Beitarie: [...I]n the absence of judicial oversight, popular vote or free press, what is the mechanism the Chinese model suggests to alert the rulers of being wrong about what they regard as national interests?

Li: [...]Many would agree that the Chinese government seems to have developed the ability to “feel the pulse” of the nation and adjust its politics in response to it while keeping it largely in alignment with the country’s long-term interests.

[...]On the other hand, the records of electoral regimes around the world indicate that party rotation through elections may not provide the needed flexibility or self-correction. In the United States, elections may have produced new presidents and Congressional majorities, but do not seem to have done much to tackle America’s long-term challenges. In Europe, governments regularly get voted in and out, but no elections have produced even the minimal corrections required to address their monumental distress. In the one-prime-minster-per-year Japan, elections and party rotations have failed to lift the country out of its 20-year stagnation. [...]

Beitarie: [...O]ne feature you have described of the Chinese model was that of allowing fairly wide personal freedoms, but not participation in governing. To what extent can the two really be distinguished? When people have demands from their government regarding their basic living conditions[...], does this fall under personal freedoms or political organization? In many cases in China (events in Wukan village of Guangdong being a recent and much cited example) people find that coming together and making their demands heard as a group is an effective way to get what they want. Does the Chinese model as you see it object to that?[...]

Li: Far from objecting to people’s demands related to their living conditions the Chinese government has proved deftly competent in responding to and co-opting such demands, considering the scale of the challenge brought about by Chinese society’s rapid change. This actually further enhances the moral authority of the central government. One interesting thing to observe was the highest banner held by the Wukan protestors read: Long Live the Chinese Communist Party. Indeed the leader of the protest movement whom later was elected village chief is a long serving member of the Party.

Li, who describes himself as a Shanghai venture capitalist (which carries a bit of irony, as I will attempt to demonstrate), is a well known apologist of authoritarianism[...]. In the most recent interview he engages in a bit of facile Confucius-citing, so I figured that brought his arguments into the general ambit of this blog.  As you might guess, I disagree with him fundamentally.

Li’s general project is to construct a kind of Chinese exceptionalism, to show that, whether in the political or economic or cultural realms, China is sui generis and, as the second title above suggests, superior to others.  As an American I am quite familiar with exceptionalist type arguments and, anticipating the Chinese nationalist critique that this post is likely to inspire, I state here that I also reject claims of American exceptionalism.  Whether American or Chinese or French or whatever, exceptionalist arguments are generally historically flawed, deeply flawed, and, bascially, intellectually uninteresting.

[...]

To be clear: Confucianism is a valuable philosophy.  We all can learn from it; we all should learn from it.  I teach it to my students. I think about ways it applies to my own life.  But it is precisely because I take it seriously that I reject its association with the Chinese Communist Party.  Were Confucius alive today he would reject much of what occurs in Chinese politics and economics.

© josh rudolph for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: eric x. li, ideology, public intellectuals
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Of course, one is unlikely to find the discussion of such sensitive issues in most official publications (although some media outlets affiliated with official publications have been particularly adventurous in carrying articles on these topics in the past few months). The range of issues is wide and diverse. Despite disagreement among participants in this incipient post-1989 Chinese intellectual renaissance, the discussion is fast converging on three critical issues. First, there appears to be a widely shared consensus among China’s thinking class that the country’s economic reform is either dead or mired in stagnation. Second, those who believe that economic reform is dead or stuck argue that only political reform, specifically the kind that reduces the power of the state and makes the government accountable to its people, will resuscitate economic reform (some advocate for more radical, democratizing changes, although the consensus on this particular point has yet to emerge). Third, the status quo, which can be characterized as a sclerotic authoritarian crony-capitalist order, isn’t sustainable and, without a fundamental shift in direction, a crisis is inevitable.

Such signs of an intellectual awakening are worth noting for many reasons. Its timing is certainly significant. Many people would connect this development with China’s pending leadership transition. In China, as in most other countries, pending changes in leadership usually stimulate discussions among the intelligentsia about the future of the country and the accomplishments or failures of the departing leadership. Chinese intellectuals, mostly liberals, may want to seize this once-in-a-decade opportunity to reignite a debate on whether the existing political system serves the country’s long-term needs of economic development, social justice, and national unity.

Another, perhaps more important reason, is that more than two decades after the Tiananmen crackdown (and after Deng Xiaoping famously admonished his colleagues there should be “no arguing,” essentially ending the ideological debate among the ruling elites over whether post-Mao China was embracing capitalism), members of China’s thinking class have come to realize that the post-Tiananmen consensus, which might be characterized as giving economic reform and development a chance to solve China’s political problems (one-party rule and poor governance), has basically broken down. In other words, the post-Tiananmen model, all but intellectually bankrupt, provides no useful guidance in the coming decades.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 1989 protests, dissent, Minxin Pei, public intellectuals
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

[...S]peculating about Bo’s downfall or future is less productive than understanding the two ideological forces that form the political context in which the Bo incident could be at risk of becoming a perfect storm. So far, neither has gained dominance. But if one of them should occupy the center stage of Chinese politics, the consequences for China and the world would be disastrous.

Two extreme ideological forces have been dismayed by China’s tremendous achievements since Deng Xiaoping launched his reform. On one side are the leftists who believe China has lost its socialist way in its head-long pursuit of market economics and want the nation to go back to its past of a completely state-owned economy and dogmatic Leninist rule. On the other side are the liberals who just cannot live with the fact that China is succeeding without multi-party elections and a Bill of Rights. The noises they are amplifying seem, at the moment, to be deflecting our attention from the extraordinary progress China has gained in the last three decades and the underlying consensus that made it possible[...]

For prior coverage of China’s ideological poles, see Cake Theory: Ideological Divisions and the Future of the CCP via CDT.

© josh rudolph for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Bo Xilai, CCP, eric x. li, ideology, public intellectuals
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Clearly a provocateur, Li champions Chinese exceptionalism and is likely viewed by some critics as a cheerleader for the Chinese government. Yet having observed his live discussions and op-eds, what strikes me is his thoroughly western style of discourse and his ability to prod, irrespective of how disagreeable or flawed one finds his arguments. All of which is to say that he seems to have adopted the traits of a rising public intellectual, on who is Chinese but is also highly capable of communicating ideas to the “West,” unlike the pro forma statements that the Chinese foreign ministry regularly recycles.

This is a rarity in China, which may explain why Li’s path here was such an unusual one. He is a Chinese returnee (he is a Stanford MBA) who was schooled in American pedagogy to engage an American audience. Indeed, Li has a long roster of credentials, with his successful venture Chengwei Capital available to help fund his varied intellectual and education endeavors. For instance, he founded the Equinox (Chunqiu) Institute, a research shop; sits on the board of governors at the Keck Center of Claremont Mckenna and the board of directors at the China-Europe business school; reportedly serves as an adviser to the Carnegie Endowment; and founded the Dulwich College system in China.

With his hands across the private sector and intellectual realms, I suspect we will hear more from Li, as he pitches a “Chinese idea” to a western audience.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: eric x. li, public intellectuals
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

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.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ilham Tohti, public intellectuals, Uighurs
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

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.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: democracy, political reform, public intellectuals, Yu Keping
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

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.

© Paulina Hartono for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: public intellectuals, Tibet
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

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.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: public intellectuals
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

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.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: democracy, new left, public intellectuals, Wang Hui
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

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]

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: defending rights, forced evictions, labor rights, public intellectuals, social stability, social unrest, Yu Jianrong
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall