The recent spate of killings of mostly of young children in China raises several questions.
The frequency of the attacks — eight assaults in 10 weeks — cannot just be explained away as the work of mentally deranged killers or copycat incidents, though some of them might be.
The Chinese authorities have sought to limit media coverage on the grounds that it encourages copycat killings. While one sympathizes with China’s ordeal in the wake of such horrible killings, limiting or censoring its exposure by the media is hardly the right approach. It is only through media exposure and open investigation that a clear picture of such tragedy is likely to emerge and on this will depend the desired course of action to deal with such incidents.
As with any other disaster, however, the first response of the Chinese authorities has been to clamp down on public information. Even in the absence of any substantive information about the killing of children, there are some plausible explanations.
It so happens that when some people start acting out their murderous impulses to wreak vengeance on society, particularly children, it is most likely that their actions are intended to invite attention in the absence of legitimate avenues where their voices can be heard. They might even be nursing terrible agony that has remained bottled up, needing psychological counseling or treatment as well as social interaction.
A study conducted last year by Michael Phillips, a mental health expert at Tongji University in Shanghai, found that 173 million Chinese suffer from mental problems, ranging from schizophrenia to alcohol abuse. Of these, 91 percent had never been treated.
China’s rapid economic growth and consequent social disruption have created a serious disconnect between its rulers and the people. True, China’s ruling oligarchy has created a new social base in the urban middle class, but they too, like most other people, feel frustrated with the growing income gap between them and the wealthy business class.
Not only this, the new business class and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) work in cahoots. Therefore, wherever one looks, corruption and nepotism are the order of the day.
In the midst of such venality, China’s rulers have the gumption to talk about creating a “harmonious society” and to rally people around the flag by staging national extravaganzas like the Beijing Olympics and Shanghai World Expo jamborees.
At the same time, when horrible killings of children occur, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) has platitudes aplenty to offer. Reacting to the killings, he reportedly said that besides taking “vigorous safety measures, we also have to pay attention to addressing some deep-seated causes behind these problems, including dealing with some social conflicts and resolving disputes.”
And what has he in mind? Not much except to urge: “We must strengthen the role of mediation at the grassroots,” which means nothing in real terms.
As Wen is presiding over the rising social contradictions and cleavages in his country, there should be a well-thought out plan to deal with and resolve these issues that threaten the country’s social stability. Of course, any well-thought out plan will require open debate and investigation into the “deep-seated causes behind these problems.”
However, this is not what the Chinese government would want. They squelched demands by the parents of children buried alive under shoddily built school buildings in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake and brushed aside the tainted milk scandal in which children were poisoned after consuming milk mixed with melamine.
The first response to all these and other tragedies has been to manage and censor the media, as is being done with the schoolyard killings. Following recent media exposure of children’s deaths and illnesses from the use of unrefrigerated vaccines, the authorities removed Bao Yueyang (包月陽) from his position as chief editor of the China Economic Times, which carried out the investigations.
The second method has been to buy the victims’ silence. If that didn’t work, the victims would be threatened with physical harm.
The third method has been to frame them in some fake criminal case and throw them into jail, while others have been thrown into mental institutions.
However, if some victims still persist in taking their cases to Beijing, they are waylaid on the way and thrown into “black jails” — dungeons operated by gangsters hired by local and regional authorities. In other words, there are no legitimate avenues for Chinese citizens to seek justice.
The media are managed, manipulated and censored; courts work under state direction and politics are monopolized by the CCP. No wonder there is so much repressed anger in the society, where outlets are found in outbursts like schoolyard killings.
In the light of all this, Chinese President Hu Jintao’s (胡錦濤) talk of bringing about a “harmonious society” is not only a contradiction, but also a cruel joke. China needs to ease up and open up, and some Chinese academics are coming to this conclusion.
For instance, the Southern Weekly newspaper recently published extracts from a report by a group of sociologists, led by Sun Liping (孫立平), a professor at Tsinghua University. The report, quoted in the press, said: “Without fundamental resolution of the question of mechanisms for social justice and balancing interests, blindly preventing the expression of legitimate interests in the name of stability will only accumulate contradictions and render society even more unstable.”
Another academic, Yu Jianrong (于建嶸), at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, has argued for opening up the system for people’s participation. He warns that if this is not done, “great social upheaval may thus occur and the existing social and political orders are likely to be destroyed.”
The CCP, however, is drunk with power and is certainly in no mood to listen.
Sushil Seth is a writer based in Australia.
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