Citizens challenge China's
authoritarian tilt By Willy
Lam
In what pundits have billed as a
battle between David and Goliath, Chinese citizens
appear to be pushing back on the all-powerful
party-and-state apparatus that increasingly seems
out of touch with popular aspirations.
Efforts to challenge the Chinese Communist
Party's (CCP) supremacy are mounting even as the
police, state-security agents, and the
quasi-military People's Armed Police (PAP) are
stepping up enforcement of draconian methods to
muzzle destabilizing or "disharmonious" voices.
Moreover, the leadership under President Hu Jintao
is apparently spearheading a nationwide campaign
to resuscitate authoritarian norms.
The
past few weeks have witnessed horrendous incidents
of ordinary Chinese resorting to drastic steps to
vent their frustrations against the authorities.
Most eye-catching has been
the worst outbreak of
disorder in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region
(IMAR) - home to six million ethnic Mongolians -
since the end of the Cultural Revolution. Since
early May, when two Mongolian herders were killed
after being run over by Han-Chinese truck drivers,
protests involving several thousand residents have
rocked the city of Xilinhot and the nearby
counties of Zhenglan and Xiwu.
The
demonstrators, who included livestock farmers as
well as college students, were protesting over the
alleged exploitation of herders - most of whom
being ethnic Mongolians - by Han-Chinese
controlled mining companies.
Unlike Tibet
or Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia had largely been free
from ethnic violence for the past 30 years. Given
the existence of an underground nationalistic
movement in Inner Mongolia, which seeks union with
Mongolia just to the north of the IMAR, regional
officials including party secretary Hu Chunhua
have sought to defuse tension caused by the
incident by vowing to "firmly uphold the dignity
of the law and the rights of the victims". Hu also
vowed to help affected herders seek compensation
from mining companies, which were responsible for
polluting the grasslands.
Equally
disturbing to the CCP leadership has been a series
of at least five bombings over the past fortnight
in the provinces of Jiangxi, Shandong, Sichuan,
Heilongjiang and Shaanxi. Most of these incidents,
which led to the death of 10 people in total,
appeared to be perpetrated by individuals with
anti-government grievances.
The most
talked-about mishap took place in the city of
Fuzhou, Jiangxi. On May 26, suicide-bomber Qian
Mingqi set off three bombs in two government
buildings in this medium-sized city. At least one
other person apart from Qian was killed and six
were injured. In Chinese cyber-space, however,
Qian received massive support and sympathy due to
the fact that he was a victim of "land grab", a
reference to the confiscation of citizens'
properties by officials acting in collusion with
developers. Qian said shortly before his
quasi-terrorist act that he had petitioned Jiangxi
and Beijing officials for 10 years, to no avail.
"Mass incidents" featuring confrontations
between protesters and police have also been
reported over the past month or so in provinces
and cities including Jiangsu, Guizhou, Hunan,
Hebei, Gansu, Henan, Guangdong, Tibet, Liaoning,
Beijing and Shanghai.
While it is too
early to tell whether this spate of unrest will
prod the authorities toward either liberalization
or enhanced repression, it is noteworthy that a
number of respected "public intellectuals" have
chosen to push forward political reform by using
established institutions and channels.
Several editors, lawyers, professors and
non-governmental orginization activists have in
the past month declared their intention to
register as candidates for elections to
grassroots-level legislatures. They include five
opinion-leaders who are running for seats in
district-level People's Congresses (PCs) in
Beijing, Shanghai and Chongqing.
The three
Beijing-based candidates are think-tank researcher
Xiong Wei, China University of Politics and Law
professor Wu Danhong, and veteran editor Yao Bo.
Li Chengpeng, a popular journalist and political
commentator, plans to run in Chongqing, while
human-rights writer Xia Shang is hoping to become
a deputy in a Shanghai district-level PC.
In an apparent attempt not to provoke the
authorities, these intellectuals have stuck to
relatively neutral themes such as "promoting
social equality and justice", which is Premier Wen
Jiabao's favorite motto. Most stated their
"electoral platforms" in personal blogs and other
social-media vehicles.
For example,
Chongqing's Li said he hoped to help the city's
residents "realize their legitimate wishes and
aspirations, supervise the government and
implement social [reforms]." Beijing's Xiong vowed
to improve the social-security benefits and civil
rights of "migrants" who lack permanent residence
status in the capital.
According to
veteran human-rights lawyer Xu Zhiyong, who is
providing legal assistance to these would-be
candidates, "more citizens devoted to the public
interest are considering taking part in the
polls". Xu, a former district-level legislator,
added: "the mere act of running for office" would
give a boost to reforms. People's University
political scientist Zhang Ming pointed out that
the government should encourage more citizens to
realize their democratic rights. "However, it is
true that the [political] atmosphere is tight," he
said. "The authorities are accustomed to
controlled elections and they may not want [public
intellectuals] to take part."
Indeed, it
is too early to say whether Li, Xiong and others
can really become official candidates. This is
despite the fact that Beijing has, since the early
1980s, allowed - at least on paper - all Chinese
to contest polls for becoming PC deputies at the
level of counties, medium-sized cities and
districts within big cities such as Beijing or
Shanghai.
For instance, in early May,
unemployed worker Liu Ping, 47, was stripped of
her rights to run for a seat in the legislature of
the city of Xinyu, Jiangxi Province. A former
employee of the Xinyu Steel Works, she has a track
record of fighting for the rights of workers. Last
year, Liu repeatedly went to Beijing to hand in
petitions to central-level departments after
having been dismissed by her work unit.
Xinyu authorities claimed that she could
not run for elections on the grounds that she had
been detained for 10 days by local police for
"illegally petitioning Beijing". Political
observers in Beijing have pointed out that the
authorities are nervous about liberal
intellectuals and human-rights lawyers running for
elections partly because of memories of the 1989
democracy movement. Two years earlier, a number of
activists, including Peking University student
leader Wang Dan and Li Shuxian, wife of physicist
and democracy theorist Fang Lizhi, had contested -
albeit unsuccessfully - in polls for seats in
Beijing's Haidian District PC.
Beijing's
reactions to the growing number of
independent-minded intellectuals taking part in PC
polls could depend on which way the political wind
is blowing. Despite the party-state apparatus'
apparent lurch toward conservative ideas, quite a
few official media outlets have published articles
appealing for an open mind toward political
pluralism. Writing in the Guangzhou-based Southern
Weekend, Zhang Lihua said "criticizing [the
authorities] is also a kind of patriotism."
Zhang, who is a member of the CCP
committee of Deqing county in Fujian province,
argued that "criticizing [the party and
government] doesn't mean opposing [them]; and
opposing [certain policies] is not the same as
being an enemy [of the administration]." Zhang
added that "the entire society should treat
yizhi [non-conformist] thinking with an
inclusive attitude."
Zhang was repeating
the viewpoint of a much-discussed article in a
late April edition of People's Daily. Apparently
reflecting the viewpoint of the minority of CCP
liberals, the piece pleads with the authorities to
"adopt a tolerant attitude toward yizhi
thinking." Citing Voltaire's famous dictum about
safeguarding the freedom of speech of one's
opponents, the article said that the "mentality
that 'you are my enemy if you think differently'
is a reflection of narrowness and weakness - and
of no use for the construction of a harmonious
society".
That the party may be
undertaking a sizeable leap backward - at least in
terms of ideology and tolerance toward dissent -
however, is evidenced by a commentary that the CCP
Central Commission on Disciplinary Inspection
(CCDI) published in the People's Daily on May 25.
The CCDI, which is in charge of discipline
and fighting corruption, said "upholding the CCP's
political discipline is a serious political
struggle". The commentary scolded unnamed party
officials for "speaking out of turn - and pursuing
their own agendas - regarding the basic theories,
paths and principles of the party." It even
accused certain party members and cadres of
"fabricating and spreading political rumors",
which had resulted in "the distortion of the image
of the party and country".
There was
speculation in Beijing's political circles that
the CCDI might be targeting Premier Wen, who
recently asked the public to be wary of "the
vestiges of feudal society" as well as the
"pernicious influence of the Cultural Revolution".
In an editorial on the Qian bombing
incident in Jiangxi, the official Global Times
editorialized that "opposition to retributive
killings" should be recognized as a "universal
value". "Murderers are penalized everywhere, which
shows that prohibiting killing is a universal
value among all mankind, which towers above
everything." The party mouthpiece noted that
sympathy for the perpetrator of the "terrorist
act," as expressed by postings on the Internet,
was symptomatic of "the confusion of values in
Chinese society".
The paper also claimed
that since "China is on the way to becoming a
society ruled by law", all disputes should be
settled by legal means.
It seems beyond
dispute, however, that the bulk of mass incidents
in China have erupted because members of
disadvantaged sectors are unable to redress wrongs
such as "land grab" through proper legal channels.
Moreover, party-and-state departments are seen as
themselves breaking the law when they carry out
the systematic intimidation and detention of
globally respected human-rights activists such as
artist Ai Weiwei.
If relevant authorities
continue to use trumped-up pretexts to bar
moderate intellectuals from taking part in
grassroots elections, the CCP leadership risks
being accused of desecrating "universal values"
that are enshrined in both the United Nations
charter and China's own constitution.
Dr Willy Wo-Lap Lam is a Senior
Fellow at The Jamestown Foundation. He has worked
in senior editorial positions in international
media including Asiaweek newsmagazine, South China
Morning Post, and the Asia-Pacific Headquarters of
CNN. He is the author of five books on China,
including the recently published Chinese
Politics in the Hu Jintao Era: New Leaders, New
Challenges. Lam is an Adjunct Professor of
China studies at Akita International University,
Japan, and at the Chinese University of Hong
Kong.
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