WASHINGTON, D.C.–China with its fast growing economy over the last three decades has made a little progress in loosening its authoritarian structure, according to a new assessment by Freedom House.
One of the more hopeful signs is that urban dwellers and even farmers are becoming aware of their rights guaranteed in China's constitution and now are boldly and stubbornly demanding them. While there has been little eroding of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)'s tight grip, its monopoly of power is being challenged from a number of directions.
In its annual report on "Countries at the Crossroads," Freedom House singled out China for a special symposium, held September 25th on such topics as government accountability, media independence, unjustified imprisonment, independent judiciary, corruption, and government transparency. The lively discussion took place at the Madison Hotel in Washington, D.C.
China: Unprecedented Challenges
"China is vibrant, undisciplined, and rollicking, yet simultaneously arbitrary, polluted, and oppressive," is a sentence in the report that may best describe the dynamic situation in today's China.
The report's author, Thomas Gold, said that toward the end of 1978, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) began to make the People's Republic of China (PRC) into a market-based and globally integrated economy, but had no intention of relinquishing its control. Gold was in China in 1979 and he observed that there were no fixed rules in making the changeover from Mao's China except that the leadership of the CCP was stamped everywhere.
"The Party must lead everything," Gold said you would hear over and over again.
At the same time, the regime began improvising big time. The CCP invited China's new entrepreneurs to join the party and thereby become part of "the vanguard," lending this class a political legitimacy as "an advanced social force," said Gold, who is Associate Dean of International Studies, University of California (Berkeley). Laws protecting private property were passed which was a big turn around for a socialist state.
There has been an expansion in certain areas, such as decisions regarding career, education, residence, and marriage. Yet, the "political life remains highly repressive and almost entirely monopolized by the CCP." Hence, the contradictions of a market economy with communist values and oversight make it so that "as with many things in China, the boundaries of what is permissible are arbitrary and constantly shifting," says Gold.
An example of a person who is caught between the old and the new is a worker in one of the many state-owned enterprises (SOE), who likely, said Gold, does not appreciate the individualism contained in the entrepreneur spirit.
Gold explained that the decision for reform in the late 1970s makes the CCP always having to improvise "as fast as it can to keep the economy growing and material living standards rising. In this way, it hopes to buy off discontent stemming from the contradictions…"
Don't Expect Elections
"Don't place too much hope on elections," said Gold, as a harbinger of democracy in China. "The Communist party has no intention of introducing a party system or a system of checks and balances," said Gold. We hear a lot about village elections, which Gold says act as a "safety valve" and a "way to identify potential leaders or miscreants." But the regime does not plan "to hold regular, free or fair elections above the village level," writes Gold. The CCP legitimizes its rule by claiming to be "the vanguard of the leading forces in society."
The admittance of capitalists into the CCP is not a step towards a multiparty system. There is no scholarly evidence that "China's new elite has any commitment to or desire for democracy," says Gold. "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…these organizations," says Gold.
Watch the NGOs!
Not democratic institutions, but the growth of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) is the trend to watch. The regime had registered 346,000 NGOs by the end of 2006, but registration is an onerous process (and some just want to avoid contact with the authorities), so the true number is believed to be much larger. The report cites the online People's Daily where a Tsinghua University professor estimates the number at more than 1 million.
The CCP is supportive of NGOs that supplement the work of the state, e.g., opening orphanages, care for the elderly, etc. But NGOs that may weaken the power and control of the CCP are regarded with some suspicion (especially foreign-based ones), e.g., NGOs for HIV/AIDS, environmental crises, and migrant workers.
Nevertheless, "numerous NGOs, especially in the environmental field, operate very actively in China," says Gold. While they have no formal power, they can comment quite forcefully through their websites and blogs. The CCP can restrict NGOs severely out of fear that the NGOs may foment color revolutions like they did in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan. But as a powerful civic voice, the environmental NGOs can often be advantages to the CCP.
Civil Liberties
China's formal legal framework is not that far behind the West, said Minxin Pei, Director of the China Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. They copied, adapted, and adopted our legal system. For example, the Chinese constitution, Article 35, guarantees "freedom assembly, of association, of procession, and of demonstration."
"Implementation is a different story," said Dr. Pei.
"The print and broadcast media run detailed pieces on civil and criminal cases, as well as opinion articles, lectures and discussions by experts and officers of the law," writes Gold. Also, judges, lawyers, and the police are regularly depicted in television dramas. Nonetheless, this is all a façade—the judiciary remains a tool of the CCP. Even its Supreme Court must obey the National People's Congress. At the lower levels, local officials appoint the judges, preventing independence.
But the ubiquitous propaganda that China lives under the "rule of law" may have backfired for the CCP. Not only the sophisticated middle class, but even a vast number of farmers, through the petition system in China, are calling for the enforcement of their rights in the constitution and elsewhere. Gold declared that this development, "rather than any demand for electoral democracy, constitutes the core popular political struggle in China."
"Suspects are not presumed innocent until proven guilty, and confessions are regularly coerced. Illegal detentions and the use of re-education through labor (RTL) are still common," says Gold. The RTL system is a "relic of the 1950s" that allows people to be sentenced up to four years incarceration, where the detainees face torture and harsh conditions, according to Gold. Clearly in violation of state, procedural, and international laws, an attempt this year to end the practice failed due to opposition from the Ministry of Public Security.
The situation for journalists in China has deteriorated in recent years, says Gold. One recent example is the case in 2006 of Shi Tao, an editor from Changsha, Hunan, who was arrested for "divulging state secrets."
He printed on the Internet the instructions from the Propaganda Department to his paper, which are directions for "maintaining stability," that included orders not to mention the June 4th anniversary (pro-democracy advocates), Falun Gong, and mass events (e.g., resettlement after demolition or relocation of residential housing, and appeals for help from higher authorities), according to Committee for the Protection of Journalists. For revealing these instructions, Mr. Shi was sentenced to 10 years.
As an indication of the 'Big Brother' role of the Propaganda Department, a news release from Human Rights Watch (May 31) is cited in the Freedom House report which refers to the weekend of August 27, when at least five newspapers ran nearly identical front pages that were heavily political in content—eerily reminiscent of a much earlier era, says Gold.
Freedom House is an independent, nonpartisan, nongovernmental organization that advocates for freedom and democracy in countries around the world. It does this through its various publications on global democratic trends, and by supporting reform efforts in countries in need of improvement.
Thirty countries were profiled in the 2007 edition of Crossroads, and next year another set of 30 will be profiled. The point system for the various indicators is very elaborate and the reader is encouraged to consult Freedom House's website (www.freedomhouse.org) for details. Generally speaking, the same countries attain the worse scores on civil liberties, accountability, rule of law, and corruption. These countries are Eritrea, Libya, Iran, Rwanda, Egypt, Syria, Laos, and China.
As an interesting aside, in the 2007 edition of Crossroads, Russia slipped from its previous rating of "partly free" to its new score of "not free."
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