BEIJING - As intellectuals, activists
and netizens continue to defy Chinese Communist Party
efforts to maintain its monopoly on the truth, freedom
of expression is coming under fierce pressure not seen
in recent years. The party's determination to fetter
them was revealed
on Monday when three outspoken
intellectuals were detained for intimidating questioning
- and released on Tuesday.
The sudden
pressure comes at a time when party chief and President Hu
Jintao has consolidated his political power. It had been
hoped by many that he would be a moderate reformer (and
in some cases he had shown himself to be one).
Similarly, it was hoped he would take a kinder, gentler
line when it came to media and free expression.
Since he finally grasped the political
scepter at the party plenum in September, his kinder face has
not been so evident, and an extraordinarily shrill
campaign of criticism has been launched in an effort to
stifle public intellectuals - journalists, artists,
academics and others.
"It's the same old story
for us journalists," said a senior reporter at the
state-run China Youth Daily, speaking to Asia Times
Online. "The atmosphere is deadly, and it's certainly
very discouraging." He spoke, like everyone interviewed
for this article, on condition of anonymity.
"This is the worst things have been in three
years," said an intellectual in Beijing.
On
Monday, authorities in Beijing detained at least three
prominent intellectuals: Yu Jie, Liu Xiaobo, and Zhang
Zhuhua. They were held for questioning, presumably about
alleged anti-state activities, then released on Tuesday.
The message was clear; the media recently were directed
not to give publicity to Yu Jie, a well-known writer,
and several other intellectuals who published critical
views. Liu Xiaobo is a longtime campaigner for
democracy and Zhang Zhuhua is a former official of the
Communist Youth League. Their detention and release were
reported by the international media. The Paris-based
Reporters Without Borders said Yu was told to stop
posting articles on the Internet.
Liu is
president of China PEN, which in October bestowed the
Free Writing Award on Zhang Yihe, author of the banned
best-seller, The Past Is Not Like (Dissipating)
Smoke, about Mao Zedong's 1957 anti-rightist purge
of intellectuals. At that time, Mao had encouraged
intellectuals to speak out and freely air their
constructive criticism. Many were jailed and severely
punished for their audacity.
Before the
detentions, the latest political strike against
intellectuals came in November when propaganda officials
ordered a ban on the discussion of the role of "public
intellectuals" in the media - after a daring call by
a Guangdong news weekly for intellectuals to take a bold
stand on public issues.
The term "public
intellectual", which refers to intellectuals who are
involved in public affairs, entered the Chinese
vocabulary last year via Europe, but was for the most
part limited to the pages of academic journals. In
September, however, the Southern People's Weekly
published a list of China's 50 public intellectuals (in
Chinese the term is far broader than in English). The
list included leading Chinese scholars, artists,
journalists, and writers - living in China, Taiwan, Hong
Kong and elsewhere - who have been outspoken on a wide
variety of issues, including the environment, severe
acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), AIDS and human
rights. News of the list shot around China via the
Internet, soon becoming a hot topic among netizens.
The eclectic list included both establishment
and non-establishment figures. For example, economist
Mao Yushi, legal expert He Weifang, environmentalist
Liang Congjie, exiled poet Bei Dao, Taiwan writer Li Ao,
Cui Jian, the grandfather of Chinese rock, Wang Shuo,
the bad boy of contemporary Chinese fiction, AIDS
activist Gao Yaojie, and outspoken journalist Lu
Yuegang.
The names missing from the list
were equally telling, and showed that the newspaper
still felt a need to toe the line. The names Jiang
Yanyong, the former People's Liberation Army doctor who blew
the whistle on the SARS scandal and coverup last year, Dai
Qing, a leading opponent of the Three Gorges Dam, and a
host of other political dissidents, in jail and in
exile, were all absent.
The Southern
People's Weekly candidly explained its motive for publishing
the list, saying that the market economy had pushed
the majority of intellectuals to the fringes of society,
and that China desperately needed them to take
an independent stand. It said that China had as
many professors and experts "as there are hairs on a cow"
but that those intellectuals who were brave enough to
stand up for truth, "if they have not already vanished,
have become the rarest of rarities". The magazine also
heaped praise on American writer Susan Sontag, whom it
called "the conscience of America" for her criticism of
the US government. The message could not have been
clearer.
That intellectuals should wish to
take a back seat to political activism should come as
no surprise. The year has seen a number of journalists
from leading newspapers demoted, fired or imprisoned. In
fact, China has more journalists behind bars than any
other country in the world - the number runs from the
20s to the 40s, depending on the definition of the word
"journalist".
Intellectuals have also
been targeted, with a number of books blacklisted.
The government banned the best-seller An Investigative
Report on Chinese Peasants, which portrayed the dire
situation of China's rural citizens. And when Zhang
Yihe, the daughter of China's "No 1 rightist" of the
1950s, wrote her reminisces she was first required to
censor the work heavily before it could be published.
Later, the authorities banned The Past Is Not Like
(Dissipating) Smoke outright.
Jiang Yanyong, a medical doctor who
treated wounded pro-democracy students on the morning of
the bloody Tiananmen Square crackdown on June 4, 1989,
spent months in detention after making a public call
for a re-evaluation of what is called the
1989 Tiananmen incident. And Jiao Guobiao, a journalism
professor at Peking University, had his classes canceled
at the prestigious university when school opened
in September. In a stinging open letter to the
Communist Party's publicity department this year, Jiao said
the party felt intellectuals were "supposed to act like
children who never talk back to their parents".
That same month, the popular Yita Hutu bulletin
board service (BBS) at Peking University, a channel for
students and teachers to exchange ideas and discuss
current events, was shut down without explanation. Also
in September, Strategy and Management, a monthly
magazine that carried articles by leading thinkers, was
closed after publishing a piece critical of the North
Korean regime. Wang Guangze, a journalist working for
the 21st Century Business Herald, was fired from his job
in November after returning from a sanctioned visit to
the United States, where he gave a speech at Trinity
College called "The Development and Possible Evolution
of Political Ecology in China in the Age of the
Internet."
In an article in Foreign Affairs in
July, Orville Schell, a China specialist, lamented the
lack of free discussion in China today, recalling a time
- dating as far back as a century ago - when Chinese
scholars reveled in a heady period of intellectual
discourse. "Dipping back into the intellectual ferment
that marked the first half of the 20th century and
comparing it to the stilled public dialogue today, it is
easy to feel wistful for a time in China when debate was
common, ideas and discussions mattered, and thinkers
were open to the world and able to speak freely," Schell
wrote.
The government's response to the list of
50 public intellectuals both shocked and amused Chinese
observers. On November 15, Shanghai's conservative
Liberation Daily launched the official attack on
political intellectuals in an article written in a tone
reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). The
newspaper argued that the value of an intellectual "lies
in serving society and the masses".
"Chinese
history has [proved] that only when intellectuals walk
together with the Communist Party, become a part of the
working class, and one with the masses, can they fully
manifest their own talents and have a lofty position in
history and society," it said. Ten days later, the
People's Daily, the party mouthpiece, reprinted the
article verbatim.
"This is so reminiscent of the
Cultural Revolution," said the Beijing intellectual
quoted earlier. "A newspaper somewhere else in China
publishes something ideological, and then the People's
Daily picks it up."
The China Youth Daily
reporter chuckled when asked for his reaction to the
article, calling it childish. "This is not your normal
immaturity," he said, turning serious. "It's exceedingly
immature."
Jeffrey
Wang, a well-known journalist who
declined to use his full Chinese name, said the article
was the party's official rejection of the term "public
intellectual". He said, "Officials feel that intellectuals
should not be independent and should not express
views that contradict those of the government." Wang
added that the biting tone of the article was one that
the Communist Party often resorts to when it lacks a
logical or scientific counter argument.
Reporters at several Chinese publications have
confirmed that the party's publicity department, which
is responsible for monitoring the media, issued a verbal
ban in November prohibiting news reports regarding the
role of "public intellectuals" as well as articles by
several leading liberal commentators. Sources have
confirmed to Asia Times Online that Oriental Outlook and
China Newsweek have been ordered not to publish any
articles by Wang Yi, a professor in Chengdu, Sichuan
province, and one of the people on the list of 50.
According to Reporters Without Borders, the
publicity department blacklisted a total of six renowned
political commentators, banning their writings from the
pages of the media. The organization called the move to
sideline liberals "sanctions from another age".
Why the harsh reaction? Chinese insiders
say officials were already miffed at being the
tail increasingly wagged by the Internet. In 2003,
the government abolished a controversial law dealing
with vagrants after the death of a man in police custody
led to a national outcry on the Internet. And in
another incident, a court was ordered to re-hear a
case after widespread protests of partiality on the
Internet. Chinese journalists argue that some dissidents
have been dealt with more leniently after
cyber-activists took up their cases.
Party
officials are said to be even more frustrated by the
growing number of intellectuals taking stands on a wide
variety of issues. The Beijing intellectual said that
the publicity department "wants intellectuals to know
their place, and what their responsibility should be".
It didn't help when rumors spread that public
intellectuals were somehow involved in two recent
protests that saw tens of thousands of workers and
farmers take to the streets in two inland cities.
The Beijing intellectual interviewed takes the
view that now that President Hu Jintao has won his
struggle with Jiang Zemin, who stepped down from his
post as chairman of the Communist Party's Central
Military Commission in September, he "no longer needs
the media", and wants to reassert his control over it.
"In reality, the new government is no better
than those of the past," she said. "It would like to
return to the Maoist days and the road of Marxism,
because experience has taught the leadership that they
have no other way to go."
Journalists support
her argument, repeating rumors of internal meetings in
which officials have allegedly called for China to copy
the example of Cuba and North Korea in controlling
freedom of expression. The intellectual insisted,
however, that there is no turning back. "Will other
people in the party and in the media be willing to go
along with this?" she asked. "I don't think so. This is
not North Korea."
More troublesome
for the Communist Party is that the media are becoming more
and more commercial and dependent on sales, which has
made the press increasingly independent and aggressive in reporting
the news.
Journalist Jeffrey Wang conceded
that the two sides may be heading toward a collision and
said he couldn't rule out the use of harsher measures to
counter this trend. But he argued such a policy would be
met by strong resistance.
"The media [have] become
very commercialized, and if the party wants to control
[them], that won't be as easy as before," said Wang. "The
people will strongly oppose this."
He cited the example of Peking University
journalism Professor Jiao Guobiao, whose classes were canceled but
who was still able to travel abroad, where he spoke
out quite openly, with no apparent retribution so far.
"If they touched him, there would be a serious
public reaction," said Wang. "My feeling is that there is no
news that cannot be seen, and no word that cannot be
spoken."
The China Youth Daily journalist argued
that the party mistakenly thinks that intellectuals are
bent on revolution, which he says is incorrect. "They
think we're anti-China, but we're not," he said.
"There's really no need for them to do what they're
doing."
Wang said suppression of free
speech could boomerang on the party. "If these rational
voices are suppressed, then an irrational voice could
emerge," he said. "And this will not be good for the
political transformation of China."
So far,
intellectuals and activists show no signs of backing
down, and no one can predict the outcome.
Many intellectuals are frustrated that the
fourth generation of the Chinese Communist Party leadership,
President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao, have not
turned out to be the open reformers people had hoped
for. The general consensus is that the Hu-Wen team is
actually even harsher in dealing with freedom of
expression.
"Before he came to power, we had a
lot of hope for Hu," said Wang. "Since then, we've not
been so optimistic. We feel quite depressed."
But despite harassment, arrests and
disappointments, Chinese continue to speak out via their
local media, the Internet, the international media and
during trips abroad. As writer Yu Jie told a group at
Harvard University in May, "The best way to deal with an
irrational and dictatorial government is for more people
to speak the truth."
Despite the banning of
Zhang Yihe's The Past Is Not Like (Dissipating)
Smoke, the book continues to do a booming business
on side streets and dark underpasses around China. It
reportedly sold 300,000 legal copies and is believed to
have sold as many as 2 million pirated copies. The same
is true for An Investigative Report on Chinese
Peasants, which has also become an underground
best-seller.
The uncensored version of Zhang's
book, under the title The Last Aristocrat,
published by Oxford University Press, is now on
bookshelves throughout Taiwan and Hong Kong. When Zhang
was awarded a China PEN award of US$2,000, security
agents warned other writers not to attend the ceremony
held in a small village near the Great Wall. But Reuters
reports that 60 people - including some of the top names
in China's literary circles - defied the ban to show
their respect for Zhang. The author is now at work on
her second book.
Another recent example is Liu
Di, aka the "Stainless Steel Mouse". The 23-year-old
woman, who looks like anything but a threat to the
survival of the Communist Party, was whisked off her
university campus by security police in 2002 because of
her political activities on the Internet. She spent a
year in prison before being released; charges were never
brought against her.
Despite her bitter
experience, the demure Stainless Steel Mouse has
returned to cyber-space. As she told the New York Times
last July, "It's the right thing for me to do, so I'm
going to keep doing it."
Paul Mooney
is a veteran freelance writer based in Beijing.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing.)
on Monday when three outspoken
intellectuals were detained for intimidating questioning
- and released on Tuesday. 
