{"id":52318,"date":"2010-03-10T10:13:25","date_gmt":"2010-03-10T18:13:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/?p=52318"},"modified":"2010-03-10T15:12:13","modified_gmt":"2010-03-10T23:12:13","slug":"yu-jianrong-%e4%ba%8e%e5%bb%ba%e5%b5%98-maintaining-a-baseline-of-social-stability-part-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2010\/03\/yu-jianrong-%e4%ba%8e%e5%bb%ba%e5%b5%98-maintaining-a-baseline-of-social-stability-part-4\/","title":{"rendered":"Yu Jianrong (\u4e8e\u5efa\u5d58): Maintaining a Baseline of Social Stability (Part 4 )"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>Dr. Yu Jianrong (\u4e8e\u5efa\u5d58), chairman of the Social Issues Research Center of the Rural Development Institute of the China Academy of Social Sciences, delivered a speech entitled “Maintaining a Baseline of Social Stability” before the Beijing Lawyers Association on December 26, 2009. This is part 4 of the CDT translation, here are part 1<\/a>. part 2<\/a> and part 3<\/a>.<\/p>\n I have made a simple conclusion about workers\u2019 problems. Workers\u2019 key problem in the restructuring of state owned work units will be conflicts between workers and management.<\/p>\n 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\u2019 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\u2019 rights defense. Now there are more and more scholars who are starting to care about city residents\u2019 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\u2019 rights defense activities will increase. Everyone should pay close attention to this. The most recent case was a relatively large mass incident near Kunming\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019 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\u2019s all about the money and not about life or death. They just want money. They don\u2019t 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\u2019s 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\u2019s] 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. The second characteristic [of rights defense activities] is that \u201crule awareness\u201d is greater than \u201crights awareness\u201d (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, \u201cThe Rights Awareness of Chinese People.\u201d 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 \u201cwe Western scholars have all misjudged the situation and there is a key reason why; we don\u2019t 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.\u201d 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\u2019t mess with them, then they usually won\u2019t dare to mess with [the government]. For example, regarding demolition, people will say: \u201cWhy are you tearing down my house; how can you tear down my house and not pay compensation?\u201d Supposing someone clearly knew that a house demolition would have benefits, they definitely wouldn\u2019t dare go and find [the government] and say \u201cWhy don\u2019t you tear down my house?\u201d This is an illustration of the principle: if [the government] doesn\u2019t mess with them, then they won\u2019t mess with [the government].<\/p><\/blockquote>\n [To be continued]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dr. Yu Jianrong (\u4e8e\u5efa\u5d58), chairman of the Social Issues Research Center of the Rural Development Institute of the China Academy of Social Sciences, delivered a speech entitled “Maintaining a Baseline of Social Stability” before the Beijing Lawyers Association on December 26, 2009. This is part 4 of the CDT translation, here are part 1. part […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[100,5,38,4202],"tags":[689,15386,148,28,1587,7966,5703],"class_list":["post-52318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-society","category-the-great-divide","category-translation","tag-defending-rights","tag-forced-demolitions","tag-labor-rights","tag-public-intellectuals","tag-social-stability","tag-social-unrest","tag-yu-jianrong","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"\n
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\nI\u2019ll tell a story. In 2007, a huge problem occurred in China\u2019s 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, \u201cYou\u2019ve sold our land, so we\u2019re coming to search your home and confiscate your property.\u201d 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 \u201ccontradictions among the people.\u201d What are \u201ccontradictions among the people?\u201d These are problems that can all be solved by using renminbi\u2014the people\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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\nThis sentence is hard to understand so let me give an example and you\u2019ll understand. Why do Chinese people take to the streets? Ordinary Chinese people will say, \u201cYou promised to give me ten Yuan, why are you now only giving me five Yuan? You\u2019re 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\u2019t there elections? Why are you selling our land without gaining our approval? You local governments are not doing things according to the nation\u2019s laws.\u201d 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, \u201cWhy 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.
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\nThe vast amount of ordinary Chinese people\u2019s behavior, I classify as legal resistance. They\u2019ll use your own laws to resist you, and won\u2019t say the law itself is wrong. It\u2019s 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 \u201cpetitioning village\u201d 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\u2019s 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\u2019s] political power will be in serious danger. Therefore, Elizabeth Perry says that the Communist Party should count its blessings. [China\u2019s] people are so reasonable! [China\u2019s] people are just saying you haven\u2019t followed the rules; if you follow the rules, then we\u2019ll 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\u2019re interested you can take a look. It\u2019s called, \u201cChina\u2019s Political Tradition and Development\u2014Yu Jianrong in Dialogue With Elizabeth Perry,\u201d published in Nanfeng Chuang. Yesterday\u2019s Southern Weekend published another exchange between myself and Elizabeth Perry. The title is called \u201cThe Vitality and Predicaments of Chinese Politics.\u201d It discusses: where does the vitality of the Chinese Communist Party lie? How much longer can it live? <\/p>\n