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DAM-L Poetry moves China's rulers to repression (fwd)



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Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2000 14:25:02 -0700 (PDT)
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Subject: Poetry moves China's rulers to repression
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Financial Times, Friday Aug 25, 2000

  
COMMENT & ANALYSIS: Poetry moves China's rulers to repression: 
The west must acknowledge that economic liberalisation has not 
brought greater freedom of expression, says Ian Buruma


How dangerous can a Chinese poet living in the US possibly be to the government 
of China? Enough, it seems, for Bei Ling, a poet and editor of a literary magazine 
in Boston, to get arrested last week for distributing copies of his journal in Beijing. 
Perhaps one should rephrase the question: why should the Chinese government consider 
him such a threat? 

Bei Ling's arrest is part of a campaign that has gone on all summer. It is called 
"political thought education". The more chilling phrase was used by President Jiang 
Zemin himself: "extermination (of unwelcome criticism) at the budding stage." Two 
varieties of criticism are especially ripe for official extermination: "bourgeois liberalism" 
and "anti-reform leftism". 

This year, several well-known academics in Beijing with liberal, but by no means radical, 
views were pushed out of their jobs. In June, the economist and journalist He Qinglian, 
author of a bestseller in China criticising the ill-effects of robber baron (or Party baron) 
capitalism, was demoted at her newspaper and banned from publishing her work in China.

Several people have been jailed for running websites that published critical articles or 
dissident news. One website operator was arrested for posting information on the Beijing 
massacre of 1989. 

None of these people is a revolutionary, advocating violence. All are in favour of political 
reforms and the right to free speech, to be sure. But neither Bei Ling, nor He Qinglian, 
nor any of the others called for the overthrow of the Communist government. 

This is not the way it was supposed to be. The promise of western 
"engagement" with China was that more liberal economics would lead, as 
though by force of nature, to more liberal politics. As China developed 
economically and opened up to the outside world, a middle class would 
slowly emerge, and the dictatorial one-party state would evolve into a
pluralistic, more democratic system of government. The Communist Party, 
like the Nationalists in Taiwan, would reform itself. For surely, one is told, 
capitalism has to end in democracy. 

All this might still come to pass in the long term, although the chances 
of peaceful evolution are slim, but in the short term quite the opposite is 
happening. The more China opens up to capitalism, of a kind, the more 
its rulers feel the need to "exterminate" critical voices. There are various 
reasons for this. First of all, they feel confident they can get away with it.
Western companies are so keen to do business in China, in the hope of 
capturing that potentially vast but still elusive market, that western 
leaders hate to put pressure on the Chinese government to stop throwing 
its critics in jail. The argument that more business will in the end result 
in more democracy is the perfect excuse for such supine behaviour. 

There is, however, another reason for official paranoia among the Chinese 
rulers. Opening up the economy, without at the same time opening up the 
political system, has eroded what little legitimacy the Communist government had left. 
China has a kind of quasi-free market economy, rigged to benefit Party bosses and their 
associates. Certainly most Chinese are better off than they were 20 years ago, but the gap 
between rich and poor has grown wider than in the US. He Qinglian reckons that 1 per 
cent of the population controls 60 per cent of the country's wealth. She also points out that 
corruption is not a question of individual malfeasance but systemic, since "political 
power determines the allocation of resources but has no need to see to their efficient use". 

You might say that any transition to capitalism is bound to be a rough business. Gangsters
and corrupt politicians are always the first to benefit from economic development. And
disparities between rich and poor cannot be avoided. Perhaps. But none of this can be
justified by Marxist dogma, and ham-fisted attempts by the government to do so only add to
the general mood of cynicism in China. "Political  thought education" in scientific socialism is
ridiculous when the cadres are on the take. 

Things would be different if the government were elected. It would then have a popular
mandate for making unpopular decisions. It could be held accountable for wrecking the
environment or embarking on disastrous policies. As it is, there is no way to resolve the
tensions and conflicts arising from one-sided and deeply flawed economic reforms in a
politically legitimate manner. All the government can do is unleash increasingly absurd
campaigns and lash out at any dissenting voices. 

The fact that such voices are becoming harder - perhaps even impossible - to control
because of the very technology that China needs to develop its economy only makes the
rulers more frantic. He Qinglian's writings still appear on Chinese websites, even after they
were banned in print. Random arrests and other acts of intimidation might scare off some
people from reading or creating such websites some of the time, but it is very difficult to
scare off all the people all of the time. And scare tactics, in any case, do no more to bolster
the legitimacy of a one-party regime than does its hollow Marxist propaganda. 

The Chinese rulers are of course well aware of their legitimacy problem. That is why, after
some well-publicised corruption cases, the government has decided to stop going after
corrupt cadres in the upper ranks, lest the image of the Party be tarnished even further. It
also explains why the regime is so nervous about "bourgeois liberals" and "anti-reform
leftists". Out-and-out revolutionaries are easier to handle, for most people in China have had
enough of violent revolution. But the liberals and leftists point out what is plain to see, that
the Communist emperor no longer wears any clothes. 

The corrupt nature of Chinese capitalism is not a reason for the west to stop trading, or
even to disengage. But it is time for western leaders to speak up when liberals are silenced
and poets are crushed. If they do not, the chances of economic reforms being matched by
political reforms are almost nil. Worse than that, to remain silent now makes us accomplices
in oppression out of our own stupid greed. 

--
The author has written about east Asian affairs for many years. 

Copyright © The Financial Times Limited

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