These are precarious times for Mr. Tohti, a brazenly outspoken spark plug of a man whose advocacy for China’s Turkic-speaking Muslim Uighurs has landed him on the government’s list of citizens who warrant near-constant surveillance.

Last July, after ethnic bloodletting in the far western region of Xinjiang killed 197 people, the governor appeared on television to accuse Rebiya Kadeer, the exiled Uighur leader, of inciting the violence, much of which involved Uighur mobs bludgeoning Han Chinese migrants in Urumqi, the regional capital. Then he parceled out some of the blame to Mr. Tohti’s Web site, Uighurbiz.net, a lively forum for debate — and a platform for rumormongering, according to the government — before it was blocked by the censors.

The next day, security agents from Beijing took him on what he said they called a “vacation” for three weeks, interrogating him for long periods and warning him to stop publicly criticizing the government’s policies and practices in Xinjiang. The agents later decamped to his living room, although Mr. Tohti declined to describe the experience for fear he might incur their wrath. “Sometimes they were nice to me, but other times they said, ‘We can crush you like an ant,’ ” he said.

It is not clear why they have not crushed him yet. Since the unrest of last summer, the authorities have had little compunction about detaining scores of Uighurs whose whereabouts remain a mystery. In recent weeks, several have been given long prison terms, including three Web masters and a journalist who were convicted for endangering the Chinese state. The longest sentence, 15 years, was handed down to Gheyret Niyaz, a 51-year-old writer who worked for Mr. Tohti’s Web site. Prosecutors say Mr. Niyaz’ greatest crime was speaking to a magazine in Hong Kong.

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A closer look at Mr. Yu provides a small window into the role of those few public intellectuals who have learned to navigate what would appear to be treacherous terrain. They tackle seemingly provocative subjects and can even function as a force for change, but in the end their writings rarely challenge the underpinnings of China’s single-party, authoritarian rule.

Even Mr. Yu’s use of the word “democracy” is not what it seems. China’s leaders frequently talk about it as a worthy goal, but in practice they have virtually no intention of ceding the Communist Party’s monopoly. In fact, Mr. Yu never advocates Western-style multiparty democracy.

“What he writes might sound good, but he is misleading the Chinese people into thinking the government is moving toward democracy,” said Guo Tianguo, a former rights lawyer from Shanghai who was forced into exile five years ago and now lives in Canada. “He owes his job to President Hu Jintao, and if he ever pushed too hard he would lose everything. He’s a coward.”

YET to some who have followed his career, Mr. Yu’s role is far more nuanced. They say that he is a true believer in democracy, but that he walks a tightrope, trying to nudge China’s political elite toward reform without upsetting the apple cart.

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China’s government has grown increasingly sensitive about Tibet in the two years since rioting in the regional capital of Lhasa left 22 people dead and led to the most sustained Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule in decades. Violent clashes and demonstrations swept Tibetan towns throughout western China, where occasional protests still continue, and security remains extremely tight.

Now, activist groups say a growing number of Tibetan intellectuals are coming under pressure from authorities determined to squelch all forms of dissent.

The government has always sought to silence critics of China’s policies in Tibet, where a debate rages over how much autonomy, from religious freedom to outright independence, the Himalayan region deserves. But now officials appear to be expanding their reach and targeting even those previously considered allies or at least innocuous.

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Every year, the Southern People Weekly compiles a list of top public intellectuals in China. The magazine defines public intellectual as those: 1) with academic background and professional standing; 2) with active participation in the discussions of public affairs; 3) with a sense of criticism and morality. In an article this month, Liu Gang, editor of the WSJ Chinese Web, discusses in turn how public intellectuals in China lack these qualities. The following are translation of extracts from his article.
Category 1: Public Toilets

Some are like public toilets on the street. They simply collect angers from ordinary people. Their greatest contribution is to let these angers be heard in a wider area. Some internet bloggers and grass root commentators fall into this category. These people publish vigorous commentaries on public affairs, serving as a channel for people to vent their angers. Unfortunately, the quality of their comments is not much higher than that of ordinary people. They lack academic vigor and professional knowledge. Their analysis on public problems is very often too simplified and emotional. For example, their writings on the rich-poor gap in China often concentrate on the lack of ethics and ill-gotten gains on the part of the rich, but rarely discuss the irrational factors and negative effects of this emotional hatred of the rich. This category of intellectual has a spirit of criticisms, but their limited knowledge and insights impair the credibility of their analysis.

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Discussions of the state are directly related to questions about the formation of democratic mechanisms. There is one basic paradox one must face, which is that, on the one hand, China’s ability to govern effectively has been widely acknowledged in comparison with the governments of many other countries, from its disaster relief mobilization after the May 12 Wenchuan earthquake to its rapid response in initiating a bailout plan after the financial meltdown, and from its successful management of the Olympic Games to the efficacy of its various local governments in organizational development and controlling the crisis. But on the other hand, contradictions have appeared between officials and the people in certain areas, and have become sharp at certain times, with the administrative abilities and levels of honesty of different levels of government having come into question. The key issue is that such contradictions are often blown up into large-scale and widely debated legitimacy crises. By observing the situation in other countries, we can see that an institutional political crisis may not result even if the capacity of the state declines, the government accomplishes nothing, the economy is in recession and social policies remain unimplemented. This issue is closely connected with democracy as the source of political legitimacy.

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I have made a simple conclusion about workers’ problems. Workers’ key problem in the restructuring of state owned work units will be conflicts between workers and management.

As for problems concerning city residents, I have not conducted specialized research. I have a Ph.D. colleague who is now a teacher at a Party school. Her Ph.D. dissertation was written specifically about city residents’ rights defense. This year I attended the dissertation defense of four Ph.D. candidates at Renmin University who majored in international politics. Three of the Ph.D candidates all wrote about city residents’ rights defense. Now there are more and more scholars who are starting to care about city residents’ rights defense. According to their research, building demolitions are a key issue. The most serious conflict caused by building demolitions occurred in Longnan, Gansu Province. November 17th last year [2008], the municipal Party committee building was smashed in. We predict that mass incidents sparked by city residents’ rights defense activities will increase. Everyone should pay close attention to this. The most recent case was a relatively large mass incident near Kunming’s Luosi Bay that was sparked by demolitions. Not long ago I went to Kunming especially so that I could understand what happened near Luosi Bay.

I have just spoken about situations where workers, rural farmers, and city residents are involved in rights defense. Now, I will make some simple generalizations about the characteristics of their activities. First, I believe that city residents’ rights defense activities are all about financial interest. Whether you are talking about workers, rural farmers, or city residents, the most notable characteristic of rights defense activities is that they are battles over financial interests, and are not battles over power. Said more simply, it’s all about the money and not about life or death. They just want money. They don’t want your political power, nor do they want your position as an official. This all-about-the-money approach is not about starting a revolution; it’s about getting money. No one is going out in the streets saying that the Communist Party must hand over its political power or that local officials must hand over their political power. No one is proposing that people should revolt and seize power like during the Cultural Revolution. Even if the government is destroyed, it would be about financial interests and [people] would not want [the government’s] power. No one is proposing to destroy the government and build a new government. A struggle over financial interests is the main characteristic of the rights defense activities of workers, rural farmers and city residents.
??
I’ll tell a story. In 2007, a huge problem occurred in China’s Guangdong province. A group of farmers in Shanwei organized a search and confiscation team. To whose home did they go to search and confiscate? They went to the homes of village and township cadres. They said, “You’ve sold our land, so we’re coming to search your home and confiscate your property.” This scared a lot of township and village cadres so much that they ran away. On May 7th of the year, I accompanied a national leader to Guangdong to conduct an investigation. On May 8th Zhang Dejiang, Secretary of the Guangdong Party Committee at the time, and member of the Central Politburo of the Communist Party, gave a report to the national leader. He said that in Guangdong Province these last few years there had been many problems; however, the provincial Party Committee after investigation and research came to the conclusion that these were all “contradictions among the people.” What are “contradictions among the people?” These are problems that can all be solved by using renminbi—the people’s currency. (Laughter) This is funny, but I think he was right. That night I met with editorialists from Southern Weekend and Southern Daily. I said that in my view, Zhang Dejiang, this kind of high ranking leader within the Communist Party, is familiar with the problems China currently faces. The biggest problem is a struggle over financial interests. The fact that struggles are about financial interests and are not about power is a key reason why, in our judgment, China is currently experiencing so many mass incidents. This is the first characteristic.

The second characteristic [of rights defense activities] is that “rule awareness” is greater than “rights awareness” (PowerPoint slide) This is what this person said. Her name is Elizabeth Perry. She is a world famous political scientist. In 2007, she published an important article entitled, “The Rights Awareness of Chinese People.” She said that since 1989, Westerners all thought that China would collapse. However it has almost been twenty years and the Chinese Communist Party has still not collapsed. When Westerners see Chinese people take to the streets they are ecstatic, they say once again that the Communist Party is going to collapse. But after a few days [the Chinese people] go back. Why? She says that “we Western scholars have all misjudged the situation and there is a key reason why; we don’t understand what ordinary Chinese people are thinking. Actually, ordinary Chinese people take to the streets for different reasons than us Westerners. When Westerners take to the streets they are talking about rights; however when Chinese people take to the streets they are talking about rules.”
??
This sentence is hard to understand so let me give an example and you’ll understand. Why do Chinese people take to the streets? Ordinary Chinese people will say, “You promised to give me ten Yuan, why are you now only giving me five Yuan? You’re not honoring your word. Your law says that rural people should be having elections and that land takings should only occur if the villagers approve. So why aren’t there elections? Why are you selling our land without gaining our approval? You local governments are not doing things according to the nation’s laws.” In summary the issue is about the [government] not honoring its word. So what do Westerners say when they take to the streets? They say, “Why are you only giving us ten Yuan? According to human rights, according to natural rights, you should be giving us one hundred Yuan. Your rules [providing ten Yuan] are wrong.
??
The vast amount of ordinary Chinese people’s behavior, I classify as legal resistance. They’ll use your own laws to resist you, and won’t say the law itself is wrong. It’s very rare that an ordinary person will say that the law is wrong. The only people that say this is are us [lawyers]. If you go to the “petitioning village” in Beijing, you will discover petitioners often copy large numbers of documents. These documents most often say that local government rules contravene central government rules. No one dares challenge the central government’s rules. Elizabeth Perry thinks that this is the key to why China has not collapsed. She says that supposing there comes a day when the Chinese masses universally think that the rules are wrong, then [the government’s] political power will be in serious danger. Therefore, Elizabeth Perry says that the Communist Party should count its blessings. [China’s] people are so reasonable! [China’s] people are just saying you haven’t followed the rules; if you follow the rules, then we’ll support you. In July 2008 Elizabeth Perry invited me to Harvard University. We had discussions that lasted for one week. We wrote an article, if you’re interested you can take a look. It’s called, “China’s Political Tradition and Development—Yu Jianrong in Dialogue With Elizabeth Perry,” published in Nanfeng Chuang. Yesterday’s Southern Weekend published another exchange between myself and Elizabeth Perry. The title is called “The Vitality and Predicaments of Chinese Politics.” It discusses: where does the vitality of the Chinese Communist Party lie? How much longer can it live?

The third characteristic [of rights defense activities] is that they are more about reactions [to events] and less about moving [a cause] forward. What does this mean? It means that for problems involving ordinary Chinese people; if [the government] doesn’t mess with them, then they usually won’t dare to mess with [the government]. For example, regarding demolition, people will say: “Why are you tearing down my house; how can you tear down my house and not pay compensation?” Supposing someone clearly knew that a house demolition would have benefits, they definitely wouldn’t dare go and find [the government] and say “Why don’t you tear down my house?” This is an illustration of the principle: if [the government] doesn’t mess with them, then they won’t mess with [the government].

[To be continued]

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Author: Yu Jianrong
Source: NewSMTH.Net
Date posted by source: February 17, 2010
Date posted by this website: February 20, 2010, 7:50 PM
Number of hits: 13,033

Time: December 26, 2009
Location: Beijing Ministry of Finance, Assembly Hall

Host: Hello, everybody. In recent years because society’s resources have been allocated in an irrational manner, because of inequities in income distribution, because of the wide gap and the polarization between rich and poor, and because of a flood of corruption, etc., contradictions within society have been aggravated, conflicts have intensified, and an anti-government, anti-rich mindset has become a serious problem. Mass incidents are sparked now and then by invasions of citizens’ basic rights, such as environmental pollution, land confiscation, building demolition, business restructuring, illegal administrative acts, and unfair judicial decisions. Unfortunate incidents occurring on a large scale are happening more and more often, such as the Weng’an incident* and the Gansu Longnan incident**. These incidents have affected national security and social stability. Lawyers have also undertaken representation for many legal issues related to mass incidents. So currently, what are the characteristics of mass incidents in our nation? How should lawyers handle these mass incident cases? What issues does one have to pay attention to in the process of handling these mass incident cases? How does one protect oneself and avoid legal danger? Today we are very honored to invite Professor Yu Jianrong to give a speech entitled “Social Conflict and the Constructive Role of Lawyers.” Everyone, please welcome Professor Yu!(...)
Read the rest of Yu Jianrong: Maintaining a Baseline of Social Stability (Part I ) (1,168 words)

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Xu Youyu (???), professor and researcher at Philosophy Institute of The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), presented the following text at the seminar, from peacehall.com, translated by E. Shih. This is Part II of his talk. Part I is here:

Ideological Fantasy is Shattered by the Sound of Guns

In order to explain the severity and deep ramifications of the June 4th gunning, I would like to say that the old ideology has such a long history and such a strong, tough hold that the people would never have been free of it without the fresh blood of June Fourth. In order to demonstrate the ideology’s insidious, barely perceptible powers of osmosis, I will add boldly an observation of 1989 that will most certainly be controversial: In fact, a significant portion of the spiritual resources supporting the 1989 student movement came from the Chinese Communist Party’s ideology. The effectiveness of this ideology was destroyed in its self-massacre.

It’s not that the students did not know how serious the consequences could be for rushing out of the school gates into the streets and squares for a mass protest under Communist Party rule. That’s only one side of the story. The other side of the story is that the CCP has been indoctrinating students on campus with teachings on “May Fourth,” “January 29th,” and “the Patriotic Students Movement,” and these movements became a mobilizing spiritual force. They seeded a deep belief in the students of their own legitimacy and of justice, so that they truly believed that the connection between the values of “patriotism, democracy” and the movement was natural.

As a revolutionary party, the CCP knows well how to wield the resources of ethnic history. It incorporated “May Fourth” and “January 29th” into its own ideological system, but it did not fully understand the double-edged nature of these resources. In reality, students in the “August Ninth People’s Movement” thought of themselves as the successors of the “May Fourth” and “January 29th” spirit. During that time, I heard directly and indirectly of CCP officials passing on their past revolutionary experiences to the students. The spiritual resonance on both sides was very natural. I should also mention that, out of ideological habit, the regime for the most part endorsed the students’ “passionate patriotism” in abstract terms. This, no doubt, made the students feel that their actions were continuous with and not rebelling against the heritage of recent Chinese revolutionism. Not until the guns sounded were they shocked by the regime’s sudden about-face.

After the June Fourth suppression, the regime fabricated a theory of “liberalized intellectuals” being the grand “puppet master” behind the students’ actions: the black threads ran from Fang Lizhi to his wife Li Shuxian to student leader Wang Dan to regular students. Even if we put aside the fact that this theory is extremely far-fetched, and assume for a moment that there was such a black thread in addition to the influence of the general intellectual atmosphere of the time upon students, we could not explain why tens of thousands of students—who had passed through political background checks in order to enter college in the first place—would become “anti-party and anti-socialism.”

I remember clearly going to Tiananmen Square in May of 1989 and trying to persuade the Beijing Steel and Iron Institute (now the University of Science and Technology Beijing) students who were meditating there in protest to go back to school. I said the troops were about to enter the city, and the suppression was about to start. Two doctoral students said without a second thought, “Why would the people’s army suppress us?” The students’ naiveté and earnestness make me sigh even today.

The students were as such, and civilians were generally not far off. Beijing citizens blocked military vehicles and martial officers from entering the city, while simultaneously bringing food and drink to the troops in support of their men. When the guns were fired, the people’s first reaction was shock and hurt, followed by rage.

During the 1989 Tiananmen Incident, a student movement leader said, just before the violent suppression began, that they would use fresh blood to awaken the Chinese people. These words were unfortunately prescient. Using such methods and paying such a price to obtain an understanding of Chinese history and political reality is particularly unfortunate; but the kind-hearted Chinese people could not have woken up with a jolt if not for this cruel blow.

From Democracy to Human Rights and Legalization

The heart of the 1989 student movement’s demands was democracy, and it brought with it a strong sense of justice-seeking within the system. We can see this from the seven demands of the April 18 petition that the students sent to the standing committee of the People’s Congress. The first demand was a fair evaluation of Hu Yaobang. The second was a disavowal of the “spiritual purge” and “anti-liberalization” movements. The third was the disclosure of property records for leaders and their children. The fourth asked for the end of media censorship and a new media law. The fifth asked for increased educational funds and a salary raise for intellectuals. The sixth asked for the annulment of Beijing’s anti-demonstration rules. The seventh asked for unrestricted reporting on student activities.

This is a clear reflection of the demands for human rights and legalization that came 20 years later. We could say that “Charter 08” has distilled the demands for human rights and legalization.

To start with fundamentals, democracy and human rights are universal values that are sought after by peoples across the world. However, in China’s specific situation, democracy has actually become a familiar mainstream ideological concept. The Chinese Communist Party is a bad match for democracy, whether in terms of structural principles or in executed action; yet it has inherited the May Fourth concept of “democracy” in name. Furthermore, it successfully wielded this concept in the battle for legitimacy with the Kuomintang, using the slogan “We Want Democracy.”

To the current regime, “human rights” is a more sensitive term than “democracy,” and to Chinese people who are fighting for democracy, it is also a bolder concept. Only with that meaning in mind can we understand the scene described by Bao Zunxin in his memoire, June Fourth Behind the Scenes: an Incomplete Nirvana: On January 28, 1989, a group of intellectuals gathered at the Doule Bookstore in Beijing. Fang Lizhi made a speech calling for human rights, and the response was so quiet you could have heard a pin drop. The whole gathering fell into an awkward silence.

After 20 years, the clearest change and contrast in thought is that 20 years ago, everyone was focused on culture; and now, the focal point is on political system. The atmosphere that dominated society in the 80s was “culture fever,” and at the heart of it was “aesthetics fever.” Other hot topics—such as humanism, alienation, subjectivity and an East-West dialectic—all had metaphysical abstractness. As for the sensational political debate television series, “River Elegy,” that was even more clearly using a discourse of civilizational and cultural type—the so-called yellow civilization in contrast with the blue civilization—to analyze China’s practical choices in the real world. This situation has shown itself to have limits, and refracted the frustration. Because of censorship, the people had no choice but to turn their practical anti-authoritarian criticism into a criticism of feudalistic culture. The limitation of this approach was that the intellectual circles were stuck in a rut, discussing problems of “ultimate compassion,” and had no interest or psychological strategies for facing the large-scale changes in society. It is very clear that the intellectuals were at a total loss for strategy in 1989, whether it was in terms of thought or in terms of knowledge.

20 years later the situation is fundamentally different, because for these 20 years the core of Chinese thought has had a momentous turn: from abstraction to the concrete, from ultimate compassion to scrutiny of policy arrangements. The core of knowledge has also had a momentous turn: from a humanities spirit towards social science, from philosophy and aesthetics towards economics, law, sociology, political science, etc. The legislative demands embody the thinking of current Chinese thought apropos of future nation-building principles and policy arrangement for China. Recently, the emergence of various events in support of rights shows that the demand for human rights has deepened and become more concrete in the past 20 years.

Persisting in Logical and Gradual Change

In the 20 years from 1989 to 2009, the Chinese people have had something continuous and stubbornly unchanging: a non-violent, logical, and gradual mode of change.

Non-violent protest was the unchanging principle of the 1989 democracy movement. The identification with, advocacy of and loyalty to this principle was a special characteristic of that movement, and it was not easy to come by. In several thousand years of Chinese history, the unchanging rule was that of one tyranny replacing another. Among civilians, the idea of taking “the justice of heaven” into ones own hands was very deeply rooted, as well. As for this generation of young people, the influence of “classics” such as Mao Zedong’s “Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan” taught them that it took brains and courage to abandon their arms, to seek dialogue, and to consider compromise. This “89” generation achieved this stance as a result of the ideological tradition of self-examination and critique.

In the past 20 years, the people’s understanding of the principle of non-violence has continued to become clearer and deeper. The generation that has experienced the christening of “89” have advocated and remained loyal to this principle as they aided the base level of human rights activism. Combined with the methods of legalizing human rights, this has in recent years had a positive effect on the development and success of human rights activism, as well as China’s legalization.

After “89,” the outstanding change in China’s thought has been an abandonment of zealous revolutionary ideology. This kind of change has far-reaching ramifications for China as it moves towards modern political civilization. However, in the development of thought, another tendency has also been spawning, and that is a growing cynicism.

On top of the suppression of mass movement and the purge that quickly followed in the wake of a mass social movement, there was an encroaching get-rich-quick opportunism and trend of going private in the 1990s. This environment led many people to quickly change their mindset from one of grief and anger to one of obedience. Others, in defense of their current way of life, began advocating a certain kind of historical and life philosophy on the level of thought. Their concepts implied that a definitive rupture with the old radical ideology entailed writing off all mass protest. Some even advocated a “paycheck philosophy” in the name of “saying farewell to the revolution,” which was a philosophy of obedience and cynicism.

Clearly, abandoning radicalism is not equal to not demanding any sort of change; insisting upon a logical and gradual method is not equal to accepting the present situation in a total absence of critique and resistance. Rejecting a totalistic philosophy does not equal not taking no responsibility for society. Currently, the regime relies entirely upon lies and terror to maintain a status quo; today’s Chinese society exists in an atmosphere and ethical situation of no truth-telling and no justice-seeking. The Chinese people who experienced and inherited the spirit of “89” are strongly advocating a kind of assertive civil society consciousness, civic ethics and civic duty. They insist that everyone should say what they really think, and work diligently to change the status quo; that no one can simply accept a life of terror and alienation, and be satisfied in self-preservation and personal benefit.

From 1989 to 2009, the face and social psychology of China’s society has undergone an enormous change. Yet the standard of thought and knowledge capability of the leaders who took the political stage after “89” did not change. They did not absorb any lessons from the “89” incident; they took no direction from the process of democratization in Taiwan. By contrast, the Chinese people who experienced and inherited the spirit of “89” never stopped learning, thinking and probing. They become more mature by the day. They use their strong will to suffer through the darkness, and use the light of their thought to welcome the future.

Posted? Friday, May 15, 2009

Please also read Cui Weiping: Why Do We Need to Talk About June 4th? on CDT.

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 1989 20 years, Charter 08, Fang Lizhi, June 4th, public intellectuals, xu youyu
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