Are China's Leaders Afraid of the Views of Their Own People?

[DaShi]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/14/world/asia/14cnd-china.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print

March 14, 2007
China in Crackdown During Parliamentary Session, Report Says
By DAVID LAGUE
BEIJING, March 14 — China has mounted a violent crackdown on protests and arrested political activists in a bid to curb dissent during the annual session of its parliament, Human Rights Watch said in a report today.

The human rights group said protests in the central province of Hunan and in Guangdong province in the south had been violently suppressed earlier this week.

In Beijing, the authorities rounded up hundreds of petitioners this month, while dozens of activists around the country were under house arrest or under close surveillance, the report said.

China’s parliament, the National People’s Congress, meets only once a year in a two-week long session. It is widely seen as a rubber stamp for the governing Communist Party.

The public and the news media are normally not allowed to monitor any debate. The authorities appear to be anxious to head off any potentially embarrassing protests over official corruption or unpopular government policies while these sessions are under way.

Since the opening of this year’s session on March 5, the police and paramilitary security services have been deployed in large numbers around the Great Hall of the People in Beijing to head off public disturbances and prevent petitioners from approaching delegates. The session is scheduled to close Friday.

“China’s leaders are showing that they are afraid of the views and the voices of their own people,” Brad Adams, Asia director of the New York-based Human Rights Watch, a human rights monitoring group, said in the report.

“If they were confident they had popular legitimacy, they would not resort to such heavy-handed tactics,” he said.

The official Xinhua News Agency reported today that calm had been restored to the village of Zhushan in Hunan after what it described as a “mass incident” that began when villagers, upset at higher bus fares, destroyed some buses.

The police detained those responsible for damage and there were no reports of any deaths, Xinhua said.

However, overseas news reports and witnesses said a student was killed and about 60 protestors injured when police clashed with about 20,000 protestors in Zhushan on Monday.

In Dongzhou village in Guangdong Province recently, police broke up a protest of about 1,000 people, the Human Rights Watch report said.

People in Dongzhou have been involved in a long-standing dispute over land with the local government. In an earlier protest, in December 2005, police shot and killed at least three demonstrators, the report said.

I'd say not necessily.

[SlowwHand]

Only 5% of Chinese consider themselves Communist.

[chequita guevara]

That's probably members of the Communist Party, which is a very different thing than being a communist.

[Victor Galis]

The Communist Party in China isn't terribly communist.

[SlowwHand]

Victor, talk to Che, would you please?
The average Chinese rural citizen doesn't know nor care what you call their government. Their life is hard, and that's what's on their mind.
Quite a success story.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
That's probably members of the Communist Party, which is a very different thing than being a communist.

Was Lenin not a commie when he instituted the NEP?

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
Victor, talk to Che, would you please?
The average Chinese rural citizen doesn't know nor care what you call their government. Their life is hard, and that's what's on their mind.
Quite a success story.

Chinese are very different from Texans.

[SlowwHand]

Yes. Yes, they are.

[Kidlicious]

Interesting. Isn't it.

[Mao]

In answer to the thread: yes. =)

Sloww has a point too, but I would argue that for many (maybe the majority, I honestly don't know), the lot of the average peasant has improved considerably since the founding of the PRC. Of course, they also had a very low base to start from.

[Solly]

Re: Are China's Leaders Afraid of the Views of Their Own People?

Originally posted by DaShi

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/14/world/asia/14cnd-china.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print

I'd say not necessily.

You'd sound pretty strange saying that

[snoopy369]

To the OP:



To Mao:

Yes, that is definitely true. PRC is not such a horrible government, and in the scheme of things probably governs with about the same degree of democratic choice as our government, that being not much.

The issue I have with the pro-protester group is this:

Just as with the anti-Castro group, guess who's probably the #1 portion of the anti-PRC group?

You got it. The would-be-rich. The poor aren't objecting to the PRC any more than the communist party leaders are, and don't give a rat's %$#@ who's in charge, any more than the urban poor here generally do. Probably far less, in fact, given the media penetration here as opposed to there.

No, those who object are (of course) those who feel themselves harmed - either the students and other 'worldly' people who can see their freedoms being quashed (agree wholeheartedly here), or the rich or rich-ish folks who think they'd have more power/wealth/etc. if the PRC became just C again.

I don't doubt that the PRC's government is very iffy, and certainly seems to care little about human rights. However, I just wonder if (as in most cases) the people really agitating are the "good" guys or not.

[Kuciwalker]

Yes, that is definitely true. PRC is not such a horrible government, and in the scheme of things probably governs with about the same degree of democratic choice as our government, that being not much.

are you deluded?

No, those who object are (of course) those who feel themselves harmed - either the students and other 'worldly' people who can see their freedoms being quashed (agree wholeheartedly here), or the rich or rich-ish folks who think they'd have more power/wealth/etc. if the PRC became just C again.

The rich love the PRC, the status quo (endemic corruption) is well in their favor.

[Pekka]

Well, the reasons why the rural area of China is still poor, there's many reasons. But it pisses people off, as it should, that at least some time ago there was an old relic of a law from commies that the place you're born in is the place you work. That is, you can't get a work permit in other areas like that, so you work where you're born.

A nice way to keep the whole country populated, but even a greater oppression this would be. So, there's this huge group of people who just go from city to city, looking for jobs, even though it's illegal. A big exodus, because their native place are teh suck now. Cities are taking most of the new growth with the jobs and all that stuff, all that investing money.

Sure, PRC has tried to support those areas a little, but too little. Who knows how much it would cost to keep those places running. So there's a lot of heat in those areas. How do you make them grow, I don't know. Since Chinese investors are starting to make the money go around and are heavily investing outside China, so it's not like that money would go in those rural areas.

There are interesting regions in China though, for example there are all these old military base areas where a great deal of China's top engineers reside, but those would be some of the poorest places as well. So you do you have a lot of potential there, someone just needs to tap into that resource. I think we will be seeing that at some point, when foreigners go there, and take the risk of going somewhere where the infrastructure is lacking.

As far as success story, it's definitely going to a better direction than it was. Middle class is rising up, granted it's from the cities. So I don't think those cities will be caring about the rural areas, this is a new thing and new situation in there so they're likely to keep it going rather than distributing any of that wealth into rural areas.

So if soon there will be a middle class of 300 million, it is projected the number will be up to 700 million in the next decade at some point, that's a huge goal and opportunity. And then the China will truly become a market place for everyone, as the consumer base is starting to really happening. The rural areas aren't going to benefit much from this. Basically the rural areas will die at some point.

As to PRC and if they care about human rights, well, they care about staying on power. That's why they are opening the market more, that's why they're welcoming the new business. Their claim to top is the economic growth. So they need to keep it going. They're recruiting the future elite into the party, the top academics, people with money etc... unless they do that, it will lose power in the future, so it's their last grab to the power in the near future, having the elite.

China can't go down the road like Russia did. What are they going to do? When the ****stem is changed into something that actually can provide people, they need to break it down step by step. They can't just hand out vouchers and say 'well here's the country'. If they do that, what you'll see is guaranteed to follow what happened in Russia, where rich started buying out the state owned, important resources. And after that, there's the superelite of a handful of people and no one else has a chance. That's not what anyone wants, except those handful of few. The only way is to set up funds and trusts, that would take those vouchers in, but they did that in Russia as well and it didn't work, since most of them went bankrupt in no time.

You can't change it over night, people don't know how it works. The PRC SHOULD hold the strings a little in the near future as well when it comes to business. Slowly and gradually, not over night, because that will resolve into chaos and only the elite will be the benefitors of that event.

Is China a success story? Yes and no. Yes, because considering the state they've been in, it is getting better all the time. They're getting a lot of that sweet investor money in and will continue to do so. But also no, because it still is far behind in key issues like human rights, and because the PRC is only interested in catering the growth. It should be doing that, but it should be also doing something about these key questions like the rural areas.

[Kidlicious]

Just speculation so far. No one seems to no what the protests are about, or who is protesting. One thing that I do know is that both the rich and the govt are primarily concerned with a revolt of the rural poor and that is what motivates them and their policies. I think many rich probably clearly see that many of the oppressive policies are in their benefit.

edit: Actually there is one issue at the end of the article regarding a land dispute. That would indicate that some of the protesting is from the rural poor or at least sympathizers.