MCLC: dangerous western values

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: dangerous western values
***********************************************************

Source: NYT (5/13/13):
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/world/asia/chinese-leaders-warn-of-danger
ous-western-values.html

China Warns Against ‘Dangerous’ Western Values
By CHRIS BUCKLEY

HONG KONG — The Chinese Communist Party has warned officials to combat
“dangerous” Western values and other perceived ideological threats,
according to accounts on Monday of a directive that analysts said reflects
the top leader Xi Jinping’s determination to preserve top-down political
control even as he considers economic liberalization.

The warning emerged when Chinese news Web sites carried accounts from
local party committees describing a directive from the Central Committee
General Office, the administrative engine of the party leadership under
Mr. Xi.

The central document, “Concerning the situation in the ideological
sphere,” has not been openly published, and most references to it
disappeared from Chinese news and government Web sites by Monday
afternoon, apparently reflecting censors’ skittishness about publicizing
such warnings. But what did come to light in the local summaries exuded
anxiety about the party’s grip on opinion.

Mr. Xi has strengthened national cohesiveness since he became general
secretary in November, said a summary of a party organization meeting last
week of the Commission of Urban-Rural Development of Chongqing, a
municipality in southwest China.

“At the same time, the central leadership has made a thorough analysis of
and shown a staunch stance toward seven serious problems in the
ideological sphere that merit attention, giving a clearer understanding of
the sharpness and complexity of struggle in the ideological sphere,” said
the account, which later disappeared from the Commission’s Web site.

The Chinese government has confronted demands for democratic reform from
activists emboldened by Mr. Xi’s vows to respect the law. In recent days,
some activists have cited rumors that the party issued a warning against
seven ideas that are considered anathema, including media freedom and
judicial independence. But the official summaries did not include such
language.

Officials must “fully understand the dangers posed by views and theories
advocated by the West,” said the account from Chongqing, which said they
must “cut off at the source channels for disseminating erroneous currents
of thought.”

“Strengthen management of the Internet, enhance guidance of opinion,
purify the environment on the Internet, give no opportunities that lawless
elements can seize on,” it said.

Reports on other local party committee Web sites in northeast and
southwest China also described the directive, although in less detail.

The demands for ideological conformity show that Mr. Xi and other leaders
want to inoculate the public from any expectations of major political
liberalization, even as they explore loosening some state controls over
the economy, several analysts said.

“If anything, there seems to be some regression in the ideological
sphere,” said Chen Ziming, a prominent political commentator in Beijing
who supports democratic change. “I think that there will be some steps
forward in economic reform, but there are no notions of political reform.
Such warnings reflect that mentality.”

Calls for orthodoxy from Chinese leaders are by no means new. But Mr. Xi
is caught in a sharpening dilemma, trying to satisfy widespread public
expectations for cleaner, more accountable government and a fairer share
of prosperity while also defending centralized control, said Minxin Pei, a
professor at Claremont McKenna College in California who specializes in
Chinese politics.

“I think in his mind he has two conflicting priorities,” said Mr. Pei,
referring to Mr. Xi.

“The top priority is to maintain the party’s rule,” he said. “But he also
has this immediate political priority; that is, he wants to show he will
end this period of stagnation. But clearly the two priorities are in
conflict with each other.”

Mr. Xi has commissioned officials and researchers to study seven areas of
potential economic reform, including loosening state controls on bank
interest rates and on resource prices, said a Chinese businessman with
close links to senior leaders, confirming a report in The Sydney Morning
Herald 
<http://www.smh.com.au/business/china/china-plans-revolution-to-head-off-fi
scal-crisis-20130512-2jg5n.html> on Monday. The businessman spoke on the
condition of anonymity, citing his need not to harm his links with leaders.

Some of the proposals are likely to be endorsed by a meeting of the party
Central Committee late this year, said the businessman.
Yet Mr. Xi has accompanied such signals of change with the messages
defending party tradition and control. In December, he said China must
absorb the lessons of the collapse of the Soviet Union, which he blamed on
political ill-discipline and ideological laxity under Mikhail Gorbachev.

More recently, Mr. Xi told officials that the Chinese Communist Party may
not have survived if it had disowned Mao Zedong in the same way that the
Soviet Union condemned Stalin, a party newspaper, the Guangming Daily,
said last week.

If Mr. Xi is to advance some economic liberalization, he must first
convince potential opponents that he will not jeopardize one-party
control, said Robert Lawrence Kuhn, an American businessman who wrote an
authorized biography of the former party leader Jiang Zemin and who has
met Mr. Xi and other senior officials.

“It’s not an irrational combination in the Chinese system,” said Mr. Kuhn
in a telephone interview. “My guess is that some of the talk is designed
to consolidate a position so that he’s not attacked by the extreme left,”
he added. “People can read into Xi what they like, because he gives each
side the opportunity to see what they like.”