Page 2 of
3 Chen's
switch spoils daring US
dance By Peter Lee
The
deal, by which Chen would, at his insistence,
remain in China with guarantees from the Chinese
and US governments for the proper and humane
treatment of himself and his family, lacked the
triumphalist celebration of freedom, Western
values and the human spirit that might have
energized Chinese dissidents ... and failed to put
the United States squarely on "the right side of
history", the Chinese march to democracy that the
US considers inevitable.
Jerome Cohen
described it as a "middle path", "a kind of path
we are trying hard to create, a space between
prison and total freedom" of the kind that Ai
Weiwei currently occupies. [7]
If the deal
capsizes on Chen's anxieties, and becomes an
embarrassment for the US government and political
windfall for Obama's Republican critics in an
election year, it may be called
something else:
appeasement.
For its part, the Chinese
government, after a complete lockdown of Internet
keywords involving Chen, "blind man", "The
Shawshank Redemption" (a prison-escape drama) and
"Flight 898" (the number for the United Airlines
Beijing to New York flight that Chen might take
into exile), handled the affair quickly and
discretely.
The first official
acknowledgement of Chen Guangcheng's escape and
refuge in the US Embassy came in an op-ed titled
"US Embassy in quandary over Chen", which was
posted just after midnight on May 2 in Global
Times, a nationalist news outlet under the
auspices of the People's Daily - the CCP's
flagship newspaper. The op-ed was carried on its
English language edition available in China, but
not the Chinese-language edition.
Global
Times, which had previously expressed exasperation
with the prolonged and extrajudicial detention of
Chen and the unfavorable international attention
it provoked, deliberately shied away from any
confrontation with the US government, State
Department, or their human-rights policies, and
instead focused on a very narrow and easily
finessed issue: the potential negative
consequences for the United States of providing
Chen - and, in the future, other dissidents - with
a haven:
If petitioners' requests are not met
by domestic authorities and turn to the US
embassy, this is not only embarrassing to China
but also puts the US in an awkward position.
The US embassy would have no interest in
turning itself into a petition office receiving
Chinese complaints. It is easier just preaching
universal values to the Chinese public, and
occasionally, helping a few exemplary cases that
best illustrate US intentions. It is never
willing to involve itself in too many detailed
disputes in Chinese society. [8]
China
has an ample supply of "petitioners" whose
"requests are not met by domestic authorities".
The implication is that the United States has a
choice: it can either repurpose its embassy as an
overbooked hostel for persecuted activists, or it
can engage with the Chinese government on the
vital economic, diplomatic, and security issues of
the day.
The next morning, the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs posted a statement in the form of
a press conference question and answer "On the
Matter of Chen Guangcheng Entering the US
Embassy", declaring that the US Embassy had
engaged in "activities incompatible with its
function" by hosting Chen. The Chinese government
demanded an apology (which US sources promptly
declared was not going to happen) and the
statement declared:
The Chinese side notes that the US
side declares it will give weight to the Chinese
side's demands and concerns, and guarantee to
take appropriate measures so that these sorts of
incidents shall not be repeated again.
[9]
After the news of Chen's departure
from the embassy emerged, Global Times rubbed it
in with its usual subtlety in an op-ed titled
"Chen and Embassy should not delude themselves":
It is hoped that the US Embassy in
China can distance itself from activities that
do not match its functions. It should gain the
favorable impression of China's public rather
than being an escape route for more extreme
elements. [10]
Whatever happens, the
Chinese government will apparently achieve its
desired objective: crestfallen activists will get
the message that the US is not a single-minded
supporter of principled dissent, and its embassy
is not a reliable safe haven.
If the deal
collapses, and the "middle path" endorsed by Cohen
and Campbell evaporates, it will also represent a
return to the familiar if not particularly
productive polarities of human rights vs
authoritarianism that usually characterize
US-China relations.
A relatively amicable
resolution of Chen Guangcheng's case could have
been taken as an indicator of a Chinese pivot away
from brutal repression that has characterized the
PRC's "weiwen" or stability maintenance
regime over the last few years - and an indication
of tacit US support as the CCP navigates through
its leadership transition and, perhaps toward a
more liberal, law-based polity.
In the
early 2000s, the CCP and the PRC experimented with
a migration from party-led, purely authoritarian
social control to a regime that would achieve its
policy goals less directly through nominally
democratic legislation applied and enforced by
local governments and courts, and some monetary
and administrative incentives.
Instead of
a party cadre telling you what to do, in other
words, you would do it yourself, having accepted
and internalized the relevant laws and rules and
weighed the costs and benefits.
A prime
field for application of this approach was in the
delicate field of family planning, the most
intrusive and personal element of government
control. Family planning, in the context of
China's perceived need to control its population,
traditionally involved taking a number of
unpopular steps from birth scheduling to
sterilization and abortion that were, depending on
the whim of the official involved and the eye of
the beholder, either encouraged, mandatory,
coerced, or forced.
Instead, new laws,
applied in concert with flexible, responsible, and
higher-quality reproductive services and some
financial incentives, would lessen the coercive
character of the system.
The new system
relied on effective access to the legal system by
the people from the bottom up, instead of only
supervision by the Party from the top down, to
detect, remedy, and deter abuses.
In
Shandong, in the municipality of Linyi at least,
this attempt at subtle social engineering did not
go well, and that is where Chen Guangcheng came
in.
Chen Guangcheng educated himself as a
lawyer to help people in his community in the
rural environs of Linyi obtain legal redress for
local government abuses. In Linyi, abuses in the
family planning system appear to have been
Medieval in their callous brutality. Activist
lawyer Teng Biao assisted Chen Guangcheng with his
interviews and investigations in 2005. His case
notes, translated and circulated by Women's Rights
Without Frontiers, provide a chilling picture of
gangsterized local rule.
One case involved
a 59-year old man who was taken hostage because
they couldn't find his daughter, who was targeted
for sterilization:
At about six o' clock in the
afternoon [of the 19th] he was found lying by
the side of Yuncai bridge when his relatives
went to the Family Planning office again to look
for him. After he regained consciousness, his
relatives knew the story: The Family Planning
Officials tortured and starved him for a whole
day.
Then they asked him to go back to
look for his daughter. He asked for food but was
refused. At about four o'clock in the afternoon,
a female town official (Tingju Zhang) went back
with a strong smell of wine. After beating
another two elderly persons (70 years old), she
took him to the courtyard and beat his head with
brooms. Three brooms were broken. Then she
slapped him in the face.
At about five
o'clock she pushed him into a small room. She
asked him to sit on the cold cement floor and
unbend his legs. She took the lead to stamp on
his legs. Other officials followed her and some
also slapped on his face and poured cold water
on his head.
He said: "I will sue you!"
She shouted: "Sue me in the court if you want.
It costs only 10,000 yuan [approximately
US$1,500] to take your life! You are the biggest
trash of all the 40,000 people in Shuanghou!" He
said: "I have been a party member for over
thirty years. I'm not trash!" She said: "I
joined the party in 1998, but I can beat an old
party member like you!" [11]
Sordid
profit (the Family Planning Bureau was allowed,
even expected to generate revenue to cover its
expenses) led to the establishment of
euphemistically named "Family Planning Learning
Centers" where relatives of people who sought to
evade sterilization or abortion were detained
under miserable conditions and subjected to brutal
beatings in the name of re-education reminiscent
of the Cultural Revolution - and at their own
expense.
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