MCLC: new Chinese crackdown

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: pjmooney <pjmooney at me.com>
Subject: new Chinese crackdown
***********************************************************

Source: NY Review of Books (7/29/13):
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2013/jul/29/whats-behind-new-chinese-c
rackdown/

What’s Behind the New Chinese Crackdown?
By Li Xiaorong

Since late March, when China’s new president Xi Jinping took power, nearly
one hundred Chinese human rights activists have been detained, on charges
like “inciting subversion” and “unlawful assembly.” The crackdown reached
a new level this month with the detention of Xu Zhiyong, a leading human
rights activist, who was detained on July 17 for seeking to “gather people
and disrupt social order in a public space.” After Xu was detained, the
Transition Institute, an independent think tank that documents social
injustice and advocates legal reforms, was shut down. The timing is
particularly interesting, as these actions come on the eve of this year’s
US–China “human rights dialogue,” which is taking place this week in
Kunming.

The reasons for the current repression—the harshest since 2011, when
police “disappeared” and tortured dozens of dissidents in a preemptive
move 
<http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2011/feb/20/secret-politburo-meeting-
behind-chinas-crackdown/> against reports of plans for a “Jasmine
Revolution”—might seem hard to fathom. Some China watchers have suggested
that Xi Jinping and the Communist Party’s other new leaders are more
liberal than their predecessors. After all, Xi has talked about his
“Chinese dream” that China will “completely respect the constitution,” and
Xu Zhiyong and fellow activists in the “New Citizens Movement” are seeking
precisely that—to have the Chinese government uphold the rights that are
guaranteed in China’s constitution.

Although he did run several times—once successfully—to be a local
“people’s representative,” Xu is a soft-spoken intellectual who has
pursued legal reform mostly through public discussion and proposing policy
changes to the government. He and his colleagues have always treaded
carefully, choosing issues that seem relatively apolitical and consistent
with the government’s own policies, and that apply broadly to
under-privileged groups. In 2003, for example, following the beating death
in a “Custody and Repatriation” center of Sun Zhigang, a migrant worker,
Xu and two other law students at Peking University wrote to China’s State
Council calling for the abolition of these detention centers—and they
were, subsequently, abolished. Other causes that Xu has embraced are
protecting the rights of the children of migrant workers to go to school,
holding officials accountable for food contamination, and exposing “black
jails,” extralegal detention facilities that the government claims to be
closing down.

In fact, most of the offenses that the recently detained activists are
accused of do not seem directly threatening to Beijing: applying for
permission to gather to commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen massacre,
uncovering and reporting to police a black jail, unfurling banners urging
the government to ratify the International Covenant on Civil Political
Rights, which the government signed fifteen years ago, and protesting an
official refusal to let the ten-year-old daughter of a dissident go to
school. Perhaps most bizarre, the authorities have detained some of them
for calling for an end to corruption in the Communist Party—something Xi
Jinping himself has pledged to do under his new leadership. (Where they
went too far, apparently, was in demanding that high officials disclose
their own personal wealth.)

While the rationale for the current crackdown remains unclear, what all
the detained activists seem to have in common is that they are accused of
organizing actions that would take place not just in cyberspace but in the
physical space of city streets. Chinese leaders always see such public
campaigns as an open challenge to their control. They fear that activists
are seeking to take China’s rising number of local protests about social
and economic problems to another level—turning it into a political
movement that could challenge the authoritarian regime.

Several more clues about the detentions can be gleaned from what lawyers
and supporters of the activists have said about the police interrogations
the activists have been submitted to. The goals of the police, according
to these reports, have clearly been to find “behind-the-scenes
organizers,” to identify “sources of funding,” and to challenge the
legality of acting in groups. Police told one activist that he was
detained for his “illegal organization.” But “we were only applying for a
legal permit. How could that be a crime?” replied the activist. Another
activist, who was detained for “gathering crowds to disrupt public order”
asked her interrogators, “How could I have gathered any crowds or disrupt
any public order while I was asleep?” The police explained: You joined
others in organizing a rally at a trade show in Beijing.

Across China, there are now hundreds of thousands of spontaneous local
demonstrations against layoffs, unpaid salaries, land grabbing, and
pollution each year. The Chinese government has been unable or unwilling
to suppress all of them, but it is determined to prevent the politicizing
of these protests through the increasing involvement of rights activists
and political dissidents, who live under close police surveillance but
pursue their causes largely online.

Xu Zhiyong, who had lived under close surveillance and was frequently
summoned to have “tea” with police, is one such activist. He had been
under house arrest since the beginning of the current crackdown in early
April. When authorities “disappeared” Xu back in 2009, they elicited some
international condemnation. This time, authorities may have weighed such
unwanted international attention against the threats Xu poses to their
rule.

In late June, authorities summoned Xu to a police station and told him
they had “evidence” of his “criminal acts,” which included instructing
migrant laborers to file complaints to officials about the exclusion of
their children from public schools, urging citizens to exercise their
constitutional rights, and organizing a petition demanding that top
officials disclose their financial assets. In a note that Xu was able to
get out to his friends after the questioning but before his detention, he
said the police said they would not detain him if he pledged to “give up
on his citizens’ activities” and “love the Party.” Xu declined the offer.
Twenty days later he was detained.

China’s rulers have always been nervous when others draw attention to
disadvantaged Chinese, because the causes of their plight can often be
traced to Beijing. The problem of denying education to the children of
migrant workers, for example, has its roots in the Communists’
discriminatory system of household registry (hukou), which privileges
officially recognized urban residents. This is a primary reason for
China’s rapidly expanding social and economic disparities, which, in turn,
contribute to the growing unrest in the country. Xu Zhiyong’s note to his
friends reports that he made this point to his interrogators:

“Do you really believe that you can maintain social stability while you
suppress calls for equal rights to education? What do you think the
children of eight million migrants will do after they realize their
futures have been ruined by discrimination?”

Concerning the problem of corruption, Xu’s interrogators tried to get him
to acknowledge that the Party was heading in the right direction. Xu
conceded that fighting corruption is good, but insisted that “the problem
is the system.” It is impossible to end corruption, he said, in a system
in which all the power is controlled by one political party—including the
press, the courts, the schools, and the economy.

Party leaders today no doubt see Xu’s point. But in a sense they are
trapped. Truly ending corruption would require scrapping one-party rule,
and they cannot do that. Their power would perish with it, and maintaining
power is the Party’s overriding aim.

So what can Xi Jinping do? He can “oppose corruption,” but in reality he
is really serving two other purposes. One is to placate popular
anger—showing the people that “we are on your side in wanting to end it”;
the other is to provide a pretext to purge political rivals, as for
example Bo Xilai, the deposed Party Secretary of Chongqing.

But what about activists like Xu Zhiyong and others who want a real end to
corruption? The urgency with which the Chinese government is now moving to
repress them is a good measure of the activists’ strength. Organized
public actions were rare even a few years ago, and the men who rule China
now regard activists like Xu Zhiyong, who are highly educated, well-versed
in Chinese law, and adept at using social media
<http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2013/jul/10/censoring-news-before-hap
pens-china/>, as a serious threat. Xu’s police interrogators told him that
they watched his “New Citizens’ Movement” swell to several thousand
members in just a few months. “If we don’t put a stop to this immediately,
it will bring chaos and instability all over the country,” they said.

The crackdown poses a further challenge to the Obama administration as it
confronts the many human rights violations in China. The Chinese
government has already taken advantage of the US’s awkward situation
because of the Snowden affair. It has been more defiant when the US
criticizes the Chinese government’s behavior toward its citizens. But the
recent detentions in China are a disturbing reminder that the new leaders
are walking the old road of abusing the basic rights that the government
grants its citizens on paper. If the US does not take up these issues at
this week’s bilateral human rights talk, it will be vulnerable to the
criticism that these “dialogues” are empty exercises. In Kunming, the US
should identify some concrete steps for progress. Persuading the Chinese
government to release prisoners of conscience, including the recently
detained civil-society organizers, should be among them.

July 29, 2013, 5:38 p.m.