In this contradiction—between Singles Day and illegal tweets, between needing the middle class to sustain the Party’s rule, and punishing the middle class for passing jokes around—lies the Communist Party’s essential problem. For years, the Party, and many observers abroad, believed that the middle class would be the Party’s greatest ally, that it had gained so much during the boom years that it would never risk the trappings of prosperity for fuzzy notions of political freedom. It was an idea that reached all the way back to the ancient sage Mencius, who declared that “Those who have property are also inclined to preserve social stability.” In modern China, that turned into the belief that the middle class would become the xiaofei qianwei, zhengzhi houwei: “the consumer avant-garde and political rear guard.”

[…] The arrest of Zhai Xiaobing, which has inspired a petition calling for his release, stirred a particular kind of dread among China’s self-made liberals because it reached into the privileged domain beyond the Great Firewall, the electronic dinner table where members of China’s new knowledge class were supposed to be able to joke freely, as long as they kept shopping. Day by day, it seems, the Party is confronting the fact that prosperity alone—the politics of goods—is no match for the politics of information.

Yasheng Huang questioned the nature of the link between stability and prosperity in a recent essay at Foreign Policy, featured on CDT earlier this week. “Some analysts believe that the Chinese people tolerate corruption in exchange for fast growth,” he wrote. “This is a bit like saying that New Yorkers tolerated Hurricane Sandy. Fast growth maintains a façade of stability not because it has secured tacit complicity from the Chinese people, but because it has funded the instruments of repression.”

The petition for @stariver can be found here.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 18th party congress, CCP, consumer class, consumerism, Evan Osnos, Great Firewall, mencius, middle class, singles day, social stability, stability, Twitter, Yasheng Huang
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

The slowdown in the Chinese economy is producing an unexpected reduction in violence and social conflict, a senior Chinese security official says.

Falling land prices and fewer transactions have reduced the number of forced land appropriations, which had accounted for an estimated two-thirds of the 187,000 “mass incidents” reported for 2010.

[…] He pointed to a reduction in land disputes, which he credited in part to a shift in official focus away from economic growth and also a less confrontational approach to resolving social disputes.

[…] The head of the China program at the Carter Centre, Liu Yawei, said a possible downgrading of the security portfolio at the upcoming 18th Party Congress could help reduce the role of force in dealing with social conflict.

Garnaut cites a recent report by Amnesty International, covered last week on CDT, which gives the central government some credit for combatting land seizures. Also last week, however, Caixin reported that the land sales that fuel forcible evictions have strongly rebounded recently, following a slow first half of 2012.

See more on land disputes in China via CDT.

© Mengyu Dong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: forced demolitions, forced evictions, land disputes, land grab protests, stability, stability maintenance, stability preservation
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

A pro-Tibet protester tries to take the Olympic torch, Paris 2008. (Yang Zhen Dong)

This week’s featured directive, issued in April 2008 by the Heilongjiang Province information portal, shows the power of “guidance” (引导) over protest in China. At that time, the Olympic torch relay was plagued at every stop by human rights groups and Tibet independence supporters. After a wheelchair-bound torchbearer was attacked in Paris, netizens called for a boycott of the French hypermarket Carrefour. “The biggest shareholder of Carrefour donated huge money to the Dalai Lama,” fumed the netizen demanding the boycott, “and even the French president has announced boycott of the Beijing Olympics.”

The directive below instructs provincial websites on how to direct online discussion of the boycott. Read the original Chinese here:

On-duty staff at the Internet propaganda office: Each website in every locality must adopt measures concerning netizens boycotting Carrefour and related propaganda management prompts to properly tamp down online discussion and prevent a loss of control from influencing domestic stability. Prepare your reports, guidance and management according to the following requirements:

(1) Give protection to the patriotic fervor of netizens who support the Olympics, who oppose “Tibet independence” and who denounce Western media’s distorted reporting and insults to China. Direct the discussion at the Dalai clique’s secessionist forces, as well as the vile material produced by CNN and a small number of other Western media.

(2) Comprehensively and nimbly guide netizen discussion of boycotting Carrefour and French products in a logical direction. Direct netizens’ patriotic fervor such that you fulfill your duties and the Olympics are successfully launched. Each website in every locality must organize commentaries to carry out guidance, but they should be limited in number and not stray in focus. After a related article is posted, please send the link to the domestic affairs work inbox of the Internet Research Center.

(3) Websites will not report specific “boycott activities” in any locality, will not exaggerate “escalating boycott activities” and the like and will not report “opposition to the ‘boycott’” or similar extreme speech or activities. Do not republish this type of reporting from traditional media; a lock-down on online publication of this type of material goes into effect from now until May 15.

(4) Comments and posts calling for seizing this opportunity to incite demonstrations, marches, assemblies, “group walks,” “group shopping” and other group activity must be deleted without exception. Comments and posts which ceaselessly negate and criticize the patriotic fervor of netizens, echo or support foreign anti-Chinese forces, or which cause trouble, add oil to the fire, create conflict among netizens and oppose [the voices we are supporting] must be deleted without exception. All those in charge of information portals and the 13 city portal websites which have already been notified will execute these instructions. They will also conduct thorough searches of all Heilongjiang information portals and delete related information; they will together delete one post calling for boycotts and five related comments. (April 18, 2008)

Since directives are sometimes communicated orally to journalists and editors, who then leak them online, the wording published here may not be exact. The original publication date is noted after the directives; the date given may indicate when the directive was leaked, rather than when it was issued. CDT does its utmost to verify dates and wording, but also takes precautions to protect the source.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 2008 Beijing Olympics, Boycott, Boycott Carrefour, carrefour, censorship, Censorship Vault, cnn, Dalai Lama, Directives from the Ministry of Truth, France, Heilongjiang, Internet censorship, media censorship, Ministry of Truth, netizens, Paris, patriotism, propaganda, protest, stability, Tibet
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

3. You emphasize that our people are intelligent, hardworking, courageous and good, the most excellent people on earth. How then do you explain that this most excellent population, having passed through 5,000 years of corrupt history and then having subsequently lived through 50 years under the most advanced and ideal system replacing [the old corrupt system], are still of such low character that they aren’t suited to the most basic democratic rights?

14. You have publicized that, “Revolution is guiltless, and revolt is rational.” But now you emphasize that “stability is the overriding priority,” afraid of the wind even stirring the grass. In this era of peace, how is it that you work along contrary lines?

20. You say that the Party was established for the people, that [the Party] is single-minded in serving the people, but the expenses of the Party are from the national treasury and the people don’t have the right to ask questions about them. Why is that?

James McGregor, meanwhile, has re-posted a column he wrote for The Wall Street Journal after the 1989 elections, in which he argued that democracy was Taiwan’s best defence against China:

As is usual in Taiwan, the average citizens are way ahead of their government. Voters interviewed during the campaign and since the voting say they were seeking to establish a two-party system. Their foremost concerns are stability and furthering the island’s economic development while solving the problems of horrible pollution, a soaring crime rate, rampant financial speculation and an antiquated infrastructure that provides a quality of life that is far from commensurate with the citizenry’s $7,200 per-capita income.

Voters here seem to realize something else that has yet to dawn on this island’s politicians: A functioning democracy can provide Taiwan with an effective poison-pill defense against China. If Taiwan can develop full democracy in the next few years, China has good reason to keep the island at arm’s length. The last thing China’s rulers want is to absorb an island where people are accustomed to speaking their minds and electing their government representatives.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chinese democracy, democracy, stability, Taiwan elections
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

In China, an extramarital love interest who comes between a happy couple is known pejoratively as “Little Three.” The expression appears in a joke about three kindergartners who want to play house.

“I’ll be the daddy,” the boy says.

“I’ll be the mommy,” one girl says.

Another girl frowns: “I guess I’ll have to be Little Three.”

If the law, the grievance process and stability maintenance were ever to play house, I think we’d see the following exchange:

“I’m the daddy,” Stability Maintenance says.

“I’m the mommy,” Grievance Process says.

The Law pouts. “Well, I’m Little Three.”

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: corruption, grievance system, judicial action, petitions, stability, Wukan
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

“Leaders at a higher level of local government summoned me for talks. They said they would come to the village as they know I will not leave. But I told them that until they release Xue’s body, and the four other villagers held in custody, and to give back our land, there can be no talks,” said village representative Lin Zuluan.

The Telegraph also noted that for the first time since the siege began last week, villagers prepared to take their grievances outside of Wukan in a march on the nearby administrative town of Lufeng:

During another day of protests and marches, Wukan village representative Lin Zulian addressed a crowd of more than 6,000, pledging to fight with their lives against the corrupt system which has robbed them of their coastal land and of their village leader, Xue Jinbo.

“We give the local government and police five days to hand back Xue’s body. If not, we shall climb over our barricades and march on the [Lufeng] town hall to try and get his remains,” said Mr Lin.

…

On Saturday the villagers staged a practice march around the small maze of streets after another emotional rally, the sixth in as many days, which included a memorial for Xue.

Another village representative, Yang Semao, confirmed the villagers’ resolve to march on Wednesday and not back down if their demands continue to go unanswered. He told Reuters that they do not believe the government would respond to their march with an armed crackdown:

“Parents can’t harm their children,” he told Reuters. “The central government should use Wukan as an example to solve all the land grab disputes.

“If they don’t meet our requests, the country will be in danger. The rich-poor gap has been widening. Look at how our land has been taken by corrupt officials.”

The local authorities strengthened the armed blockade around Wukan late last week, and continue to try and starve the villagers into defecting (some have already done so), though residents have managed to smuggle supplies into the village and The New York Times observed that shops appear fully stocked. And despite whispers of an impending crackdown, The Financial Times reported Sunday that villagers had formed their own administration to govern themselves completely outside of the state’s control:

Villagers pitch in and are assigned tasks by the temporary village committee that has replaced the Communist officials who fled after being accused of corruption and misrule three months ago.

Some guard the village perimeter, alert for any sign of a crackdown, while others organize food and logistics or coordinate the mass rallies that have become a daily occurrence since one of the village leaders died in police custody on December 11.

More and more members of the foreign media have made their way into Wukan since last week, and a makeshift foreign media center has been established. The Financial Times posted a video from within Wukan, the latest in a series of overviews put online by the foreign press, which includes interviews with “openly defiant” villagers. Tom Lasseter, the Beijing Bureau Chief for McClatchy Newspapers who evaded the roadblock and has been Tweeting and reporting from within Wukan since last Thursday, posted a photo of a notice distributed by the villagers urging the members of the media to use positive reports and stressing that “we are not in revolt, we support the Communist Party.” His report on Sunday speculated how long the villagers could push forward and maintain their enthusiam with no sign of real compromise from the ousted authorities.

The China Media Project observed that while a search today for “Wukan” in a database of Chinese-language newspapers returned zero results from mainland publications (of which about 200+ would be captured by the database in question), offshore Chinese-language press has covered the event and information has still crept past mainland censors and into the Chinese blogosphere:

While there seems to be no mainstream media coverage inside China today of the Wukan story, news is flittering across domestic microblogs. Searches for “Wukan” remain blocked on Sina Weibo, bringing up a notice that results cannot be shown “according to Chinese laws and regulations.”

…

However, searches for “Shanwei,” which were blocked late last week, are now freed up and reveal plenty of chatter about the situation in Wukan Village, for which a number of new keywords have cropped up, including “W-kan” (W坎), which uses the English letter “W” with the second character in the village’s name, and “Wu-K” (乌K), which combines the character for “wu” with the English letter “K.” Another term being used is the simple “WK.”

The images of armed police surrounding the roadways and waterways into Wukan exemplify the largescale buildup of China’s domestic public security infrastructure under Hu Jintao, a trend which may be one of his ”most far-reaching yet contested legacies,” according to Reuters:

“When we look back, the defining feature of Hu Jintao’s era will be stability preservation. That will be the term through which his era is remembered. It will be his legacy,” said Cui Weiping, a 55-year-old dissident-writer in Beijing, who lives monitored by a team of security police — another part of the security drive.

“Stability preservation is the party’s defensive response to a society that is growing more fluid and assertive,” said Cui.

“But the system can’t keep up with social change and public demands. That’s why they’re so anxious despite all the security spending,” she said, adding that she herself has become a prisoner to this push.

“Somebody controls my cell phone, my computer and Internet, when I can step outside and when I must stay in,” Cui said.

Elizabeth Economy writes for The Council on Foreign Relations that the incident has done little to aid Guangdong Party Secretary Wang Yang’s desire, as conveyed by the Chinese state media earlier this year, to “balance maintaining stability and basic rights while helping people to express their needs”:

Eventually the siege will end but the fundamental challenge to Beijing will not. Every year, despite the country’s impressive economic growth, the number of protests grows. By one estimate, Beijing now contends with 180,000 so-called “mass incidents”. The why of these protests is no mystery: the lack of the rule of law, transparency, and official accountability. These are the structural elements that define the country’s political system and allow corruption to flourish. In the Wukan case, the villagers are protesting corruption in both land sales and the electoral process. Whether the protests are over these issues or the environment or defective products, the root cause is the same.

Beijing’s take away from the Wukan protest probably won’t be much more than “It’s time to launch another [ineffective] anti-corruption campaign.” The real take away, however, is that it is time to listen to what Premier Wen Jiabao had to say a few months ago in Dalian: “We must govern the country by law… We need to uphold judicial justice…People’s democratic rights and interests prescribed in the Constitution must be protected. The most important ones are the right to vote and to stay informed about, participate in, and oversee government affairs.” Put more bluntly, if the 5th generation* of Party leaders doesn’t listen to Wen and seize the initiative on political reform, it is looking more and more likely that the Chinese people will.

Sources:

- “Wukan siege: rebel Chinese villagers reject resolution talks” from The Telegraph

- “China’s rebel villagers in Wukan threaten to march on government offices” from The Telegraph

- “Chinese rebel villagers vow march to press complaints” from Reuters

- “Chinese Protesters Seek Return of Villager’s Body” from The New York Times

- “Wukan villagers form own administration” from The Financial Times

- “Defiant mood in village that shook China” from The Financial Times

- “Between jubilation and foreboding in Wukan, China” from McClatchy Newspapers via The Miami Herald

- “Chinese-language coverage of Wukan” from The China Media Project

- “Insight: In China, security drive sows own seeds of unrest” from Reuters

- “Occupy Wukan: China’s 99 Percent” from The Council on Foreign Relations

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: CCP, democracy, Guangdong, Hu Jintao, land grabs, Lufeng, mass incidents, microblogs, protests, public security, stability, Wang Yang, Wen Jiabao, Wukan, Xue Jinbo
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Though Jiang did not clarify which developments pointed to expanded state power, he said Taiwan’s major political reforms in 1986 are a noteworthy example for how China should carry out reforms, while creating checks on the government. That year, Taiwan shifted its single-party system to a multi-party democracy, while also removing state controls over the press.

He also viewed the prioritization of “Stability Overrides Everything Else”—a Deng Xiaoping quote oft-repeated by officials in recent years to describe China’s economic and political direction—as going hand-in-hand with expanded state power. As long as political power is of the utmost importance to the Communist Party, he said, it will never implement real reform ….

Another sociologist at the gathering, Tsinghua University Professor Li Dun, said reform in China has reached a standstill. It is a sign that the central government has too much power, he said, when there are all sorts of people who want to revert back to socialism, or to the Cultural Revolution times, and or who advocate militarism for the sake of unification.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Cultural Revolution, Deng Xiaoping, dictatorship, Jiang Ping, socialism, stability, Taiwan democracy
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

I have long advocated that the ruling party reflect on the concept of “stability suppresses all else” (稳定压倒一切) [or "stability is the overriding priority"]. This concept was raised by Deng Xiaoping at a very particular moment for our country. At the same time, Deng Xiaoping also said that, “Reform is the overriding priority,” and that, “Development is the overriding priority.” But now we have overlooked every other problem because “stability is the overriding priority.” For the sake of stability, we sacrifice the livelihood of the people; for the sake of stability, some local areas even pull the Cultural Revolution-style method of parading offenders through the streets out [of an earlier chapter in our history]; for the sake of stability, we do not shrink from the abuse of police powers.

So what has “stability suppresses all else” actually suppressed in this time of ours? It has suppressed the livelihood of the people, suppressed human rights, suppressed rule of law, suppressed reform. But stability preservation has not suppressed corruption, nor has it suppressed mining tragedies, nor has it suppressed illegal property demolitions and seizures.

See also ‘The Machinery of Stability Preservation‘, ‘Saving Face in Beijing: Regional Policemen Sent to Intercept Petitioners‘ and ‘For Light, For Time: Visiting Chen Guangcheng‘, via CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Deng Xiaoping, rule of law, stability, Yu Jianrong
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Feeling heavy in the dead of the night we came to the agreement that no matter what, we would not raise our fists in retaliation. If they beat us, we’d bear the beating. If they beat us too much, we’d run. If we couldn’t run, we’d leave it up to fate. Some people accuse us of doing all this for show, but at the time, we really did prepare ourselves, prepared to bleed, prepared to suffer pain. We just wanted to verify what it takes in this country, at this time, to visit an imprisoned “free man.” But it was not until the end that we learned the outcome and truly understood the distance spanning between us and Chen Guangcheng. It was exactly like as Enchao said: The longest distance in the world was from the gate of his village to his house.

It was October 15th, 2011. It was an ordinary day. Four fat men and a woman arrived in an unfamiliar city. In the deep of the night, the woman slept. The two fat men sleeping in another room snored loudly, threatening to wake the whole city. Another fat man snored in a different room, mumbling in his sleep and occasionally grinding his teeth. The fourth fat man couldn’t sleep. He sat on the toilet and smoked a cigarette, mindlessly flipped through a book. In a village near these five people, a group of guards surrounded a door, their eyes watched a single room.

In that room sits a blind man. He has been tortured for his activism. He sits in darkness and yet he struggles to find light for the rest of us. On this tranquil night, I hoped that he was having a good dream, a dream filled with color, a dream filled with light and the memories of home.

At Global Voices Online, Andy Yee explores Chen’s house arrest as a manifestation of China’s colossal stability maintenance machinery. He cites and translates numerous arguments from Chinese commentators, including the following from Xiao Han, of the China University of Politics and Law:

In the stability maintenance system, the more sensational the situation, the better it is for executors of stability maintenance. This brings power as well as economic benefits. In ancient China, there is a strategy of keeping the mobs close in order to strengthen oneself. Generals will not destroy bandits immediately, but will keep them alive in a fight-and-release tactic in order to keep asking for resources from the top. The stability maintenance system exhibits similar characteristics. In the Chen Guangcheng case, the Linyi authority not only beats up Chen and his family, it also kidnaps and detains visitors. This not only serves as an intimidation to Chen’s supporters, but is also a way to create tension in order to legitimize its violence. This can help them gain supports and power from the top. However, as all this is too outrageous, it leads to a condemnation from the pubic and waves of fearless visits. This results in a slight improvement in Chen’s situation, but visitors are still subject to harsh treatments. From the point of view of stability maintenance, the local government has already achieved its evil aim: to exaggerate the seriousness of the situation. Although the superiors of the Linyi authority know that this is a bad consequence of the stability maintenance system and its specific implementation, they are already tied to the same vested interests and can by no means display “weakness” towards Chen.

See also Caijing magazine’s description, translated by the Dui Hua Foundation, of China’s machinery of stability preservation, via CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chen Guangcheng, film industry, linyi, local officials, Murong Xuecun, security guards, stability, Xiao Han
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

For all its glitter and shimmer, the China model has some clear faultlines that are responsible for China’s many social and political problems. For example, without accountability, the authoritarian state’s ability to make quick decisions has often come with high economic and environmental costs, leading to irrational and distorted investment, waste of resources and environmental deterioration. In addition, without an opposition party to keep watch on privileged state officials, a combination of authoritarian politics and the market economy has produced corrupt crony capitalism (权贵资本主义) in which power and money are closely connected. Acting to protect and enrich specific interests, the state has come to infringe upon ordinary people’s rights. Arbitrary land acquisitions are prevalent and workers have to endure long hours and unsafe conditions, causing discontent within society.

China now has one of the most unequal income distributions in the world, with a Gini coefficient of 0.50 in 2009, even higher than the United States, at 0.46. This alarming inequality has come as China has dismantled its social welfare structures, leaving hundreds of millions of people with minimal or no provision of healthcare, unemployment insurance, and other social services. These growing gaps are at the root of social unrest, that threatens political stability, an accepted pre-condition for economic development. Coercive force has been deployed with increasing frequency to suppress popular unrest. This year, the financial cost of ‘maintaining stability’ (维稳) is estimated to have outstripped the size of the defence budget. The dramatically rising costs of maintaining internal control have raised questions about the sustainability of the China model, which is based on the wrong assumption that economic growth trumps all else. If the government takes care of economic growth the assumption is, people will be willing to give up all moral and other demands.

See also: Is the ‘China Model’ Failing? via CDT. The China Model was a recurring theme in The Economist’s recent Special Report on China.

Source: The China model and the authoritarian state – East Asia Forum

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: China model, corruption, environmental degradation, healthcare, income gap, land grabs, stability, unemployment, United States, welfare, working conditions
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

The Party’s legacy was described as an unqualified success, a faultless saga of national progress. “All of the accomplishments we have made over the past 90 years are the result of the tenacity and continued struggle of the Chinese Communist Party along with the people. The first generation of central Party leaders of which Mao Zedong was the core led the whole Party, the whole people and the various nationalities of the entire nation in achieving the great victory of the new-democratic revolution, building the basic system of socialism, and setting down the basic political conditions and institutional foundations for all development and progress in China today.”

While emphasizing that Hu Jintao’s speech yesterday can be seen as one of “his most important political declarations ahead of the 18th Party Congress [in 2012],” China Media Project Director Qian Gang (钱钢) said the speech was “completely stable and safe, even lethargic,” and gave every indication that Hu Jintao and China’s current crop of leaders have no intention of taking bolder action, particularly on political reform, to deal with problems currently facing China. Overall, Qian Gang said, the speech suggests that Hu Jintao is “in a situation where he doesn’t dare move forward but doesn’t dare move backward either.”

There is every suggestion in yesterday’s speech that Hu Jintao will maintain the status quo through the remainder of his term in office, and will have a hard time making any concerted move.

The full text of the speech can be found here in English.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: ccp 90 years, Hu Jintao, leadership, stability
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Zhang said that many petitioners are persuaded to renounce their complaints on their first visit to Beijing, but are then arrested as soon as they get home, which gives them a new determination to make their grievances heard in Beijing.

“I promised them that they wouldn’t be detained if they went home…However, they were arrested the moment they got back,” Zhang said regretfully. The situation is often beyond his control – local officials believe that petitioners blacken their reputation and damage their career prospects.

Another difficulty facing interceptors is that new local officials regularly refuse to clear up the mess left by their predecessors. Zhang has helped reached settlements with petitioners on behalf of his home region, only to see the government there renege on those agreements when new officials are appointed. As a result, men like Zhang lose petitioners’ respect.

Throughout Wu’s 20-year career maintaining social stability, he says that petitioners have had two gripes: state-owned enterprise reform and land seizure. They come from various industries electricity, tobacco, water, and even the army, but they all been deprived of the livelihood.

See also The Dui Hua Foundation’s recent translation on China’s “Machinery of Stability Preservation“, of which the booming interception industry is one facet:

Security companies set out clear and detailed fees for intercepting, detaining, and transporting petitioners on behalf of local governments: 200 to 400 yuan per person for stability control and 200 to 400 yuan per person for restraining measures. Fees for transport vary according to the method of transport, the number of individuals to be transported, and the distance involved ….

Local governments’ fear of petitioning has led to a huge stability-preservation “market” that includes capital liaison offices, security contracts, and “payoffs” and results in all types of rent-seekers, brokers, and thugs out foraging for themselves. Appetites whetted by the favors that can be had in this rent-seeking arena, the capital liaison offices, security companies, and petitioning officials all [seek ways to] protect and expand the “stability-preservation pie.” As this “market” continues to grow, even things that have nothing to do with “stability preservation” can be categorized as “stability preservation” in order to “collect more rents.”

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Beijing, local officials, petitioners, stability
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Despotic rulers stay in power by rewarding a small group of loyal supporters, often composed of key military officers, senior civil servants and family members or clansmen. A central responsibility of these loyalists is to suppress opposition to the regime. But they only carry out this messy, unpleasant task if they are well rewarded. Autocrats therefore need to ensure a continuing flow of benefits to their cronies.

If the dictator’s backers refuse to suppress mass uprisings or if they defect to a rival, then he is in real trouble. That is why successful autocrats reward their cronies first, and the people last. As long as their cronies are assured of reliable access to lavish benefits, protest will be severely suppressed. Once the masses suspect that crony loyalty is faltering, there is an opportunity for successful revolt. Three types of rulers are especially susceptible to desertion by their backers: new, decrepit and bankrupt leaders.

From The Useless Tree:

This sentence is especially important: “That is why successful autocrats reward their cronies first, and the people last.” It brings a rather famous passage from Mencius to mind:

Mencius said: “The people are the most precious of all things. Next come the gods of soil and grain. The sovereign matters least.” (14.14/7B.14)

Indeed, throughout the book that bears his name, Mencius is constantly presented as challenging rulers to share their wealth with the people, to ensure that economic inequalities do not grow too onerous, and to limit their personal consumption, as well as that of their families and immediate political supporters, all in the interest in preserving “the most precious of all things.” We can read this as a kind of socio-economic welfarism but, as De Mesquita and Smith suggest, it also has profound political implications. If taken seriously, and actually implemented, serving the people would limit an autocrats capacity to pay off the military, the bureaucracy and other key political supporters. From the Menican point of view, a ruler has to be willing to weaken his own political base, in order to create the conditions for longer term political stability, on the belief that when people can see that their material conditions are improving they will continue to support the leader who has contributed to their prosperity.

For a glaring contrast with this Mencian approach, see The Dui Hua Foundation’s detailed description of China’s current stability management machinery.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: civil service, inequality, mass protests, mencius, military, stability
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

[The] detailed portrait of this structure as it exists at both the central and local levels leads into a trenchant analysis of China’s paradoxical pursuit of stability and a look at how that structure actually undermines that effort. Their conclusion—that the only escape from this paradox is to accelerate the pace of political and judicial reform—is a clear articulation of an aspiration that is gathering momentum in China but that will still have to overcome much resistance if it is to be realized.

Local governments’ fear of petitioning has led to a huge stability-preservation “market” that includes capital liaison offices, security contracts, and “payoffs” and results in all types of rent-seekers, brokers, and thugs out foraging for themselves. Appetites whetted by the favors that can be had in this rent-seeking arena, the capital liaison offices, security companies, and petitioning officials all [seek ways to] protect and expand the “stability-preservation pie.” As this “market” continues to grow, even things that have nothing to do with “stability preservation” can be categorized as “stability preservation” in order to “collect more rents ….”

Ying Xing believes that, on the one hand, petitioning highlights the need for stability, unity, and order and demands that conflicts remain at the grassroots level. On the other hand, as a way for the central government to check [the activity] of local grassroots government, petitioning also encourages the “rightful resistance” of petitioners under certain circumstances. These two conflicting goals put petitioning in a paradoxical situation in which it is difficult to justify itself: on the one hand the central government retains the petitioning system because it wants a path whereby the masses can oversee local [government]; on the other hand, it calls on local governments to strictly control petitioning and “nip sources of instability in the bud” at the local level so as not to negatively impact the work of the central government. With “obstruction” foremost and no effort made to open up new paths to resolve conflicts, whenever there are destabilizing incidents like collective petitioning, local governments are forced to resort to extraordinary measures.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: local officials, petitioners, rule of law, stability, Sun Liping, Tsinghua University
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Originally, I had planned to celebrate this in the traditional fashion, with a barrage of upbeat statistics about readership and jovial promises about more exciting things coming down the pipeline. I still could, I suppose, but it just doesn’t feel like the time.

All day I’ve been ruminating on the story of Qian Mingqi and what it means for China’s future. I can’t say I’m particularly optimistic.

I believe it’s fair to say at this point that things are objectively worse in China than they were a year ago for most people. The economy may be growing, but so are prices, and salaries generally aren’t. Local governments’ budgets are so dependent now on profits from land deals that, combined with the wave of infrastructure being developed, more people than ever are being forced out of their homes, and many of them are unhappy about the terms of compensation ….

Most Chinese would, as I would, back away from actually endorsing the final, violent actions of Qian Mingqi or Yang Jia. But the fact that both figures have received such widespread sympathy is evidence that many, perhaps most Chinese people can relate to them and their stories. They may not agree with what Qian did, but they can understand how he got to that point. This is a decidedly bad sign.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: bomb, inflation, Jiangxi, land compensation, stability, Yang Jia
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall