Beijing plays up the carrot, wields
stick By Willy Lam
The
relatively swift resolution of the protests in
Shifang in southwestern Sichuan Province could
mark a turning point in the Chinese Communist
Party (CCP) administration's handling of the
estimated 150,000 or so cases of mass incidents
that erupt every year. While continuing to boost
its formidable "preserving stability"
(weiwen) apparatus, Beijing appears to be
putting at least as much emphasis on conciliatory
gestures in tackling very public and large-scale
disturbances. No change, however, is expected in
the CCP leadership's draconian measures to stamp
out frontal challenges to its one-party rule,
including those posed by dissidents and human
rights activists such as Liu Xiaobo, Gao Zhisheng
and Ai Weiwei.
On July 1, several thousand
residents - including scores of high-school
students - in Shifang, a county-level city in
Sichuan, held a
rally to voice their
opposition to the planned construction of a $1.6
billion molybdenum copper plant. Municipal
officials immediately deployed anti-riot police
against the protestors, many of whom had
surrounded party and government buildings. Tear
gas was fired at the demonstrators of whom 27 were
arrested. It was soon apparent that authorities
not only in the provincial capital of Chengdu but
also in Beijing decided to adopt a softer and more
flexible approach to quickly defuse this largely
environmentally-based protest.
Barely two
days later, Shifang cadres buckled under pressure
and indicated they had scrapped plans for the
plant, which the officials had claimed earlier
would help revive the economy by bringing in huge
employment opportunities. Beijing-based national
newspapers began berating Shifang officials for
their failure to make proper consultation with its
people, most of whom were scared of the pollution
that the factory might generate. On July 5,
Chengdu dispatched the Zuo Zheng, Vice Mayor of
Deyang City, which has jurisdiction over Shifang,
to "supervise" local Party Secretary Li Chengjin
in handling the aftermath of the incident.
It is probably not a coincidence that the
same week, the CCP Central Political-Legal
Commission, which is in charge of the nation's
police, domestic intelligence, prosecutors'
offices and courts, laid down instructions on
so-called "innovation in preserving stability
[methods]" (chuangxin weiwen). While the
leadership has yet to spell out details of
chuangxin weiwen, Politburo Standing Committee
member Zhou Yongkang, who heads the Central
Political-Legal Commission, asked law enforcement
cadres to emulate the so-called "Wukan Village
Model". This was a reference to Guangdong
authorities' placatory treatment of "rebel
peasants" in Wukan Village in southern Guangdong.
Late last year, residents there threw out local
officials who were accused of illegally
confiscating the household family plots of
peasants and then selling them to developers at
huge profits.
Fresh elections at Wukan
were held in January and a few of the protest
organizers were elected as the village's new
administrators. After discussions with Guangdong
Deputy Party Secretary Zhu Mingguo, who personally
negotiated with the Wukan rebels, Zhou praised Zhu
and his colleagues for their "bold exploration" in
political-legal work. "I hope Guangdong will
continue to establish path-breaking experience in
chuangxin weiwen," Zhou said. How to use
the "Wukan Model" to handle confrontation between
police and citizens was also featured in a
training camp for 1,400 newly appointed municipal-
and county-level police chiefs.
There are
other examples of Beijing's new-found readiness to
enforce an "innovative" style in upholding
stability. Feng Jianmei, the woman from rural
Shaanxi Province who was forced to undergo a
late-term abortion was last week promised an
unprecedented compensation of $11,000. The grisly
picture of her killed fetus was widely circulated
in China's Cyberspace as well as in the foreign
media. Two local officials were sacked and five
others penalized for their overzealous - and
illegal - methods in enforcing China's stern
one-child policy.
If it is indeed true
that part of the spirit of chuangxin weiwen
includes a more placatory way to deal with
protests, what are the factors behind this turn of
events? Apart from an obvious desire to stop the
number and intensity of anti-government mass
incidents from increasing, a key consideration
could be the enhanced activism of the so-called
post-80 and, in particular, the post-90
generations - references to Chinese born after
1980 and 1990, respectively.
While the
participation of the post-90 generation was
already evident in the Wukan insurrection in
Guangdong, this phenomenon first attracted
nationwide attention during the Shifang incident.
Particularly noticeable was the unusually
enthusiastic involvement of several dozens of
students from Shifang Middle School. The slogan of
these teenagers resonated among the tens of
millions of the country's post-80 and post-90
Netizens: "We are not afraid of making a
sacrifice; we're of the post-90 generation!"
That the authorities are nervous about the
political awakening of the post-90 generation was
evidenced by the speed with which the CCP
propaganda machinery swung into action. The
popular Global Times ran an editorial entitled "We
should not encourage high school students to show
up at the frontline of [social] conflicts." The
official paper warned different social sectors
"not to unreservedly praise the [political]
participation of high school students." The paper
went further, noting "Nobody should encourage high
school students to plunge into different types of
mass incidents, not to mention going to the
frontline of political confrontation ... It is
immoral for adults to make use of youths to attain
their political goals".
The party
leadership has good reasons to be disturbed by the
destabilizing potentials of politicized youths.
During the Cultural Revolution, teenage high
school students as well as college students in
their early 20s figured prominently in some of the
bloodiest "armed struggles" among rival Red Guard
factions. The post-90 generation's eagerness about
"rights protection" (weiquan) and defending the
rights of the underprivileged has demonstrated
that "patriotic education" about the party's
supposedly glorious achievements is not working
well.
More significantly, even compared to
their post-80 forebears, members of the post-90
generation seem to have less economic and
political baggage. They do not yet need to worry
about jobs and saving enough money to pay for
their first mortgages. Most importantly, the
Internet - especially social media platforms such
as the Chinese versions of Twitter and Facebook -
has more influence on their way of thinking than
government propaganda. As famed writer and blogger
Han Han wrote of the post-90 youths who starred in
the Shifang demonstrations: "It's wrong to call
them future leaders of the country; they are
already today's movers and shakers".
Shifang also marked one of most obvious
instances of the CCP Propaganda Department's
inability to contain public discourse critical of
the government in cyberspace, where more than 500
million Chinese Internet users congregate
virtually. More than 200 nationally known bloggers
and Internet-based social critics defied orders
from the authorities by penning pungent
commentaries on how cadres' arrogance and
insensitivity had contributed to the Shifang
mishap. Han Han and popular commentator Li
Chengpeng also praised the increasing maturity of
young protestors nationwide. Beijing's apparent
inability to control Internet-based opinion
leaders also may have prompted central and
provincial authorities to take quick action to
mollify Shifang residents.
There is little
evidence, however, that the political-legal
apparatus will contemplate more enlightened
methods in dealing with dissidents who are deemed
to pose the most serious threat to CCP
authoritarianism. Dissidents, such as human-rights
activist Hu Jia and avant garde artist Ai Weiwei,
are still placed under 24-hour surveillance. This
is despite the fact that Chinese courts have not
convicted them of any offenses. Even though blind
lawyer Chen Guangcheng left China two months ago,
his nephew Chen Kegui is still held by police in
Shandong Province. Attorney Song Ze, one of dozens
of human-rights lawyers who have helped the Chen
family, has lost contact with his family members
or associates. International human-rights
watchdogs believe, like famed lawyer Gao Zhisheng,
Song has "disappeared" and is believed to be held
in an undisclosed location somewhere in China.
Beijing's decision not to yield an inch
regarding widespread demands that party
authorities pay hefty compensation to victims of
the Tiananmen Square crackdown, let alone overturn
the official verdict on the June 4
"counter-revolutionary turmoil," is also telling.
A case in point is the mysterious death of
Hunan Province labor activist Li Wangyang, who was
imprisoned for 22 years because of his role in the
1989 democracy movement. Li was detained again in
late May shortly after he had given an interview
to a Hong Kong television station. On June 6,
authorities claimed he had committed suicide. The
62-year-old's body was incinerated immediately
despite queries and protests lodged by relatives
and lawyers about the circumstances of his demise.
Last week, Hunan authorities released a report
confirming that Li had taken his own life. Li's
closest kin - his sister and brother-in-law - were
kept under house arrest in an apparent attempt by
the police to prevent them from talking to foreign
media.
Chairman Mao Zedong said it all
with this telling remark about the incendiary
nature of popular protest: "A spark from the
heavens can set the whole grassland on fire."
While party authorities might have been forced
into using relatively rational and placatory
weiwen tactics in the wake of the Wukan and
Shifang incidents, there is slim evidence that the
leadership under outgoing President Hu Jintao is
ready to introduce radical measures to promote
social justice and ensure ordinary citizens'
rights in political participation.
The
world - and the increasingly politicized post-80
and post-90 generation in China - waits with
impatience for signs that the new leadership to be
endorsed at the 18th Party Congress this autumn
may bring real reformist zeal to repairing the
party's sorely strained relationship with the
citizenry.
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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