China's economic liberalization has had little effect on political reform, as the country's elites are complicit in monopolizing state wealth, which has been distributed unevenly during the privatization of state-owned properties, a Chinese democracy activist said yesterday.
Hu Ping (胡平), editor-in-chief of Beijing Spring magazine and a commentator residing in the US, said the reason it was difficult for the Chinese authorities to initiate political reforms was because those in power were afraid of being purged for "stealing" state wealth once democracy is introduced in the country.
"Ninety percent of the officials in China have the problem of having inconsistencies between their income and their spending. It is common that most officials are corrupt. So of course the officials wouldn't want to initiate reforms," Hu said at a forum held by the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy.
The forum, titled "Will China Become a Responsible Stakeholder" invited a group of Chinese democracy activists to comment on the issue.
All of the panelists agreed it was impossible for China to become a "responsible stakeholder" in the international system, a term coined by US deputy secretary of state Robert Zoellick.
Hu said the major difference between the former East European communist countries and China's economic development was that the during the privatization of state-owned properties, East European countries had a popular debate about how the properties would be divided, while in China, this was monopolized by the few elites in power.
"The state-owned properties were basically preyed on by the Chinese authorities during privatization. The process -- despite being more efficient than the democratic method used in East European countries -- is nevertheless illegitimate," Hu said.
Ruan Ming (
"The current Chinese economy is based on a slave system, exploiting cheap Chinese labor and land. China is now a heaven for overseas capitalists. But Chinese laborers live and work in terrible conditions," Ruan said.
Ruan said that the way to help China develop democracy was to stop financing the Chinese Communist Party.
He said the way Google and Yahoo had to compromise with the Chinese authorities to enter the Chinese market had helped China to better its technologies to limit freedom of speech.
Paul Lin (
"The thinking behind this was that China can take a little disadvantage now in order to gain other advantages in the future. The goal is for Taiwan to lose its sovereignty gradually," Lin said.
Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Deputy Chairman David Huang (
China's offer of preferential terms for imports of Taiwanese fruit, vegetables and fish would not benefit Taiwanese farmers and fishermen as there were already shortages of the products in the domestic market.
"Some of the fish products can hardly meet domestic consumption and we even need to import them from overseas. Why would we still want to export them to China?" he said.
"China is actually not under any disadvantage at all," Huang said.
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