two to three years, there is going to be a tremendous change in Chinese policy for politics and economics," Chen said. ---- Jiang's Blessing Undercuts Critics ---- Jiang's update of party doctrine came more than two years after Parliament amended China's Constitution to upgrade the status of private business from a "complement" to the state-owned sector to an "important component" of the economy. The government has been slow to follow that move with concrete policies, such as laws to fully protect private property or measures to ensure access to loans or stock listings in a financial system designed to support the state sector. But Cao Siyuan, a merger and bankruptcy consultant, said "Life should get better for the private sector from now on" even though it will probably take until the 16th party congress next year to flesh out policies to match the rhetoric. "We are trying to forge a market economy and this will provide encouragement to entrepreneurs, whose contribution to society from bearing risk finally has been recognized," he said. Cao, who says the party should rename itself the Socialist Party to reflect reality, said Jiang's blessing of new capitalist blood in the party would quell opposition from leftist ideologues, who had furiously attacked the idea for months. "Now that Jiang has spoken, opposing him will be tantamount to being anti-party," he said. The open door to the rising middle class was a "tremendous victory for party liberals" that will bring modernizing and pluralistic forces into the Communist Party, said the diplomat.