MCLC: discontent among party faithful

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: discontent among party faithful
***********************************************************

Source: NYT (1/19/13):
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/20/world/asia/in-china-discontent-among-the-
normally-faithful.html

In China, Widening Discontent Among the Communist Party Faithful
By EDWARD WONG 

BEIJING — Barely two months into their jobs, the Communist Party’s new
leaders are being confronted by the challenges posed by a constituency
that has generally been one of the party’s most ardent supporters: the
middle-class and well-off Chinese who have benefited from a three-decade
economic boom.

A widening discontent was evident this month in the anticensorship street
protests in the southern city of Guangzhou and in the online outrage that
exploded over an extraordinary surge in air pollution in the north. Anger
has also reached a boil over fears concerning hazardous tap water and over
a factory spill of 39 tons of a toxic chemical in Shanxi Province that has
led to panic in nearby cities.

For years, many China observers have asserted that the party’s
authoritarian system endures because ordinary Chinese buy into a grand
bargain: the party guarantees economic growth, and in exchange the people
do not question the way the party rules. Now, many whose lives improved
under the boom are reneging on their end of the deal, and in ways more
vocal than ever before. Their ranks include billionaires and students,
movie stars and homemakers.

Few are advocating an overthrow of the party. Many just want the system to
provide a more secure life. But in doing so, they are demanding something
that challenges the very nature of the party-controlled state:
transparency.

More and more Chinese say they distrust the Wizard-of-Oz-style of control
the Communist Party has exercised since it seized power in 1949, and they
are asking their leaders to disseminate enough information so they can
judge whether officials, who are widely believed to be corrupt, are doing
their jobs properly. Without open information and discussion, they say,
citizens cannot tell whether officials are delivering on basic needs.

“Chinese people want freedom of speech,” said Xiao Qinshan, 46, a man in a
wheelchair at the Guangzhou protests.

China’s new leadership under Xi Jinping, who took over as general
secretary of the party in November, is already feeling the pressure of
these calls. Mr. Xi has announced a campaign against corruption, and
propaganda officials, in a somewhat surprising move, allowed the state
news media to run in-depth reports on the air pollution last week. Zhan
Jiang, a journalism professor, said he believed that the leaders had
decided “to face the problems.”

Some Chinese say that they and their compatriots, especially younger ones,
are starting to realize that a secure life is dependent on the defense of
certain principles, perhaps most crucially freedom of expression, and not
just on the government meeting material needs. If a ruling party cannot
police itself, then people want outsiders, like independent journalists,
to do so.

Proof of that can be seen in the wild popularity of microblogs in which
ordinary citizens frustrated by corruption post photographs of officials
who wear expensive wristwatches
<http://news.wfcmw.cn/wfcmw/cmwbx/2012/09/26/085227_3.shtml>. It was
evident, too, when hundreds of ordinary people rallied in Guangzhou to
defend Southern Weekend, a newspaper known for investigative reporting,
against censorship.

“What’s interesting is that these protests were not over a practical issue
but over a conceptual issue,” Hung Huang, a news media and fashion
entrepreneur, said in a telephone interview. “People are beginning to
understand these values are important to a better life, and beginning to
understand that unless we all accept the same universal values, things
will never really get better.”

Ms. Hung also said, though, that most Chinese were “very practical,” and
that calls to action here were “very, very far away” from the kind of
revolutionary fervor that had gripped the Arab world.

The Guangzhou rallies were fueled by an outpouring of support on the
Internet for Southern Weekend, where journalists were protesting recent
censorship rules. Celebrity gadflies with big followings among China’s 564
million Internet users urged the journalists onward. They included Yao
Chen, a young actress who quoted the Russian dissident Aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn in an online post, and Ms. Hung, who changed the logo on her
microblog to that of Southern Weekend, also known as Southern Weekly. They
ran risks by voicing their support; security officers reportedly
interrogated some of the outspoken celebrities.

On the air pollution issue, prominent commentators have also taken to the
virtual ramparts. Among those leading the calls for change is Pan Shiyi, a
real estate tycoon. Mr. Pan’s demands that the government publicly release
data on levels of PM 2.5, a potentially deadly particulate matter,
contributed to an official decision that 74 cities would start reporting
that information this year.

These elites are not just speaking to one another; they are also giving
voice to widespread concerns among the middle class. Last Monday, in the
middle of the record air pollution spike, there were 6.9 million mentions
on a popular microblog platform of the term “Beijing air,” 6.7 million of
“air quality” and 4.8 million of “PM 2.5.”

“It’s like never before, this consensus,” said Li Bo
<http://doteco.org/partners/friends-of-nature/>, director of Friends of
Nature, an environmental advocacy group. “It took us so long to reach this
consensus that China’s problems with the environment are rather serious.”

Such popular outcries can send ripples through the party’s upper ranks.
Last Monday, the current prime minister, Wen Jiabao, criticized the
Ministry of Environmental Protection and its cautious minister, Zhou
Shengxian, in an internal discussion, according to an official with ties
to the ministry. “This was a gesture that Wen had to make,” he said.

A day later, Li Keqiang, the incoming prime minister, who oversaw
environmental policy during the past five years, somewhat defensively
announced that solving environmental problems would require a long process.


The environmental official also said the pollution in northern China had
deteriorated to the point at which senior party officials had been forced
to loosen the reins on reporting of the problem in the state news media
and on news Web sites. “Everyone is dissatisfied with the air pollution,
even the Central Propaganda Department,” he said. “They have to breathe
this bad air, too, after all.”

As frustration over the air quality grew, Internet users also waged an
online campaign to demand official transparency on tap water. The spark
came from a Southern Weekend article
<http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/5611-Beijing-family-bo
ycotts-city-s-tap-water> posted early this month about two married veteran
researchers for government water safety bureaus in Beijing. The couple
said that because of all the behind-the-scenes data to which they were
privy, they had not let a single drop of tap water touch their lips in 20
years.

That unleashed a torrent of questions online about the government’s
ability to ensure clean tap water, and it even prompted Global Times, a
newspaper that often defends the party, to run a lengthy article on
Tuesday with the headline “Watered-Down Truth
<http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/756013.shtml>.”

Last Monday, The Economic Observer, a respected newspaper, ran a strongly
worded editorial <http://www.eeo.com.cn/ens/2013/0116/238771.shtml> that
said the recent environmental debacles underscored the need for officials
to provide more information.

“Our hope is that the government treats this as a turning point and
presses ahead with an overarching reform aimed at promoting transparency,
effectively guaranteeing the public’s right to know,” it said. “By doing
this, they can help to restore the public’s trust in government.”

Any official commitment to transparency, though, could be fragile. After
Hu Jintao and Mr. Wen took charge of the state in 2003, they opened up
reporting on the SARS virus, which raised expectations for a more liberal
administration. But the leaders dashed those hopes by enacting
conservative policies.

Propaganda officials could simply now be allowing the state news media to
report on the air pollution and other sources of discontent among the
middle class to shape public opinion and prevent anger from swelling.
Those same officials took a hard line on the Southern Weekend conflict by
ordering newspapers to run a harsh editorial denouncing the protesting
journalists.

Other officials, including those in the security apparatus, are sticking
to their own methods for containing outbursts. The anticensorship rallies
in Guangzhou lasted only three days before the police began hauling off
protesters. By the fourth day, Mr. Xiao, the man in the wheelchair, was
nowhere to be seen.

Jonathan Ansfield contributed reporting. Mia Li, Amy Qin and Shi Da
contributed research.