Interestingly, Chinese President Hu Jintao’s (胡錦濤) “harmonious society” does not feature as prominently in official Chinese propaganda as it did a while ago. This is not entirely surprising, considering the social unrest that China has been experiencing in different parts of its territory.
And this is not just because of the economic downturn, which is making things worse. The crisis has worsened the employment situation, sending millions of rural migrants back to the countryside, where things are more dire.
The diversion of resources from the rural hinterland to develop an industrial economy had already created a wide gap between the countryside and urban areas.
Aside from arbitrary local taxes and entrenched corruption among party hacks, people in rural areas have had their land taken away (with little or no compensation) to make it available for the industry.
The diversion of water for urban use and/or pollution from industrial chemical waste has further compromised rural economies and quality of life.
The pillaging of rural assets to subsidize the urban economy has forced millions of rural workers to flock to urban industrial centers in search of jobs.
And since these workers are not entitled to the social and legal benefits of urban residency, they are easy prey for employers and virtually anyone else powerful enough to exploit them.
They are paid abysmal wages (held in arrears in many cases), with little or no recourse to legal process.
That they still came in millions to work in urban ghettoes is a sad commentary on the state of the rural economy.
This is how China’s economy became internationally competitive, making it, as many call it, the factory of the world.
Commenting on the axis between party elites and developers, Zhao Ziyang (趙紫陽), who was deposed as party secretary-general for opposing the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre and subsequently spent rest of his life under house arrest until his death, reportedly said: “The government seizes land from the people, pushing the price down to a minimum, then hands it over to developers to sell it at a huge markup.”
As a result, he said, “We now have a tripartite group in which the political elite, the economic elite and the intellectual elite are fused.”
“This power elite blocks China’s further reform and steers the nation’s policies toward service of itself,” he said.
But popular resistance has been building up for a number of years. In December 2005, for example, a riot in Dongzhou, Guangdong Province, against plans to build a power plant on land taken without compensation resulted in the killing of 20 people at the hands of security forces.
Lately, there have been instances of protests organized across provinces, as in the case of taxi drivers striking against the high cost of cab rental.
The cumulative economic and social pressures over the years and the desperate need for a political outlet to air grievances is starting to fray the tripartite bond between the “political elite, the economic elite and the intellectual elite” described by Zhao.
The most telling example was the signing of Charter 08 in December by several hundreds of Chinese intellectuals and others seeking the end of one-party rule and its replacement by real democracy based on freedom, respect for human rights, equality and rule of law.
As usual, the Chinese government tends to tighten the system to suppress dissent, while obfuscating the issue of political freedom with platitudes.
The most recent example was the National Human Rights Action Plan of China, 2009-2010, which ostensibly aims to make government more responsive to popular concerns regarding governance.
However, the document is silent on the question of freedom, an independent judiciary and political plurality — competing political parties that could challenge the monopoly of the Chinese Communist Party.
The document focuses instead on improving the situation within the existing system of one-party rule.
The point, though, is that in theory the Chinese Constitution already incorporates democratic provisions. In practice, however, it doesn’t work because the party has interpreted it to suit its own power imperatives.
The question, then, is: Why would anyone believe that the new action plan would work any better than the Constitution?
All the provisions of the Constitution are easily obviated through a system of administrative detention without trial, which often imposes sentences such as “re-education through labor.”
The arbitrariness of the system, in which everything goes if the party or its minions so decree, has resulted in growing resistance within the populace to corruption.
Li Datong (李大同), a Chinese political analyst, recently told a visiting academic in Beijing: “The government has been skilful in convincing the middle class it is futile to protest … but you only need one spark for that to change.”
Whether the present economic crisis will provide that spark is difficult to say. At a minimum, it is another building block — and a significant one at that — in the growing social unrest in the country.
Because the political system is so top-heavy and unresponsive, there are no built-in safety valves to let off steam through mass protests. There is also very little transparency and accountability.
In a recent investigative report on China’s mining disasters, which far too often result in fatalities, the New York Times quoted Hu Xingdou (胡星斗), an economics professor at the Beijing Institute of Technology, as saying: “We don’t have grassroots democracy. We don’t have independent labor unions. We don’t have checks and balances. We don’t have any system of official accountability.”
Hu’s observations sum up what is wrong with China.
What this means is that unless the political system develops grassroots democracy, it will remain prone to sudden periodic shocks.
In the absence of institutionalized democratic shock absorbers like popularly elected assemblies, a free media, independent judiciary and rule of law, China will remain a punters’ game.
Sushil Seth is a writer based in Australia.
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