Countries at the Crossroads 2007

China’s booming economy has become increasingly privatized and market-driven, and its urban and rural citizens have gained a significant measure of control over their economic, social, and cultural lives, but formal political life remains highly repressive and almost entirely monopolized by the CCP. There is no pretense of currently holding, nor does the regime plan to hold, regular, free, or fair elections above the village level. At a news conference on March 16, 2007, marking the conclusion of the Fifth Session of the National People’s Congress (NPC), Premier Wen Jiabao reiterated that although “we must guarantee the people’s rights to democratic election,” the nation’s priorities are “to develop our social productive forces…[and] promote social fairness and justice.”¹ In an article published on February 27, 2007, Wen estimated that the “intitial stage of socialism” said to lead to “socialist democracy” would take 100 years, and asserted that it required leadership by the CCP.²

As with other Marxist-Leninist parties, the CCP legitimizes its exclusive rule by claiming to be the vanguard of the leading forces in society. Previously this referred to the proletariat and poor peasants, but under the CCP’s current formula of “The Three Represents,” attributed to former General Secretary Jiang Zemin, the party represents the interests of the most advanced forces in society, advanced culture, and the interests of the whole people (as determined by the party, of course). “Advanced forces” is seen as code for the new entrepreneurial elite. Entrepreneurs, the former targets of the dictatorship, are now being recruited into party, and legislative and consultative bodies at all levels. However, the entry of capitalists per se into the party and state should not be seen as an inevitable step toward a multiparty system or democracy. Scholarly researchers have found no evidence that China’s new elite has any commitment to or desire for democracy.³ Indeed, many local entrepreneurs are dependent on the largely unchecked power of local chiefs, with whom relationships based on crony capitalism are forged.

Except at the level of the village (which is not a unit of the formal government) and in urban neighborhoods, there are no elections for public office.⁴ The nomination of candidates for village chief remains a tightly controlled process, and even when non–CCP members win, they are often aggressively recruited into the party or subverted in carrying out their duties. Even then, the division of labor between the elected village head—often focused on economic development—and the appointed party boss has not been clarified, and relations can be hostile. Fraud, violence, and corruption have marred many of the elections.

There are eight “democratic parties” in China, mostly left over from the pre-PRC era. In the 1980s they began to recruit new members. The main function of the parties is to “mutually supervise” the CCP, and they do not contest the limited elections that are held. Many of the parties’ members are appointed to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) at several levels, up to the national, where they conduct investigations and comment on pending legislation and other matters. The CPPCC meets at the same time as the People’s Congress. It has no power and serves primarily to co-opt well-known individuals from various sectors of society.⁵

There are closely managed elections for delegates to People’s Congresses at the local level,⁶ and some non–CCP members have stood and won, with victories reported in the media. These delegates select representatives to the next higher level of the Congress, all the way to the NPC, which is elected for a five-year term and has approximately 3,000 members. Common citizens thus have little influence over the selection of their government leaders. The process is managed in secret within the CCP, and there is no opportunity for the rotation of power among parties.

The only parts of China with a competitive multiparty system are the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macao, which Britain and Portugal returned to China under special arrangements on July 1, 1997, and December 20, 1999, respectively. On March 25, 2007, Hong Kong’s incumbent chief executive (CE), Donald Tsang, was reelected by an 800-member election committee whose members represent a range of professional and business communities, religious groups, and the local and national legislatures. He had originally been chosen in 2005 to replace the first CE, Tung Chee-hwa, who resigned before the end of his second term. Unlike his predecessor, Tsang faced an opponent in 2007, meaning at least 100 of the electors had nominated his rival. Though the outcome was never in doubt, there was an actual campaign and public debates. According to its Basic Law, Hong Kong is supposed to be moving toward universal suffrage for the election of its leaders, but Beijing has so far delayed any major expansion of voting rights.⁷

The executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the PRC government do not oversee one another. Key figures are all appointed by, and accountable to, the CCP, where ultimate power lies. The political system is designed to ensure that the CCP remains in power by holding the top positions in all organizations of state, economy, and society, or through party structures parallel to and within these organizations. The party’s Central Discipline Committee investigates and punishes wrongdoers among the membership, but these cases do not always make it to the formal legal system. Party branches monopolize the formulation of policy and appointment of personnel. That said, party control waxes and wanes, and dissent periodically emerges during meetings of the NPC. One instance of dissent arose during the recent passage of a Property Law.⁸ A draft was prepared in 2004, after years of discussion, and the law was expected to pass in 2006. But strong opposition from several corners delayed passage until March 2007. Opponents of the measure, who included intellectuals and party members, saw it, not without reason, as a stunning betrayal of the ideals they thought the CCP stood for, and argued that it sanctioned corruption and inequality. Ultimately, it passed with 97 percent of the vote, a less-than-perfect endorsement that indicated at least some ongoing disapproval.

The criteria for selection of civil servants have shifted along with the party’s priorities. When the leadership’s concerns were primarily political, demonstrated loyalty was the paramount qualification. With the change of focus to the Four Modernizations (agriculture, industry, science and technology, and national defense) since 1978, the party has sought out more technically skilled experts to join the party and staff state bureaucracies. The civil service exam was reestablished in 1994.⁹ Heads of ministries and subsidiary bureaus are almost universally CCP members, and their main commitment is to the party, or often to powerful patrons and factions within it. A major early achievement of the reforms was the introduction of a retirement system for party and state officials. This was illustrated by the requirement that Jiang Zemin retire as CCP general secretary, state president, and chairman of the Central Military Commission between 2002 and 2004, although many members of his Shanghai faction remained in their jobs for several more years.

One of the most noticeable trends in China in recent years has been the growth of the nongovernmental organization (NGO) sector, and with it the makings of civil society, despite government efforts to restrict both. The state is of two minds about NGOs and civil society more broadly. NGOs are more likely to be welcomed when they supplement the work of the state, for instance by opening orphanages, delivering care to the elderly or disabled, or providing education and other forms of welfare to the rural poor, especially girls.¹⁰ But groups face suspicion when they adopt a more investigatory and critical stance or attempt to press their cases publicly, as have NGOs dealing with HIV/AIDS, environmental crises, and migrant workers.¹¹ Many of these groups and causes attract foreign support, heightening their sensitivity.

The government’s policies toward NGOs pass through alternating periods of restriction and loosening, and the shifts are often unpredictable. In recognition of the significance of the emerging NGO sector, Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University in 1988 established an NGO Research Center to investigate the topic, propose related legislation, and make policy recommendations to the government.¹² The restrictions on NGOs are clearly motivated by the CCP’s concerns that groups in China, including foreign ones, might play the same sort of role as those in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan in fomenting Color Revolutions. Nonetheless, numerous NGOs, especially in the environmental field, operate very actively in China. Although there are no established channels by which civic organizations can participate in the policy process, they comment quite forcefully on affairs of the day through their websites and blogs. They have had some successes, such as delaying (but apparently not canceling) dam building on the Nu River in the southwest and on a sacred Tibetan lake.¹³

The exact number of NGOs is not known because registration requirements are onerous and many groups prefer to avoid contact with the authorities. The Ministry of Civil Affairs reported 346,000 registered NGOs by the end of 2006, an 8 percent increase over the previous year.¹⁴ The All-China Environmental Federation, a GONGO (government-organized NGO), acknowledged that only 23.3 percent of environmental organizations were formally registered.¹⁵

The CCP views the media as an instrument to articulate and support its policies; to mobilize, unite, and divert the people; and to manage the impressions it gives to its own citizens and the outside world.¹⁶ Although the constitution’s Article 35 guarantees free speech and freedom of the press, Article 51 warns that these cannot infringe on the “interests of the state.” This deliberately vague guideline is an obvious impediment to media freedom. The party and the state own all media in whole or in part, and they are closely regulated by the authorities. However, with the advent of market-based reforms, even state-owned outlets must compete for audience and advertisers. This is done through sensationalized stories, articles about celebrities, and some degree of investigative reporting, but not through the free presentation of alternative viewpoints.

The party and state use a variety of tactics to control the media. In many cases they rely on “prior restraints,” severely restricting the outlets that are allowed to operate and expecting journalists to practice self-censorship.¹⁷ The line between what is permitted and what is forbidden is never clear or fixed, but when the media are perceived to have crossed it, the authorities turn to various forms of overt intimidation and punishment. This may involve the use of the courts, police, or thugs; financial pressure; the closure of outlets; or the firing of individuals. For example, when Chinese reporters, including those from CCP mouthpiece People’s Daily, were interviewing relatives of people killed in a bridge collapse, they were set upon and beaten by local toughs. Foreign journalists have likewise been detained and manhandled.¹⁸

There is general agreement that the situation for journalists in China has deteriorated in recent years.¹⁹ In one well-known case in September 2004, Zhao Yan, a crusading journalist for the rights of farmers and a researcher for the New York Times, was detained for “providing state secrets to foreigners” by revealing before the official announcement that Jiang Zemin would retire.²⁰ He was exonerated of this but was subsequently sentenced to three years’ imprisonment on a fraud charge. Both of his trials were closed to the public.

Later that year, Shi Tao, an editor with the Dangdai Shang Bao (Contemporary Business News) of Changsha, Hunan, was arrested for divulging state secrets—namely, instructions from the Propaganda Department to his paper.²¹ In April 2005 Shi received a ten-year prison sentence. An additional disturbing aspect of his case was the revelation that Yahoo! Holdings (Hong Kong), a division of the U.S.-based internet company Yahoo!, had provided information about his internet protocol (IP) address to the authorities.²² Subsequently, U.S.-based internet giant Google also admitted that it had modified its Chinese search engine to block sensitive topics including the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement.²³ Ching Cheong, a Hong Kong citizen working for the Singapore-based Straits Times, was arrested as a spy in April 2005. As of December 2005, China had 32 journalists in jail, more than any other country.²⁴

The rapid growth of the internet in China, coupled with the extensive restrictions imposed on it by the authorities, is a revealing example of the contradictions currently permeating the country.²⁵ By the end of 2006, China had an estimated 144 million internet users, 23.4 percent more than the year before.²⁶ Although a visit to a typical internet café would indicate that a number of people (especially young men) use the medium primarily to play games, many Chinese surf the web in search of information about world or domestic affairs that they cannot get from official sources. They also use it to express their own opinions, with researchers at Tsinghua University predicting a total of 100 million Chinese bloggers in 2007.²⁷ The “blogosphere” may come to serve as a healthy safety valve for public debate as well as an important means of communication between the people and the state. However, the state continues its efforts to monitor, filter, and control the internet, erecting what foreigners call “The Great Firewall of China.”²⁸ Arrayed against the state’s surveillance are numerous “hacktivists,” who seek out or create ways to circumvent government controls.²⁹ In one recent example of the state’s influence, on August 22, 2007, the Internet Society of China, an offshoot of the Information Ministry, convinced at least twenty leading blog service providers to sign a “self-discipline pact,” encouraging them to register users under their real names and contact information. Reporters Without Borders condemned the pact, which Yahoo.cn and MSN.cn (a division of U.S.-based Microsoft) signed, though many bloggers did not appear to be terribly intimidated.³⁰

China’s journalists have actively protested acts of repression. For instance, in 2005 hundreds of reporters and staff at the outspoken Beijing News publicly demonstrated “against an editorial takeover by one of its parent publications, party mouthpiece Guangming Daily.”³¹ In February 2006, the top editors of Freezing Point, a weekly investigative supplement to the China Youth Daily, were removed after an article by historian Yuan Weishi criticized China’s textbooks, though the paper had skirted the limits of what was permissible since its inception in 1995. A group of retired officials and intellectuals issued a public statement protesting the paper’s closure, and a dismissed editor, Li Datong, went public with his criticisms.³² The shocking revelations of kidnapping and slavery at brick kilns in Shanxi province in the spring of 2007 prompted reflection on the responsibilities and shortcomings of the media by one of the more daring papers, Southern Metropolis Daily. Even China Daily, the official English-language paper, published a signed opinion piece stressing the need for investigative reporting.³³

Sensitive to global public opinion in the run-up to the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, the Foreign Ministry in December 2006 announced new regulations permitting foreign journalists to conduct interviews anywhere in the country without prior permission from local officials. The rules were to expire on October 17, 2008.³⁴ International human rights groups including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and Reporters Without Borders have begun to test the limits of this policy, and their disconcerting findings indicate that it has not been successfully implemented.

Many official media outlets, concerned with public opinion and frustration regarding corruption, conduct hard-hitting investigations of wrongdoing at the local level. Here again, the authorities have not clearly defined the limits of what can be revealed, the proper selection of targets, and the autonomy of reporters to pursue their own stories rather than be used by officials to expose and bring down other officials.

Limits are similarly vague for other types of artistic expression, but control has softened considerably with the advent of market-based competition.³⁵ Television now offers a wide variety of program choices, and entertainment provides a way to divert the public’s attention from politics and other sensitive topics. One television show that drew a great deal of scrutiny in 2005 was the Super Girl contest, a satellite broadcast out of Hunan that used the same format as American Idol. It became a matter of official concern not only because of the winner’s androgyny, but because millions of fans nationwide voted by cellular telephone, clearly indicating that they were willing to express their opinions in a democratic contest.

Recommendations

• China’s leaders should continue to expand and perfect village elections and experiment with township and urban elections. Institutions for positive working relations between elected officials and local party chiefs should be built.
• The leadership should continue to raise the quality of civil servants at all levels. Higher officials should regularly spend time at local levels to better understand the situation on the ground and in order to close the gap between the leadership and the people.
• Registration for civil society groups should be made easier, and the government should work to build channels for such groups to engage in public discourse with the party and state on important issues, such as the environment, corruption, and welfare. Moreover, the leadership should invite representatives of NGOs to testify before congresses or publicize their opinions in the media.
• The government should recognize the diminishing returns of its attempts to monitor the internet and encourage party and state officials to engage in competition and debate with bloggers and other internet users. Officials should not fear the expression of public opinion and diverse views.