Writers, deaths and official indifference

ZI YUE

BEIJING, China, Nov. 29

"Writers are the engineers of the human soul," said former Soviet Communist Party leader Joseph Stalin. Perhaps in recognition of this, China requires professional writers to join the Chinese Writers Association and to produce works in alignment with government policies and priorities.

According to Chinese Communist Party official Li Changchun -- whose academic background is limited, yet who dominates the ideology of the 1.3 billion Chinese people -- writers should take the opportunity after last month's 17th Party Congress to generate good work based on the spirit of that meeting. If one doesn't dance to the tune of the Chinese authorities, he or she cannot be granted the status of a writer.

Take Zhang Yihe for example. Her works are considered among the best produced since the founding of New China, yet her books are banned as "rightist" and her name is barred from official media, let alone her designation as a writer.

Another example is Gao Xingjian, the French Chinese émigré novelist, dramatist and critic who received the 2000 Nobel Prize in Literature. The Chinese government should be proud of him, but instead, the Chinese Writers Association described his win as a Western plot against China. This illustrated that to qualify as a writer in China one must keep the same political position as the Chinese Communist Party.

Another special writer that deserves mention is political commentator Liao Zusheng. He is not known for his literary works, but for his attempts to identify the murderer of his bright, outstanding and innocent only son, who died suddenly and mysteriously last July at his middle school. Since that tragedy, Liao and his family have tried every means to find out the truth of his son's questionable death.

Local authorities claim that Liao's son was to blame and took his own life. The authorities made no effort to properly handle this case; instead, they quickly burned the child's body, closed the case, and stopped Liao from receiving further information or taking further action. The family couldn't accept this.

This incident has torn Liao's family apart. Liao is no longer a writer singing the Party's main theme but has become a "dissident" because of his efforts to investigate his son's case on his own.

Liao posted the story on the Internet in an effort to interest the public and possibly discover some clues as to what happened to his son. However, all of his postings were removed by Internet supervisors, including the contents of his own blog. He wrote more than 200 letters to dozens of officials and sent them by express delivery or registered mail, questioning the murder, but received no reply.

He wrote open letters to national leaders, begging for assistance, but all in vain. Under the strong sun and heavy rain, Liao's wife wept and knelt in front of so-called public servants, appealing for justice. However, as usual, the "public servants" showed no concern.

His experiences have left a huge question in the mind of the writer Liao Zusheng: Where are those people-friendly officials described in the media? How could they be so cold and heartless in reality?

Is this a weird and complicated society? No. These are exactly the characteristics of the "post- totalitarian" society described by Vaclav Havel, former president of the Czech Republic and celebrated writer and politician. This is an absurd world in which you can get in trouble and lose not only your personal rights, but also your name, your face and your identity; all that remains is the so-called "people" or a certain "class." Havel said that those living in a post-totalitarian socialist society appear to have no worries and to enjoy a comfortable, casual and free life. But only those who survive this kind of society can truly know what a horrible and oppressive life it is, living in a world of lies.

No one will come to your rescue if you encounter unexpected disaster or injustice. For example, your home might be torn down and your family forced to relocate at the whim of some powerful figure. There is no hope for a writer such as Liao Zusheng. Even former President Liu Shaoqi and former Communist Party Secretary Zhao Ziyang could not be protected once targeted by the brutal dictatorship. The law is nothing but useless paper and there is no escape, even from death.

Havel described the ruling power in the post-totalitarian society as an inflated and anonymous bureaucracy. Far from taking responsibility, the authorities set aside their conscience and justify their deeds by some ideology that exists everywhere and rationalizes anything, no matter how divergent from the truth. Their power to manipulate, oppress and horrify, to control and confine the moral and individual life, is totally dehumanizing.

A handful of despotic rulers wield this power. It catches and swallows everyone, and absorbs all individuals. No one really possesses this power, for it actually possesses every one. It is a monster.

Now the writer Liao Zusheng has dared to challenge this monster. Some may say it's just because Liao suffers from the pain of losing his child. But let's not forget that this monster possesses the power to deprive you of your rights so that no one will help you when bad luck strikes. You could be in the position of Liao Zusheng , without hope.

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(Zi Yue is the pen name of a Beijing-based freelance writer, critic on current affairs and medical doctor. This article is edited and translated from the Chinese by UPI Asia Online; the original can be found at www.ncn.org. ©Copyright Zi Yue.)

http://www.upiasiaonline.com/Human_Rights/2007/11/29/commentary_writers_deaths_and_official_indifference/9055/

China and the Olympic Truce

MU CHUANHENG

QINGDAO, China, Nov. 26

China made a successful public relations bid for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games at the U.N. General Assembly last month by introducing the Olympic Truce Resolution, which was unanimously adopted by the assembly.

In fact, passing the resolution has become a common practice ahead of the Olympic Games; the General Assembly has passed eight such resolutions in the recent past. Chairman of the Beijing Olympic Committee Liu Qi, who is also a Politburo member of the Chinese Communist Party and the Beijing Party Secretary, introduced the resolution titled "Building a peaceful and better world through sport and the Olympic ideal." He said that the United Nations and the Olympic movement were natural allies, as the Olympic ideal coincides with the U.N. purpose to promote peace.

Liu further promoted the Games by saying, "In 282 days, the Olympic Flame, burning bright for solidarity, friendship and peace, will be lit in the main stadium of the Beijing Olympic Games. This is of great significance both to the Olympic Movement and to China, an ancient civilization with a time-honored history."

He claimed that seeds of peace, friendship and progress would be planted among the public, especially the young people. Liu also announced that a so-called Wall for Peace and Friendship would be set up at the Olympic Village where athletes and other people could sign an appeal for the observance of the Olympic Truce and promote world peace.

The Olympic Truce is actually a peace movement designed by the International Olympic Committee based on the practice of stopping all fighting during the games in ancient Greece. Starting in 1993, the IOC has introduced this concept at the United Nations, requesting that all member states observe the Olympic Truce during the period of the Olympic Games.

Since that time, each host country of the Games has submitted this resolution for the General Assembly's approval. Moreover, the 2000 U.N. Millennium Declaration called on all member states to observe the truce and facilitate human peace and reconciliation by supporting the ideals of the Olympic Games.

The humanistic concept of sports arose from three major movements of thought and culture in Europe from the 14th to the 18th century -- the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Enlightenment. These movements left behind the theocracy of the Middle Ages, which restricted free thinking, and ushered in the era of human rights, scientific understanding and prosperity.

The French educator Pierre de Coubertin (1863-1937) is recognized as the founder of the modern Olympic Games. He passionately advocated equality in competition, to break through the barriers of racial and political ideologies. Moreover, he proposed that the modern Olympic Games should be open to all countries, regions and races, and be held in every part of the world. Thus, his ideas carried the modern Olympic Games beyond the limitations of racial and political ideologies, featuring a universal view of humanity and internationalism from the very beginning.

Today's Olympic spirit remains loyal to these pure ideals and continues to promote human equality, positive participation in sports, fair competition, religious tolerance, ceasefires and peace. These are all expressed through the Olympic symbols -- the flag with five rings, the Olympic Hymn, Olympic Torch and the dove of peace -- which have become part of a "world language." In a sense, the Olympic Games movement reflects absolute protection of human rights and free personal expression.

As a result, the Games are open, all-embracing and free, allowing people of diverse cultures to interact and develop through sports. In other words, the very existence of the Games is a challenge to closed societies, autarchy and class discrimination. Furthermore, the Games defy global cultural projects dominated by political borders and ideologies. They promote a strong cohesive humanity in which there are no enemies -- a new universalism.

Nevertheless, the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games are colored by politics and ideology. China has abandoned the "world language" accepted around the globe. Instead it is showing the world, with typical "Chinese characteristics," that the spirit of Olympic Truce does not exist in Beijing. The true ideology in Beijing is that those who hold different political views from the CCP are "political enemies" and "opponents."

The theme of the Beijing Games is "One world, one dream." Its core ideas are "Green Olympics, High-Tech Olympics and People's Olympics." What Beijing would not dare to proclaim under the sun is "Human Rights Olympics."

Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee, has said, "The Beijing Olympics belong not only to all the athletes, but also to the Chinese people." But he is wrong about this. Some believe there exists a long blacklist of "opponents," which includes the names of democracy activists, religious practitioners, ethnic autonomists, etc. These people are excluded from the Beijing Games, which demonstrates that the CCP has no intention of practicing the Olympic Truce.

In addition, the authorities have recently upgraded the level of their Internet censorship and closure of Web sites. They have placed under supervision, or even arrested and detained, Internet writers who hold views different from the CCP's, including lawyers fighting to protect people's civil rights. Furthermore, many people who have attempted to appeal to higher authorities for assistance have been confined at certain locations or chased out of Beijing.

As one local official seeking reforms dared to say in a public letter to the CCP, the ruling party, which advocates a "harmonious society," must first protect the basic rights of the citizens and practice social justice. The Chinese government should promote the Olympic Truce by setting a good example and leading the trend -- starting with itself and starting today. The government should stop prosecuting dissidents, religious practitioners and civil rights activists, initiate overall political reforms including a multi-party system, realize freedom of speech and abolish the excuse of denying human rights in the interest of stability, especially during the Games.

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(Mu Chuanheng is a freelance writer and former lawyer. He has published a number of books on trade negotiations and democratic politics. He is included in the book "World Celebrities [China Vol. 2], published in Hong Kong, for his new theory of culture. This article is edited and translated from the Chinese by UPI Asia Online; the original can be found at www.ncn.org and www.chinaeweekly.com . ©Copyright Mu Chuanheng.)

http://www.upiasiaonline.com/Politics/2007/11/26/commentary_china_and_the_olympic_truce/4740/

China's lawyers denied protection

MA CHUANHENG

QINGDAO, China, Nov. 19

Exemption from prosecution for remarks made while defending accused criminals in court -- a standard protection for lawyers worldwide -- has been explicitly denied in the newly amended Chinese Lawyers Law.

Lawyers may say nothing in court deemed harmful to national security, slanderous or disturbing to the order of the court. In the future, lawyers may face prosecution over such remarks.

In reality, the law gives authorities the legal means to oppress lawyers who seek to defend people's human rights. It is regarded as a political attempt to stop courageous lawyers from defending dissidents, religious practitioners and human rights activists. The newly amended law will take effect June 1, 2008.

Chinese legal circles and academic law societies have long appealed for the court exemption right. In March 1991, the Judicial Department handed to the State Council a draft of the Lawyers Law of the People's Republic of China, which explicitly stipulated that lawyers would be immune from prosecution while legally defending the accused in criminal lawsuits. But the authorities opposed this right of exemption and it was not included in the final draft of the law.

Now the National People's Congress has gone further in amending the law to include the words "not allowed" with regard to what lawyers may say in court. This represents a real reversal of China's legal system. The law reflects a refusal to align China's laws with those of international society.

In most legal systems, lawyers cannot be detained or arrested because of remarks made in court or written documents submitted to the court on behalf of their clients. This is especially important in criminal lawsuits. This is not a special privilege granted to lawyers; it is merely a protection enabling them to carry out their responsibilities without personal legal risk.

This exemption from prosecution is designed to protect human rights. At present, the United Nations and many countries grant lawyers different degrees of immunity from prosecution; this has become a common international practice. Even in Hong Kong the law explicitly states that lawyers have no legal responsibility for slandering a third party while defending a client in court.

In China it is extremely critical to have this exemption from prosecution for lawyers, as this land has never had a proper legal system or a tradition of making laws based on human rights. Throughout the hundreds of years of feudal society, defending others has been regarded as an indecent profession. Defense lawyers were not included in the legal system of the ruling class in Chinese history. Moreover, the government never acknowledged that a defendant should have any rights at all. If a person came to trial, he or she was assumed to be a criminal. The authorities would not tolerate anyone attempting to defend an accused criminal.

This negative attitude has continued even after the New China was built by the Chinese Communist Party and the legal system was restored. Old concepts are deeply rooted in judicial practice. This makes it very risky for lawyers to do their job.

According to a 2006 report issued by Human Rights in China, an organization based in New York, the official All China Lawyers Association revealed that more than 500 Chinese lawyers had been detained or harassed up to that time. This is far from the government's promise to rule the nation by law. This reality underscores the necessity and urgency of giving Chinese lawyers the protection of exemption from prosecution while conducting their professional activities.

The provision of defense lawyers for the accused in criminal lawsuits is a significant step reflecting the progress of human civilization and ensuring judicial fairness and the protection of human rights. Fundamentally speaking, lawyers represent the confrontation and competition between the "private right" of the suspect to make his or her defense, and the "public right" of the country to prosecute the suspect.

The defense lawyers' profession is based on the principle that before being convicted and punished for a crime, suspects have the right to defend themselves or to appoint others to defend them. This universal principle is a profound lesson learned by the world after the dark Middle Ages in Europe, after the period of feudal society in China and after two world wars in which human rights were brutally violated.

Throughout China's recent "red history," contempt for human rights has brought great disaster to society. Even since the period of reforms and opening up, the "public right" of the authorities is still over weighted. Under these circumstances, it is very difficult for lawyers to confront the judicial authorities. Few lawyers are willing to speak boldly, or to defend the accused in high-risk cases. In this case, the criminal defense system is not worthy of the name.

The 17th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party has just ended, in which the CCP boasted of its objectives to "liberate thoughts and insist on reforms." But soon afterward, the Standing Committee of the NPC passed its amendment to the Lawyers Law, rejecting the universal practice of modern civilization. Where is the hope for China's legal system to progress?

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(Mu Chuanheng is a freelance writer and a former lawyer. He has published a number of books on trade negotiations and democratic politics. He is included in the book "World Celebrities [China Vol. 2], published in Hong Kong, for his new theory of culture. This article is edited and translated from the Chinese by UPI Asia Online; the original can be found at www.ncn.org. ©Copyright Mu Chuanheng.)

http://www.upiasiaonline.com/Human_Rights/2007/11/19/commentary_chinas_lawyers_denied_protection/1466/

Why China favors the death penalty

ZI YUE

BEIJING, China, Nov. 22

A panel of the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution last week calling for a moratorium on executions. China voted against the resolution, sticking to its long-held position that this matter is an internal affair to be decided by each country.

A representative of China's U.N. mission pointed out that 52 nations voted against the resolution, proving that there is no international consensus on abolishing capital punishment. The Chinese government thus questioned the effectiveness of this resolution.

However, the Chinese government should be aware that the 52 nations that voted against the resolution represent less than one-third of the 191 member states. It is a fundamental practice that the minority should follow the majority; isn't this principle recognized by the Chinese government under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party?

China often describes itself as a great nation; it is also one of the five members of the U.N. Security Council. With this kind of status and position, China should be able to lead the trend to abolish the death penalty, especially as most of the countries in the world oppose it on the grounds that it is inconsistent with universal principles of human rights.

Why then does the Chinese government favor capital punishment?

It is because the death penalty is the most effective tool by which a highly centralized government can frighten the people. The Party must therefore retain the right to deprive an individual of the right to life through judicial channels.

The Chinese government objected to the U.N. committee addressing this issue, saying this would further politicize the matter. Nevertheless, consider the fact that the CCP has killed more than 1 million people since it took power, including the period of the Cultural Revolution. Among those deaths, which one was not pursued due to political considerations?

Concerning one of China's most furious massacres, in which books were burned and scholars buried alive during the Qin Dynasty, Mao Zedong spoke with contempt of the Qin Emperor for killing fewer people than he himself had killed. Doesn't this show that the political purpose of killing is more important than the penal purpose?

The Communist Party itself arose through a process of high horror and killing. A Russian history scholar once compared the last Czar's regime with the Russian Communist regime after the October Revolution of 1917. The scholar pointed out that the regime of the Romanov Dynasty killed 894 prisoners of state within 80 years from 1826 to 1905. By comparison, he said, hundreds of thousands died for political reasons within the first month after the Bolsheviks took power.

What about the Chinese Communist Party, which killed not only its enemies but also its own people? During the Cultural Revolution, one sentence misspoken or one mistake made could result in a death sentence.

Today, application of the death sentence demonstrates the difference between a person who is inside and one who is outside the Party. The first will be treated with lenience, while the second will face strict judgment. This holds true even in cases where the accused has killed a witness to cover up the crime. A Chinese official said that cases involving capital crimes were handled with caution, under stricter standards than others to ensure a fair trial for the accused. This is impossible however.

Last year there were two prominent cases in which people hired killers to take someone's life. One involved the brother of the minister of railways, while the other concerned a rich man.

The former not only hired an assassin to kill someone, but was involved in corruption and bribery to the tune of more than 10 million yuan. Yet the judge gave him a suspended death sentence. It is expected that this brother of a high official will swagger out of prison.

The latter had committed a similar crime, hiring killers to take a life. This man cooperated with the police and offered to pay millions of yuan to compensate for the crime. However, the man and the hired killers were quickly and rashly sent to their deaths.

These two different judgments stirred much discussion on the Internet -- most of which was quickly removed by Web supervisors. In the end, that minister of railways was appointed as a member of the Party's Central Committee after the 17th Party Congress last month.

A majority of the countries in the world want to abolish the death penalty, for it cannot reduce or put an end to crimes. This is certainly true in China now.

The exact number of prisoners who are put to death each year remains a state secret. Whenever a significant holiday approaches, the government will announce many death sentences. This is to accomplish the goal of frightening potential wrongdoers. Yet social order does not improve.

Moreover, some criminals think they are going to die anyway, so they are very bold in carrying out terrible crimes. Therefore in today's China, marred by social inequality and a huge gap between rich and poor, it becomes harder and harder to maintain a so-called "harmonious society."

Why does the Chinese government favor the death sentence?

It is a means of displaying its own cruelty and unchangeable nature. In ancient times, when the rulers killed the people it revealed their failure to control the people they killed. In that case, killing was not at all a display of their power.

However, in the New China led by the CCP, the rulers kill the people and then make a lot of noise about it. They execute a prisoner and then ask the family to pay for the bullet; they seem to take satisfaction in this.

Nationally known academician He Zuoxiu has said that both living and dying are different for officials than for ordinary people in China. Even if both receive a death sentence, in the case of the official, it can be carried out by injection, keeping the body undamaged. The ordinary person will be shot in the head, and his or her organs cut out to be sold for transplants.

Facing death, equality is beyond reach. Facing life, there is no comparison.

In brief, the Chinese government favors the death penalty because it serves the needs of an autarchic government; it is the final weapon of the one-party dictatorship.

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(Zi Yue is the pen name of a Beijing-based freelance writer, critic on current affairs and medical doctor. This article is edited and translated from the Chinese by UPI Asia Online; the original can be found at www.ncn.org. ©Copyright Zi Yue.)

http://www.upiasiaonline.com/Human_Rights/2007/11/22/commentary_why_china_favors_the_death_penalty/2289/

Putting the heat on Hong Kong 'traitors'

PAUL LIN

TAIPEI, Taiwan, Nov. 15

While the movie "Lust, Caution" was being shown in theaters in late September in Hong Kong, the topic of Chinese traitors suddenly become hot in the city. A second "traitor heat wave" followed soon after. The former was about a traitor in history while the latter was about Martin Lee, a political leader in modern Hong Kong. Even some Western media reported the incident, which occurred in late October.

This "traitor" incident resulted from an article written by Martin Lee, a legislator and founding chairman of Hong Kong's Democratic Party. The article titled "China's Olympic Opportunity" was published in The Wall Street Journal in mid-October, while Lee was attending a conference in the United States.

In Lee's article, he appealed to U.S. President George W. Bush and other international leaders "to take a broader vision of the possibilities for the Beijing Games," saying they "should press for a significant improvement of basic human rights in my country, including press, assembly and religious freedoms."

Lee voiced disagreement with those who would boycott the Beijing Olympic Games, however. "As a Chinese person, I would encourage backers of these efforts to consider the positive effects Olympic exposure could still have in China," he wrote. He said he hoped "the Games could have a catalytic effect on the domestic and foreign policies of the Chinese government."

Many pro-Beijing political figures and media in Hong Kong responded to the article with furious attacks on Lee, calling him a traitor, while he was still out of the city.

After Lee's return, the attacks gained momentum. Pro-Beijing newspapers, including Hong Kong's best-selling Oriental Daily, Ming Pao and Singtao Daily, simultaneously published articles on their front pages criticizing Lee. Even the largest local English newspaper, the South China Morning Post, harshly commented that Lee's words would intensify Beijing's worries that Hong Kong is being used as a base for foreign countries to interfere with China's domestic affairs.

Apart from the media, the former and the present chairmen of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, the Chinese Communist Party's proxy political organization, both rushed into this battle. Tsang Hin-Chi, who represents Hong Kong as a Standing Committee member of the National People's Congress of China, strongly denounced Lee, saying, "Lee doesn't have the blood of a Chinese person; he is extremely crazy and hopeless, which is very deplorable." TV shows joined the attack, and even the sports sector held a campaign to "accuse traitor Lee."

Hong Kong government officials did not stay out of the fray. As a matter of fact, a short time before all this transpired, Hong Kong Chief Executive Donald Tsang was forced to apologize for his careless remark that democracy could lead to chaos like China's Cultural Revolution. Now it appears that the real Cultural Revolution style of politics has hit Hong Kong. Of course in reality the Cultural Revolution had nothing to do with democracy; this style of speech is simply the way dictators manipulate their people.

In Chinese President Hu Jintao's speech at the 17th Party Congress, he gave instructions for Party members to firmly oppose foreign powers' interference in the affairs of Hong Kong and Macau. Thus Lee has become a living target of this effort.

If the Chinese government promises foreign countries that it will respect human rights ahead of the Olympic Games, it is not colluding with foreign powers. But if a civilian makes such a request, he or she is treated as a traitor.

While Lee's Democratic Party felt dizzy from the attacks, its allies, Hong Kong's other small political parties, remained clear-minded. For example, The Frontier led by Emily Lau and the League of Social Democrats led by Raymond Wong and Leung Kwok-hung both came out to support Lee. Actually, in the past, when Emily Lau said that the Taiwanese people's freedom of choice should be respected with regard to their own future, she was also branded a "traitor" for a few months.

This is to say that the so-called "traitors" are Hong Kong's determined group of democrats, whereas the "patriots" are supporters of dictatorship and opportunists who unreasonably oppose democracy with nationalism.

The Wall Street Journal later commented that the attacks on the democrats were widely reported in Taiwan, which would further weaken Taiwanese people's confidence in "one country two systems" -- and lead to disappointment for Beijing. In other words, in order to protect Taiwan's democratic freedoms, the Taiwanese people should vote for those who pursue Taiwan's independence -- the "traitors" in the eyes of the Chinese Communist Party.

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(Paul Lin is a well-known commentator on politics and an expert on Chinese Communist Party history. He is a former editor whose columns have appeared in major newspapers in the United States, Hong Kong and Taiwan. This article is translated and edited from the Chinese by UPI Asia Online; the original can be found at www.ncn.org. ©Copyright Paul Lin.)

http://www.upiasiaonline.com/Politics/2007/11/15/commentary_putting_the_heat_on_hong_kong_traitors/5206/

Chinese Muckraking a High-Stakes Gamble

Propaganda Authorities Intervening With Increasing but Unpredictable Frequency

By Edward Cody

Washington Post Foreign Service

Monday, November 12, 2007; A12

BEIJING -- A few weeks ago, Pang Jiaoming's career as a reporter ended, just two years after it began.

The Communist Party's Central Propaganda Department and the official All-China Journalists Association issued a directive ordering Pang's employer, the China Economic Times, not only to fire him, but also to "reinforce the Marxist ideological education of its journalists." In a separate notice to news organizations across China, Pang said, propaganda officials announced that he was also banned from further work as a reporter at other publications.

Pang's offense was a pair of articles reporting that substandard coal ash was being used in construction of a showcase railroad, the $12 billion high-speed line running 500 miles between Wuhan, in Hubei province, and Guangzhou, an industrial hub just north of Hong Kong. The ash is a key ingredient in concrete used for tunnels, bridges and roadbed, Pang wrote, and a substandard mix raised the specter of collapsing structures and tragic accidents.

Pang's report, which was published on the front page, illustrated the growing desire of young Chinese reporters to push the limits of the country's draconian censorship system. In a booming and fast-transforming economy riddled with corruption, they have found a fertile field for investigative journalism, along with readers increasingly hungry to know about malfeasance that affects their lives.

But his fate also dramatized how helpless China's journalists remain under the thumb of an authoritarian government that maintains a vast propaganda bureaucracy with unquestioned power to control what is published and decide who rises and falls in the news business.

Change has begun, with visible loosening since the 1970s. But the party's propaganda mandarins have retained the power to intervene whenever they decide to do so, and in the past several years they have intervened with increasing, although unpredictable, frequency. As a result, working as a reporter in China has come to mean succumbing as a compliant propagandist or dancing along the censors' red line -- making each story a high-stakes gamble on how far to go.

"China is a heaven for investigative reporting, since it has a lot of interesting things to cover, but it is not a heaven for Chinese investigative reporters," said Zhan Jiang, journalism dean at the China Youth University for Political Sciences in Beijing.

Pang, a slight Hainan Island native with a sparse mustache and hair hanging unfashionably down the back of his neck, had an unlikely background for someone trying to play the edge. He graduated in 2005 from the China Youth University for Political Sciences, which traditionally has been a training ground for the Communist Youth League once led by President Hu Jintao.

Nevertheless, Pang gravitated swiftly toward investigative journalism, focusing on economic corruption and environmental degradation.

Money wasn't the lure; Pang said he earned about $120 a month in salary and, with the per-word payments common in Chinese journalism, was able to add another $300. But Pang decided it was the work for him. Soon after starting, he wrote about pollution in Jiangsu province. Then he took aim at pollution in Shanxi province, coal mining corruption in Hunan province and abuse of pasture lands in Inner Mongolia. In his wake were dozens of local officials angered by the disclosures.

As a result, Pang became known at the Central Propaganda Department as someone willing to cross the line. His image was further defined by a sassy blog that featured drawings of the classic see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil monkeys.

Pang's latest gamble began in June, when several letters arrived at his newspaper's Beijing headquarters. Because substandard ash was used in the mix, said a writer working on the railroad project, concrete was getting stuck in construction site funnels. After looking into the problems that substandard ash could cause and getting his editor's approval, Pang boarded a train south and launched his investigation. What he found, he said, were five factories selling ash rated below the national standard for use in concrete. Pang said he witnessed the substandard ash being loaded into trucks and mixed into concrete for use on the railroad. He had samples of the ash analyzed by two laboratories, which found it did not meet China's standards, he added.

There was a difference of about $12 a ton between the substandard ash, which contained rock and other waste, and the mandated fine ash, which comes mostly from the smoke of coal burned in power plants, Pang said. That meant a lot of money was being made from fraud, he suggested, probably at the railroad construction company as well as at the coal ash providers.

"If there was no cooperation between the railroad construction company and the sellers of the coal ash, how could all this be done?" he asked.

With its clear suggestion of corruption and safety hazards, the first article drew a swift reaction when it appeared July 4. Pang said his editors got calls from the Railway Ministry, the Central Propaganda Department and the All-China Journalists Association urging that nothing further be written on the subject.

The ministry and its Wuhan-Guangzhou Passenger Dedicated Line subsidiary issued denials, meanwhile, saying their own analyses showed that ingredients in the concrete met the standard. Undeterred, Pang published a second report July 24, offering further details from what he described as "inside sources" and repeating his allegations.

Angered by the challenge, and apparently responding to upset officials in the Railway Ministry, the Central Propaganda Department demanded to see Pang's documentation. Pang said he handed over his material as requested, but without revealing his sources. The next move by propaganda officials, he said, was to hold a meeting Aug. 27 between the newspaper editors, on one side, and on the other, railway officials, university specialists and a senior representative of the All-China Journalists Association. All of the latter condemned the stories, saying they had damaged the reputation of the railroad in China and abroad. A week later, an official ruling declared that the ash in question had been analyzed and was without problem. That was followed by the firing order.

"Our investigation showed that Pang's report was untrue and not comprehensive," said Sun Zhaohua, who attended the meeting as director of the self-discipline division at the All-China Journalists Association.

Pang said he was not surprised to see Sun join the attack on his stories. The journalists association does not represent journalists, he said, but serves as a wing of the Central Propaganda Department.

"I don't see anybody who protects us journalists," Pang said. "But maybe I can protect myself." To do so, he has continued his investigation, accumulating what he says is more scientific proof that substandard ash was used.

But aligned against Pang and his kind is a formidable propaganda bureaucracy that has been a key part of the Chinese Communist Party since the days of Mao Zedong.

Li Changchun, who guides the machinery as head of the Central Leading Group on Propaganda and Ideological Work, was just reappointed to the Politburo's Standing Committee, the apex of power in China. His deputy, Liu Yunshan, who was just reappointed to the Politburo, has since 2002 administered the Central Propaganda Department, headquartered in a new building next to the Zhongnanhai leadership compound and a few hundred yards from Tiananmen Square.

Liu's operation, with about 250 staff members, has been assigned mainly to monitor domestic information. Efforts to control, or at least influence, foreign information about China have been entrusted to the party's External Propaganda Leading Group, which merged 16 years ago with the State Council Information Office, according to David L. Shambaugh, a China specialist at George Washington University writing in the January issue of the China Journal.

In addition, the party's central bureaucracy has been replicated dozens of times in provincial and municipal offices around the country.

The New China News Agency, although an organ of the government, has been assigned a number of party propaganda officials to monitor reports from each department. The agency, ostensibly a public news purveyor, also has been tasked with writing internal government reports, providing the party and government with news the public is not allowed to see. A former editor said senior correspondents have long vied to write official reports rather than general news, hoping to get noticed by party cadres.

Pang said he was not dismayed by the odds despite his experience. His girlfriend, also from Hainan, has continued to work and bring in money, he said, adding, "Myself, I'll just have to wait and see for a while."

China's superpower dream (Part II)

MU CHUANHENG

QINGDAO, China, Nov. 12

The Chinese Communist Party dreams of superpower status for China, but has not reflected deeply on what responsibilities this would entail. Theoretically speaking, the leaders of a country are responsible to pursue and maintain national security, economic prosperity and all-round development. But a superpower's responsibility goes beyond the nation; it extends to the region or even to the world, and entails global moral obligations. After the Cold War, the United States became the only superpower and took on the obligation of being the world's policeman.

However, Chinese scholar Jiang Yong believes that the theory of a superpower's responsibilities is a double-edged sword. He thinks it would harm China's reform and development if the nation were to take on responsibilities beyond its capability. He claims that within the country, the call for China to take on superpower responsibilities is growing because some sectors, driven by self- interest, are no longer satisfied with domestic "vanity projects" and have begun to pursue global vanity projects.

This is to say that a developing country, still far from being mature, tries to present itself as a strong country. In addition, the strategy of going beyond the nation is not well coordinated. Some monopoly enterprises sing a high tune but attain low performance. They glorify their achievements and seek publicity at the expense of the national benefit. In reality, their achievements are far below expectations.

According to Jiang Yong, the call for China to take on the responsibilities of a superpower is not an objective demand from international society. Instead, he considers it the major concern of the Western countries led by the United States, which hopes to regain a certain moral stature. His article states that the U.S. call for China to take up superpower responsibilities is an inhibiting magic phrase, intended to use and control China.

"Without military or political intervention, the United States is attempting to contain China's rise through finance. It is getting more obvious that the United States is making trouble for China," says Jiang. He thinks that developed countries have failed to successfully manage the global economy; therefore they keep pointing the finger at China and asking China to take responsibility for the global economic imbalance. The United States and Britain have tried every means to push for the financial opening up of emerging markets, to make it easy for multinational capitalists to create financial turbulence and obtain wealth from the host country.

Additionally, Jiang's article is filled with criticism of China's present policies. The speed of China's financial opening is shocking to many international economists and institutes. China is opening the areas that it promised to open after entering the World Trade Organization, and even areas not included in the agreement are voluntarily opening up. As a result, more and more foreign capital is entering China, including the real estate and securities markets. The financial situation is getting unstable and financial risk is increasing dramatically.

Jiang believes that the noise about a superpower's responsibilities is humiliating to China which, he says, has always been a responsible country. The substance of his article lies in that the country should continuously strengthen its "hard power" (economic strength) in order to develop its "soft power" and finally to replace the "Washington Consensus" with a "Beijing Consensus."

The "Beijing Consensus" originates from discussions of China's development over the past 20 years, and the country's experience of gradual innovation and experimentation. As soon as this idea emerged, it generated widespread and imaginative reports in China's official media. The idea magnified China's experience of development, explaining how China, a developing country, organized itself and evaluating the applicability of China's experience to other countries in the world. Later the official media began to publicize the Beijing Consensus and demean the Washington Consensus. Some people have even described the Beijing Consensus as the soft power of China's rise.

The Washington Consensus refers to an agreement between the United States and Latin American countries. It focuses on 10 policy tools that could be useful to Latin American countries in adjusting their economies and reform. The consensus included a series of theories based on a market economy. The United States and other international economic organizations make and implement the theories through various means.

The Beijing Consensus and Washington Consensus not only are different routes for economic development, but also contain seeds of conflict between different ideologies. Zheng Yongnian, a well-known commentator, once suggested that the Beijing Consensus should not be exaggerated. He also said, "There is nothing wrong and it is necessary to summarize the experience of China's development. But if China lifts its experience up to the Beijing Consensus, or even promotes it outwardly like the Washington Consensus, it will be a huge mistake."

According to Zheng Yongnian, China had similar lessons in the past. During the Mao Zedong era, China tried very hard to promote communism to the third world, which resulted in resistance and animosity from some countries, especially in Southeast Asia. Jiang has used his article to resist the idea that a superpower has unique responsibilities, and then waved the flag of the Beijing Consensus, which seems to repeat the history of failure and promote the idea of "neo-resistance."

It has not been rare for China to speak out against the United States and other Western countries in recent years. What's interesting this time is that right before the 17th Party Congress last month, the Chinese government expressed such a strong opposing view toward the idea of cooperation between superpowers, carried on the main page of its major media. This is very unusual and raises concerns as to what will be the Communist Party's approach to foreign policy after the 17th Congress.

--

(Mu Chuanheng is a freelance writer and a former lawyer. He has published a number of books on trade negotiations and democratic politics. He is included in the book "World Celebrities [China Vol. 2] published in Hong Kong for his new theory of culture. This article is edited and translated from the Chinese by UPI Asia Online; the original can be found at www.ncn.org. ©Copyright Mu Chuanheng.)

http://www.upiasiaonline.com/Politics/2007/11/12/commentary_chinas_superpower_dream_part_ii/9078/

China's superpower dream (Part I)

MU CHUANHENG

QINGDAO, China, Nov. 9

Chinese scholar Jiang Yong has claimed that the hidden purpose behind international calls for China to take up the responsibilities of a superpower is to increase China's development risks and slow China's rise. Jiang holds that this effort to impose superpower responsibilities on China is an attempt by the United States to use and control China. The article goes on to explain the dual U.S. policy of engaging and containing China.

These points were made in a recent article titled "Challenge of a Superpower's Responsibilities" by Jiang, who is director of the Center for Economic Security Studies at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations in Beijing. The institute has a strong government background, and the article was published in the latest issue of the official magazine "Outlook Weekly."

Jiang Yong recommends that "hiding one's capacities and biding one's time" should remain China's basic and long-term foreign policy. He stresses that China should take on only those responsibilities that suit it; in other words, Beijing should selectively take up global duties without assuming the all-round responsibilities of a superpower. This suggests Jiang is critical of China's foreign policy in the past two years, and the government's proclaimed accomplishments.

On the other hand, the author also reveals an ambition to replace the "Washington Consensus" on fiscal responsibility with a "Beijing Consensus." This shows his mixed feelings -- wanting China to have the status of a superpower without accepting the corresponding responsibilities.

Soon after the article was published it was posted on major government Web sites including Xinhua.net. It appeared the media had been instructed to promote this article.

Zheng Bijian, former executive vice principal of the Central Party School and director general of the critical think tank China Reform Forum, published an article related to President Hu Jintao's visit to the United States last year. The article, titled "The Direction of the Chinese Communist Party in the 21st Century," was an attack on China's political leftists.

Zheng claimed that economic globalization was what made possible China's peaceful rise. He said China therefore had no intention of challenging the existing international order or taking a violent approach to break it. He concluded by saying that the core principle of China's domestic and foreign policy was to seek peace with foreign countries and harmony within the country, and to achieve reconciliation with Taiwan.

Discussions on the rise of a superpower have become popular not only in international society but also in China in recent years. Last year the state-run China Central Television launched a 12-episode large-scale documentary called "The Rise of the Great Powers," which drew tremendous response from viewers. Recently, CCTV launched another documentary by the same production team, called "Road of Revival." This documentary is more left-leaning than the first, and filled with "red nostalgia."

In fact, Chinese people have long dreamed of attaining superpower status, though the dream keeps transforming. Since early last century China longed to rid itself of Western influence; later it desired to surpass Japan. After the Chinese Communist Party took power it boasted that it would catch up with Britain and the United States within 15 years. Later, during the Cold War, China wanted to play a role in the power struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Then, when the Cold War ended, the United States stood as the lone superpower. Professor Niu Jun from Beijing University published an article in "Global Times" stating that China's dream to become a superpower referred to its desire to attain the same international stature and influence as the United States. Therefore, since the late 1980s, China's foreign policy strategy and goal has been to stand firmly on the international political stage and build its image as a responsible superpower.

However, China's ability to become a real superpower is restricted by the following three factors:

First, China's territory is not yet unified. The Taiwan issue has long been a major concern for the Chinese Communist Party. If this issue is handled unwisely it could lead to foreign intervention. Besides, there are many other hidden troubles in China's border areas.

Secondly, as the domestic economy develops serious social problems have appeared, owing to the lack of protections provided by a democratic system. These include corruption, conflicts between the government and citizens and a huge gap between rich and poor. Pressure from the huge numbers of poor people could lead to social breakdown at any time.

Thirdly, international society and surrounding countries have always been cautious and suspicious of Red China. Although China today enjoys rapid growth in its economy, foreign trade, foreign investment and official foreign reserves, its per capita income ranks 110th in the world. It is equal to only 4 percent of U.S. per capita income, 5 percent of Japan's and 10 percent of South Korea's. According to international standards, which put the poverty line at less than US$1 income per day, there are 135 million Chinese people living under the poverty line. This accounts for 10.4 percent of the country's population and 18 percent of the world's 750 million impoverished people.

These three factors reveal the limits of China's ability to attain superpower status. Nevertheless, in recent years China's economy has developed phenomenally and its international influence has increased. Hence its desire to become a superpower has also expanded. It is therefore natural for international society to expect China to take on greater superpower responsibilities.

(To be continued)

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(Mu Chuanheng is a freelance writer and a former lawyer. He has published a number of books on trade negotiations and democratic politics. He is included in the book "World Celebrities [China Vol. 2]" published in Hong Kong for his new theory of culture. This article is edited and translated from the Chinese by UPI Asia Online; the original can be found at www.ncn.org. ©Copyright Mu Chuanheng.)

http://www.upiasiaonline.com/Politics/2007/11/09/commentary_chinas_superpower_dream_part_i/9498/

Burmese blood is the U.N.'s shame

HU SHAOJIANG

CAMBRIDGE, Nov. 5

September's street demonstrations in Burma were the country's largest public demonstrations in 20 years. Unlike previous actions, the main protestors were the monks and nuns who are supposed to live quietly in monasteries. Their peaceful protests lasted more than a week, but finally ended in brutal suppression by the Burmese military government, as expected.

Although the government blocked communications between Burma and the outside world, and reported only a small number of civilian casualties, we could see from photos and videotapes sent overseas or posted online that hundreds of demonstrators disappeared. Many of them have most likely been killed.

Peaceful protest is the people's right. In today's world there are only a few totalitarian countries that ban their people from this means of political expression. Burma is among these countries; so is its neighbor, China.

Actually it is the totalitarian Chinese government that is supporting its counterpart in Burma. In fact, back in January, several democratic countries submitted a proposal that the United Nations pressure the military government in Burma to stop political repression. However, China and Russia, as permanent members of the Security Council, vetoed the proposal.

On the eve of the crackdown against monks and civilians in September, a number of countries had proposed a U.N. resolution calling for restraint in Burma, to prevent a repeat of the brutal suppression that occurred in Burma 19 years ago. But again China's opposition put the proposal on the shelf. With the support of big brother China, the Burmese military leaders were especially violent in suppressing the protests.

The United Nations accomplished nothing toward protecting the legal rights of Burma's citizens, once again revealing its incapability in dealing with major international affairs. As a matter of fact, since the United Nations was founded it has almost never played a decisive role in major international issues.

The only exception was in the early 1950s when the United Nations discussed whether or not to fight against the North Korean regime led by Kim Il Sung, which had invaded South Korea. Because the former Soviet Union made a wrong decision and did not attend the meeting, the United Nations had a good opportunity to exercise justice.

During the Cold War period, there was no understanding and no forgiveness among the superpowers. The United Nations didn't have the chance to work even in a superficial function as a rubber stamp. This situation hasn't really improved substantially even now that the Cold War is over.

In the 1980s, the Chinese government openly used tanks and guns to attack peaceful protesters, who held no weapons at all. The United Nations only watched and did nothing. The United Nations again did nothing when the Serbian army massacred an entire race of people in Kosovo in the 1990s. It did nothing during the racial massacres in Rwanda and Sudan. The United Nations just looked on with folded arms in innumerable situations.

The major reason why the United Nations could not take effective action in human crises caused by totalitarian regimes is that among the permanent members of the Security Council there are nations allied with the totalitarian regimes, and they have veto power. Moreover, with the support and indulgence of their totalitarian big brother, some rogue nations have tried to create chaos within the United Nations. As a result, the United Nations has become a place where justice is not supported, while totalitarianism is protected.

Take Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe's leadership, for example. After nearly 30 years of his rule, the country has changed from the richest in Africa to a poor country where people lead miserable lives under brutal suppression. Nevertheless, this country was allowed to sit on the former U.N. Commission on Human Rights, which sullied human rights under the name of the United Nations.

Even more ridiculous is that the United Nations is financially dependent on membership fees paid by democratic countries. The current situation at the United Nations is that democratic countries pay to allow totalitarian regimes to wreak havoc on the international stage.

In fact, "equality among countries" is not equivalent to "equality among governments." If we let totalitarian governments enjoy the same rights as democratic ones that are elected by their citizens' free choice, it is humiliating to people who are deprived of their rights under totalitarian governments.

In my opinion, if a country violently suppresses its people's right to participate in political affairs, that country's right to speak and participate in international affairs should be taken away. Unless this problem is solved, the United Nations cannot effectively implement justice in key international affairs.

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(Hu Shaojiang is director of the China Research Center at the University of Cambridge in Britain. He is also an active commentator in overseas media on China affairs. This article is edited and translated from the Chinese by UPI Asia Online; the original can be found at www.ncn.org ©Copyright Hu Shaojiang.)

http://www.upiasiaonline.com/politics/2007/11/05/commentary_burmese_blood_is_the_uns_shame/

No Citizens, No Democracy: China's Would-Be Citizens

Liu Junning

A communist society is characterized by comradeship, whereas a democratic society is characterized by citizenship. If we define a citizen as a person who has the right and freedom to vote, to associate, to participate, and to publish, there are virtually no citizens in today’s China. China has been ruled by the Chinese Communist Party for almost six decades, and is the only large country in the world that is not a democracy. A comrade is a symbol of communist totalitarianism. In contrast, a citizen is a symbol of liberal democracy. There cannot be democracy without citizen participation.

The simplest way to decide if a system is democratic is to determine whether or not there are citizens as defined above in the society. If such citizens can be found in the society, then it can be deemed a democracy. If comrades are found in the society, then it is a communist society. In a communist society, the term “comrade” connotes loyal, faithful and trusted followers of communism, who unquestioningly obey party orders and subscribe to party policies. (p. 5) In brief, a comrade is one who is willing to forgo his or her rights. A citizen is a one who asserts and enjoys his or her rights. In contemporary China, the term “comrade” is still the dominant form of official address for communist party members.

But is China moving in the direction of democracy? How can we discover whether or not a transition to democracy in China has begun? As a leading scholar who has devoted her career to looking for "seeds of democracy" in contemporary China, Merle Goldman, professor emerita of Chinese history at Boston University and associate of the John K. Fairbank Center for East Asian Research at Harvard University, attempts to answer these interesting questions in her Comrade to Citizen: The Struggle for Political Rights in China. Goldman does this by examining those individuals in China who want to be democratic citizens and following their cases and their struggles for citizenship in the society. As the title suggests, From Comrade to Citizen explores the growing civil society and the process of supplanting comradeship by a democratic sense of citizenship and rights. The book traces the development of movements that have questioned China's political structure and have attempted to guarantee those rights that are theoretically enshrined in the Chinese constitution.

Based on her close and professional examination, Merle Goldman presents a very stimulating discussion of the growing struggles of the Chinese people over the last 20 years for democracy and political rights. In this book, Goldman rightly characterizes democratic transition as the march toward citizenship, and she reports on how a number of Chinese intellectuals and a growing number of ordinary people have cast off their roles of comrades to begin to act as citizens and how the efforts of such individuals and groups have attempted to assert political rights in today’s China. The author shows how the struggle for freedom by establishment intellectuals has begun to spread to workers and peasants. Goldman obviously sympathizes with the struggles of these various activists and organizers of associations. In the meanwhile, she is well aware of the limitations that a Leninist party can impose on society: “For semi-autonomous and even autonomous groups to survive in China in the last decades of the 20th century, they had to be explicitly apolitical … without any laws to protect them and without the backing of a broad social base or a civil society … politically independent groups could not function openly for very long” (p. 67).

According to Professor Goldman, the process of democratization in China is almost identical to the transition from comradeship to citizenship, because the replacement of comradeship by citizenship is a major prerequisite for the establishment of a democratic political system. Democracy depends on the desire of organized citizens to participate in the political process, to hold the political authority accountable for its actions, and to improve the public good. (p. 233) Obviously, China is a not a democracy. But the transition from totalitarianism began after the ruling party adopted its reform and open-door policy in 1978. This has resulted in an expanding public space and the beginnings of civil society. As the author notes, there is a growing sense of rights consciousness, particularly of political rights, articulated by intellectuals and spreading to the population in general – workers, peasants, the growing middle class, and religious believers. (p. 2)

The author considers pro-democratic intellectuals both within and outside of the establishment as pioneers in asserting and defending their political rights and therefore acting as citizens. These intellectuals have contributed significantly to the expanding public space for civil society and to creating a new consciousness of citizenship. Some brave intellectuals within the establishment who have broken away from party patronage openly criticize government policies and the totalitarian political system. Intellectuals outside the party structures publish independent critiques and form independent groups, even calling for the end to communist rule in China and for the establishment of a democratic political system. Despite the party’s repeated attempts to suppress those efforts, awareness about political rights has been spreading among the general population. Furthermore, in recent years, the forces of Chinese pluralization and human rights have largely outgrown their intelligentsia-based roots and spread to a myriad of groups (not only those mentioned above, but also environmentalists, health-care advocates, feminists, gay activists, and the vendors featured on the cover of this volume).

As the author sees it, at the turn of the century the pace of political change in China accelerated in terms of the variety of political strategies used by establishment and disestablished intellectuals. They adopted a more activist approach, through the independent publishing of books, engagement in ideological debates, writing petitions, holding demonstrations, and mobilizing groups. At times, they joined with and drew members of other social groups into their political activities. Most of these intellectuals came to believe that it was necessary to educate in order to establish democratic institutions. The widespread demonstrations by different sectors of the Chinese population—workers, farmers, pensioners, migrant laborers, religious believers, and urban and rural residents—protesting environmental pollution, loss of health care and pensions, and the confiscation of their homes and land for modern development—that exploded all over China in the 1990s and accelerated in the early twenty-first century revealed an increasing popular awareness of the right to associate and organize in order to gain one’s due, whether to unpaid wages, pensions, medical care, compensation for one’s property, less official corruption, lower rural tax burdens, clean air and water, or freedom of religious worship.

With a sharp eye, the author detects a very important development which she describes as “citizenship extends into cyberspace despite repression” (Chapter 7). She is correct that China’s embrace of the new communications technologies in the mid-1990s facilitated independent political discourse and organization of political activities (p.186). Because the Internet did not exist during most of the period of the third wave of democratization, it is therefore not considered by democratization scholars. Various reviews of Goldman’s book have neglected her important emphasis on the contribution of the Internet to the democratization process. And there have been further developments since the publication of this book. Not only are there more young and urban Internet users, but also there are new functions and terrains that can be used to speed up the formation of citizenship and to promote the transition to democracy. Take the blog as an example. China now has almost 40 million bloggers, and this number is increasing at a pace of 50,000 new bloggers daily. There is in China now what I call a Republic of the Blog. Every blogger is a citizen of a blog republic. They post journals to express their opinions about public affairs and associate with other blog groups to organize bloggers of common interest. In a word, bloggers are now acting as citizens. I hope that Goldman will follow this important development in her future research.

At the same time, Goldman is fully aware of the rocky road ahead for China’s transition to democracy, because “China’s growing urban middle class in the last decades of the 20th century had not yet become independent.… The role of China’s emerging middle class … was fragmented” (pp. 14–15). And, later, “most of China’s growing business and professional communities in the late 20th century were co-opted into the official establishment” (p. 228). The institutional guarantees of citizenship, such as freedom of expression and association, an independent judiciary, an elected legislature, and a multiparty system, do not yet exist in China. The difficulties of establishing such institutions are due not only to the continuing communist rule, but also due to the fact that the emerging urban middle class in China is not independent and powerful enough to bring about such institutions.

As a post-totalitarian society, China has changed a lot. Even the form of address “comrade” has adopted new meanings. In daily slang, it has become a euphemism for homosexuals. In the official language, if someone is said to be a “comrade,” it still means that he or she is a loyal communist. But if someone is said to be a “comrade” in a bar in Beijing, the meaning is entirely different. This kind of linguistic change suggests that the communist zeitgeist of comradeship has been fading and giving way for the rise of citizenship in China. No doubt, this is good news for China’s transition to democracy.

As a scholar deeply committed to liberal democracy, Professor Goldman is not only interested in seeking “facts,” she is not value-neutral. She never disguises her sympathy and concern for the Chinese people’s struggle for political rights and democracy. Her book is a “must read” for anyone who wants to understand China’s contemporary transition to democracy.

From Comrade to Citizen: The Struggle for Political Rights in China, by Merle Goldman. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005. xiv + 286 pp. US$39.95 (Hardcover).

Journal of Democracy

October 2007, Volume 18, Number 4

http://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/toc/tococt07.html

China's serious social schisms (Part 2)

FU GUOYONG

HANGZHOU, Oct. 29

People at the bottom of Chinese society do not naturally possess moral superiority. They are also declining along with the corrupt elite. The purity and kind-heartedness of Chinese culture, cultivated for hundreds of years, is passing away.

Sun Yat-sen, considered the father of the Republic of China, once sighed that the Chinese people were like scattered sand, not united. Now it is more likely that the rich people in China -- such as the real estate dealers -- can unite together. Government officials are in some ways in accord with each other too. Out of common interest they can stay together and speak the same words.

By contrast, people at the bottom in China have become completely become pulverized. What is worse is that a new phenomenon of "people eating people" has appeared. If this continues to spread it will be disastrous.

In the first half of this year, media were full of the sensational news that illegal brick kilns in Shanxi province were using children as slave labor. Actually there have been similar cases in other places too. Recently an illegal kiln was discovered within the jurisdiction of Beijing. The contractor was accused of denying his workers personal freedom, withholding their salaries, beating them and forcing them to work long hours. He had paid 300 yuan (US$40) for each worker. They had been tricked into coming there from different places.

Why is similar mistreatment of people found at illegal kilns in different places? We can see that they all have contractors who directly carry out evil deeds and play the role of "eating others." Someone has calculated carefully that if a contractor is honest and not cheating the workers, he will have very little profit left after paying the contractor's fee. Contractors themselves actually also belong to the bottom of society. At first, they strive to survive. Later, during the process of acquiring benefits, they go beyond the bottom line of humanity. They then become ruthless and exploit the workers to the maximum level, which is typical of "people eating people."

Unlike people in the upper class, those at the bottom of society do not have the legal right to harm others. To make their lives better, they can only harm those who are also at the bottom, or at most in the middle class.

By contrast, people in the upper class own their armor. Their security is guaranteed before the basic social order goes out of control. The "people eating people" phenomenon of the bottom class is against civilized society, and is an inauspicious sign. If it becomes more serious, the result will be even worse than that of the self-indulgent "Xi Menqing" style and the fawning "pet" trend in upper-class society.

People living on Chinese soil who have not yet lost their normal judgment can easily conclude that China has fallen to its lowest moral point in history. All the bottom lines have been broken through; people can do anything without fear. They are not afraid of punishment from God, and do not worry that God is actually watching them.

There is no future for such a place, filled with the indulgent rich, the fawning, marginalized middle class and the lowly "people who eat people." Although we cannot say that all evils are caused by politics, politics certainly play a decisive role. Early in the 18th century, French Enlightenment thinker Jean Jacques Rousseau noted that everything is the result of politics. A nation's outlook is totally decided by its political nature, he said.

Under such circumstances, people in power should do something to change all this. They should not put maintaining their authority as their top priority. Before political change takes place, at least those conscientious people belonging to the rich class in China should stand up and take some responsibility to reverse this moral degradation, change the self-indulgent lifestyle and try to rebuild the people's moral standards and values. They should take action to build new models for society.

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(Fu Guoyong is an independent writer and civil scholar. His articles on modern China have been widely published within and outside the country. His special interest is the history of public opinion over the past 100 years and issues related to China's intellectuals. This article is edited and translated from the Chinese by UPI Asia Online; the original may be found at http://fuguoyong.vip.bokee.com. ©Copyright Fu Guoyong.)

http://www.upiasiaonline.com/society_culture/2007/10/29/commentary_chinas_serious_social_schisms_part_2/

China's serious social schisms (Part 1)

FU GUOYONG

HANGZHOU, Oct. 26

The discrepancy between rich and poor and serious social injustice are among the major issues facing China today. In fact, we could say the country is divided into three Chinas at present.

The first is the rich China, which consists of officials at different levels, who enjoy privileges and who suddenly became wealthy as a result of the opening-up policy. They hold most of the economic and social resources, can afford to buy the best things in the world, and enjoy a life of high luxury.

The second is the middle-class China, which is made up of ordinary civil servants, most intellectuals, white-collar workers in companies and owners of some small and medium-sized enterprises. They possess houses or apartments, have decent jobs, and do not need to worry about what to eat or wear. They can easily live a good life as long as they work.

The third sector of China, the bottom China, includes a huge proportion of the population. These people cannot live a good life no matter how hard they work. Those at the bottom of the social order strongly resent the rich, while the dissolute members of high society ignore and disdain the bottom sector. Meanwhile, the middle-class sector is not really developing, is very dependent on the other two, and cannot play a balancing role in society.

These three Chinas are separate from one another, and the gaps between them will increase as time goes by and social injustice increases. China's Gini coefficient has long passed the warning line; thus problems can occur at any time. Many of the rich people hold foreign passports. It is very common for them to send their children and transfer their money overseas. They have perfect plans; even if disaster strikes someday they need not worry, for they have a safe place to go while leaving a ruined and empty China behind.

A survey published by global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company shows that the number of rich people in China is increasing rapidly. The number of people with an annual income of over US$50,000 is increasing by 15 percent each year. The total number of people in that group is over 1.5 million now. And these statistics definitely do not include the invisible income of officials.

The image of the rich group is not good in the eyes of the general public. In August, China Youth Daily conducted a survey with Sina.com. They asked people to choose the words that best describe China's rich people. A total of 7,916 people responded; the top three words they chose were luxurious, greedy and corrupt.

Some say that China's rich people are following the lifestyle of Xi Menqing (a character in a classical novel who represents luxury and sexual indulgence). In times of rampant corruption, after accumulating huge amounts of illegal wealth, it seems natural for the rich to pursue sexual and sensual satisfaction. Rich people live for and act according to their instincts. Their ideal lifestyle is to live and die following their desires.

The professional morals of officials have come under serious discussion in the media. It can be said that the last G-string has been pulled off, and there is no need to be shy or to hide any more. For those who are rich and powerful and belong to the rich China sector, it is actually strange not to have mistresses. Their tacit value criterion has probably became "the more mistresses, the more glory." But having more people like the character Xi Menqing means that the rich and powerful actually feel empty inside. They lack hope or a sense of security; that's why they grasp at every indulgence.

Every society has its moral criteria. When one set of criteria loses effect, another set will replace it. The Xi Menqing lifestyle results in moral degeneration and a reversal of values. Instinct, desire and personal benefit become the only rules dominating people's lives. People pursue things without shame and live in luxury. This lifestyle releases the worst elements within human beings and allows them to spread beyond control.

Another current phenomenon is the "pet" trend. Many stars and intellectuals are willing to become the pets of the rich and powerful. Once they become "super pets," receiving grace from those in political power, they will be adored by the media and admired and followed by the ignorant public. This is their green light to fame and glory.

This trend is the result of high political pressure. The long period of political oppression has distorted many people's mentality. People try by every means to adapt themselves to their environment. As time goes by, the pet mentality seems to get into their genes. These people are like animals without bones. All they can do is be obedient and sing the praises of their owners.

(To be continued)

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(Fu Guoyong is an independent writer and civil scholar. His articles on modern China have been widely published within and outside the country. His special interest is the history of public opinion over the past 100 years and issues related to China's intellectuals. This article is edited and translated from the Chinese by UPI Asia Online; the original may be found at http://fuguoyong.vip.bokee.com. ©Copyright Fu Guoyong.)

http://www.upiasiaonline.com/society_culture/2007/10/26/commentary_chinas_serious_social_schisms_part_1/