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China's public intellectuals struggle

`Since taking over, Hu Jintao has arrested a number of outspoken journalists in an effort to rein in the media.'

Is China's political environment loosening up, or is the government cracking down? It's hard to tell. Chinese President and Communist Party General Secretary Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) sometimes seems to be going both ways simultaneously.

For example, Hu has decided to honor the memory of his mentor, former general secretary Hu Yaobang (胡耀邦), in order to burnish his aura as a reformist. But, in many ways, Hu Jintao's tenure as the head of the fourth generation of Communist leaders, which began when he became party secretary in 2002, differs sharply from that of his mentor.

Hu Yaobang was a founder of the China Youth League, regarded as a relatively liberal institution in the People's Republic, who in the 1980s promoted political reforms and rehabilitated virtually all the victims of Mao Zedong's (毛澤東) purges. By contrast, the younger Hu has narrowed the public space for political discourse that had opened up during the latter years of his predecessor, Jiang Zemin (江澤民), when market pressure was forcing media outlets to be more daring and wide-ranging.

Since taking over, Hu Jintao has arrested a number of outspoken journalists in an effort to rein in the media. His government has also detained an array of public intellectuals who have been critical of its policies, including cyber-dissidents Liu Di (劉萩) and Shi Tao (師濤) -- who was arrested thanks to Yahoo's collaboration with the police in identifying him -- and freelance writers Yu Jie (余杰) and Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波).

Military doctor Jiang Yanyong (蔣彥永) was detained in 2003 after he publicly rebutted the party's assertion that the SARS epidemic had been brought under control. Last year, he was placed under surveillance when he called on the party to revise its judgment of the 1989 Tiananmen demonstration.

Hu's tightening of controls over political discourse and the media intensified with the publication in September last year of a list of "Top Fifty Public Intellectuals" in the Southern Weekly. The list, dominated by intellectuals who in the 1990s had called for freedom of speech and political participation, appeared with this statement: "This is the time when China is facing the most problems in its unprecedented transformation, and when it most needs public intellectuals to be on the scene and to speak out."

On Nov. 23 last year an article in the Shanghai Party Committee's orthodox Liberation Daily disagreed. It attacked the concept of "public intellectuals," claiming that their "independence drives a wedge" between intellectuals and the party, and between intellectuals and the masses.

Hu's leadership has tried to draw public attention to the growing gap between rich and poor. But its reaction to the book A Survey of Chinese Peasants, which is based on interviews over several years with farmers in the poor province of Anhui, was a telling reminder that public intellectuals are not welcome to contribute to that effort.

The authors, the husband-and-wife team of Chen Guidi (陳桂棣) and Wu Chuntao (吳春桃), who spent their early years in the countryside, described in detail the imposition of unfair taxes by local officials and the authorities' rapacious seizure of land farmed by rural residents. The increasingly impoverished lives of peasants that the book vividly documented resulted from the very abuses of power that Hu had declared himself to be against. Yet, in February last year, one month after its publication, A Survey of Chinese Peasants was banned.

Hu's government has also tightened controls over the media. Reports on peasant and worker demonstrations against corrupt officials and illegal property confiscations have been banned. Those who dare to protest, such as Beijing University journalism professor Jiao Guobiao (焦國標), are silenced.

Similarly, Wang Yi (王毅), a law lecturer at Chengdu University who called for freedom of speech and association, was barred from teaching. The liberal journal Strategy and Management was closed down. Even the editor-in-chief of China Youth Daily, the newspaper affiliated with Hu's own China Youth League power base, which had been aggressive in exposing official corruption, was recently detained.

Hu's rule is not a return to the Mao era. Despite the regime's vast means of censorship, new communications technologies like the Internet make it increasingly difficult for the party to maintain effective control over people's views.

Moreover, persecution of political dissenters does not now reach far beyond the accused to involve their associates. While scores have lost their positions and others have been imprisoned, most are briefly detained and then allowed to find other jobs in China's burgeoning civil society.

By comparison with the late 1990s, however, the space for political discourse has undeniably narrowed, crushing expectations that the country would continue on a liberalizing course. Hu Jintao may have made a genuflection to his more liberal mentor, but in the two decades since the elder Hu's fall from power, even as private space has expanded, China has become a politically far less open society.

Merle Goldman, the author of the forthcoming book From Comrade to Citizen: The Struggle for Political Rights in China, is an associate of the Fairbank Center for East Asian Studies at Harvard.

Copyright: Project Syndicate
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