MCLC: crackdown on independent candidates

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: crackdown on independent candidates
***********************************************************

Source: NYT (12/4/11):
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/05/world/asia/china-clamps-down-on-even-a-by
-the-book-campaign.html

Alarmed by Independent Candidates, Chinese Authorities Crack Down
By SHARON LaFRANIERE

BEIJING ‹ Periodic elections to neighborhood People¹s Congresses are as
close to participatory democracy as this nation comes. Of the many
grass-roots candidates running here this year, Qiao Mu, an energetic
41-year-old journalism professor in the capital, seemed one of the better
bets.

He was well known and liked on the campus of the Beijing Foreign Studies
University <http://www.bfsu.edu.cn/en>, his election district. He ran an
innovative campaign, making full use of social networks and other Internet
tools. He amassed a cadre of enthusiastic student campaigners, and he
aimed for practical improvements in campus life: a faster Internet
connection and permission for students to study in the spare classrooms
instead of the crowded cafeteria.

He lost anyway. A university vice president ‹ a largely unknown personage
whose campaign amounted to some posters ‹ collected three times as many
votes.

Mr. Qiao said authorities did all they could to stymie him, keeping his
name off the ballot, threatening his student volunteers, even forcibly
collecting the red bookmarks he had printed with the slogan: ³I am the
master of my ballot.²

³The harassment started from the very beginning,² he said in an interview
in his university office, still cluttered with campaign paraphernalia he
never got to distribute. ³It is a shame, because I didn¹t do anything
wrong,² he said. 

³All we did was follow China¹s Constitution and election law.²

His experience demonstrates an underlying political doctrine of today¹s
China: while Chinese leaders speak in favor of political reform, local
authorities routinely deny voters the chance to freely choose a political
representative.
Such official machinations have become more obvious and more intense this
year ‹ a telling indicator of the government¹s paranoia over a greatly
increased pool of independent candidates, even given the near
powerlessness of the congresses.

A final assessment is still months away. But Li Fan, an election expert
who has been monitoring the elections around the country, said the votes
were more rigged than ever.

³It is a big step backward from previous years,² said Mr. Li, director of
the World and China Institute
<http://www.world-china.org/newsdetail.asp?newsid=452>, a nongovernmental
research center in Beijing. The government, obsessed with the notion that
political stability must be maintained, ³has taken strict control of the
elections,² he said.

Inspired by the potential of Internet services like China¹s Twitter-like
microblogs to create visibility and impetus, an unprecedented number of
independent candidates are trying to contest the Communist Party¹s chosen
candidates for two million seats on the local People¹s Congresses, China¹s
lowest parliamentary tier, which has elections every five years for posts
that are largely symbolic.

Haidian District, a Beijing sector of 1.6 million residents where Mr. Qiao
sought office, is particularly hospitable to such challenges. The
district, chockablock with universities and known for its comparatively
liberal bent, elected China¹s first independent candidate in 1984.
According to Mr. Li, Haidian fielded 23 of Beijing¹s roughly 28 successful
independent candidates in 2003 and all 16 independent candidates elected
in the capital in 2006.

But this Nov. 8, Mr. Li said, although Beijing had a surge of 40 to 50
grass-roots candidates, not one was elected. The same held true in voting
on Sept. 8 in Wuhan, a city in east-central China, and on Nov. 18 in
Shanghai, he said. The local governments ³do not want to see any
independent candidate be seated,² he said.

Mr. Qiao, a Communist Party member who advocates democratic reforms,
seemed an especially intriguing candidate. As a student in 1989, he
participated in the student-led protests in Tiananmen Square, but faced no
repercussions. Later he went to work for Beijing government¹s foreign
affairs office, where he said he was disgusted by the ³ridiculous
ideology,² low pay, corruption and bureaucracy.

He returned to academia, joining the faculty of the Foreign Studies
University in 2002. Now an associate professor and director of the Center
for International Communications Studies, he cultivates ties with
students, regularly joining them in the cafeteria. He announced his
candidacy on Sept. 28, he said, because ³it is my right.²

Some of his tactics were avant-garde by China¹s standards, such as going
online to sell book bags emblazoned with his photo, and touring
dormitories with his wife and daughter in tow. But his proposals were
strictly nonpolitical, such as moving a smelly garbage collection site.

Nonetheless, before he even gathered student volunteers for a meeting, he
said, his department¹s party leader urged him to withdraw, telling him,
³What you have said about democracy has made the authorities very angry.²

Undeterred, he collected more than 500 signatures from faculty and
students ‹ more than 50 times the number required by law. The university
responded by announcing that the university¹s vice president and another
university official had more signatures and would be the only names on the
ballot.

Professor Qiao then tried to mount a write-in campaign, but one by one,
his student volunteers quit. Some said that school officials had
telephoned their parents, warning them that their children were engaged in
illegal activities.

³They even told students that they were going to ask their parents to come
to the school,² said one graduate student, who spoke on the condition of
anonymity because he was afraid of getting into trouble. ³Most students
thought it was so unfair.²

Rumors swirled that Mr. Qiao was a tool of the American Embassy or the
foreign media, or that he was on his way out. School officials demanded
that students turn in their red bookmarks and barred Mr. Qiao from the
dormitories. University officials repeatedly advised him that government
and university policies and regulations carried more weight than an
election law.

In the final week before the vote, he said, his telephone calls were
monitored and two security officers tailed him. Except for e-mail, his
Internet tools were disabled, a situation that persists to this day. That
included three microblog accounts on Sina Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of
Twitter, another blog with his scholarly articles, a video site with his
campaign clips, and two social networking pages, where 20,000 people
followed his posts.

³It seemed like my mouth was forced shut and my ears were cut off,² he
said.

On Nov. 8, he said, colorful banners on campus urged people to ³vote
gloriously² and ³enhance the rule of law.² Of 8,030 people who cast
ballots, 1,296 wrote in his name. The university vice president won with
4,127 votes.

Given the stacked playing field, Mr. Qiao considers that a victory. ³What
they did to me,² he said, ³shows their weakness and my strength.²

Shi Da and Mia Li contributed research.