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2 Beijing's silly season
begins By Kent Ewing
HONG KONG - Now that the date of the 17th
National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party
(CCP) has finally been set for October 15, the
paranoid desire to ensure that it comes off
without an unscripted hitch is spreading like one
of those viruses Chinese leaders have come to
dread.
Top party officials apparently lose
a lot of sleep worrying that the purity of the
all-important five-yearly conference will be
sullied by an unanticipated protest or uncensored
newspaper, television
station, weblog or even
mobile-phone text message. After all, this year's
congress is designed to be President Hu Jintao's
crowning moment - when he finally vanquishes the
ghost of his predecessor, Jiang Zemin, in a party
reshuffle that cements his hold on power four
years after he assumed the presidency.
As
Hu's theme song - yet to prove a universal hit -
is "Building a Harmonious Society", it would be
embarrassing if the party's facade of political
and social unity were shattered by protests led by
any of a number of disgruntled groups via the
street, the Internet or mobile phones.
Minister of Public Security Zhou Yongkang
has vowed to shut down street demonstrations -
especially in Beijing, where the congress will be
held.
The groups that Zhou worries about
are many and varied - ranging from the banned
Falungong spiritual movement to Tibetan and Uighur
separatists to ordinary citizens who have been
victimized by land grabs, wrongful arrests,
intimidation and beatings ordered by local
officials, and an array of other injustices.
Protests are part of daily life in China,
with Zhou's ministry reporting 74,000 "mass
incidents" - government-speak for demonstrations
that often turn violent - in 2005. The ministry
claims such incidents declined by 22.1% in the
first nine months of last year. Whether the
reported decline is fantasy or reality, it seems
safe to say that Zhou still has reason to worry.
In a remarkably straightforward commentary
on the social challenges the country faces, Zhou,
who is expected to be elevated to the Politburo
Standing Committee at next month's congress, was
quoted by the official Xinhua news agency as
saying: "China is at a juncture with explosive
contradictions among the people, soaring criminal
offenses and a complex struggle against the
enemy."
At this point, the enemy appears
to be anyone who is even thinking about
undermining the image of unity and harmony to be
promoted at the congress. Sadly, even the
down-and-out petitioners - who for thousands of
years have trekked to Beijing from the countryside
to plead with the central government to redress
their grievances - have fallen victim to
pre-congress paranoia.
Traditionally,
Beijing is the last hope for those whose
complaints of injustice have fallen on deaf ears
at home. Very few outstanding grievances are
likely to be heard after September 19, however. On
that day, the government plans to knock down the
rental slum in Fengtai district that has become a
temporary home for petitioners while they wait,
sometimes for months, in the hope that officials
will deign to hear their case. A highway will run
through the demolished site.
As
petitioners tend to time their pilgrimages to
coincide with big political events, their numbers
were expected to swell ahead of the congress. Not
now, however. New York-based group Human Rights
Watch estimates that 4,000 people will be turned
out by the demolition, most of them with no choice
but to return to their homes in the countryside,
their grievances unheard.
But the streets
of the capital are only one of the pre-congress
clean-up targets. Cyberspace is also a big
concern.
The Ministry of Information
Industry has served notice on search-engine
operators, including Google and Yahoo, to purge
"harmful information" and "provide healthy and
positive Internet search services to enhance
online civilization". China's Internet regulations
classify harmful information as anything from
leaking state secrets and advocating the overthrow
of the government to spreading rumors and
disturbing the social order.
The
regulations have been implemented under the guise
of preventing the spread of pornography, but
critics say the real purpose is to suppress
dissent. Government inspection teams will visit
search-engine operators to monitor their
compliance with the regulatory regime.
Examples of non-compliance have already
been made of Shantou Telecom and AnyP.cn, a blog
service based in the southern city of Guangzhou.
The government ordered Shantou to shut down 2,000
servers until objectionable content on client
bulletin boards and websites had been removed.
Forty of the servers were shut down permanently.
The blog service was also ordered to clean up its
content before it could resume business.
To avoid government censors, many people
use text messages (often called SMS, for short
message service) on their mobile phones to share
sensitive information and political opinions that
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