China censorship by extortion in London

Update at October 7, 2019 – The NBA self-censors for China

The NBA is a business – we know that.  But the NBA has been the professional league in which players and coaches have had the most freedom to speak their minds about issues of rights and morality.  Now, apparently, that freedom of speech stops at the Chinese border.  The New York Times has the story – NBA executive’s Hong Kong tweet starts firestorm in China.

Daryl Morey, the general manager of the Houston Rockets, tweeted an expression of support for protesters in Hong Kong.  This upset the Chinese Basketball Association, and some Chinese fans, who see Hong Kongers as only hooligans and destroyers of Chinese harmony.  Morey’s tweet suggested that he “stands with Hong Kong.”  He has now apologized to the NBA’s largest international market.  The NBA has disavowed his comment, although it did suggest weakly that he had a right to say what he said.  Of course, the Chinese league commented with the old trope, that Morey had hurt the feelings of all Chinese people (who are basketball fans). 

The story is less that the NBA wilts in the face of Chinese outrage, but that the outrage is so unified, potentially deadly, and in accord with CCP desires. Plenty of other western businesses have set the pattern, whether on Hong Kong, Xinjiang, or Taiwan. The takeaway is that FBI director Christopher Wray is correct in his assessment of China as a “whole of society” threat. The ease with which we self-censor in the face of Chinese assessment that we have offended the whole of the Chinese people (how DO they make that determination?) is a threat to our own values in more than just business. In 2002, eminent China scholar Perry Link wrote of Chinese censorship as the “The Anaconda in the Chandelier” – everyone knows it is there, we can’t see it, and don’t know when it will strike. It is powerful, and causes us to behave differently. We fear all the more what we don’t know and can’t see. National inability to tolerate a single tweet by a relatively minor official of the NBA is itself a bargaining tactic to worry about. Who knows where it will strike next?

The original London theater story below.

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China censorship by extortion in London

There cannot be anyone who still thinks “peaceful rise” is a metaphor for China’s relations with the world. But the real fear is not what we see in the papers. The real fear is not China’s military, or trade power, or isolating Taiwan, or OBOR, or votes and influence at the UN and in other international bodies.  In a sense, not even IP theft, although that is the only current trade concern of real import. 

What the world should fear over the next ten or twenty years is export of business and government practices conducted via cheating, extortion, threats to innocent parties, arrests under false pretenses, no rule of law, no free press, prison torture, and police and government action with impunity. 

The latest example is threats to a theater performance in London.

The Guardian has the story –

From Beijing to Hampstead: how tale of HIV whistleblower rattled Chinese state

Now we have threats to the performing arts – a theater, in London. Via threats to the family and friends and daughter of the woman who is the subject of the play.  Chinese security officials are threatening the family in China of a former health bureau official who exposed coverup of an HIV and hepatitis scandal in China in 1992 and 1995. Apparently the loss of face for CCP over events of 27 years ago is still salient. 

Dr. Wang Shuping is not the author of the play, the director, an actor, and probably not an investor or audience member.  The play is about her story to expose the coverup of “epic proportions” – demands to falsify medical data and then physical destruction of her lab and samples of blood tainted with hepatitis and HIV from donors.  Wang is now an American citizen, a practicing nephrologist in Williamsburg, VA.

From Wang’s statement to the media –

On 22 August 2019, I received a phone call from a relative in America who told me that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) Ministry of State Security have sent officers from Beijing to Zhoukou, my hometown, to investigate my colleagues and relatives … During the past ten years, officers from the PRC Ministry of Health, Ministry of Public Security and Ministry of State Security have been to my hometown to interrogate my relatives and colleagues several times, trying to silence me.

 From the Guardian story –

The plot closely follows the battle Wang and her colleagues waged to uncover the truth. “I first reported the HCV [hepatitis] epidemic among blood donors to the Ministry of Health of PRC [People’s Republic of China] in 1992,” said Wang. “Three years later, I discovered and reported a serious HIV epidemic among the plasma donors to the Health Bureau of Zhoukou Region and the ministry of health of the PRC … Only after I reported my results to the central government in Beijing was any action taken. They requested that I falsify my information about the HIV epidemic situation among the plasma donors but I refused. To cover up the HIV epidemic situation, they broke up our clinical testing centre, hit me with a heavy stick and insulted me.”  Wang resisted pressure to close her laboratory, but the health bureau cut off the electricity and water supplies, forcing it to discard thousands of blood samples.

Officials have threatened the livelihoods of Wang’s friends and family in Beijing, and attempted to contact her daughter, to threaten her also.  The director of the play says they will do what Dr. Wang wishes – presumably, cancel the play if she feels the threats are extreme.  She wishes the play to go on, even with the threats to family and friends. 

Wang’s closing statement –

The only thing harder than standing up to the Communists and their security police is not giving in to pressure from friends and relatives who are threatened with their livelihoods all because you are speaking out. But even after all this time, I will still not be silenced, even though I am deeply sad that this intimidation is happening yet again. The King of Hell’s Palace will go ahead and I am really looking forward to seeing the production.

You know about kidnapping of foreign business people in China over business disputes.

You know about the hostage taking of three Canadians as political retaliation over the Huawei business. 

You know about threats at academic conferences and threats to individual foreign teachers, in their own country, of whom Beijing disapproves. 

You know about threats to Chinese students studying abroad, and their families in China.

You know about threats to the families of Chinese students studying in Hong Kong.

You know about threats to foreign businesses, such as Marriott and United and American and Delta airlines if they don’t cease calling the Republic of Taiwan the Republic of Taiwan.  

You know about the threat to put Cathay Pacific Airlines out of business unless they policed the activities of their own employees in not supporting the Hong Kong protests.

Business is not safe from threat.  Academics are not safe from threat in their home country.  Students are not safe from threat.  Now, theater is not safe from threat.  One is reminded of the Niemoeller quote –  “First came for the socialists, and I did nothing….”   Or Edmund Burke – “All that is required for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

 Dr. Wang’s personal story is available at ChinaChange here.  It is perhaps more detail than you want, but is a good example of how some Chinese exports will be expected to work if good people remain silent and do nothing.

What Chinese are Talking About (3) – Love Mr. Xi, Love Mr. Trump

Update at August 13 – 

I wrote a bit about Epoch Times in the post below, mostly about Chinese getting their news from China news sources like public wechat.  Epoch Times is most decidedly anti-CCP, and published by organizations related to Falun Gong, the same people who bring you Shen Yun, the extraordinary dance and performance troup that has been wow-ing Americans for a decade.

In the last two weeks, Epoch Times has been bombarding YouTube with two minute (two minute!) video advertising in advance of a video one is watching.  The ads offer subscriptions to the newspaper, promising to expose the lies of the mainstream media in vilifying Donald Trump.  Here is a screen shot from one subscription ad.  “Honest news” is what they tout.

Donald Trump reads it every day.  ‘Nuff said.  Chinese can get their “honest news” from Beijing or Falun Gong.  Truly, only no news here is good news.

What Chinese are Talking About (3) – Love Mr. Xi, Love Mr. Trump

We know that mainlanders, particularly those in CCP, have a fondness for Mr. Trump.  There are several reasons – Chinese historically have been willing to defer to strong leaders, and Trump projects arrogance, if not wisdom.  It was clear before the 2016 election that if Trump won, Mr. Putin would win and Mr. Xi would also win.  Events bear this out.  There is no adversary so easy to fool as one convinced of his own superiority, particularly one with such poor justification.  Flattery and artifice will get you … everywhere.  For Chinese interested in foreign policy, all they need do is sit back and wait.  Trump’s unforced errors – TPP, belittling allies, cozying up to dictators, removing US from environmental treaties, threatening friends and foes alike – make Chinese arrogance and Mr. Xi’s own unforced errors look positively innocuous.  What’s not to love about someone willing to play the fool for you?

There is reason to think that Chinese in the US, whether citizens, long-time residents or new green card recipients, might hold more nuanced views about Mr. Trump.  And, in fact, they do.

But often not in the direction you might think.  Case in point – the Chinese American news, sent around the US on wechat.

You know wechat is the ubiquitous and multifaceted phone app from Tencent that has become indispensable to Chinese lives.  For communication purposes, there are two broad categories – private wechat, which functions like a group email, and public wechat, in which wechat operates as a news disseminator.

The news disseminator is well established in the US.  There is Chicago American Chinese news, New York American Chinese news, and probably a dozen or twenty more channels.  The channels have some local news, and share word for word some national stories.

All the channels function only in Chinese.  Anyone can read the news, if they can read Chinese.  For many Chinese in America, these channels function as a principal news source.  Every Chinese student who is harmed in America gets featured, along with positive stories about inventions and developments in China. The wechat channels function as modern versions of the Polish or German language newspapers our parents or grandparents read. 

But in our new era, the politics are different.  Rather than a pro-worker or socialist bent, the wechat channels exhibit a distinct pro-Trump, pro-Republican bias. 

Some bias among Chinese is understandable – they tend to be opposed to attempts to change university admissions standards, which tends to undercut hard-working and high-achieving Asians.  And they tend to be suspicious of Democratic relaxation of immigrant controls, when so many Chinese sacrificed so much to get here themselves.

One should remember that the wechat stories for consumption in America are mostly unsourced, identical across wechat platforms nationally in the US, and written in China or by Chinese working directly for wechat. Five or six national stories are reported each day, in addition to local news.

The wechat groups can be a useful and positive organizing technique.  Last year, a Chinese immigrant used WeChat to win a seat in the Maryland House of Delegates.  Lily Qi raised nearly $150,000 for her candidacy, and did so by contacting non-registered voters directly, with an appeal to change their non-voting behavior.

On the other hand, Australians are worried about fake news stories planted in the wechat groups to steer political views.  The Sydney Morning Herald documents fake news and doctored stories on local wechat groups, and comments  – With less than two weeks until the May 18 election, Chinese social media has become an increasingly powerful tool for all political parties, especially in seats with large numbers of Chinese-Australian voters…

Given its dependence on Chinese trade, and its traditional alliance with the other “five eyes” nations (US, Canada, Britain, New Zealand) Australia has become a prime target for Propaganda Ministry or United Front organizations to influence public opinion. 

Bill Bishop comments at Sinocism – any government should be very concerned over the growing role of Wechat as the primary communications and media consumption tool of the Diaspora. It is after all still controllable and censorable from Beijing.

Wechat is not the only social media platform operating in Chinese, of course.  The political newsletter Popular Information reports on wildly pro-Trump stories in Epoch Times, a media conglomerate with strong ties to Falun Gong, the secretive organization banned in China. A publication with Falun Gong ties is going to be virulently anti-CCP, but they do love Trump.

Epoch Times publishes in Chinese and in English, as well as in other languages. Popular Information reports that Epoch Times “was one of the top three political spenders on Facebook in the last week in April,” outspending every political candidate in the country except Biden and Trump, according to third party research. The money was spent “to promote stories that Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, has championed.”  Epoch Times spent almost as much on Facebook ads ($148,937) as did the Trump campaign ($149,610) in early May.  Epoch Times is now featuring hysterical Youtube advertising, debunking the Mueller investigation and directly promoting Trump. 

From the Popular Information story.  Epoch Times is number 4 –

 Also from the Popular Information story, about Epoch Times reporting on the FBI spying on Trump –

if you could read English only moderately well, wouldn’t you migrate to the news in your own native language?  Makes sense to me.  And makes sense to the wechat writers in Beijing, and to the Chinese and English language writers at Epoch Times.  Truly, for Chinese readers in America, no news is good news. 

Learning from China … and Hong Kongers

Don’t trust China” is what the recent Hong Kong protesters told the G20 representatives in Osaka.

 I think that is right. It has been a sea change for me.  Fool me once.  Maybe even a few times. Still, over the last 15 years, I have come to realize that we should listen to the Hong Kongers (who don’t wish to be called Chinese).

Why believe twenty-somethings marching in the streets? Let’s remind ourselves that lying and no respect for human dignity are part and parcel of the government face to the world.  FBI director Christopher Wray’s declaration of China as a “whole of state” threat should be taken at face value.  There is no company or researcher or even student studying abroad who cannot be tapped to assist CCP.  (This of course casts false suspicion on honest Chinese everywhere.  Resistance is of course possible, and the norm, but it can be dangerous).

We have preponderance of the evidence and beyond a reasonable doubt.  On our most public piece of recent evidence – Huawei cannot be an innocent bystander, regardless of its own wishes.  It has been implicated or charged in theft and cyberspying for years China hacked Norway’s Visma to steal client secrets: investigators | Reuters:; Huawei Sting Offers Rare Glimpse of U.S. Targeting Chinese Giant – Bloomberg:; Cisco, T-Mobile, Motorola, Nortel, et.al.  The rap sheet over a decade or two is pretty impressive.

Don Clarke, cited at Huawei – taking a fall, hoping for a call– There’s a whole variety of pressures that the government can bring to bear on a company or individual, and they are not at all limited to criminal prosecution …. China is a Leninist state that does not recognize any limits to government power.

Mark Rosenblatt  in Real Clear Policy  citing two recent Chinese laws, the National Intelligence Law and the Anti-Spyware Law –  Specifically, “any organization or citizen shall support, assist, and cooperate with the state intelligence work in accordance with the law, and keep the secrets of the national intelligence work known to the public. The State protects individuals and organizations that support, assist and cooperate with national intelligence work.”

Other evidence – politics in Australia and New Zealand are under direct attack, as are American tech companies; also, here – china cyber-cloudhopper.  A mayoral election in Taiwan appears to have been determined by fake news on social media coming from inside the mainland. Academic researcher Anne Marie Brady is under personal attack in New Zealand, presumably for research not to Mr. Xi’s liking. See Intimidation knows no boundaries and the update.  Wechat news for Chinese in the US is unabashedly Republican oriented, not only because of Democratic support for immigration and Chinese fears of university quotas.  The news stories, coming from Wechat in China, support the buffoon who is easy to exploit.

 Chinese espionage even rates its own wiki site now.

 My own path from trust to mis- began in 2004.  I taught CCP members going to school in Chicago for a year. They were sent by the government to learn about markets and government management. The students were midlevel bureaucrats, in about every discipline from police and propaganda bureau officials to stock market administrators. Over the years, many became my friends and colleagues.  I stayed in their homes, they in mine, we vacationed and worked together.

In 2009, I went to China to teach.  The world was still enamored of China, the shiny once-in-world-history transform learning to be a responsible leader in the community of nations. 

Living closely in China, one sees more sides of the world-facing sculpture constructed to be the New China –  like seeing the man behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz.  What’s behind the curtain is not so shiny and imposing.  Nowadays, it can still be threatening.

The 2008 riots in Tibet and the 2009 unrest in Xinjiang were part of my seeing more clearly.  Suppression of the Sanlu milk scandal in 2008, for fear of soiling the glory of the Olympic Games, was another eye-opener.  Years later, my wife, who is Chinese, would never buy Chinese milk for our son.

There are, of course, innumerable other incidents of moral decay and lying, some reported in the Chinese media. For comparison, the US has no shortage of corruption, murder, mayhem, and cheating in business and government.  But more of that malfeasance is available in the news, and sometimes lawsuits and media and whistleblowers can help restore human dignity.  But see this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and – well, you get the idea.

By 2012, my view had changed. I had first hand exposure to police and hospitals and doctors and universities and media, urban and rural, wealthy and poor, citizen and peasant – and a lot of guanxi exercised on my behalf. I saw a university dean jailed not for a crime but for political retribution. I see now a university party leader heavily suspected of corruption, cheating faculty and no one will dare to complain. I see how judges and police and teachers deal with the moral quandaries.  I learned a great deal about Chinese as moral individuals in an immoral system.  I developed an idea – honor and respect individual Chinese; mistrust Chinese people; fear the Chinese government.  That still seems right to me.

None of this is new; China Law Blog, now-retired China Accounting Blog, and major media have been documenting for years how malfeasance – basically, all forms of lying – has cost American business and threatens models of business and law in which good will and good faith are basic to ideas of civility, fair dealing, and due process. 

The world is no longer so naïve about Chinese government intentions.  In 2009 American intellectuals thought a modern Chinese economy would bring democratic change.  Mr. Xi has disabused them of that notion.   Don Clarke has written about the Uyghur concentration camps, entirely outside the purview of the Chinese legal system.  This is what Hong Kongers see. 

The notion of Chimerica, the international economic partnership, is clearly no more.  Now, how does one deal with an ex when the breakup is a matter of lying?  Trust is off the table – even Reagan told us that, in the 1987 SALT treaty – “trust but verify.”  Now, the US negotiators want to insert such provisions into any trade agreement about IP theft.  While an admirable goal, Chinese will never agree to such a limitation, could not enforce it, and in any case, sanctions are after the fact. 

Now comes an open letter in the Washington Post to Trump from more than a hundred “scholarly, foreign policy, military and business” individuals advising return to the days of wishin’ an’ a hopin’ on China policy.  Bill Bishop’s sound reply at Sinocism is here, at item number three.  “Can’t we all just get along?” is so twentieth century. 

Turn the other cheek in international economic and political matters is no prescription for achieving a final reward.  The partnership breakup is a done deal. The only way forward for America is some limited decoupling, along with doubling down on the ideals of honesty and fairness and respect for human dignity that made Hong Kongers appeal to Americans at the G20.  Going forward, we should all learn from Hong Kongers.  We can’t go back to those innocent days of a decade ago.  You also remember – denial is not just a river in Egypt. 

When Internet Blocking Fails

An internet not coming to a computer near you …

CCP gets more paranoid than usual around June 4 of every year, particularly those years a multiple of five from 1989.   This year is 30 years since the Tian’anmen massacre.

I was in Chicago around June 4 of 2009, but I made the 2014 anniversary.  Internet blocking began early in May.  Every foreigner in China gets accustomed to internet and social media blocking, but in 2014 the online ban was nearly total.  It was a lesson in how particular the censorship could be.   You know, it’s China – it’s complicated.

At my school in Hangzhou, there were two internet services for students – one for Chinese, one for foreigners.  I got the foreign service, since I was living in the foreign faculty housing.  This was post-google ban in China, so it was expected that gmail would not go through.  Surprisingly, I could receive gmail, but could not respond to a gmail address, whether I used my own gmail or another server.  My principal means of communicating with students outside the classroom – for homework, paper information, changes in class scheduling – was via email.  My Chinese students could receive my emails from my aol account.  Some of my foreign students who lived off-campus, outside of the school server, could not.  When students told me they had not received my emails, at first I put that down to normal attempts to get around responsibility.  I was wrong.  My students could not receive my emails, and I could not receive theirs.

Herein lies the lesson about blocking particularity.  Blocking could be done, is done, at any of several different levels – national, provincial, city, district or individual school. The flow of information could be turned on or off like a hose, and could be titrated to whatever level was desired.  In 2014, I could send some emails – but one email might take four or six hours to send.

In 2015, one of my computers was blocked completely in Hangzhou – no internet access whatsoever, for a period of about six months. The same computer, taken to Wuhan, still had no access; but another computer of mine did work in Wuhan.  The blocking was targeted at me – or at least, at the computer I always used.

I was more than a little incensed about the blocking at my school.  Student contacts were completely disrupted, even more than usual.  In class, I began telling students when I had sent an email, and asked the foreign students to tell each other about my emails, so that they might be able to send to each other. Sometimes, that worked.

Communication with students outside of the classroom was nearly impossible.  This was made more ridiculous by the selectivity of the blocking – students living on campus had worse internet service than those living off campus. Sometimes. And vice versa.

The 2014 internet massacre was actually the second major interruption since 2009.  In late 2012, there were similar problems – emails that never got through – without any notice, emails that took many hours to send.  That was the time of the Bloomberg and the New York Times exposing the billions of dollars in family wealth accumulated by sons and family of Xi Jinping and Wen Jiabao, and CCP thought those exposès a bit … unseemly.   It was at this time that google was completely blocked from China – search, email to and from.

In my case, it was not only being unable to communicate with students.  I had business to conduct in Chicago, which was made impossible.  Checks could not get written.  Blocking was not just google, but any search, any email.

Not to sugarcoat it, but I voiced my discontent.  I complained.  Like voting – early and often.

The international office of our university was the natural place to go.  One of my Chinese government students from Chicago was the deputy leader (second only to the party leader) and she was generally sympathetic to my occasional foreign demands.  After a couple of weeks of no service, I went to her office on a Tuesday morning. The excuses were pathetic – there were problems with the whole school internet server (the Chinese students had no problem).  Ok.  Then, just a problem for foreign internet servers in China.  So why was this not a problem all over China?  Then, the apologies – “I have been told it will be fixed by next Monday.”  This, of course, on a Tuesday.  There were five or six successive Tuesdays with this promise.

Since this was clearly a problem only at our university, I suggested some remedies.  My favorite was a big, gross remedy that indicated how stupid the whole business was. The Chinese students had no problems.  The school administration people had no problems.  Apparently, the rest of China had no problems.  A residential development about 500 meters away on the other side of some small hills had no internet access problems.

I volunteered.  Ok, if this is so difficult for you to solve internally, give me 500 meters of category 5 cable, and we can string a wire from the adjacent residential development with service to the foreign faculty building. Right over the hills, bushes and all. Lay cable on the ground.  Would take two guys a few hours.  Inelegant, but solved.

The blocking was a problem for all the foreign faculty and the foreign students.  But I was teaching major courses, not language courses, so I was more or less a leader of the foreign faculty.  Sometimes leadership demands bold action.

I demanded a meeting with the university president.  I pointed out that the school was really banking on a large increase in the foreign student population.  I was more or less the face of the foreign presence at the school, and if I could not get internet access, all those foreign students in Germany, Indonesia, the –stans, and Africa would hear about the problems someway when I finally could get access.  In any case, the blocking was a violation of my contract with the school, that internet access would be available.

After six weeks of promises about next Monday, mirabile dictu, after my meeting with the university president on a Friday, access was restored by next Monday morning.

Worked pretty well, too.  Guanxi and a credible threat works wonders. 

How to End June 4, et al.

A Country That Controls the Internet Should be Able to Control the Calendar

A few years ago, it was reported in the Australian Financial Review that senior party members in the Chinese Communist Party were reading deTocqueville’s The Old Regime and the Revolution.  This was at the suggestion of Xi Jinping, who apparently wanted to call attention to the fate of leaders who ignore the people in favor of corruption and the easy life.  The end times of the French monarchy is a good model for what rulers should not do.

We now have the anti-corruption campaign and the tigers and flies and the framing of enemies by other Party members.   And we have the mandate to remove evil western influence from China (free speech, free press, democracy, and the western books and teachers who are unfortunately a product of those ideas).  This was the pronouncement from Yuan Guiren, the Chinese Education Minister.

An aside – Communism, you know, is a German import.  What CCP should do about that is overlooked.  No doubt this will be the subject of investigation.   Someone, somewhere, within the CCP, at a very senior level, is protecting Communism, this western import,  from being attacked.   Is this more corruption?

Anyway, the French Revolution has spawned lots of interesting ideas, in addition to “liberty, equality, fraternity.”    One of the more interesting was the French Revolutionary calendar.   Those of you who can get access to the internet outside China can look at French Republican Calendar.

The rationale for the calendar was to sweep away the ideas, the habits, the customs of the old system – the ancien régime, as it is called.   The concept was to erase the memories, the Four Olds of France as it were, and pave the way for a new France.

Sort of like a New China.  

On October 23, 1793, the Revolutionary Calendar was adopted by the National Convention, acting as the government in France.  The idea was to make the calendar rational, and modern.

In the spirit of the times the calendar was designed to do away with the old names of months, irrational numbers of days in the month and the week and hours in the day, and replace them with systematic, metric, and base-10 representations.    Very modern.  

The wiki article describes the months, days, and hours –

There were twelve months, each divided into three ten-day weeks called décades. The tenth day, décadi, replaced Sunday as the day of rest and festivity….

Names of the days, names of the months, and number of days in the month and hours in the day were all changed.  Controlling the calendar was rational, and modern.

How the old New France can help the New China

There has been a lot of anxiety within China about the date of June 4.    Many people think that June 4 is part of the modern calendar, and should come after June 3 and before June 5.    But in New China, old ideas should be eliminated.

Others in China seem to fear the date of June 4, and would like to see it banned.   Certainly, the Chinese Communist Party has taken that position, in action if not in policy statement.   References to June 4, particularly if they include a year, such as 1989, are blocked by the Chinese government.   References to related terms, such as May 35, or characters or words that could be generally understood as meaning “June 4” are also blocked by the Chinese government.  Attempts to talk about June 4 can land people in jail

Now we know that the Chinese government supports modernization of everything in China.   Getting rid of the Four Olds is itself an old term, but still a useful idea.

In the spirit of modernization, and using modernist ideas from the French enlightenment to support the CCP, we recommend that June 4 just be eliminated from the calendar.  This should eliminate the anxiety felt within the government about June 4, and make it possible for millions of Chinese to get back to the business of making money, which, after all, is what a society is for.

How to do it

There are many ways to eliminate June 4.   Perhaps the easiest would be to simply print calendars that go directly from June 3 to June 5.   The extra day can be added somewhere else, like February, which really could use another day in any case.

If this program were implemented immediately, then the calendar revision could be accomplished in conjunction with the map revisions that show dotted lines in the South China Sea and Taiwan as part of traditional China.  Maybe include some proposed acquisitions, as well.   Arunachal Pradesh, Aksai Chin, and diaoyudao in the East China Sea.  Mongolia?  Surely some argument can be made for ports in Sri Lanka, or along the coast of Africa.   With all those dotted lines, it would be easy to draw a dotted line between June 3 and June 5 to February 29.

Another idea – print calendars that call the day between June 3 and June 5, June X.   There will be confusion with people thinking we are using Roman numerals, like the French Republican calendar.   But we already have a June 10, so the confusion should be small, even if unavoidable for some people.   We all have to pay a price for progress.

There are other ideas.   June 3.99 has a nice look to it. Chinese citizens can come up with variations.

And the beauty of that sort of choice is that there are an infinite number of variations.  If some people don’t like June 3.99, then they can try June 3.999.   Or June 3.1.   Lots of choices.

Some people – looking at you, CCP –  get so anxious about June 4 that they try to eliminate June entirely from the calendar, or at least eliminate internet use during June.   We can fix that, too, by eliminating the word “June” from the calendar.

Early June in the French Revolutionary calendar would be Prairial, from the French word for prairie, or pasture.

And senior Communist Party officials who are reading deTocqueville should really have no objection to naming a month after a French prairie.   So Prairial 3.99 could be just what is desired, for all Chinese people.    So the sequence could be, Prairial 3, Prairial 3.99, Prairial 5.   So much more modern feeling.  And the internet doesn’t  have to go down, again, for maintenance, every year during May and  June.  There is no June.

As a final solution, we could just replace June 4 with nothing.   We would write June   , 2019, or 2019 – Prairial –    .     That way, the people who want to eliminate June 4 will have done so.   Everyone else can just remember what goes in front of the comma or behind the dash.

And then, on Prairial    , Chinese web-users should show their solidarity, and go silent.   Post nothing on Prairial    , and show your support for June 3.99.   This might be the most effective way to deal with the June 4 problem.  Post nothing on that date.  

If enough people comply, government will be flustered.  What does it mean to protest when no one shows up?  What if they blocked the internet and no one complied by being blocked?  And how about all those millions of Chinese who failed to post anything on June 4?  Which side are they on?

Think of  Tenzin Gyatso. the Dalai Lama, suggesting that if CCP demands that there be a new Dalai Lama to succeed him at death, then perhaps there should not be a new Dalai Lama.  Atheistic CCP is insistent that there be a new leader, so CCP can control; the religious faithful are not so sure.   What is the sound of one internet not buzzing?

Now I know it will be difficult to get hundreds of millions of people to adopt a system like this.   Sometimes when something is very difficult to do, we say it would be like murder to accomplish.   But that is what we suggest.   Not posting would to be thinking of murder.

Even if it is like murder to not think about June 4, take up the banner for June X or, if you wish, for June    , or Prairial 3.99.   Your choice.  Then we can completely forget June 4, and maybe that day, the internet can go silent, while millions remember. 

What Chinese cannot not talk about …

In a previous post, I mentioned the heavy hand of CCP coming down on internet access each year in the weeks leading up to date of the Tian’anmen Massacre in 1989.

What CCP sincerely wants is for Chinese netizens to model the three monkeys – see, hear, speak no evil – evil, of course, being in the eye of the CCP beholder and specifically any sight, sound, voice or thought related to the events leading up to and during June 4, 1989. 


But netizens are tenacious.  They are inventive in devising terms to get around blocking of all sorts, but particularly the blocking of 6-4 remembrance.

China Digital Times maintains a list of terms, indicating the extraordinary lengths to which Chinese netizens go to communicate about 6-4, or May 35, or any of dozens of other made up ways to refer to the date.  My current favorite is 82 = 64.

In spite of netizen tenacity, the government crackdown on public knowledge about Tian’anmen has worked very well.  While the “tank man” photo is recognized worldwide, it is nearly unknown in China.  My undergraduate students did not know what it was – or would not admit to knowing.  In 2014, the Onion had a headline – Chinese Citizens Observe 25-year Moment of Silence for Tian’anmen Square Massacre.  In 2013, Louisa Lim, author of Republic of Amnesia, found that 85% of Beijing  college students could not identify the picture.

And in truth, 1989 was a long time ago for young Chinese.  That was then, this is now.  In June, 2014 Robert Hariman noted how complete the erasure of history has been for most Chinese – a public act of protest against the authoritarian state has been replaced with political quiescence on behalf of commercial consumption. 


Michela Buttignol/New York Times

Also in 2014, China Law & Policy published a moving short biography of Wang Nan, originally published in People’s Republic of Amnesia.  (Video at Louisa Lim at Google).  In 2014, Wang Nan was a 45 year old photojournalist with a wife and family – except that he never made it to 45.  He was killed at Tian’anmen as a 19 year old student. 

China Law and Policy

His mother remembers her son.  Along with others, she is monitored heavily around this time each year.  She is one of the Tian’anmen mothers.

http://api.pictures.reuters.com/archive/CHINA-TIANANMEN-MOTHER-GM1EA640E8X01

Helen Gao, writing Tian’anmen, Forgotten in the New York Times in 2014 –

I do remember the first time the topic came up in conversation with my Chinese peers. On June 4, 2009, the 20th anniversary of the crackdown, I was shopping with a friend at a convenience store near Tsinghua University, when she, a junior at the university, turned to me, next to a shelf of colorful shampoos and conditioners. “Some people have been talking about this incident, liu si,” she said. “What was it all about?”

One of my minor subversive acts teaching in China was to accommodate Chinese undergrads who talked with me after class – “We want to know what happened.”   I gave them a three hour video documentary in Chinese about the events of the days.  The Gate of Heavenly Peace – part 1 and Part 2 was produced in 1995 with compiled videos and interviews with students, teachers, and observers of the events.  This is an extraordinary documentary.  There are some English subtitles.

No doubt that video has been shared.  I felt a bit like Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, retrieving truth from the west.

Outside the mainland, remembrance persists – in Hong Kong, in Taiwan, in the Chinese diaspora. The date is remembered each year in Hong Kong, to the worry and dismay of mainland officials.  The commemoration is one way that young people in Hong Kong express themselves as HongKongers, not Chinese. Typical of the response in Hong Kong is this from China Digital Times – Hong Kong Marks June 4 Anniversary.  Some of my mainland Chinese undergraduates expressed some anger at students in Hong Kong, deriding them as bad Chinese – disloyal and “stirring up trouble” – a common arrest charge on the mainland.

CCP likes to use Confucian chapter and verse to support its policies.  There is a paragraph in the Analects that would seem to recommend the stance of the three monkeys to all Chinese –  “Look not at what is contrary to propriety; listen not to what is contrary to propriety; speak not what is contrary to propriety; make no movement which is contrary to propriety” (Analects Book 12 (Yan Yuan) para 1)

But this is not a recommendation to self censorship. Confucius is speaking of a man in control of his emotions, assured of his correctness, the Junzi– without anxiety or fear, as is pointed out in the same book, paragraph 4.  Censorship is the action of a man anxious or afraid, suppressing citizens’ lack of confidence in rule. In paragraph 7, the Master said that military equipment and even food sufficiency may be given up in extremis, if the people have confidence in their rulers.  Otherwise, the Master said, there is no standing for the state.

Censorship betrays the anxiety and fear in CCP.  In a far different context, Bill Clinton reminded us that a strong grip is the sign of a weak hand.  Netizens constantly remind CCP that the Chinese people are as Sun Yat-sen said in 1924 – a handful of sand, without a strong commitment to the CCP variety of nationalism and unmoldable to the model of a good communist soldier – willing to sacrifice all, even memory and moral freedom, for the benefit of the state.

CCP must walk a fine line – Xi Jinping just got through extolling the actions of student protesters of the May Fourth Movement in 1919, a foundational time for CCP. For CCP, also, that was then, this is now.  Student protesters in 1989, and since, are subject to arrest, jail, or murder.  See The Ideology of Occupation on arrest and disappearance of Peking U students trying to be good Marxists. 

This year, 30 years later, the heavier than usual blocking should be starting about now.  CCP must be always on guard against thinking that will pollute minds of Chinese.  Otherwise, as the Master said, there may be no standing for the state.

Negotiating Harmony – Conflict and Governance in the New Age

This paper was published in the Journal of the Zhejiang Province School of Administration (otherwise known as Party School) in 2015. 

So far as I know, it is the only original contribution by a foreign author to this Journal.  Since the Journal is from CCP in Zhejiang, one of the wealthiest and most sophisticated provinces in China, it is as well respected as a CCP journal can be.

The paper is way too long for a blog read.  I outline a way for CCP to provide meaningful voice to populations angry over land thefts, pollution problems, and corruption.  Among other suggestions, a ready-in-waiting conflict resolution organization, structured at the provincial level, could be brought to bear on incidents of mass protest.  A stand-still agreement is necessary to force parties to negotiate.  This is one way to provide voice to Chinese people in the absence of democracy. 

This is a theoretical paper, although no one in China would describe it that way.  A bit too clear and direct.  The paper was presented at a conference at Zhejiang Business and Financial University in 2015, although my presentation was kept apart from those of other presenters.  I gave a more or less private briefing to about 30 faculty and students – either to inoculate others from dangerous ideas or provide me with a rapt audience.  Probably both are true.  The presentation was in the school’s Party conference room.  

Negotiating Harmony – Conflict and Governance in the New Age

William D. Markle, Ph.D.

Zhejiang University of Science and Technology

Hangzhou             

March, 2014

Version 2 – May 15, 2014

Contact:

wdmarkle@aol.com

15988832937

Abstract

A fundamental question of the times is whether the economic and political reform necessary to continued growth in the Chinese economy can be accomplished within the existing political system.    This article briefly reviews the literature on complex systems, as applied to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the demands for a new method of addressing fundamental conflict – mass protest – over land rights changes and environmental problems.   The author suggests that use of conflict resolution skills and a defined public participation program, conducted at the provincial level, can be of use to the CCP in adapting to the new society. 

Introduction

Stability and harmony 和谐  hé xié  are key words for public administration in China, as they have been for more than a thousand years.   Nevertheless, for more than sixty years, the concepts of stability and harmony could be trumped by economic development, in whatever form that took – land reclaiming, expressway construction, development zone clearing, or apartment and factory construction. 

That era is over.   For many reasons, including overinvestment, bank balance sheet problems, a rising middle class that demands attention, and social media that make communication instant and definitive, it is no longer possible for government at any level in China to ignore stability and harmony as important principles of governance.

As is well-known to readers of this journal, both environmental problems and land conversions are a significant source of instability.  One has to only consult China Daily, or most any western newspaper or magazine, to get weekly examples.  Most recently, last October, Xiage township in Zhejiang provides an embarrassing example, or Gangnan County in Wenzhou, in 2012. 

This article is not directed at providing advice for policy makers on compensation, or removal procedures.  This article argues for a more sophisticated approach to public involvement in public decision-making that can reduce the potential for, and severity of, mass protest.   Specifically, public participation training, in schools and training institutes, should include courses in conflict resolution and negotiation.  The public officials for whom this training is critical are those working in urban planning, environmental analysis, civil engineering, and public administration. 

In addition to conflict resolution training, it is important to develop a structured dispute resolution system within government, for use in local land conversion, land use, and pollution conflicts.  

There are five suggestions for consideration as part of greater use of rule of law, openness, and the reform agenda of the Xi Jinping era.

The five suggestions are –

1.Training in conflict resolution for undergraduates in urban planning and environmental programs 

2. Similar training for graduate programs in public administration and at institutes

3. Empower professional staff in decision-making, and publish environmental evaluation reports and demand conformance to a time frame

4. Create a defined provincial level procedure for conflict resolution, triggered without excessive delay or petition

5. Process and professionals in conflict resolution to report to provincial authorities

Public Participation, Conflict, and Demand for Change

Public participation techniques are well understood in China, at least at some levels.   Design of public participation in environmental assessment in China has been discussed by Wang and Chen (2006), Horsley (2009), Wang (2006), Zhang (2012), and Tang (2007), among others. 

As long ago as 2006, Pan Yue, the vice minister of the State Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA),  linked environmental changes to increased public participation –

In China, environmental protection is an increasingly pressing issue. Not only are pollution and ecological degradation becoming ever more serious, but also people are more and more unsatisfied about the situation. The speed with which we are polluting the environment far outstrips our efforts to clean it up. Why is this? China has a large population but few resources, and our production and consumption methods are too out of date. But at the root of the problem lies a more significant cause — the lack of public participation in China.  (Yue, 2006)

Wen Jiabao made protection of land use rights in land conversion a theme of the later years of his premiership.  In an article in Qiushi –

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has called for farmers’ land rights to be protected and criticized a widespread policy of moving villagers into apartment blocks so their land can be merged into larger blocs or developed.

State-backed land grabs are a cause of deep tension across China. Ten days of protests over confiscated farmland and the death of a protest organizer in Wukan in booming Guangdong province in December drew widespread attention as a rebuff to the stability-obsessed government.

In an essay for influential magazine Qiushi, or Seeking Truth, Wen said “rural residents enjoy the legal rights of land contracts, land use and collective income distribution,” whether they stayed in the countryside or migrated to cities for work, according to a summary published by the Xinhua news agency on Sunday.   (Reuters, January 15, 2012)

 

And as recently as last October, Xi Jinping urged officials to resolve conflicts according to the rule of law, reminding officials of the “Fengqiao experience”  in 1963, in Zhuji.   The Fengqiao experience suggests that people should be enabled to resolve conflicts among themselves without having to refer disputes to higher level authorities. 

Improvements to process and participation in decision making about the built environment are laudable.  But too often, such public participation fails because it is done at the wrong time or at the wrong level of analysis, or with wrong intentions.    Seven years after Hu Jintao promised

To ensure scientific and democratic decision- making, we will improve the information and intellectual support for it, increase its transparency and expand public participation. In principle, public hearings must be held for the formulation of laws, regulations and policies that bear closely on the interests of the public…. We will improve the open administrative system in various areas and increase transparency in government work, thus enhancing the people’s trust in the government  (Hu, 2007)  

we know that the environmental protection process and land conversion process in China fail to protect.  In a short piece in Global Times, quoted in Qiushi, Yan reports that the draft changes to the environmental protection process were unlikely to protect Chinese or the environment.  (Yan, 2012).    And at times, the environmental protection bureau itself displays the problem with both regulating and collecting fines for violations of regulations – the economic moral hazard problem in Haimen City, in Nantong, in Jiangsu.  (WSJ, February 1, 2013)

And even though environmental protection is moving closer to the top of the national agenda, there is still reluctance on the part of powerful departments to consider environmental projection when proposed by the environmental protection bureau –

Strong and influential government agencies such as the planning commissions (jiwei), economic commissions (jingwei), and the construction commissions (jianwei) and industrial and commercial authorities are known to be reluctant to endorse and enforce stringent environmental measures for fear that they might slow down economic growth.  (Wing Hung Lo and Leung, 2007)

We are concerned here not with administrative rule making, or mediation in Chinese village life, or strike resolution, but with the use of public participation ideas in resolving conflicts in land transfers and the built environment.   These are the areas of most significant individual and group conflict in China, which according to research by Sun Liping at Tsinghua, reached 180,000 per year in 2010  (Fung, 2012).   

The topic is not new to the CCP.   At Fujian School of Administration, Wang Liping has held a class that points not to improvements in governance, administration, or communication techniques, but to violence –

To help illustrate his point that forceful demolition can lead to violence, Wang shows a slide of a farmer in Hubei Province who used a home-made cannon to drive away a demolition team in order to protect his land. The class falls quiet.   (Fung, 2012)

 

In what follows, I want to describe the CCP as a system of organization, and make the point that the CCP has demonstrated in the past, and must continue to demonstrate, that is an adaptive system, that can use flexibility to respond to challenge.    Then, discuss governance and public administration in China, and note that conflict resolution has not been part of professional training. 

CCP as a Complex Adaptive System

The unique political and governance structure in China has facilitated economic growth for 30 years.   During that time, the CCP has shown itself to have remarkable flexibility in adapting to new conditions – restructuring SOE in the mid-1990s,  banks in the late 1990s, opening to the world in trade and gradually expanding the scope of the private sector.    All accomplished within a single party state system, with hierarchical but still extremely decentralized control.   How is decentralized control possible?

Despite the decentralized nature of government in China, we can characterize government and political organizations as part of a single complex system.    A definition of relationships and interactions that are complex –

They are complex in that they are dynamic networks of interactions, and their relationships are not aggregations of the individual static entities. They are adaptive; in that the individual and collective behavior mutate and self-organize corresponding to the change-initiating micro-event or collection of events    (Mitelton-Kelly, 2003)

There are an uncountable number of parts, interacting both closely and at a distance, with varying levels of force and reaction over time.   It is really impossible to describe any policy change, any administrative change in such a system, as a linked set of linear commands, coming from a central authority to subordinate groups, which understand and obey.  The rational and hierarchical models of Max Weber or Henri Fayol certainly do not apply.   

 

Within this hierarchy, we can characterize the CCP as a relatively adaptive system, in the terms of Boisot and Child (1999) –

systems that have to match in a nontrivial way the complexity of their environment (Ross Ashby 1954, Wiener 1961), either to achieve an appropriate measure of fit with it or to secure for themselves a degree of autonomy with respect to whatever constraints it might impose (Varela et al. 1991).

Within the system, there are feedback loops, and non-constant levels of action and reaction between agents.  And a system that remains in existence for a significant period of time, responding to change from outside, must be minimally adaptive to the environment.    The adaptation requires the system to interpret, or understand, pressures being applied from outside.   How can a complex system adapt?   We can think of the hedgehog and fox essay, by Isaiah Berlin – “the fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”   (Berlin, 1953).   An adaptive, interpretive system can be a hedgehog or a fox.

Adaptive, interpretative systems have two quite distinct ways of handling the complexity that underlies the variety:

(a) They can either reduce it through getting to understand it and acting on it directly. That is, they elicit the most appropriate single representation of that variety and summon up an adapted response to match it.  Such a strategy leads to specialization informed by relevant codification and abstraction of the phenomenon.

(b) Or they can absorb it through the creation of options and risk-hedging strategies. That is, they can hold multiple and sometimes conflicting representations of environmental variety, retaining in their behavioural repertoire a range of responses, each of which operates at a lower level of specialization. This approach develops behavioural plasticity. There may be less goodness of fit between any given response and the state of nature to which it needs to be matched, but the range of environmental contingencies that an organism can deal with in this way is greater than in a regime of specialization.  It may endeavor to enhance its capability to deal with a wider range of environmental contingencies …

In plainer English, an adaptive interpretive system can develop a single response, informed by judgment, and specialize;  or, the system can become more sophisticated, and develop a variety of responses that are then more suitable for individual conditions.      There can be a single system response to the same challenge – always do This, or That;   or, be adaptive in the individual circumstance.

A key characteristic of adaptive systems is the ability to undergo substantial  change, without collapse or failure. 

The decentralized complex system can survive because it can adapt.

That CCP absorptive adaptive model now needs to be called upon again, as China addresses the problems of corruption and

environmental pollution and land reclaiming.   This is a public administration problem of the first order.   Existing public administration theories allow for more effective solutions to conflict than have been used in China in the past. 

 

New Public Management – Models and Practice

The term New Public Management (NPM) refers to a view of governance that tries to incorporate consideration of “markets, managers, and measurement”  as a way of improving performance and accountability  (Ferlie, 1996).   Although NPM was a popular emerging paradigm in public administration in the US, and then in China, the number of published articles on NPM has certainly faded in recent years.  And there is no particular reason to force Chinese public administration practice into a western theoretical construct.  But the lessons – treating citizens as customers, providing information, and lessening the gap between citizens and administrators – do continue in China. 

As part of the New Public Management focus, there is increasing attention to what is referred to as “governance.”   Governance refers, in part, to the set of traditions and practices by which laws are implemented.  In essence, governance refers to both quality of governing and reasonableness of policy.   Are rules for society reasonable, and understandable by those to whom the rules are applied, and is there a sense of fairness in the application?   New public management, and governance techniques, are applied to daily effectiveness of organizations in cities in China.  But the implementation process in built environment projects remains a public administration problem in the world, but particularly in China. 

Practice

The Chinese government has learned to respond to the wishes of the people, in some cases better than in others.   In general, one expects that the higher the level of government, the more sophisticated the leadership, the less tied for promotion to enhanced local GDP, the more willing leaders will be to listen to the local view.  

Zhejiang Province is a key example.   Rich, experienced, open to the world, and innovative, Zhejiang has long been in the forefront of administrative reform in China.   The Zhejiang model of land reform, allowing for transfers of development rights (TDR) within and between local governments, is well known (Wang, Tao, and Tong, 2009).  And more recently, Haining has been selected as a pilot for land reform, allowing mortgages of village property and sales of farmer land to those outside the village; and Wenzhou has established a “rural property rights service center, that in theory allows sales of village land to citizens from within the county.    

As far back as 1995, the Yantai Service Promise System, in Shandong Province “drawing on the New Public Management approach to administration,”  represented a serious attempt to make the bureaucracy more customer oriented and professional (Foster, 2006).   Fifteen government departments were required to provide service delivery promises to citizens, and the local government leaders appeared to consider citizen complaints and survey results quite seriously in individual leader evaluations.

A version of the Yantai system was begun in Jinhua in 1996, 

and in Wenzhou, in 2003.   Other cities – Beijing, Guangzhou, and others –  have implemented more open communications with citizens, and provided a survey mechanism to review the performance of government departments. 

In addition to openness in administrative matters,  there are public officials willing to experiment.   In Shaoxing, a communications model has been used to defuse conflict between a real estate developer and neighborhood residents.   This model used intervention by the urban planning authorities to pro-actively address concerns, rather than ignoring them or waiting for conflict to reach a higher level of intensity (Zhou, 2008, unpublished).       

But these laudable experiments in communication are still focused on administrative actions and service delivery.   We are concerned here with projects, not programs, that constitute once-in-a-lifetime events for most citizens and farmers.

More commonly, however, we have seen examples of local mass protests, real conflict, being resolved by provincial or higher government leaders, stepping in at the critical moment to undo the Gordian knot of development and its externalities.   Witness environmental and land transfer conflicts in Wuhan (Provincial Party leader steps in to resolve); Dalian (City leaders vow to close paraxylene plant, and move it); Ningbo (city officials decide to cancel paraxylene plant);  Shiyang (Deputy Director of local Development and Reform Commission and former City Party leader meet with protesters);  and many other places. 

There are problems with this high tension, high conflict model, however.

Governance has two components – leadership and administration.   Both exercise power,  and both need to demonstrate legitimacy for a sense of fairness.   China, with its focus on relationship and Party loyalty, has tended to solve public conflicts in governance through application of leadership, rather than administrative techniques.    At the last moment, or too often, after the last moment (someone is killed, or worldwide media attention is obtained) a top leader, from the city or province – possibly from a central organization – steps in to mediate or construct a solution. 

But solution to conflict through application of leadership should be the least attractive option for the CCP and the government.   For reasons that are as apparent in the west as they are in China, using leadership as a solution mechanism puts leaders in uncomfortable positions, often between parties with equally good claims to authority and justice, and forces a solution that could be more sophisticated in form if left to negotiation at a lower level of authority.   Moreover, governance by leadership almost necessarily takes place after local dissatisfaction has risen to the level of local mass protest, once positions have hardened, interests are damaged, and trust in government is weakened. Governance by leadership is a high-cost strategy.  It is responding, rather than anticipating, and tends to put the government in a negative position. 

Leadership, moreover, takes on new dimensions as the demands of the economy and the culture change.   Leadership that once meant making command decisions now must be collaborative, and collaborative not only with a few subordinates and leaders, but collaborative with the general public, who demand more and better from leaders.

What to do, now?   The customary answer is training, for both leaders and for administrative staff.   Government leadership, management, and administrative technical skills can be, and are, taught.   But skills in implementation, particularly as regards dealing with the public –how to do what is desired –  remain generally untaught.   For most environmental and land decisions, “decide, announce, defend” remains the dominant implementation model.   The government decides on policy or program, announces a decision, and then is forced to defend that decision before an angry and aroused public.   But a changing environment demands changing nature of training that can utilize a different, more sophisticated model.   And the new era of development in China requires an implementation model that takes public participation into account, and in a manner more respectful of public wishes. 

 

Public Communications and Public Participation

The term public participation gongzhong canyu, 公众参与 can have many meanings, and many ways of implementing. 

There are many ideas in the “toolkit” of public participation –

Obtaining information from the government

Complaints or petitions to the government

Deliberative democracy experiments

Public meetings or hearings

“Field investigations”

Expert analysis

Online activism

Street protests and demonstrations

 

Public participation refers to the public’s involvement in government decision making, whether regulation or rule-making (zhiding tiaoli, guizhang, 制定条例,规章or administrative  xingzheng juece, 行政决策  (Horsley, 2009).   This is the definition most of interest in discussing ways of lessening public protest and improving citizens’ lives.   But this list of public participation techniques is too limited.   It does not address the response to conflict in the streets, moving to destruction of property and prestige.

A local government can provide information, and take complaints, and have public meetings, and conduct expert analysis of a project well in advance of construction, and still face mass protest at perceive injustice.  One can make the argument that with “correct” dissemination of information to the public, and properly scheduled public meetings, and serious attempts at obtaining expert opinion, there should be no need for additional public participation techniques.    The facts on the ground, however, suggest that the “correct” processes are seldom followed, and the result is the demand for public participation tools that help to resolve conflict.   The suggestion here is that skills in conflict resolution, including negotiation, should be part of the public participation toolkit.   

To be effective, and considered just by all participants, public

participation must be timely – that is, it must take place before spending commitments are made, certainly before construction begins;  information with which to analyze proposals must be provided; and it must be understood as being useful – public participation that is “public relations” rather  than public involvement is designed to result in loss of respect for, and trust in, government.

Above all, public participation must demonstrate respect for the views of the public, whether informed or not, and allow a “seat at the table” in decision making.   This is where the conflict resolution skills are necessary.

Rather than the decide-announce-defend model noted above, a

more sophisticated model for public participation is discuss-decide-announce, in which community concerns are made part of the decision-making process, rather than trying to address them at the end of a process when commitments may already be made and it is too late to develop anything but anger and resentment and protest.  Public participation needs to be more than press agentry, or one way dissemination of information, or even two-way communication that is widely asymmetric in power relations. 

 

A government that can only communicate in these ways is not a government that is confident of its role, and not a government that inspires trust.

Trust can only come from communication, and that in an honest manner.   Otherwise, communication is one-way and is public relations, not public participation. 

In design of a public participation system, there are three dimensions to keep in mind.   What is the scope of participation – will the public be permitted to protest, or petition, but without meaningful response, or will the public be considered as a partner in decision-making?    What is the method of communication – press releases and announcements, or face-to-face discussion, with decision-making to come later?   What is the extent of authority of the government participants?  Are they both responsible for decisions and authorized to make changes?  If not, then the public is going to be at a significant disadvantage in any discussion.   Why talk with people who cannot do anything?  (Feng, 2006).

It is important to keep these three dimensions in mind when considering public participation models for China.

–  Scope of participation  – must include all parties affected; 

– Mode of communication – must be timely, and useful;  special  

  efforts to communicate, and provide technical advisors for the

  public, as needed;

–  Extent of authority – participation must respect the public,

acknowledging that not all interests – even government interests-   can be equally satisfied.

Public participation in physical project review is different from administrative reviews.   Administrative actions generally do not involve threats, or perceived threats, to life, health, or livelihood;  construction projects and land takings often do.    So we are faced with conflict, rather than simple evaluation;  and public participation in conflict resolution is a far different skill than participation in surveys of prior performance. 

One of the teachers within the Chinese Academy of Governance system, Zhong Kaibin, has echoed the demand for better results from leaders, in practice of public management –

The fourth area is related to China’s transformation from a public administration system based on personal will and charisma to one that is increasingly based on rule of law, which has been recognized as necessary for a modern state government. This transformation, however, requires an independent judicial system and genuine public participation process.   (Xue and Zhong, 2012)

The existence of government schools of administration, as well as public administration programs within universities, speak to the need for professional education and continuous learning.    There are now more than 100 MPA programs in universities and Party schools across China (Wu and He, 2009).

Notably, there seems to be increasing attention in Chinese MPA programs on public communications;  negotiation, however, is a topic reserved to business (MBA) programs.   Public communications seems to be focused on public speaking and putting one’s best foot forward, as it were, rather than addressing conflict. 

A review of public administration programs at Zhejiang University, Fudan, and Shanghai Jiaotong confirms that there do not seem to be required or elective courses in conflict resolution or negotiation within public administration programs, at either the undergraduate or graduate level.   There does appear to be a negotiation course and a conflict resolution course within the Tsinghua Master’s in Public Administration Program, but both are 1 credit courses, not required and apparently not considered important topics for education. 

But the “first line” responders to community or village conflict are usually administrative staff,  in urban planning, environmental analysis, or civil engineering.   This is reasonable.   But these professionals receive no training in conflict resolution, or in negotiation.   The question remains as to how much authority such professionals have, in the face of serious conflict.   But they are the first contacts the public sees.   To reduce the spread of conflict, it is important that these “first responders”  have some training in reducing conflict.   This is recommendation No. 1.

1.Training in conflict resolution for undergraduates in urban planning and environmental programs

These are officials with the most direct understanding of issues on all sides of a conflict, and the most technical ability to address problems. 

A review of university catalogs in urban planning, civil engineering, and environmental planning suggest that there are no required courses in conflict resolution or negotiation.

The content of such courses can vary.   International undergraduate business programs already incorporate negotiation courses – examples are Fudan University and Zhejiang University of Science and Technology (ZUST).    These courses will tend to focus on business disputes rather than government-citizen conflicts, but negotiation skills can be similar in both cases. 

But the public management programs – the School of International and Public Affairs at Shanghai Jiaotong University is an example – do not have a required negotiation or conflict resolution course.   Within public administration programs in China, negotiation or dispute resolution does not appear on course listings.   The Chinese Academy of Governance does not seem to offer such courses, either.

In any case, the current negotiation courses taught in China tend to focus on business negotiation, in which both sides are fundamentally hoping to achieve the same goal – a profitable outcome.   But most disputes with village people in China are of conflictual nature, in which power distribution is clearly unequal, one side is reluctant to acknowledge the legitimate interests of the other side, and on one side there are often people willing to take to violence

to protect perceived threats to their lives, livelihood, and health.

Public administration programs, both within universities and within the schools of administration, should have a required course.   There is not a more important piece of training that leads to hé xié than conflict resolution skills.    And current public officials in districts, townships, counties, and cities need such assistance as the first line responders to conflict. 

Where should such training take place?    My suggestion is that the natural location is within the undergraduate or graduate urban planning programs at universities, and within environmental planning programs, and in the CCP schools of administration.  So, suggestion number 2:

2. Similar conflict resolution and negotiation training in graduate programs in public administration and at institutes

 

Community Empowerment – Exit and Voice

Citizens have two active potential responses to undesired local conditions – they can choose to leave, moving somewhere else where conditions might be better; or express their unhappiness.   We refer to these as exit and voice.  Among the two responses to conflict – voice, and exit –  Chinese generally do not have the choice to exit – to leave the village or the neighborhood.    Voice is their means of resolving conflict.    Voice can be discussion, at one end of a communications spectrum, or it can be violent disruption, at the other.   Violence appears when trust is lost.   Discussion, on the other hand, requires trust.   The classic description of exit and voice is by Albert Hirschman (1970).   Voice and exit both work in both the marketplace and in governance. 

The classical work of Tiebout suggests that individuals and businesses make a location decision partly on the mix of public resources available in different locations, and the prices (taxes) at which they are offered.   If the cost benefit analysis of public services and taxes paid changes for the worse, as defined by the individual, the individual or business is inclined to move, to a location with a preferable mix.   This is obviously the “exit”  choice.

The “voice” choice in provision of government services includes complaint, letters, media attention, and street protest.  

But more significant than street protest, more than complaint and media attention, is the work of community organizing and community empowerment in the US. 

Community organizing involves creation of a stronger sense of community in poor and under-served communities, through meetings and public information and creation of a sense of ownership and power, with which to confront the government.  The goal is to win attention, resources, and a “seat at the bargaining table” –  forcing government to pay attention to an organized community that is difficult or impossible to ignore, when individuals could safely be ignored. 

It is fair to say that the seat at the table – the ability to negotiate – is the desire of community organizing everywhere.  In the US, the organizing work of Saul Alinsky and his followers became so powerful that the Chicago local government created a Department of Neighborhoods in 1981, to specifically hear the “voice of the neighborhoods.”   The concept of listening to the people, in a way not provided by representative government (aldermen, mayors) or by individual media, constituted a huge change in the way neighborhoods were understood in American government.   In some cases, local governments now provide annual funds to community organizations that may oppose projects of the same local government.   This can create organized opposition.   But it does provide a way for information to flow up to the decision makers. 

Why would local government do this?   The short answer is that governments in the US do not want to see mass protests or significant organizing against what might otherwise be government policies or projects.  Smart governments want to be ahead of public opinion, not always responding to conflict.   If a “seat at the table”  is the goal of community organizing, after protest and resulting media attention, then it may be possible to provide the seat without the prior conflict.   Making community part of the decision-making process makes for good politics and, in the American sense, good governing. 

It is probably a bridge too far to suggest that governments in China provide funding for a citizen movement.    But conflict that is not addressed, except in the extreme, does not foster trust in government, and people who perceive themselves to be wronged do not forget.   At the same time, there is no negative response more

feared in harmony-seeking China  than the organized mass public protest.   Where should voice be expressed?

These are critical issues for China now, and in the next ten years.   It is no longer sufficient to promise a better world at some undetermined time in the future, when the socialist state is fully achieved.  And, it is no longer sufficient for government to take action without responsible acknowledgement of the interests of the people.   

In negotiations of all kinds, we talk about having to address two different kinds of needs – those that are tangible, and those that are intangible.  In business, we suggest that one party not agree too quickly to an otherwise acceptable offer, or make a concession too fast.  We want the other side to feel that offers and counteroffers are taken seriously.  It is understood that the intangible interests – in being treated seriously, in having positions considered fairly – are as important as tangible results.   In neighborhood and village conflicts, people have interests in a clean environment, and in fair land transfers.  These are tangible.   The intangible is being treated with respect, before, during, and after conflict.    It is no longer sufficient to offer the solution, without the expressed, and intentional, voice of the people being heard.   People have interests in clean air;  but they also have interests in being respected, which requires being heard, and is a form of justice – respect for the individual.

Barriers to Public Participation and a Solution

 

Public participation in environmental impact assessment is required by law in China (Zhang, et.al., 2012).   But despite ten years of required public involvement, the number of protests over land seizures and environmental problems, violent and otherwise, continues to grow.   The list of weaknesses in environmental assessment in China is well known.   Zhang et al., quoting Zhao, 2010 –

there are some limitations in current EIA public participation mechanism. First of all, the extent of public participation is limited. Relatively small percentage of projects is subject to the compulsory public participation requirement. On the other hand, the timing and duration of engaging the public is rather short. The way in which the public is defined and selected also brings bias to the true public participation. Secondly, the access to information is limited. Although progress has been made to increase public access to environmental information, there are still uncertainties regarding what to disclose and how much to disclose, and concerns of potential social unrest if too much information is disclosed. Thirdly, the public has limited impacts on the final decision-making. The power of all the parties is out of balance among project proponents, EIA institutions and the public. In addition, the voice of environmental NGOs in China is still relatively weak (Zhao, 2010).

Despite the widespread dissemination of policies regarding public input, implementation remains generally poor, as evidenced by the size and number of mass protests. 

Why is implementation poor?   There are several reasons.   One is political, or, shall we say, reflects a public choice perspective – leaders who see an advantage from not serving the public interest. 

There is no doubt that political obstacles can easily prevent useful implementation of the participation process.    Low level officials can easily circumvent regulations from above, and to the extent bad information does not flow up the chain of communications, upper level executives may not know about problems until the problems are well advanced in severity and complexity.

So one reason for poor quality of implementation can be found in corruption – local officials trying to collect economic rents for themselves, and deceiving the public in the practice.   This is a serious problem, and must be addressed at the highest levels of the Party.

On the government administration side, another issue is low levels of information made available to the public, or information made available in inconvenient form or at inconvenient times.      In China as in the US, a conflict resolution system will only work as well as the commitment to honest voice and openness 信息公开 xìnxīgōngkāi

There are also citizen reasons for not engaging with government in conflicts.  Low willingness to engage can come from four causes.  

–  a traditional reluctance in China to engage in public affairs;

–  lack of awareness of proposals, and a means of response (no

non-government data or information sources are available, petitions have no value)

–  fear of reprisals

–  costs to protest, including ineffectiveness of past efforts

Frustration with the process is cited by Ma, Webber, and Finlayson (2008), from Eastern Horizon.   Respondents to a survey on the failed sealing of a waste storage facility were asked what they thought of public hearings generally.   While about 40% of the respondents thought that public hearings were useful,

nearly 59% of respondents chose the answer that public hearings were ‘not useful, public opinions are rarely adopted’. In other words, most people thought that hearings were not useful and/or that public opinion was rarely heeded.

Tradition

There may be a more traditional reluctance to engage with government in China than in the west.   That is possible.  But the intense use of forms of communication – petitions, lawsuits, complaints, trips to Beijing as part of xinfang techniques – suggests that even if there is a tradition of acceptance, that tradition does not impede Chinese from attempting to make their grievances known.   This does not appear to be a reasonable argument for lack of public participation, particularly in this new era. 

Data and Means

There are many ways in which public information can be obtained prior to land takings or construction projects are begun, and all of those are in use now in China, in different places in different times.   As with many regulations and programs in China, problems lie not in the form but in the substance of the work.   The laws exist, the desire to enforce does not.

There are already systems in place to prevent illegal or undesirable conversions of land  (Heurlin, 2007).

There remains a problem of evaluation of data.   Emissions data, or controls on pollution, are beyond the ability of most citizens to evaluate.   How to provide adequate representation for citizens in conflict?  

In politics, we sometimes argue that a government needs a loyal opposition to provide better policy, better monitoring of results, and better outcomes for the society.    This article does not argue for an opposition; but it does argue for a government ombudsman, or review process, or voice in consideration of the public interest, largely construed.   No such voice exists now. 

There are many ways in which a public voice can be provided.   In China, given recent history, it is important that any system of providing additional voice be located away from local officials, and that the system clearly provide for – perhaps, require – additional delay in construction and land transfer.   Delay is always to the benefit of voice.   Delay is always detrimental to those who want to avoid the law. 

An honest search for harmony in “built environment” disputes requires that first-line responders in conflict be empowered to provide data, including any environmental reports.   But before environmental reports are completed, front line officials should be able to provide data and help citizens and peasants understand what has been provided.   So, suggestion number 3 –

3. Empower professional staff in decision-making, and publish environmental evaluation reports and demand conformance to a time frame

Fears

To address public fears regarding public participation, including threats of reprisal from government leaders, it is necessary to locate a conflict resolution or negotiation program at a level of government sufficiently removed from the local level to allow for some public trust in the process.   As noted in an village aphorism,

 

“the Center is our benefactor, the province is our relative, the county is a good person, the township is an evil person and the village is our enemy”  (Michelson, 2008)

At the same time, the way to reduce corruption at the local level – village, township, county – is to empower the public to communicate with leaders above that level.    I suggest a conflict resolution or negotiation process as that method of communication, once past the petition stage.

So, recommendation number 4 –

4. Process and professionals in conflict resolution to report to provincial authorities

Costs

Another reason for lack of participation is the understanding that protest has costs, short term and long, in several forms.   Heurlin calls this the “Peasant’s Dilemma.”   There are costs in lost time, from productive activities in farming or factories, as well as real dangers in being detained, beaten, or murdered.  See Huerlin (2005), Lichbach (1994), Javeline (2003), Whyte (2010), and many others. 

It is important for the government to encourage additional use of public participation measures by the public, as a way of deflecting anger and conflict that rises to the level of collective protest.    The costs, real and perceived, of public participation to the individual peasant are high – costs in lost time, lost wages, potential reprisals.   As a result, anger and resentment fester, and instead of being defused over time, rises to the level of organized protest as a last resort, when the costs of non-protest become too high to bear.   

There are systems in place that have been designed to address conflict that cannot be ameliorated at the local level – specifically, the petition system.   But even with recent proposed changes to the petition system, it is unlikely that this system will work to  the advantage of citizens and peasants, unless there are additional procedural delays and steps required in the development process.

So, suggestion number 5 –

5. Create a defined procedure for conflict resolution, triggered without excessive delay or petition, coming from provincial authority.

 

It is necessary to construct a dispute resolution system that is administered at the provincial level or above, with a funding source that does not depend on city or lower revenues, with trained conflict resolution experts, or trained mediators, who have power to bring about solution.    Robert Emerson made a similar suggestion in Disputes in Public Bureaucracies (1999),   cited in Michelson (2008). 

The benefit of such a system is that it provides the voice demanded by villagers and citizens.   This, per Whyte and others, is a demand for procedural justice, not distributive justice, and can substantially enhance the position of the Party.   Other measures to enhance distributive justice – greater democracy, independent courts, even hukou reform – are far more difficult for the CCP to accept.   Corruption policies are good;  but  it is doubtful whether even the most rigorous corruption regimes can reach to the lowest levels of governance, where most mass protests arise. 

If administrative officials in urban planning or another technical department are to have authority to resolve conflict, they must report to leaders sufficiently high in the CCP ranks to overrule or counteract actions by local officials.   And, of course, the technical staff should be relatively protected from the lure of corruption.    The suggestion is that each province have an urban planning staff, perhaps from the Development and Reform Commission, whose job it is to assist local technical staff in resolving conflict.   Such an official should have the ability to call a standstill to development in the face of conflict – much as the banking regulators were able to call a halt to actions regarding Zhongdan Investment Credit Guarantee Co. Ltd.,  in Beijing in 2012.   Standstill will put a halt to pressured response from villagers, force scrutiny onto local officials, and do much to restore some element of trust in government.  (Chovanec, 2012)

An argument can be made that active use of conflict resolution skills – particularly negotiation skills – is contrary to Party polices and goals, of remaining as the leader of the people.   And government plans and expertise are far beyond anything that is reasonable for the public to obtain – technical skills in planning, real estate, evaluation, budgeting, and mitigation of damages.    Consulting – in an honest, open fashion – could be viewed as government weakness.   Leaders should lead.

The contrary is true.    Leaders who are secure in their power are unafraid to ask for assistance.   There are different sources of power and types of power.   Coercion, threats, and force are ways of exercising power.   But Antonio Gramsci, in Selections from the Prison Notebooks,  used the centaur – half man, half beast – image from Machiavelli to describe the different characteristics of power.    More traditional power, violence and threats, are the beast half;  but capitalist relations demand the more human side of domination, the thinking, consensual source of power.   That is certainly where China is now, and will be.   Use of consensual means of power does not take away from leadership or authority;  it expands it.

Additions to Required Process

In addition to training for government officials, it is necessary to provide a structured public participation program for units of government.   Such a program has several elements –

  1. Requirement for submission of the public record of public hearings and public participation meeting to relevant city and provincial bureaus before a land conversion and transfer can take place
  2. Additional procedural requirements for existing public participation in environmental reviews.
  3. Any public hearing or meeting record regarding land conversion or construction of “significant public projects” must be signed by a provincial or city representative, who was in attendance at the meetings.   This should help remove principal-agent problems among village or other local leaders.
  1. Triggering of a required conflict resolution program –  when protests submitted reach a particular level – and publicized – then a conflict resolution system must be employed. 
  2. Publishing of environmental reviews in time for public consideration
  3. provide technical assistance to the public to help in understanding of technical details of proposals

 

Benefits to CCP of a defined negotiation process

 

What are the benefits to the CCP of better conflict resolution skills in the development of projects and transfer of land?   Here is a list, not in any particular order of importance.

Retain Government Authority

Conflict resolution skills, used proactively, puts the government in charge of change.    Mass protest by definition means that the public perceives that its interests are not being served, and is a failure of change management.   Asking questions at the beginning is far easier than offering concessions in a media charged atmosphere, later.

Keep Conflict Local

It is important for the CCP to keep protests local.   Negotiation and consultation before implementation is one of the best ways to do that.   Citizens in Dalian are unconcerned about negotiations on a paraxylene plant in Ningbo;  but they are concerned when the objections rise to the level of mass protest.     As an adaptive complex system, the CCP allows local solutions to local problems.   That is still true with use of better public participation techniques, but conflict resolution skills and negotiation skills add to the “toolkit” of local solutions.   China is not at the point in development or law in which national laws can be effectively enforced.   Local solutions to local problems are a satisfactory substitute.

Keep Leaders out of Local Processes

Use of planners in planning departments, or officials in environmental departments fits with a traditional Chinese approach – adaptive, not like western approaches, which are more complexity reducing (using law and regulations),  Chinese approaches would be more complexity absorbing (harmony and guanxi)).   In any case, leaders should be kept out of the process as much as possible.  

Reduce Costs of Governance

Mass protest is far more costly to the government and CCP than to villagers or citizens.    By the time conflict reaches the stage of mass protest, the cost to organizing at the village level is small, and the cost to leaders in terms of trust and image is very high.   In this era, information is relatively easy to obtain, voice, as expressed through social media, is cheap.    A small expense in time and money at the beginning of a project will seem very inexpensive when compared with the costs of dealing with protest later. 

Remove Threat of Reprisals

Consultation and negotiation at the beginning removes threats of reprisal from local officials to citizens; which enhances trust in government and creates working relationships.    There have also been cases of threats by the public of revealing confidential  information about leaders,  as a way of forcing upper level action against local leaders.   While providing information about corrupt leaders is good, extortion is not. 

Strengthen Party Discipline Process   

Use of a defined conflict resolution process provides additional evaluation information for both discipline inspection and the organization departments.   How well can leaders serve the public interest?

Increased Party Legitimacy and Flexibility

Allow local solutions for local problems   – including response to petitions, and reduce the use of “extra-legal” actions – chengguan – that stifle protest and decrease legitimacy

Novel idea – Strength Through Openness

Real power is shown in not having to use it.  See  sun tzu-  “the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting”   sun tzu    孙子   writing in The Art of War孙子兵法,  Sūnzǐ Bīngfǎ.

Provide Administrative Clarity

 As in Yantai – provide a defined system for protest, rather than the ad hoc system now in place.   This alone, if done in an open and honest way, should provide greater trust in government.

Rationalize Land Use Procedures

Even though several provinces, including Zhejiang, have announced plans to reform rural land use and sales, there remains the problem of how to plan for future uses below the county level.    If peasants are going to be provided with stronger land use rights, then a stronger system of adjudicating those rights must be in place.   A conflict resolution system provides a means of doing that, without having to resort to court actions which may be influenced by local officials in any case. 

Improve the Business Climate

Increased use of conflict resolution or negotiation skills, in advance of significant conflict, improves the business climate by bringing difficult issues – land conversion, pollution – to the leadership at the beginning, when solutions may be possible, rather than later when solutions may be impossible and government legitimacy is lessened. 

There may be additional costs to using better public participation skills.   Costs may be in simple delay, or significant costs in pollution equipment or additional compensation to farmers.   It seems difficult to argue against such spending, however. 

Allow Regional Solutions

At the same time as local solutions – within the township, or village – to local problems are enhanced, there may be a need to consider more regional solutions to larger problems.  The pollution impacts from a steel factory, or a coal burning power plant, are regional.   An honest public participation process allows for consideration of who should be “at the table” in discussion of regional issues, and a structured conflict resolution process is a way to do that.

Improve Evaluation of Cadres

The Organization Department zu zhi bu  already takes into account more than simple GDP growth in the evaluation of leaders for future positions.  The absence of conflict is another measure.   This can be enhanced by existence of a defined public participation program that reduces conflict.   Use of the techniques is not a negative for leaders;  it should be considered a positive development, demonstrating consideration of public needs in addition to business needs. 

Reduce Corruption –  An honest public participation program acts to reduce corruption, since it raises issues of conflict before a project is implemented, and allows the public to ask the question that all too often goes unanswered in China – “why?”

 

Removes Pressure from Leaders for Special Privilege

The honest leader can find himself in a difficult position when pressured by powerful business owners or other government officials to approve a project to which the leader has objections.   The ability to use a structured public participation program, required by law or local practice, allows the leader to “put more moving parts” into the machine of project approval.  Significant opposition by the public cannot be ignored.

Address Democratic Issues

At its most fundamental, democracy is a system for providing voice to the public.  Democracy with Chinese characteristics will certainly not look like American democracy.   But additional voice for the public in China, particularly on those projects in which they are most interested and have the most stake is a good step in the direction of Singapore, which certainly is not democratic but allows voice.

Serve the People

An honest public participation program serves the needs of the people, both locally and regionally.   The program will require additional data and analysis, which may not be available to the public in government channels;  but that is a small cost to pay for the benefits of providing more harmony.

There are many ways to provide additional voice to the Chinese people.   A China that wishes to lead, not only in economics but in public approbation, should do better on government effectiveness.   A dispute resolution system is necessary, feasible, and Chinese.   It is the manifestation of harmony with Chinese characteristics. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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No Way Out, 2 Understanding the Chinese Constitution, the New Citizens Movement, and Document No. 9

The New Citizens Movement should not have been a big deal – a loosely organized group of activists campaigning against corruption and for “constitutionally protected rights” in China.  Xu Zhiyong, a PhD from the Peking University Law School, was one of the leaders.

Xu Zhiyong, shortly before arrest   Xu Zhiyong speaking at a meeting in Beijing in March, 2013, shortly before his arrest

And since Xi Jinping has made anticorruption a key part of purifying the CCP and the Chinese people, one might think that such a citizen’s movement would be welcomed.  A group advocating for what is already in the Chinese Constitution – equality before the law, the right to vote, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly – should be innocuous. 

One would be wrong.  One must remember the fundamental rule of any authoritarian government – the leader determines the truth, the leader determines right and wrong, and only the leader can lead the people.  Any attempt by citizens to “contribute,” particularly if organized, can only be anathema.  Any organization – any civil society organization – that intends to compete with the government must be destroyed as an enemy of the state.  There cannot be any organization that intends to stand between the state and the individual. 

When Xi came to power, some western observers questioned whether Xi would be a reformer, continuing more or less down the path opened by Deng Xiaoping.  The answer by now, in 2018, is certainly clear – CCP members talk (not openly) about a return to the days of the Cultural Revolution, when fear and terror worked among colleagues, friends, and family members to expose the slightest hint of political deviation from Mao Zedong Thought. Students recording and reporting on teachers,  Chill and fear in the classroom, colleagues evening old scores by reporting someone to the jiwei, without evidence.  (This latter was in my direct experience.  More on that in a future post).    

But the Xi path might have been clear when Xi gave his first speech to the press, following his election at the end of the 18th Party Congress in November, 2012  Xi’s first speech after elevation.   He outlined his agenda in stamping out corruption and taking China to a leadership position internationally.  No one – not even CCP members – knew then how the agenda would be implemented. Now we all know.

The crackdown on any dissension from the path of Xi began with arrests of the New Citizens Movement leaders, in April, 2013.  Simultaneously came the infamous Document No. 9, a warning from the CCP Central Committee General Office to CCP members about the seven deadly western sins seeking to destroy CCP and China.   This document, only available for a short time online before being “harmonized,” as they say, telegraphed the entire Xi Jinping crackdown on speech, civil society, a free press, and freedom of assembly.  It is not subtle.   

As you know, there have been many detentions and prison sentences for human rights lawyers, dissidents, artists, academics, and anyone expressing dissatisfaction, or worse, with CCP and the CCP path as defined by Xi Jinping.  A couple more examples, after the destruction of the New Citizens Movement –

 In July, 2015 Wang Yu, a commercial attorney turned civil rights advocate, was seized.  She had been representing six schoolgirls who were abused by a school principal.  Wang Yu  The seven minute video at this site is worth watching.  Wang Yu interview  Her son, Bao Zhuoxuan,  was not permitted to leave Tianjin last year (2017) to attend college in Australia.  The government told her son that he was a national security threat, and mutilated his passport  Family responsibility This is just like ancient China – one guilty person convicts the whole family.  After a forced confession of her sins, Wang will remain under surveillance for years, with little or no access to friends and family, perhaps the rest of her life.

 Wang Yu     Source:  New York Times

I have CCP colleagues, or friends of colleagues in China, who are bereft at the moral quandary they now find themselves in.  They are forbidden to tell the truth, or say what they think – they know the truth, or what is right, or what is the law; and they are required to obey to do otherwise. 

What I want to do in this post is (briefly) review three documents – the Chinese Constitution, the advocacy of the New Citizen’s Movement, and the threats of Document No. 9.  This is a blog, not an essay, so I will let the reader do most of the work here.  But the reading is not long, and the distinctions clear.  The role of the New Citizens Movement, and others like it, in stimulating repression is quite clear.  It is as if Document No. 9 is responding directly to the perceived threat of the New Citizen’s Movement, even though the New Citizen Movement is not calling for anything that isn’t already in the Chinese Constitution. 

First, the Chinese Constitution, occasionally modified but generally intact since the 1982 major rewriting.  Chapter II describes the fundamental rights and duties of citizens –

Article 33 All persons holding the nationality of the People’s Republic of China are citizens of the People’s Republic of China.

All citizens of the People’s Republic of China are equal before the law.

The State respects and preserves human rights …

Article 34 All citizens of the People’s Republic of China who have reached the age of 18 have the right to vote and stand for election, regardless of ethnic status, race, sex, occupation, family background, religious belief, education, property status or length of residence, except persons deprived of political rights according to law.

Article 35 Citizens of the People’s Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration.

Article 36 Citizens of the People’s Republic of China enjoy freedom of religious belief.

No State organ, public organization or individual may compel citizens to believe in, or not to believe in, any religion; nor may they discriminate against citizens who believe in, or do not believe in, any religion.

The State protects normal religious activities. No one may make use of religion to engage in activities that disrupt public order, impair the health of citizens or interfere with the educational system of the State.

Religious bodies and religious affairs are not subject to any foreign domination.

Article 37 Freedom of the person of citizens of the People’s Republic of China is inviolable.

No citizen may be arrested except with the approval or by decision of a people’s procuratorate or by decision of a people’s court, and arrests must be made by a public security organ.

Unlawful detention or deprivation or restriction of citizens’ freedom of the person by other means is prohibited, and unlawful search of the person of citizens is prohibited. 

Article 40 Freedom and privacy of correspondence of citizens of the People’s Republic of China are protected by law. No organization or individual may, on any ground, infringe upon citizens’ freedom and privacy of correspondence, except in cases where, to meet the needs of State security or of criminal investigation, public security or procuratorial organs are permitted to censor correspondence in accordance with the procedures prescribed by law.

Article 41 Citizens of the People’s Republic of China have the right to criticize and make suggestions regarding any State organ or functionary. Citizens have the right to make to relevant State organs complaints or charges against, or exposures of, any State organ or functionary for violation of law or dereliction of duty; but fabrication or distortion of facts for purposes of libel or false incrimination is prohibited.

Wow.  Sounds pretty reasonable.

Second, the mission of the New Citizen’s Movement, as described by Xu Zhiyong in May of 2012, concurrent with the rise of Xi.  Following this one-sentence mission statement are several paragraphs describing what individual Chinese can do to further the movement.  To us, nothing sounds very subversive –

The goal of the New Citizens’ Movement is a free China ruled by democracy and law, a just and happy civil society with “freedom, righteousness, love” as the new national spirit.    Xu Zhiyong’s controversial essay

To push forward the New Citizens’ Movement, the New Citizen can:

Disseminate the New Citizen Spirit: Explain the “freedom, righteousness, and love” of the New Citizen Spirit by way of online posts, street fliers, t-shirt slogans, and any other method of spreading the New Citizen Spirit. The New Citizen Spirit must appear on the Internet, flourish in the streets, and, most of all, take root in the deepest part in our hearts.

Practice New Citizen Responsibility: Promise to practice New Citizen Responsibility, stand fast to New Citizen behavioral standards, reject corruption in one’s life, reject the practice of seeking private gain at the expense of the public, be loyal to good conscience and do not actively do evil, do good service for society, and mutually supervise one another to carry out this promise. The New Citizen Spirit is the spirit of commitment, sacrificing one’s profit to be an example, to maintain good conscience and righteousness, up until righteousness exists all over the Chinese nation.

Use the “Citizen” sign or other identifying methods: Citizens design their own “Citizen” insignias, and strengthen their own Citizen status and self-affirmation by wearing the insignias in everyday life.

Participate in civic life: Hold regular mealtime talks, discuss current political situation, pay close attention to people’s livelihood, care for public service as well as public policy, help the weak, serve society, promulgate fairness and justice. Every place has a group of modern citizens. Everybody needs to group together for society to progress. Unity begins with acquaintance.

Unite to share labor and coordinate work. Repost messages, file lawsuits, photograph everyday injustices, wear t-shirts with slogans, witness everyday events [specifically referring to the phenomenon of standing in a circle around someone causing a scene to witness it], participate or openly refuse to participate in elections, transcribe [things that you see happen], hold gatherings or marches or demonstrations, do performance art, and use other methods in order to jointly promote citizens’ rights movements and citizens’ non-cooperation campaigns—such as assets reporting, openness of information, opposition to corruption, opposition to housing registration stratification, freedom of beliefs, freedom of speech, and the right of election. Practice the New Citizen Spirit in action. Citizens’ power grows in the citizens’ movement.

Xu Zhiyong and other leaders of the New Citizens Movement were arrested in 2013 and sentenced to prison.  Xu was released last year, in 2017.  China Change offered a translation of his “return from captivity” post in September of 2018.  Xu Zhiyong returns   A short YouTube video explains his plans, now that he has been released from prison –  Xu Zhiyong video on plans

The New Citizen Movement promoted following the language of the Chinese Constitution (see above) although not many Chinese have ever seen their constitution or knew that it existed.  But now you can understand why “constitutionalism” was denounced by CCP as dangerous.  Following the rule of law (as suggested in the Chinese Constitution) would mean that CCP members were subject to the same laws as ordinary citizens, and that just could not be permitted.   And read the New Citizen Movement tasks listed above.  The denunciations of western evils in Document No. 9  – free speech, free press, civil society – are all right there in the New Citizens Movement manifesto.  With Document No. 9, it is as if Xi Jinping is responding to the New Citizens’ Movement directly. 

It didn’t help that Xu was also promoting transparency about the fabulous family wealth of Wen Jiabao and Xi Jinping, reported by the New York Times and Bloomberg, respectively, in the summer and fall of 2012.  Today, the NYT and Bloomberg are both still banned in China.  

Third, the infamous Document No. 9 – Compare the goals of the New Citizens Movement, and their program of advocacy, with the warnings in the now infamous Document No. 9 (below), from the spring of 2013, warning CCP members against any tolerance of the western evils attempting to destroy China.  The New Citizens’ Movement was by no means the only civil society group working for change in China, but you can see clearly the relationship between the goals and advocacy of direct action by the NCM and the warnings in Document No. 9.  The document warns against

constitutionalism, civil society, “nihilistic” views of history, “universal values,” and the promotion of “the West’s view of media.” It also called on Party members to strengthen their resistance to “infiltration” by outside ideas, renew their commitment to work “in the ideological sphere,” and to handle with renewed vigilance all ideas, institutions, and people deemed threatening to unilateral Party rule.”  (Introduction at China File translation)

Document No. 9 appeared on April 22, 2013, a few months after the NCM manifesto and a few months after the ascension of Xi Jinping, before being deleted internally. I edit the following language from Document No. 9 liberally, providing only pertinent language on all seven of the deadly western sins, but the entirely is available at  The Infamous Document No. 9

The document is addressed to leaders, including those in the Party Committees of private businesses, probably at a senior mid-level ranking or higher.  Members are warned to resist and oppose –

  1. Promoting Western Constitutional Democracy: An attempt to undermine the current leadership and the socialism with Chinese characteristics system of governance.
  2. Promoting “universal values” in an attempt to weaken the theoretical foundations of the Party’s leadership.

The goal of espousing “universal values” is to claim that the West’s value system defies time and space, transcends nation and class, and applies to all humanity.

This is mainly expressed in the following ways: [The people who espouse universal values] believe Western freedom, democracy, and human rights are universal and eternal. This is evident in their distortion of the Party’s own promotion of democracy, freedom, equality, justice, rule of law, and other such values; their claim that the CCP’s acceptance of universal values is a victory for universal values,” that “the West’s values are the prevailing norm for all human civilization,” that “only when China accepts Western values will it have a future,” and that “Reform and Opening is just a process of gradually accepting universal rights.”

  1. Promoting civil society in an attempt to dismantle the ruling party’s social foundation.

Promoting civil society and Western-style theories of governance, they claim that building a civil society in China is a precondition for the protection of individual rights and forms the basis for the realization of constitutional democracy. Viewing civil society as a magic bullet for advancing social management at the local level, they have launched all kinds of so-called citizen’s movements.

Advocates of civil society want to squeeze the Party out of leadership of the masses at the local level, even setting the Party against the masses, to the point that their advocacy is becoming a serious form of political opposition.

 

  1. Promoting Neoliberalism, attempting to change China’s Basic Economic System.
  2. Promoting the West’s idea of journalism, challenging China’s principle that the media and publishing system should be subject to Party discipline.

Defining the media as “society’s public instrument” and as the “Fourth Estate;” attacking the Marxist view of news and promote the “free flow of information on the Internet;” slandering our country’s efforts to improve Internet management by calling them a crackdown on the Internet; claiming that the media is not governed by the rule of law but by the arbitrary will of the leadership; and calling for China to promulgate a Media Law based on Western principles. [Some people] also claim that China restricts freedom of the press and bang on about abolishing propaganda departments. The ultimate goal of advocating the West’s view of the media is to hawk the principle of abstract and absolute freedom of press, oppose the Party’s leadership in the media, and gouge an opening through which to infiltrate our ideology.

 

  1. Promoting historical nihilism, trying to undermine the history of the CCP and of New China.
  2. Questioning Reform and Opening and the socialist nature of socialism with Chinese characteristics.

These mistaken views and ideas exist in great numbers in overseas media and reactionary publications. They penetrate China through the Internet and underground channels and they are disseminated on domestic Internet forums, blogs, and microblogs, They also appear in public lectures, seminars, university classrooms, class discussion forums, civilian study groups, and individual publications. If we allow any of these ideas to spread, they will disturb people’s existing consensus on important issues like which flag to raise, which road to take, which goals to pursue, etc., and this will disrupt our nation’s stable progress on reform and development.

Western anti-China forces and internal “dissidents” are still actively trying to infiltrate China’s ideological sphere and challenge our mainstream ideology. Some of their latest major efforts include: Some people have disseminated open letters and declarations and have organized petition-signings to vocalize requests for political reforms, improvement of human rights, release of “political prisoners,” “reversing the verdict on ‘6/4’[the Tiananmen Massacre],” and other such political demands; they have made a fuss over asset disclosure by officials, fighting corruption with the Internet, media supervision of government, and other sensitive hot-button issues, all of which stoke dissatisfaction with the Party and government. Western embassies, consulates, media operations, and NGOs operating inside China under various covers are spreading Western ideas and values and are cultivating so-called “anti-government forces.” Cooking up anti-government publications overseas. Within China’s borders, some private organizations are creating reactionary underground publications, and still others are filming documentaries on sensitive subject matter, disseminating political rumors, and defaming the party and the national leadership.

 

Quite a mandate.

I described the quandary for American businesses in No Way Out.  But that is a quandary about profits and operations.  For CCP members, and rights lawyers, and journalists, and academics, and dissidents, the quandary is much more personal, about moral choices and family preservation, and threats to life and livelihood.  It is No Way Out at a different level of salience. 

A little more on attorney detentions, disappearances, prison terms, threats, and torture –

 Arrest of more than 200 civil rights lawyers followed in July, 2015 (the 709 incident).  200 lawyers detained – the 709 incident

More on New Citizens Movement

Description of 14 more lawyer cases –

14 Cases Exemplify the Role Played by Lawyers in the Rights Defense Movement, 2003–2015  By Yaxue Cao and Yaqiu Wang.  China Change,  August 19, 2015