“Development is the only hard truth,” Deng claimed. “If we do not develop, then we will be bullied.” Speaking of the “China Dream,” the new Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, upholds the same imperatives of national unity, strength and pride against the need for broad democratic reforms.

And he may be right to think he has a receptive audience. Soothsayers have been predicting the collapse of the Chinese regime for decades. In recent years, they have transferred their hopes onto the main beneficiaries of China’s economic growth: the middle classes. Last year’s leadership transition generated much wild talk about imminent revolution.

But China’s middle classes seem too fragmented to mount an effective political movement, let alone spark a revolution. And to many Chinese left behind by economic growth, the remote apparatchiks in Beijing may appear more committed to their welfare than an affluent minority devoted to further self-enrichment. [Source]

While Mishra addresses the link between economic growth and political liberalization, Martin King Whyte recently questioned the relationship between economic equality and political stability, arguing that the uneven distribution of power, not wealth, is the most likely source of unrest in China.

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Xu Zhiyong appeared in the Chinese edition of Esquire in August 2009, while he was being detained for alleged tax evasion.

Rights defense lawyer Xu Zhiyong has continued his advocacy despite years of setbacks. The Open Constitution Initiative, a legal assistance NGO he and several other lawyers founded in 2003, was shut down in 2009 by Beijing officials, citing tax evasion. After writing a blog post about the New Citizens’ Movement last May, Xu was detained overnight. In the run-up to the National People’s Congress this February, Xu was one of 100 signatories to an open letter to the Chinese government calling for the ratification of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Xu was put under house arrest during the Congress. He lectures at the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, but has been barred from teaching because of his activism.

In an April 12 blog post, Xu describes how the police pulled him from a flight to Hong Kong and questioned him about the New Citizens’ Movement and public dinners he has helped organize to discuss issues of civil rights and democracy. Both this blog post and his April 23 essay on the New Citizens’ Movement are translated below.

On April 12, I was on my way to Hong Kong to participate in the “Symposium on the 10th Anniversay of the Sun Zhigang Case” at the invitation of the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Teng Biao. I went through border control waited for my flight. “See you this afternoon,” I told Teng.

As we started boarding, three policemen suddenly appeared and asked if I was Xu Zhiyong. I said yes, and asked if they were there to stop me from boarding. They said yes. They didn’t know why. There were people waiting for me outside.

Outside, there were three familiar plainclothes officers from the Cultural Protection Branch of the Municipal Police Bureau. They asked why I was leaving the country without telling them. I said citizens have the freedom to leave and enter the country. “Get a refund,” they said. “We need to take you to your university.”

When we got to the College of Humanities, Z told me to leave my bag and go upstairs. I firmly resisted. I wasn’t afraid that they would find anything to use against me. Everything on my laptop can be made public. But that’s my private information, and I was concerned that they would install something on it. I bolted out of the car. They ran after me, right in front of the classrooms on the ground floor where students could see. I want to tell the students that this is something that happened in today’s China. Concerned that there were too many people around, they promised not to take my bag. I went to my office on the third floor, closed the door, and called my family. The college Party secretary started knocking at the door.

The Party secretary told me that my college salary had been suspended as of March. I said I understood and would consider writing a resignation letter. My teaching credentials were revoked in 2009, but I was willing to stay because I hoped that I would still have the opportunity to teach. However, this system cannot tolerate a true idealist. The salary suspension was a result of direct pressure from the Ministry of Education. The excuse was that I hadn’t been going to work for some time. That was when my freedom was illegally restricted and I could not leave my house.

I told the Party secretary that they were going to illegally seize my bag and asked him to help me hold onto it. He refused. I left the Party secretary’s office and was taken to the campus security office. I know that Chinese universities lost their basic independence and dignity long ago. In an isolated room, five people seized my bag.

For the next few hours, I was alone with my thoughts while they chatted in the next room. They ordered McDonald’s. As usual, I didn’t eat anything. In the mean time, Z came along and asked to make a written report. I said there was nothing much to say, but he insisted.

He asked, “Will you continue to work for education equality?” I said, “I will.”

Q: What are you going to do about black jails?

A: As long as there are illegal detentions, like what you did today, I will continue to surround and watch.

Q: What are you going to do about financial disclosure?

A: I’ll continue to strive for it. How can you fight corruption if you don’t even dare to disclose your personal assets?

Q: Will the citizens’ city-wide dinner parties continue?

A: Yes. We will be citizens with pride and dignity.

Q: How many people attend your dinners?

A: Not sure. Everybody can be a citizen. Everybody can attend or leave at any time.

In the end I asked him to add that “I solemnly protest the Beijing Municipal Police Bureau illegally restricting me from leaving the country, illegally restricting my personal freedom, and illegally searching my personal belongings.” He didn’t add this. I refused to sign. They took the written report away.

After 10 p.m., Captain C came in. We’ve had many conversations before.

C: In the past, you worked on individual cases to protect people’s rights. Wasn’t that pretty good? For example, you helped appeal the Chengde case. But now, this New Citizens’ Movement. In the past ten years, especially the last year, the there have been dinners everywhere. The nature of the movement is changing.

Me: The unjust Chengde case happened 19 years ago. We have been working on the appeal for 10 years, but no settlement has been reached. While we worked hard on individual cases, more and more injustices emerged. This is essentially a problem of the political system. From individual cases to the New Citizens’ Movement, we followed Heaven’s will. And to some extent, you forced us. Before March of last year, we had a fixed office. Every day we had at least one person available to receive petitioners. I would go there twice a week to read their documents. Perhaps there were many cases we could not handle, but at least we could offer some advice. We spent a lot of time doing this concrete work. But after March, you shut down our office. A lot of underprivileged people couldn’t find us. We shifted the emphasis of our work to promoting people’s awareness of their identity as citizens. Actually, the nature of our work hasn’t changed at all. We have always been pursuing democracy, rule of law, equality, and justice. In the past we worked more on being citizens ourselves. Now we advocate that everybody act as citizens. More and more people want to be citizens. What are you afraid of?

C: Where does your theory of “new citizens” come from?

Me: Inspiration from above. Specifically, inspiration came to me around May last year while I was reading at home. I believe that all inspiration that drives the work of human beings comes from above.

C: Do you know the theory of the “small circle”? Do you know Li Yiping?

Me: I know of this theory. I heard about it in the past few months. I don’t know Li Yiping. The dinners are not “small circles.” They are open to all. We who share an identity as citizens meet to discuss common issues, and together push forward democracy and rule of law in China.

C: What’s the purpose of New Citizens’ Movement and the dinners?

Me: For citizens to work together to push forward democracy and rule of law, and ultimately to make China a country of freedom, righteousness, and love.

C: Does democracy imply overthrowing the Communist Party?

Me: There are no such concepts as “overthrow,” “knock down,” or “enemies” in our system of thought or our discourse. Democracy implies people having the right to directly cast votes and elect officials and legislators at all levels of government. This has nothing to do with overthrowing anyone. If the Communist Party is capable of transforming itself like the Kuomintang and winning an election, we will definitely support that. What we pursue is true democracy, China’s peaceful transition to constitutional government. Whether the Communist Party can transform itself and win elections is your own business. We don’t entertain any fantasies about that. But we harbor good will towards every Chinese person.

C: You and I have known each other for years. I believe that you are a pure idealist. This is the reason we have been relatively polite to you. But do other people in your group, like Zhao Changqing and Ding Jiaxi, think the way you do? How do you control other people?

Me: I am quite selective when it comes to my close friends. Zhao Changqing and Ding Jiaxi are both model citizens with moral characters and pure ideals. The “citizenry” is a group that is open to all, a coalition of free citizens which offers no hierarchy or material gain. Nobody can censor others. We cannot exclude people who have bad characters. We don’t even know if anyone was sent to us by you. We don’t care. But if someone does seriously immoral things under the banner of freedom, righteousness, and love, I may publicly criticize him or her. It might have some impact on the person, but that isn’t control. It’s normal for citizens to disagree with each other. We resolve discord through democratic rules. What we are pursuing is ultimately the establishment of a system of democracy and rule of law. People will bad characters will be controlled by the law.

C: Some among you are extreme. Are you able to control them? We have solid evidence that those four people advocating financial disclosure gathered illegally. How could you possibly say you are not responsible for that?

Me: Citizen groups all around China are evolving independently, and act autonomously. I can only influence others, not control them. As for the four gentlemen detained for promoting financial disclosure, of course I am responsible. I initiated the movement. Although strategically I don’t agree with their particular method, their action was just, and anything but illegal. I’m responsible for following in their steps. If they are guilty, I ask for the same treatment right now.

C: I’m puzzled. You were always a good student. Your family wasn’t persecuted. You’ve been successful in school and in your career. You could have lived a good life. Why did you choose this path? Everything has a reason. What’s yours?

Me: You think everyone lives for himself or herself. Only when we suffer injustice ourselves do we fight back; only when something unfortunate happens is the orbit of our lives altered. This logic doesn’t suit me. I could live a comfortable life under this system, and I don’t feel that I have ever been persecuted. Every time my freedoms have been illegally restricted, even when I have been beaten, it was because I stood up for someone else. This is a responsibility I ought to bear. But in this country, the autocratic system is the root of so much injustice and so much pain. Autocracy must end. Nothing happened when I made up my mind in the ninth grade. The radius of my life was no more than ten kilometers at that time. So I believe in destiny. If we have to find a reason, it is the destiny of a people which has gone through immense hardship, and which will find nirvana in a new life of freedom, righteousness, and love. This is the reason why I came into this world.

At 11 p.m., they said they would send me home. I wanted to go home by myself, but they forced me into their car. Outside the corridor, they didn’t leave. I don’t know how long will I lose my freedom for this time. I know that as I carry on, the price I have to pay will only grow. But someone has to take this on for the progress of our people’s modern civilization. A group of citizens has already stood up.

Citizen Xu Zhiyong, April 12, 2013

Citizen Self-Encouragement–Service, Duty, Letting Go

In an autocratic society, the path of striving to be a good citizen is a long one. I have come to some understanding in recent years of what this path entails–service, duty, and letting go. I write this to encourage myself as well as my friends. Service means serving society, helping those who need help the most through actions. Every place has its own social problems: domineering, corrupt officials; chengguan who beat people; a polluted environment; injustice; land grabs; and arbitrary fines and illegal charges, to name a few. We need to cast our attention downwards, sincerely care about the underprivileged, and help them protect their rights and interests. Citizen groups should do things that offer genuine help to the people. Only if we help many, many people can we take root in society and gain broad support, so that we can promote the development of a democratic and constitutional government in China. Politics should serve the public. At present, there are a lot of opportunities to serve the people in China. We need to look for them carefully and invest in them with devotion. Tomorrow’s democratic politicians are today’s pro bono representatives.

Politics is not empty talk. Politics is not opposition for its own sake. Politics is a noble career that serves the interest of the public. Politics is in our daily life. Our fundamental strength is not measured by how politically calculating we are, but how many things we have done and how many people we have helped. Demanding financial disclosure of officials, pushing the Standing Committee of National People’s Congress to pass the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, surrounding and watching Attorney Wang Quanzhang’s detention and other public incidents, all serve society. Reposting the truth about events online and spreading the ideals of democracy and rule of law also serve society. While paying attention to the general direction of our country, we ought not to neglect the people and events around us. Citizen groups should work hard to be recognized as good people by the public in their communities and cities. There are many things to do in this time of change. Fierce action has its value, but it is neither possible nor necessary to have everyone at the vanguard. More people should serve society in down-to-earth and practical ways. In all, we should do work and thrive through our actions.

Duty means courageously taking on responsibility. In the pursuit of freedom, righteousness, and love, in the transformation from subject to citizen, you might “drink tea,” be harassed, have your freedoms illegally restricted, be fired from work, or even be beaten and punished as a criminal. But there have to be people who pay the price for the progress of society. Many of our predecessors have shouldered enormous responsibility. Some of them spent decades in prison, and others, like Lin Zhao, sacrificed their lives. Today, we still need to make sacrifices to push forward social progress. Although we have generous hearts; although we pursue a noble career of freedom, righteousness, and love; although our actions are temperate and reasonable, the move from subject to citizen is, by nature, dangerous.

Some people take the lead for social progress. Once they take the first step, they cannot go back. We respect those warriors who fiercely challenge the system. But we do not need everyone to be at the forefront. We hope that everyone takes responsibility according to his or her own capacity. Some citizens within the system can also take on responsibility in their own way. If a person does not have too many family obligations, is psychologically prepared, and is relatively well-known, then he or she can take on more. If someone has a heavy family burden and is not that well-known, I suggest that he or she start with smaller, less sensitive tasks; for example, individual rights defense cases, environmental protection, charity and public welfare, etc.

The New Citizens’ Movement is a huge, historic change. We should move forward with perseverance and peaceful minds, avoid the impulse to act radically, and not let setbacks defeat us. Letting go means forgoing the ego. Most people who pursue democracy and freedom have a strong personality. The positive side of this is that they are courageous and persistent, while the negative side is that they cling to their own ideas. Some of them even regard themselves as elders. They talk endlessly during our dinners, while others cannot squeeze a word in edgewise. Instead of going through the democratic process, they act according to their own will. If one utterance rubs them the wrong way, they think it is a conspiracy and try to undercut the speaker–to the point that the doors for us to open multiply, the mountains for us to climb stand like a forest, and our group is factionalized. We pursue freedom, but that does not mean we do not have responsibility. Only when we unify our strength can we achieve true democracy and freedom. Only when we let go of our obstinate egos and follow democratic rules can we achieve unity. No matter how senior you are or how much you have accomplished, at citizens’ dinners we sit as equals and speak as equals. When we disagree, we can engage in public debates and resolve them by vote. It does not matter if you are a reformer or a revolutionary. We can have different methods to pursue democracy and constitutional government. We should coordinate with each other while preserving our own beliefs, but we should not attack each other. If some people in our community of citizens does something wrong, we should criticize them if necessary, but always maintain good will.

Ultimately, letting go means forgoing personal interests, social status, and prejudice. Modern politics is a noble career of idealism. We do not pursue democracy and constitutional government for personal gain or social status, but to realize our dream–to make China a country of freedom, righteousness, and love–to promote the progress of human civilization, and to fulfill our mission on this earth. To those who think politics is a filthy shoal whose sands we may sift for profit, I suggest they keep away from modern politics. In an ever more transparent, modern, and civilized society, a person’s image is accumulated through time and action. There is no need to overemphasize temporary gains and losses. By serving society, taking on responsibility, and letting go of ego, strength will naturally grow.

Service, duty, and letting go; each is harder to accomplish than the last. Many can serve society, but as soon as they encounter resistance, they might retreat. This is understandable. Each person should take on responsibility according to his or her capacity. The most difficult of all is letting go. We all have our selfish instincts. But to fulfill our responsibility, we must let go of our egos as best we can. This is a continuous process of self-reflection and self-cultivation. Democratic elections and the system of checks and balances are of course more essential forces; but the strength of personal morality within the community of citizens will directly influence the progress of democratization and, in the long run, the quality of the newly-born democratic system. Service, duty, and letting go; this is a never-ending process of personal cultivation, and it is the continuous union and growth of the force for democracy and constitutional government.

Citizen Xu Zhiyong, April 23, 2013

Via CDT Chinese. Translation by Mengyu Dong.

Notes:

Li Yiping, an activist living in the U.S., theorizes that the pro-democracy movement in China can organize itself through interlocking “small circles” (小圈子), building a social network that is “formless” and therefore difficult for the government to track. Li has written about his “small circle” theory at Boxun [zh] and Beijing Spring [zh]. Back.

After losing the Chinese Civil War to the Communist army in 1949, the Kuomintang (KMT) perpetuated the Republic of China and martial, one-party rule in Taiwan. The KMT began allowing new political parties to form in the 1980s, and by the 1990s competed among the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and other parties in free and fair elections. Back.

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A public letter that he wrote on January 6, 1989, urging Deng Xiaoping to release all political prisoners, including Wei Jingsheng , in a “massive amnesty” to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China, only annoyed the paramount leader further, Fang writes.

[...] Besides a sole public appearance to persuade Anhui students to end street demonstrations in 1986, Fang says he tried his best not to show up at student gatherings, especially the remarkable two-month-long Tiananmen protests, which ended with a bloody military crackdown on June 4, 1989.

After the incident, Fang and his wife, Li Shuxian , a Peking University physics professor, found themselves at the top of the authorities’ list of “black hands” behind the protests.

“If there was something we had contributed to the [democratic] movement, it might be our simple [democratic] message, which had struck a chord … with the public,” Fang writes.

See more on Fang Lizhi via CDT.

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[…] As in previous years, the [U.S.] reports are full of carping and irresponsible remarks on the human rights situation in more than 190 countries and regions including China. However, the US turned a blind eye to its own woeful human rights situation and never said a word about it. Facts show that there are serious human rights problems in the US which incur extensive criticism in the world. The Human Rights Record of the US in 2012 is hereby prepared to reveal the true human rights situation of the US to people across the world by simply laying down some facts.

The report covers a very broad range of political and social problems, from obstruction at polling stations, domestic surveillance, police brutality, abuses at Guantanamo and military actions abroad to high campaign spending, low election turnout, unemployment, homelessness, racist attacks, “apartheid” on New York’s Upper East Side and child abuse at Penn State. The Diplomat’s Zachary Keck analyzed the two reports’ chosen areas of focus (noting that the U.S. report on human rights in China is “almost entirely what one would expect to see from a U.S. report on human rights in China”):

Many of these [issues] are justifiable in their own right and indeed are issues many Americans regularly raise themselves. Still, it seems odd that the PRC is concerned about them, given how it handles the same issues in its own country. This of course might have been China’s point, since it argues that the U.S. is a hypocrite for issuing reports on the human rights situation in other countries, but not one on the U.S. itself.

One subtle difference between the U.S. and Chinese reports is actually rather telling. Specifically, whereas the U.S. human rights reports focus on mainly political and social issues, China’s report on the United States focuses heavily on economic issues. For instance, the evidence China cites about ethnic discrimination in America points to minorities’ inferior economic opportunities in society. When criticizing China’s treatment of its ethnic populations, the U.S. report focuses on the level of surveillance and lack of civil and political rights that these groups enjoy.

In the one sense, this may just reflect the fact that each country is more vulnerable to charges of discrimination made on political or economic rights than the other. Still, it seems to me to point to a larger difference on how the Western world in general, but the United States in particular, views human rights, compared to the rest of the world conceives of them.

At the forefront of the Chinese report, though, is America’s failure to protect its citizens from mass shootings like the Colorado theater attack and Sandy Hook school massacre, as well as a steady stream of smaller-scale gun violence.

The US was haunted by serious violent crimes in 2012 with frequent occurrence of firearms-related criminal cases. Its people’s lives and personal security were not duly protected.

[…] In 2010, there were more than 30,000 deaths caused by firearms. However, the US government has done little in gun control. In 2008 and 2010 landmark Supreme Court rulings on two firearms-related cases dramatically diminished the authority of state and local governments to limit gun ownership. Roughly half of the 50 US states have adopted laws allowing gun owners to carry their guns openly in most public places. And many states have ‘stand your ground’ laws that allow people to kill if they come under threat, even, in some cases, if they can escape the threat without violence. According to an article on the website of the Hindu on August 7, 2012, in population-adjusted terms, civilians in some parts of the US are more likely to become the victim of a firearms-related murder than their counterparts in war-torn regions like Iraq or Afghanistan. On January 16, 2013, the US president announced 23 steps on gun control to take immediately without congressional approval. And the president signed three of the measures. But the public opinion generally believes that the gun-control measures will encounter great resistance.

The report appears to have been finished too early to include the failure last week of even moderate gun control measures to clear the U.S. Senate, despite overwhelming popular support and 54-46 support in the Senate itself. (If so, it was also finished before its American counterpart was released.) Still, the baton of criticism was taken up by Chinese netizens. From The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos:

[…] To the Chinese who awoke to the news Thursday, it was a confusing object lesson in what they are so often told is a model political system. There was the technical matter of how a compromise that would have extended background checks for prospective gun buyers could have failed even if a majority of senators vote in favor of it, and about ninety per cent of Americans support it. (The obscure Senate provision involved, cloture, or keyong zhongjie, means about as much to the Chinese as it does to the average American.) One Weibo commentator explained simply, “Today, politics defeated conscience.”

For some, it was so implausible that the Senate could be designed in such a way, that they looked for darker designs to explain it. “American people strongly demand gun control, but then the bill doesn’t pass. Why, you ask? Because it would negatively impact the interests of the one per cent.”

[…] But it would be a mistake to assume that everyone in China is pro gun control. On the contrary, in a nation that has growing political discontent, and zero private gun ownership, one often hears snickering asides these days that a few guns on the street might do some good. And they are not talking about hunting quail. One commentator wrote: “If Chinese people had the right to own and carry weapons, society would probably be more harmonious than it is now. City authorities wouldn’t dare to bully street vendors; on the highways, nobody would dare to rush in and swipe vegetables and fruits that fall off a delivery truck when it rolls on its side; corrupt officials wouldn’t dare to commit crimes in broad daylight.”

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In May, 1989, while student demonstrators were in the streets of Beijing calling for democracy, I listened as a Western journalist interviewed Fang. At the end, the interviewer asked if there were a way he could pursue follow-up questions if necessary. Fang said “sure,” and gave the reporter his telephone number.

“We’ve heard that your phone is tapped,” the reporter said. “Is it?”

“I assume so.” Fang grinned.

“Doesn’t that…bother you?” the reporter asked.

“No,” said Fang, “for years I’ve been trying to get them to listen to me. If this is how they want to do it, then fine!”

See more on Fang, including Link’s earlier tribute and James H. Williams’ biographical appreciation from China Quarterly and the Forum on International Physics Newsletter, via CDT.

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THIRTEEN YEARS AGO Bill Clinton, then America’s president, said that trying to control the internet in China would be like trying to “nail Jell-O to the wall”. At the time he seemed to be stating the obvious. By its nature the web was widely dispersed, using so many channels that it could not possibly be blocked. Rather, it seemed to have the capacity to open up the world to its users even in shut-in places. Just as earlier communications technologies may have helped topple dictatorships in the past (for example, the telegraph in Russia’s Bolshevik revolutions in 1917 and short-wave radio in the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991), the internet would surely erode China’s authoritarian state. Vastly increased access to information and the ability to communicate easily with like-minded people round the globe would endow its users with asymmetric power, diluting the might of the state and acting as a force for democracy.

Those expectations have been confounded. Not only has Chinese authoritarian rule survived the internet, but the state has shown great skill in bending the technology to its own purposes, enabling it to exercise better control of its own society and setting an example for other repressive regimes. China’s party-state has deployed an army of cyber-police, hardware engineers, software developers, web monitors and paid online propagandists to watch, filter, censor and guide Chinese internet users. Chinese private internet companies, many of them clones of Western ones, have been allowed to flourish so long as they do not deviate from the party line.

If this special report were about the internet in any Western country, it would have little to say about the role of the government; instead, it would focus on the companies thriving on the internet, speculate about which industries would be disrupted next and look at the way the web is changing individuals’ lives. Such things are of interest in China too, but this report concentrates on the part played by the government because that is the most extraordinary thing about the internet there. The Chinese government has spent a huge amount of effort on making sure that its internet is different, not just that freedom of expression is limited but also that the industry that is built around it serves national goals as well as commercial ones.

The report’s contents:

• The machinery of control: Cat and mouse — How China makes sure its internet abides by the rules, including CDT’s ‘Directives from the Ministry of Truth‘.
• Microblogs: Small beginnings — Microblogs are a potentially powerful force for change, but they have to tread carefully.
• The Great Firewall: The art of concealment — Chinese screening of online material from abroad is becoming ever more sophisticated.
• E-commerce: Ours, all ours — A wealth of internet businesses with Chinese characteristics. (See also recent Economist cover story ‘Alibaba: China’s king of e-commerce.’)
• Cyber-hacking: Masters of the cyber-universe — China’s state-sponsored hackers are ubiquitous—and totally unabashed. The Economist is also hosting a debate, set to conclude next week, on the motion “Is industrial cyber-espionage the biggest threat to relations between America and China?” BDA China chairman and founder Duncan Clark is arguing for, and Claremont McKenna College’s Minxin Pei against, with the Council on Foreign Relations’ Adam Segal also contributing.
• Internet controls in other countries: To each their own — China’s model for controlling the internet is being adopted elsewhere.
• Assessing the effects: A curse disguised as a blessing? — The internet may be delaying the radical changes China needs.
• Shutting down the internet: Thou shalt not kill — Turning off the entire internet is a nuclear option best not exercised.

Epstein discusses the report in a short audio podcast:

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“They are fake parties, just a mirage created for the benefit of ordinary people, although most people are not fooled,” said Jin Zhong, editor in chief of Open Magazine, a Hong Kong political journal. “People who join them have a fantasy that they can influence the Communist Party.”

Such sentiments are vehemently rejected by the organizations’ leaders, who say the system works just fine, providing the government with detailed proposals and measured advice from those outside the Communist Party. Asked whether he hoped China might one day embrace multiparty elections, Wan Exiang, chairman of the Revolutionary Committee of the Chinese Kuomintang, said such questions betrayed a Western fixation with electoral democracy.

[…] Zhou Zhongxiao, 30, an executive at an online dating site in Beijing, said his participation in the China Democratic League had provided an outlet for promoting his pet project: the preservation of traditional wedding rituals. “We provide a useful service by helping the ruling party govern the country,” he said, adding with impatience, “Why does a party always have to be seeking political power?”

Reuters’ new Connected China site provides a brief primer on the parties and their place in China’s political system:

China has eight so-called “democratic parties” but they don’t interfere with the dominance of the Communist Party. According to the government’s official website, “the CPC is the sole party exercising political leadership in this system of multi-party cooperation,” which has been “generally accepted by various parties and people across the country after decades of practice.”

The parties’ influence is limited and is “window dressing” that allows the government to say they listen to outside views, China observer Willy Lam told the BBC. Their membership rolls are comparatively minuscule, and they are barred from challenging the Communist Party’s leadership.

Heads of the parties hold vice-chairman positions on the National People’s Congress or the Chinese People’s Consultative Conference (CPPCC), according to pro-Beijing newspaper Wen Wei Po. There has only been one non-Communist Party minister since China’s opening up – China Zhi Gong Dang (Party for Public Interests) chairman Wan Gang (万钢), who was appointed Minister of Science and Technology in 2007.

See more at Connected China via its glossary entry on the eight parties.

More influential than these eight formal parties are the unofficial factions and alliances within the CCP. At China Media Project, Wu Jiaxiang discusses these in terms of a liberal ‘market faction’, a conservative ‘Cultural Revolution faction’ and a mainstream ‘state planning faction’, while at BBC News last November, Cheng Li described the Party’s internal politics in terms of ‘populist’ and ‘elitist’ coalitions.

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Stahl interviews developer Wang Shi who acknowledges that the bubble is “dangerous” and on the verge of bursting. In an accompanying Internet feature, Stahl also interviews real estate mogul Zhang Xin — the “richest self-made billionaire woman in the world” — who made waves not for her comments on the real estate market in China, but on democracy, made in the last minute of this clip:

60 Minutes Overtime gives more background on Zhang’s comments and discusses her activity on weibo:

[The SOHO Sanlitun office and shopping area, developed by Zhang Xin and her husband Pan Shiyi. Photo by TonyV3112 / Shutterstock.com]

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Reuters visited Wukan six times over the last year-and-a-half, chronicling the early protests, the uprising, its eventual triumph and now its disillusionment.

The events in Wukan focused keen attention in Beijing over a problem the central government had long underplayed – rampant land seizures across China. The government is drafting revised land management legislation for the annual parliament session in March that would require farmers – an estimated 650 million of them in China – to be adequately compensated and relocated before officials can expropriate any land.

But Wukan’s failure to overcome entrenched corruption shows how difficult it is for grassroots protest to spur lasting change in China. Towering above Wukan is a vast local, regional and national edifice of Party control and vested interests. Indeed, even the Xi administration’s push to overhaul the land seizure law faces opposition from developers, businesses and local governments that depend on property sales.

“For Wukan, amongst all the villages in China, to be able to rise up and protect their interests, then to conduct a democratic election and to become a kind of experimental ground, is significant,” said Peng Peng, a senior researcher with the Guangzhou Academy of Social Sciences. But the inexperience of the new leaders and their halting progress over the land issues has exposed the teething problems of nurturing village democracy in China, he added. “There can’t just be democracy, there needs to be solid administration, too.”

Resentment has simmered among Wukan villagers at their leaders’ inability to secure the return of their land, but the Financial Times reports that deputy village chief Yang Semao believes critical villagers “are not reasonable:”

In its year in office, the committee has succeeded in returning 200 hectares of land sold off by the previous village chief, Mr Yang says. But many villagers are still determined to seize property for which the deeds were transferred to factory owners and businessmen several years ago.

Confronted with persistent criticism – in painful contrast to the adulation they once enjoyed of a once remarkably united village – Mr Lin and many committee members have contemplated resigning.

“I am afraid of seeing people, afraid of hearing my doorbell ring,” Mr Lin told a Shanghai television station last month. “Why? Because whatever I do or say now, people are able to find a way to blame me.”

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Post tags: democracy, land grabs, local politics, mass incidents, political reform, protests, Wukan
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At the main entrance of the village of 3,000 people, 40 police and officials stood guard, barring outside vehicles from entering. Not far away, a cloth banner read: “Strongly request legal, democratic elections.”

Shangpu’s two-storey houses, typical of the region, and low-slung family-run workshops are surrounded by fields awaiting spring planting. But the main street is lined with the wrecks of cars damaged in the clash, with glass and metal littering the ground.

Residents said they should have the right to vote both for the leader who represents them and on whether to approve a controversial proposal to transform rice fields into an industrial zone.

“This should be decided by a vote by villagers,” said one of the protest leaders, adding: “The village chief should represent our interests, but he doesn’t.”

Residents told AFP that the village chief and party head fraudulently collected signatures to facilitate the transfer of farmland to a local businessman for industrial use, and they fear they will not be properly compensated. China’s state-run Global Times reported on Monday that the county-level public security bureau arrested the village leader and eight others it claims were hired by the village leader to attack the Shangpu residents:

County authorities said that on the morning of February 22, village committee director, Li Baoyu, called police to report he was attacked in his office and injured by six masked thugs. Less than an hour later, police say, Li hired his own thugs from other villages and ordered them to attack residents of Shangpu village, said the newspaper.

According to county police the fight injured four residents and damaged at least 26 vehicles, two of which were burned. Police earlier arrested Li, and on Friday eight other assailants were detained. The police are still hunting for 10 other men.

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…Last week, an interview by iFeng with a few villagers and their newly elected leaders showed that local people may see the “Wukan model” as a completed failed attempt of democracy.

Many of the new leaders of Wukan’s village committee are leaders of the anti-government protests two years ago. For example, the 70-something Lin Zhulian is the new director of village committee elected by his fellow villagers. Two year ago, it was him who often held public speeches and called for villagers to stand up against local government and get their illegally seized lands back.

One year after being elected, Lin told journalists that he regretted leading the protests.

“I’m afraid of receiving phone calls, afraid of seeing people, afraid of hearing my own door bell ring. Why? Because whatever I do or say now, people are able to find a way to blame me. I can neither speak the truth nor tell lies. Things are complicated. I need to pay attention to every single bit of detail to guard against potential harms.”

Tea Leaf Nation has more on other problems now confronting Wukan:

Some of Wukan’s problems are not news. In September, 2012, several Western media outlets revisited Wukan and reported on the slow progress of its democratic experiment. Then, areas of dissatisfaction included villagers’ “expectations gap” between the promise of democracy and its messy reality, meddling by county-level governments, and suspicions that the whole enterprise was simply a political move by Wang Yang, the former Guangdong province Communist Party chief who was known to eye a seat on China’s elite Politburo Standing Committee.

Additional obstacles have now begun to emerge. Wukan is dealing with a dearth of outside investment due to concerns over its political stability, a village leadership that lacks governing experience, and in-fighting within the village administration itself. As one villager told a reporter, “All of Wukan is dissatisfied. First, we villagers overthrew the corrupt officials, but the new administration has done nothing [to get land back]; they got nothing back and have not given us an answer…We’ll take anything [at this point].”

Surveying unbought luxury residences whose bare porches had begun to sprout grass, reporter Jin Song concluded that “currently many investors do not dare to invest in Wukan…because there is still no consensus about whether to lease the recovered land or to transfer it, the village committee is unable to monetize it.”

[...] Meanwhile, infighting is worsening between elected village leaders and those activists left on the outside. According to Yang Semao, deputy director of the governing village committee, “The village committee only has seven people…, [but] there are dozens of influential activists and it’s impossible for everyone to join the committee. Now they’re going all out to attack, defame, and stymie us.”

Some observers on weibo have blamed China’s political system for the failures of democracy in Wukan to thrive. From Tea Leaf Nation:

User @玻璃罐子里的苍蝇 echoed this view, writing, “What Wukan villagers really want is money. Using democracy to solve the Wukan problem sounds great, but actually it is not the right prescription … Wukan’s follow-ups are reflections of the embarrassing situation of democracy in China. Democracy is still a luxury for us, just someone’s talking point. ”

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“We are not satisfied,” said one villager. “We removed corrupt officials to get our land back, but have received nothing, and the new village committee has not given us an explanation.”

[...]Lin Zuluan , 69, was elected head of the village committee. But now he says that, while democratic governance was worth trying, he regrets taking part in the campaign, because villagers have unrealistic expectations of their leaders.

“I am old,” Lin said. “I can’t stand the pressure and fulfil all of their expectations. I’ve gained nothing from the whole campaign; I should not have taken part in it. Democracy is something that all people should pursue, but the implementation of it should be gradual, and there should be an environment that is conducive to it. We can’t let it happen overnight.”

Lin also said the villagers were not clear about their rights and had raised “unreasonable” demands, such as asking the committee to publicly release every detail of contracts it signs.

For more on Wukan, land-grabs, or democratic reform, see prior CDT coverage.

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What we found was a hardscrabble village – Wukan is home to rice farmers and fishermen – whose leaders are struggling to deliver on the promises they made to their electorate. The electorate, meanwhile, is beginning to wonder if choosing their own leaders has made things any better.

The Wukan uprising has been declared (by the academic who advised China’s new leader Xi Jinping on his doctoral thesis) to have “historic significance” because it showed democracy and social stability could coexist in China. But the new village council remains just a tiny brick at the bottom of a vast, corrupt and authoritarian power structure. And that power structure is obsessively monitoring the democrats of Wukan.

Shortly after we met Mr. Zhang for tea to discuss the events of the last year, a thin man in dark jacket walked in through the teahouse’s open door. “Who are you? Give me your business card,” he shouted, grabbing my shoulder. When I asked him to give me his own card first, he released his grip on me, handed Mr. Zhang a handwritten note and walked out without getting my name. “He’s a police informant,” Mr. Zhang said with the shrug of someone who sees such people every day.

The system is pushing back against Wukan’s uprising in subtler ways, too. Members of the seven-person village committee (only the village chief, Lin Zuluan, is a Communist Party member) say they’ve hit a wall in their efforts to reclaim villagers’ land that was illegally sold to real estate developers by the previous committee.

The shine has reportedly worn off for the members of Wukan’s village committee, who were elected after villagers engaged in a standoff with police and provincial officials over illegal land grabs in late 2011. Villagers held a small demonstration in September, and one village official resigned in October 2012 over the lack of progress in resolving the grievances which had sparked the protests.

MacKinnon and photographer John Lehmann have chosen Wukan as the start of The China Diaries, “a journey of discovery overland through China by the Globe and Mail,” where they will seek to roughly retrace Mao’s Long March by rail over the next few weeks.

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The incident and the protests in New Delhi in recent days have received wide attention in China. While the brutal attack was initially highlighted by Communist Party-run outlets as indicative of the failures of India’s democratic system to ensure stability, the following protests in New Delhi triggered calls from pro-reform bloggers for the Chinese government to learn from India and to allow the public to express its voice.

The rape case was one of the most discussed topics in Chinese microblogs over the past week, prompting thousands of posts and comments. By Sunday, however, the authorities appeared to move to limit the debate: on Monday, a search for the topic triggered a message on Sina Weibo – a popular Twitter-equivalent used by more than 300 million people – saying the results could not be displayed according to regulations. The message is usually seen as an indicator of a topic being censored by the authorities.

[…] That Communist Party media outlets and academics often point to India’s “disorderliness” as an outcome of the democratic system and to justify one-party rule is a sore point among many liberal Chinese who are pushing for democratic reforms.

Western responses have also come under fire: Emer O’Toole wrote at The Guardian that media commentary focusing on cultural rather than political issues has frequently displayed “uncomfortably neocolonial” attitudes.

In a recent essay at Foreign Affairs, Eric X. Li argued that Chinese authoritarianism has proven its superiority over democracy, while at The New Republic, Pankaj Mishra lamented India’s “budding likeness to China—the onset, in particular, of an informal authoritarianism in the hollow shell of a formal democracy” (both via CDT).

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[…] There is no doubt that daunting challenges await Xi. But those who suggest that the CCP will not be able to deal with them fundamentally misread China’s politics and the resilience of its governing institutions. Beijing will be able to meet the country’s ills with dynamism and resilience, thanks to the CCP’s adaptability, system of meritocracy, and legitimacy with the Chinese people. In the next decade, China will continue to rise, not fade. The country’s leaders will consolidate the one party model and, in the process, challenge the West’s conventional wisdom about political development and the inevitable march toward electoral democracy. In the capital of the Middle Kingdom, the world might witness the birth of a post-democratic future.

[…] Many developing countries have already come to learn that democracy doesn’t solve all their problems. For them, China’s example is important. Its recent success and the failures of the West offer a stark contrast. To be sure, China’s political model will never supplant electoral democracy because, unlike the latter, it does not pretend to be universal. It cannot be exported. But its success does show that many systems of political governance can work when they are congruent with a country’s culture and history. The significance of China’s success, then, is not that China provides the world with an alternative but that it demonstrates that successful alternatives exist. Twenty-four years ago, the political scientist Francis Fukuyama predicted that all countries would eventually adopt liberal democracy and lamented that the world would become a boring place because of that. Relief is on the way. A more interesting age may be upon us.

Also at Foreign Policy, Yasheng Huang responds. The Party, he argues, has not so much adapted as muddled through, while Yunnan’s innovative Party vice-secretary Qiu He is no more representative of Chinese meritocracy than the corrupt torturer Bo Xilai. He praises as “sensible” Li’s suggestions for the near future but, citing the example of Taiwan, frames them as steps onto a benignly slippery slope towards democracy.

In 2011, standing in front of the Royal Society (the British academy of sciences), Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao declared, “Tomorrow’s China will be a country that fully achieves democracy, the rule of law, fairness, and justice. Without freedom, there is no real democracy. Without guarantee of economic and political rights, there is no real freedom.” Eric Li’s article in these pages, “The Life of the Party,” pays no such lip service to democracy. Instead, Li, a Shanghai-based venture capitalist, declares that the debate over Chinese democratization is dead: the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will not only stay in power; its success in the coming years will “consolidate the one-party model and, in the process, challenge the West’s conventional wisdom about political development.” Li might have called the race too soon.

[…] There are calls for more democracy in China. It is true that the party’s antireform bloc has had the upper hand since the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. But recently, voices for reform within the CCP have been gaining strength, aided in large part by calls for honesty, transparency, and accountability from hundreds of millions of Internet-using Chinese citizens. China’s new leaders seem at least somewhat willing to adopt a more moderate tone than their predecessors, who issued strident warnings against “westernization” of the Chinese political system. So far, what has held China back from democracy is not a lack of demand for it but a lack of supply. It is possible that the gap will start to close over the next ten years.

See more on political reform, democracy and meritocracy, via CDT.

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Post tags: CCP, democracy, eric x. li, legitimacy, meritocracy, political reform, rule of law, Wen Jiabao, Yasheng Huang
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