China’s Aborted Openness

Xiaorong Li

2005-10-24

[Today, six years after I wrote this article, the blind Chinese activist, "bare-foot" citizen lawyer Chen Guangcheng remains under house arrest after serving 4 1/2 years in jail. He has been detained at home since his release in September 2010, together with his wife and two small children, in Dongshigu Village, Linyi, Shandong Province. In the last few weeks, activists and public intellectuals have spoken up openly online, calling for "Free Chen Guangcheng". Some activists have traveled to Linyi, trying to break up the illegal confinement, so far without success. Chinese police have tried to stop them and intimidated them. It's nonetheless encouraging and it lifts my spirit to see such calls and actions.  I post this article here to join their call, in a small way, to free Chen Guangcheng.  - Xiaorong Li, Oct. 15, 2011.] 




China’s state-run Xinhua news agency recently reported on a government investigation into a string of forced sterilizations and abortions in the village of Linyi, Shandong province. The speed of the investigation – said to have begun days after the kidnapping of Chen Guangcheng, a blind activist who had been a public advocate for the victims – and the candor of the report created the impression of greater government responsiveness and bolder official media. Is this impression right?

The story in Linyi is the kind of news that propaganda officials usually bury in the Communist Party’s secret files. According to reports, local authorities in Linyi, seeking to avoid exceeding birth quotas under China’s “one-child” policy, forced several women to undergo abortions and forcibly sterilized many couples with more than one child. Villagers who hid to avoid the campaign reportedly saw their family members jailed. Some in Linyi alleged degrading treatment, torture, and extortion.

Why investigate and report this scandal? The Xinhua reports, I believe, are best read as damage control.

China is trying to secure funding from the United Nations to improve reproductive health – an effort that has been set back by reports of forced abortion. Central authorities did not investigate the Linyi abuses until news of the harassment of Chen Guangcheng – and his abduction with the help of Beijing police – spread into international media.

Chen had reported the abuses to officials and asked a non-governmental organization, the Citizens’ Rights Defense Group, to investigate. The group went to Linyi in May. A month later, the network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders reported the group’s findings and demanded the intervention of the central government’s Family Planning Commission (FPC). 

As a volunteer for the network, I was in touch with Chen and followed events closely. In July, having failed to elicit any government response, Chen began seeking legal aid from prominent lawyers to prepare lawsuits on behalf of the victims, causing alarm among local officials. Pursued by police, Chen went into hiding. My “personal safety was threatened,” he wrote on August 30 in the last email I received from him.

Following strenuous international protests over Chen’s kidnapping, the FPC decided to investigate. Xinhua announced that local officials responsible for the violence might be prosecuted. Central authorities seemed to sense an immediate need to quell criticism of its controversial population-control efforts. And Xinhua wasted no time in claiming that the abuses were limited to a few towns.

However, central government authorities have done little to halt intimidation of Linyi’s villagers. Chen was released from detention but remains under house arrest and was dragged back to the police station on September 2 for unknown reasons.

Police refuse to return Chen’s personal computer and cell phone. The village, too, is mysteriously without phone service. Meanwhile, through arrests, threats, and bribery, authorities are forcing villagers to withdraw accounts of abuse and back out of their lawsuits, warning of the dire consequences of cooperating with Chen and the lawyers.

The FPC declines to intervene, citing lack of law-enforcement powers. On October 10, the villagers’ lawyers were told that the court hearing scheduled that day was canceled. On their way back to Beijing, thugs reportedly assaulted the lawyers.

Viewed in this context, the belief that the government’s approach to Linyi reflects a new responsiveness to human-rights abuses seems naïve. If the government were truly becoming more responsive, why have we not seen similar responses to other disputes over the theft of farmland, compromised investors’ rights, or high-level corruption?

In all these cases, authorities have responded with repression, including the hiring of plain-clothes militias to kidnap or beat up people who attempt to publicize problems. China’s belated bouts of openness about the rural spread of AIDS and the SARS epidemic clearly indicate that the central government regards transparency solely as a matter of expediency.

Others argue that China’s government is simply losing its grip over local authorities. This prospect is hardly encouraging. If abuses and repression in the provinces continue no matter how attentive the central government, or how assertive the press might have become, what then? 

More likely, however, the central authorities are following a policy that most Chinese know well: neijin waisong, or “controlled inside, relaxed outside.” Applied here, the policy means consolidating power at home while disarming critics abroad.  

I believe that the government’s loss of control in the provinces has been stage-managed. Chaos provides a cover for crackdowns. It is too convenient when unidentified strongmen beat and harass activists who question Party rule, and it is too easy for officials to blame an out-of-control “criminal society” when international media start asking questions.

Suspiciously targeted “criminal” assaults have, indeed, occurred in places other than Linyi. Thugs thrashed civil rights activist Lu Banglie in the Guangdong town of Taishi in early October. Six villagers in the Hebei village of Dingzhou, protesting government seizure of their land, died after bloody clashes with a gang of toughs in July. The list goes on.

State media recently started releasing year-end “mass incident” statistics. Last year, the government said, there were 74,000 such incidents. Observers marvel that China’s leaders admit to such a staggering number of protests. But here, again, the government is hiding in plain sight. State-run media organs have been forced to admit that these protests test the Party’s will to maintain power. They neglect to tell the real story of how the Party exercises that will, trusting that the admission itself will satisfy us. We should not be so quick to play along.

(Published at Project Syndicate:

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/xiaorong1/English)