While the arguable non-story of China’s “Jasmine protests” enjoys excited and widespread coverage internationally, boiling over into a tug-of-war over the very real harassment of foreign journalists in China, there is one potentially great big story missing from everyone’s agenda — the mysterious death of Chinese college student Zhao Wei (赵伟).
And yet, the chilling story of Zhao Wei, who was very possibly murdered by railway authorities on his way home to Inner Mongolia during the Spring Festival rush more than a month ago, goes to the very heart of the issues and anxieties that are of most immediate relevance to all Chinese, and could contribute to demands for change.
How can the government ensure safety of life and property for ordinary Chinese? How can Chinese find justice in a society where special interests can get away — possibly quite literally in this case — with murder?
Given such immediate concerns about justice and fairness in Chinese society, Zhao Wei’s case has the potential — just the potential, mind you — to become what the Sun Zhigang case was for China’s detention and repatriation system back in 2003.
For those of you fishing around for another news hook, let us remember that China’s powerful Railways Ministry, subject right now to one of the biggest corruption probes in memory, is involved in Zhao’s case too. They are, Xinhua reports, now charged with the official investigation, despite the possibility that their own local authorities in Daqing are culpable.
Got your attention?
Zhao Wei’s story drew a firestorm of interest online earlier this week after a link to an open letter written by his desperate parents emerged through Sina’s microblog, or “weibo,” platform [WARNING: this link includes a photo some may find disturbing].
The essentials of Zhao Wei’s story, which receives basic corroboration by an official Xinhua News Agency release today — we’ll come to that in a moment — runs as follows.

*Zhao, 23, a fourth-year student at Hebei University of Technology, boarded the 1301 train from Tianjin bound for Inner Mongolia on January 22, 2011. He sat in Car 12. A classmate and companion sat in Car 11.
*According to Zhao’s classmate, Zhao was taunted by a train attendant over the issue of a seat change. Zhao complained about this matter to the train conductor. *Later that night, Zhao traded seats with someone in Car 11 so that he could sit next to his classmate. He told the classmate it seemed he had somehow gotten on the train conductor’s bad side.
*At around 3 a.m. the railway police came and led Zhao away from Car 11. Zhao’s parents received a call at around 8 a.m. on the morning of January 23, 2011, saying that Zhao had jumped from a building at the Daqing Railway Station and was being treated. Unable to get clear confirmation of the hospital where their son was being treated, the parents went directly to the Daqing Railway Station, where police told them their son had already died.
*Zhao parents asked to see police photographs from the report on the alleged jump — the police said there were none and the crime scene had not been properly secured. The parents asked to see video surveillance footage — they were told the station was not equipped with video surveillance (which apparently is false).
*When family members were finally allowed to view Zhao Wei’s body, they found wounds that apparently could not be explained by his alleged jump from a building.
*All attempts by the Zhao family to petition various government offices in various jurisdictions for further investigation failed.

Online posts made on March 1 and 2 were accompanied by numerous photographs purported to be of Zhao Wei’s body, documenting various wounds and bruises on his body. The photos were allegedly taken by Zhao’s relatives when they were permitted to view Zhao’s body at the Daqing Mortuary, and found that he had already been dressed in new funeral clothes (which is not general practice).
By mid-morning yesterday, March 2, nearly all references to Zhao’s story had been scrubbed from China’s Internet.
The Sina Microblog post on the case was still available, however, as was the Phoenix Online BBS page it linked to, which included the open letter from Zhao Wei’s parents.
News searches on Baidu revealed that a mainstream newspaper had covered the story yesterday (but perhaps only online), and the report had been available online, attributed to Jinan’s Metro Information Times (城市信报), a commercial spin-off of Shandong province’s official Dazhong Daily.
But the story, still available (as of noon today) via China.com, is attributed there to Xinmin Online, the website of Shanghai’s Xinmin Evening News, a commercial newspaper published by the Wenhui Xinmin United Press Group. The story covers all of the essentials of the Zhao Wei case as known from online materials, and notes that the case has received a great deal of attention from web users “in recent days.”
[UPDATE: China.com story removed on the evening of March 3, sometime before 22:55 HK time. We have an archived version of the story HERE 1 and HERE 2.]

[ABOVE: A Baidu search on March 2 reveals only one news article on the Zhao Wei case, but following the link leads to a “Page Not Found” error.]
Noting yesterday that coverage of the Zhao Wei case was clearly being restricted, CMP set about gathering and translating as many materials as we could. Our number one question yesterday: what will happen tomorrow?
What we find today is an official news release, or tonggao (通稿), on the Zhao Wei case from the official Xinhua News Agency. The release is very brief, and very scant on details. Here it is:

“Railway Departments To Investigate Death of Hebei University of Technology Student in Daqing Railway Station”
Xinhua News Agency, Beijing
March 3, 2011
Reporters Bao Zhiheng (鲍志恒) and Ge Rongjin (葛熔金)
The reporters learned from railway authorities concerning the death of Hebei University of Technology student Zhao Wei (赵伟) in the Daqing Railway Station, that relevant parties are giving the case high priority. An investigative team has already been sent, and will carry out in-depth investigation to clarify the circumstances [of this case], which will be handled according to the law. The results of the investigation will be released quickly.

The most important detail to note about the Xinhua release itself is that the official investigation into the Zhao Wei case is to be conducted by railway authorities, whose role in Zhao’s tragedy is already suspect.
The Xinhua release appears at a number of online sites today, both state and commercial. Here is the Xinhua release as it appears at People’s Daily Online, a site operated by the CCP’s official People’s Daily newspaper. And here is the Xinhua release as it appears at QQ.com, one of China’s leading commercial Internet portal sites [and posted at Global Times Online at 14:15 HK time on March 3 archived HERE].
The difference between the two posts lies below the line.
QQ has drawn a line under the Xinhua release and then included much more material — in fact, an entire report about the Zhao Wei case including fresh interviews with various sources. Where does this report come from?
With a bit of sleuthing through the WiseNews database, we found that only one mainstream newspaper report has appeared in the Chinese media on the Zhao Wei case, and this can be found in today’s edition of Shanghai’s Oriental Morning Post. As it turns out, this is the story that at least two websites, QQ and Sina, have chosen to add to the Xinhua release. [UPDATE 22:45 HK time: QQ has now removed the Oriental Morning Post material, and only the Xinhua release remains. We will provide an archived page of the earlier QQ version tomorrow. Screenshot of current QQ page HERE].
The fact that the Zhao Wei story is still being actively scrubbed from the Internet, combined with the fact that no other mainstream media have touched the story, strongly suggests there has been some sort of directive from press authorities on this story that either defines it as off-limits or sends the signal that coverage is risky. Often such directives will refer media to a Xinhua release like the one above and instruct them to avoid additional coverage.
It is also possible, therefore, that the Oriental Morning Post, the same paper that busted the tainted milk scandal wide open in 2008, has shown courage with its story today.

[ABOVE: Today’s Oriental Morning Post, the only newspaper in China to brave coverage of the Zhao Wei story. This coverage appears on its National page.]
Earlier this week we posted about the Zhao Wei case via our CMP Newswire, noting that the original Sina Microblog post (NOTE: the post comes with a photo) was getting a surge of attention. As of today at 10:26 a.m., this Sina Microblog post, originally posted on February 28 at 23:21, had 66,014 re-posts and 13,986 comments.
The post reads as follows:

[Railway murderers, a college student dies an unnatural death riding the 1301 line] The deceased is Zhao Wei, a college student. Due to a problem over the changing of seats, Zhao Wei was mocked by the train attendant, and he reported this problem to the train conductor. At around 3 a.m., railway police took Zhao Wei away. When a classmate on the same train next saw Zhao Wei, his eyes were already black and blue, and he was dead. The aggrevied: Zhao Wei’s father, Zhao Tingfu; Zhao Wei’s mother Tian Jingrong: http://sinaurl.cn/h5MdgT

The “Sinaurl” link at the end of the post goes to a BBS page at Phoenix Online, which contains the full text of the letter written by Zhao Wei’s parents, which given today’s Xinhua News Agency story we can now safely assume to be genuine.
The posting of the letter to the Phoenix Online BBS was made on February 27, 2011, exactly one month after the date on the “signature” of the letter. Readers may note that this letter was translated by the Ministry of Tofu blog on March 1, so we encourage visits to their version. Ours, however, is below.
More photographs and documentation on Zhao Wei’s death can be found on this Health BBS page at Phoenix Online, including a photograph of the autopsy report — but we warn you that many of the images are unsettling. [UPDATE: Both links on Phoenix Online were disabled early afternoon on March 3, 2011, but we have archived the original link from Sina Microblog HERE and the page on the Phoenix Online Health BBS HERE].

Esteemed Leaders and Friends:
We write to you to complain about the incident of the unjust death in the Daqing Train Station in Heilongjiang province of our son Zhao Wei (赵伟), and we plead that you act on our behalf so that this case can be cleared, the criminals brought to justice, and the wrongs against Zhao Wei be redressed.
Zhao Wei was a fourth-year student at Hebei University of Technology. In Tianjin he purchased [a ticket for] seat 045 in Car 12 of the 1301 line from Tianjing to Zalantun [in Inner Mongolia]. One of his classmates was in Car 11.
According to this classmate, after they got on the train, because of some issue about changing seats, Zhao Wei was taunted and ridiculed by a train attendant. Zhao Wei made a complaint to the train conductor about this problem. At around 10 o’clock that night, Zhao Wei came into Car 11 with his luggage and said to this classmate that it seemed he had done something to upset the conductor. He then switched seats with the person sitting next to this classmate. At around 3 o’clock in the morning, the railway police came and asked Zhao Wei to come with them.
When this classmate next saw Zhao Wei, Zhao Wei’s eyes were already black and blue, and his life was gone.
On January 23, 2011, at around 8 o’clock in the morning, we received a telephone call saying that Zhao Wei had jumped out of a window at the Daqing Railway Station and that he was at the hospital being treated. We asked him which hospital? He said the name twice but couldn’t say it clearly. We then hailed a cab and went to the Daqing Railway Station. Police told us that Zhao Wei had jumped from a building and was already dead. (The train arrived on time to Daqing at 6:21am. The coroner determined that [Zhao Wei had] fallen at around 7:20am. Zhao Wei’s train ticket destination was for the city of Zalantun. The time between 3am and 6:21am is lost, and no one knows exactly what happened. Nor does anyone know what happened at the Daqing Railway Station between 6:21am and 7:20am). We asked: How did Zhao Wei get off the train at Daqing? The police said: We don’t know. We asked to see the surveillance camera footage from the train station, but the police told us that the Daqing Railway Station has no surveillance cameras. We then asked to see photographs or video footage from the scene [of Zhao Wei’s death, or alleged jump], but the police said: The scene was not properly secured, and there are no photographs or video. We asked to see Zhao Wei’s body. The police told us now wasn’t the time. At a loss, we waited until the night of the 24th. Some of our relatives came to Daqing. The police drew out and showed us a medical certification from the Oilfields General Hospital [in Daqing], which concluded that Zhao Wei had died as a result of cranial trauma. Only after much back and forth did the police allow us then to go and see Zhao Wei.
Zhao Wei’s body was being kept in the cold storage at Daqing Mortuary. They pulled him out for us to see, and his body was dressed in brand new funeral clothes. There was no sign of the Yishion brand coat and Nike brand pants he had been wearing. (The head of the Daqing Railway Station told us he had paid 2,600 yuan for this set of [funeral] clothing). We saw that Zhao Wei’s right eye was purple, and the cotton in his nostrils was bloody. There were three wounds inside and outside his left ear. There were wounds in two places on his right lower jaw. There was a large purple bruise on his right hip and buttock, and a wound in the middle. There were five wounds on his right groin, and his scrotum had swollen up to the size of a pear. There were many wounds on both hands, and his left wrist bore purplish red marks that suggested he had been handcuffed. Could so many wounds possibly have come from jumping from a building? Moreover, there were streaks of blood on the coat, pants and shoes Zhao Wei left behind. Could these too have come from a jump?
We asked that a medical examiner look into the cause of Zhao Wei’s death. The police said we would have to find a medical examiner ourselves. At a loss, we demanded to file a petition. Only then did the police carry out an autopsy on January 26, and the results left us even more shocked. Aside from Zhao Wei’s external wounds and cranial trauma, there were fatal injuries to Zhao Wei’s internal organs as well. But the autopsy report (刑事技术鉴定书) made no mention of the swelling of Zhao Wei’s scrotum, and we don’t know whether this was an omission or something intentionally left out. There were wounds in so many areas, scars on different parts [of his body], and still this autopsy report determined Zhao Wei died as a result of a fall from a height that resulted in a massive subarachnoid hemorrhage, and a brain hernia that caused massive craniocerebral trauma and death.
We must ask: this nation, a country which [dedicates itself to] creating a harmonious society, and which [pledges itself] to protecting the lives and the property of the masses — how can it not even protect the safety of life and property of an undergraduate student making his way home for the new year? A human being dies without anyone understanding why. And no one cares.
We must also ask: Zhao Wei was an excellent university student, and very intelligent. How was it that he got off the train only halfway through his journey? Why is it that there are surveillance cameras at the Daqing Railway Station, and [the police] say there are not? How is it that the Railway Police claim that they cannot protect the scene of [an alleged] jump from a building within their own jurisdiction? How could photos or video not be taken of the scene of the [alleged] jump from a building? Why were Zhao Wei’s bloody clothes exchanged for new ones before his relatives arrived?
What in heaven’s name are the Daqing Railway Police and the Daqing railway authorities up to? We called the criminal vice squad of the Daqing Police and they said there was nothing they could do. This was the territory of the railway police. The railway authorities in [the city of] Harbin said this would be referred back to [authorities in] Daqing. And for their part, [the authorities] in Daqing have left a hundred questions unanswered.
If we cannot get to the bottom of Zhao Wei’s death, there is the risk that the same kind of thing could happen to a Qian Wei, a Sun Wei or a Li Wei.
We ask that anyone from any corner of our society with a conscience, that they extend a hand. We ask that relevant departments be able to open up an investigation into Zhao Wei’s death, exposing the circumstances of his tragedy before all. Deal with the murderers, return justice to this harmonious society, and hand justice back to this simple peasant couple who raised Zhao Wei all these 23 years. Let Zhao Wei pass in peace.
Signed, The Aggrieved
Zhao Wei’s father, Zhao Tingfu (赵庭富)
Zhao Wei’s mother, Tian Jingrong (田井荣)
January 27, 2011

SUPPORTING MATERIALS:
Two screenshots of the two most popular Sina Microblog posts on the topic, which enjoyed runaway popularity across the Weibosphere. As of March 3 at 15:00, these microblog entries are fully accessible with a Sina Microblog account. At publication of this article, post #6916701255 recorded 66,000 reposts and 14,000 comments over the course of three days. Post #6914233491 had 43,000 reposts and 10,000 comments.
Sina Microblog post #6916701255 (screenshot — graphic contents)
Sina Microblog post #6914233491 (screenshot — graphic contents)
A screenshot of a Baidu News search showing 12 articles from various online sites on March 2, 2011. Click systematically through these and you get various messages such as “page no longer exists.” The snippet of content visible on the search results page reads: “The online post read: ‘Zhao Wei was a fourth-year student at Hebei University of Technology. In Tianjin he purchased [a ticket for] seat 045 in Car 12 of the 1301 line from Tianjing to Zalantun [in Inner Mongolia]. One of his classmates was in Car 11. ‘ That night, ‘because of some issue about changing seats, Zhao Wei was taunted and ridiculed by a train attendant. Zhao Wei made a complaint to the train conductor about this problem.'”

Readers can view the “Page Not Found” warning for the news story at Sina.com by clicking HERE. The page re-directs to Sina’s homepage after five seconds.
Readers can view the “Page Not Found” warning at Netease (163.com) by clicking HERE. The page re-directs after several seconds.
Below is the warning from Xinmin Online for the story: “We’re sorry. We cannot find the page you requested.”

Below is the March 3, 2011, Xinhua News Agency release on the Zhao Wei case published on People’s Daily Online, the website operated by the CCP’s official People’s Daily newspaper. There is no use of the Oriental Morning Post story.

Below is a Baidu News search conduced on March 2, which reveals only one news story on the Zhao Wei case. Following the link gives a “Page Not Found” message. This story, which is still available at China.com (but apparently nowhere else in China), is attributed to Xinmin Online, the website of Shanghai’s Xinmin Evening News, a commercial newspaper published by the Wenhui Xinmin United Press Group, which also publishes Shanghai’s Wenhui Daily.

People’s Daily Online reports that Chinese Academy of Social Sciences scholar and CMP fellow Yu Jianrong is planning to set up a “nursing institution” in Baoding, Hebei province, to provide shelter and counseling for child beggars.
Yu recently launched an online microblog-based campaign to combat child trafficking and the phenomenon of child begging, calling on web users to take photos whenever they found children begging on the streets, and post these to a designated online group.
The People’s Daily Online piece begins:

The initiator of a campaign to prevent children from begging plans to set up a nursing institution in Baoding city, North China’s Hebei province, in cooperation with the local branch of the Red Cross Society of China (RCSC).
The institution is designed to provide rehabilitative services to child beggars who suffered physical or mental abuse and to offer educational programs to those who are of school age, said Yu Jianrong, who has launched a nationwide micro-blogging campaign aimed at eliminating child begging in China.
Yu also revealed on Monday that he is prepared to build another nursing home in the Honghe Hani and Yi autonomous prefecture in Southwest China’s Yunnan province.

Click HERE for more.

Chinese President Hu Jintao’s calls on February 19 for regional leaders in China to strengthen social controls, including controls on information, and the government’s aggressive and preemptive actions to suppress dissent in recent days, can be read at once as a show of strength and a sign of creeping weakness. There is no denying that China faces complex and nagging social issues — a yawning gap between rich and poor, rising inflation, poor access of healthcare and education, and highly unpopular land-use actions, to name just a few — and the country’s leaders are clearly alert to the possibility that festering resentment might lead to broader social unrest and demands for political change.
To understand this, we can observe how Chinese leaders are attempting to persuade the population as much as suppress dissenting voices.
Last month, four separate editorials in the CCP’s official People’s Daily addressed deep economic and social problems in China, and attempted to assure an uneasy population that the country’s leaders are mindful of the needs of China’s citizens. The editorials were as follows:
1. “Working Hard to Reverse the Trend of Growing Income Disparity”
2. “We Must Squarely Face the Income Gap”
3. “A Rational Approach to Prevailing Issues of Social Justice”
4. “Industries Are Not Afraid of the Income Gap but of Unfairness”
All four of these editorials addressed the question of social fairness and the rising gap between rich and poor in China, issues that are a source of ongoing friction. The tone of the editorials is paternalistic and highly theoretical. “An accurate understanding of social fairness requires that we grasp three aspects: social fairness is historical, relative and concrete,” reads the third editorial, language unlikely to have a palliative effect on farmers who have no legal or other recourse once their farmland is stolen by local officials.
Published on February 16, the third editorial, “A Rational Approach to Prevailing Issues of Social Justice,” prompted a great deal of discussion on China’s domestic microblog platforms, QQ and Sina.
We have translated the official “content summary” of the article and a brief portion below to provide a taste of this series.

CONTENT SUMMARY:

* Social fairness is a value judgement about whether a member of a society is “desirable” to that society. It’s true nature lies in the demand that various rights and interests are reasonably allocated among members of a society, so that everyone can obtain that which they deserve; various responsibilities are taken on by members of society, and everyone must take on that which they should. Social fairness is a term with rich connotations. An accurate understanding of social fairness requires that we grasp three aspects: social fairness is historical, relative and concrete.
* Social fairness is a value judgement made by the “person” as subject concerning the “society” to the object. A rational approach to the question of social fairness in our country requires that we grasp two perspectives, that we grasp the two factors of “society” and the “person,” and that we connect questions of social fairness with our development situation, and with changes in the expectations in people’s hearts.
* Resolving issues of social fairness today requires emphasis on three points: accurate recognition (认识到位), taking social fairness as the basic problem in whether society can or cannot achieve sustainable development; competent measures, achieving scientific development, continually enlarging the cake [of economic development], while working hard to divide the cake; cohesion of forces, with the government taking on the principal role, and society serving a cooperative role (协同作用) and individuals fostering a sense of justice.
Social fairness is an issue that has been around since ancient times. Ever since the dawn of human history, people have thought about how to make society more just. Social fairness is also a routine and perennially fresh issue — along with the development of human society, people will continually raise new demands in terms of social fairness. As an important measure of how civilized and progressive a society is, social fairness goes hand in hand with the development of human society.
Right now, our country’s development stands at a new historical starting point, a time at which strategic opportunities are woven together with [social] tensions. The problems we face are more complex than those in the past, more prominent, and accommodating various interests becomes steadily more difficult. This has meant that issues of social fairness are more plain and noticeable to us. In the online surveys about “what you care about most’ conducted by various websites ahead of the National People’s Congress and Chinese People’s Political Consultative Congress, the issue of social fairness has been among the top concerns. In a number of cases of “flaunting of wealth” (炫富) and “hatred for the rich” (仇富), “flaunting of power” (炫权) and “hatred of government officials” (仇官) that have drawn widespread public attention, the crucial reasons lying behind these cases have to do with social fairness. It can be said that many of the issues in [Chinese] society today that become the focus, that are hotly discussed and sticking points, have on some level to do with social fairness. Dealing appropriately with the issue of social fairness has already become a major question that our country must confront. Dealing appropriately with the issue of social fairness requires first of all a rational view of the problem of social fairness.
Historical, Relative and Concrete: Understanding Social Fairness Requires a Grasp of Three Aspects
What is social fairness? Generally speaking, social fairness is a value judgement about whether members of society are “content” with their society. It involves essentially whether various economic, political and cultural rights and interests are reasonably distributed among members of society, so that all can receive what is due them; and how members of society reasonably take on various duties and responsibilities, with each person taking on their measure of responsibility.

FRONTPAGE IMAGE: A cartoon graph from Guangzhou Daily showing dramatic inflation in China, from rising food prices to rising home prices.

It took just 18 days for the people of Egypt to overthrow the Mubarak government, which had ruled the country for 29 years. The pro-democracy movement in North Africa and the Middle East has already spread to 11 countries. In China, these events have been handled very cautiously in the media. Editorials rarely touch on the issue, and even English-language publications like China Daily, which are usually given slightly greater latitude considering their role as publications expressly for foreign consumption, have stuck to the official line as given by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs: “China hopes Egypt can maintain social stability.”
As Twitter has become the “engine of revolution” elsewhere in the world, similar “microblog,” or weibo, platforms in China have come under greater government pressure. Try plugging terms like “Egypt” or “Mubarak” into searches on these microblog platforms, and the messages come back saying, “Posts related to ‘Egypt’ cannot be found,” or “According to relevant laws and regulations, these search results may not be shown.” While searches may be interrupted, however, Chinese users are still able to make posts containing these terms, and discussion has not slackened.
In the past few weeks, as events have unfolded in Egypt and elsewhere, the usually lively opinion pages in China’s commercial media — which tend to push issues further than their Party media counterparts — have been far more restrained. The most notable exception was a piece published in New Century Weekly, the magazine run by CMP fellow and former Caijing editor-in-chief Hu Shuli (胡舒立). Called “The Decision Belongs to the People of Egypt,” the piece argued that “dictatorship breeds unrest, and democracy engenders peace.” While it did not mention China specifically, the relevance was clear, and Internet users in China quickly added their own comments, drawing parallels to the Chinese experience.
Few if any other Chinese media have drawn on the events in Egypt to discuss matters at home, but one can easily imagine that those both inside and outside the system are wondering whether the changes that have shaken Egypt will accelerate China’s own moves toward democratization — and whether the web might spark political reform at home. And behind these questions, a more anxious one — will the events on Tiananmen Square that shook the world in June 1989 be replayed?
It goes without saying that the situation in China today is vastly different from that in the 1980s, and very different from the situation in Egypt. Sustained annual GDP growth of above eight percent has catapulted China into position as the world’s second-largest economy. China has made clear strides in alleviating the most basic poverty. China’s international influence and its comprehensive national strength have grown substantially.
Nevertheless, present-day China also has important similarities with Egypt today, and with the China that experienced the “Tiananmen incident” 22 years ago. Market reforms in China in the 1980s deepened the divide between rich and poor, and between the cities and the countryside, and the very reforms that made many people more prosperous excited demands for greater political reform. In much the same way, the gap between rich and poor has grown sharply in present-day China, and high inflation has eroded quality of life.
According to official statistics, inflation stood at 4.9 percent last month, and grain prices were up 15.1 percent. It is also a fact that so-called “mass incidents” — a catch-all term for instances of protest or unrest resulting largely from resentments over basic rights and quality-of-life issues — are on the rise in China, particularly as a result of local government actions such as the demolition of homes to make room for property developments and other signature economic projects.
The yawning divide between rich and poor, endemic government corruption, and rising popular resentment in many areas in China all mean political reform must make it onto the agenda somehow, and soon.
Much as was the case on Tiananmen Square in 1989, two sides have become polarized in the new public space of the Internet. The government remains determined to exercise control with an iron hand, and spurns dialogue with public intellectuals who have become livelier in the online space. Even pro-reform voices within the system have been repressed, as was evident last year when seven important calls for political reform in China by Premier Wen Jiabao (温家宝) became unmentionables in the country’s domestic media.
As it becomes impossible to have this important conversation at all, mistrust deepens. Many liberal intellectuals harbor doubts about Wen’s intentions, supposing his overtures were little more than a political show.
Despite all attempts by the leadership to stifle the discussion and “guide” public opinion, however, popular voices demanding the truth and pushing for greater openness have only increased. On the virtual public square of the Internet, Chinese explore sensitive issues through the constant invention and re-invention of memes, so that keyword blocking becomes largely irrelevant; they use proxy servers to get around censorship and post what they wish.
The gap between the people and the government is deepening as well, a divide compounding the gaps between rich and poor, and between the city and countryside.
One important difference with the situation in China 22 years ago, in fact, is that democratic demands have progressed. They are no longer limited largely to students as they were before “June Fourth.” In the major social flash points we’ve seen in China in recent years, from poisonous milk powder to the collapse of school buildings in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, forces from all levels of Chinese society have come together.
The mass reach of the Internet means that people from all walks of life can take action and potentially bring about change. The web has already become a powerful force for mobilization, a boundless, all-weather channel for the sharing of information. Differing points of view clash in online forums, everyone benefits from the exchange of ideas, and civil society gradually develops.
The Internet also provides a platform for balanced and moderating ideas. We saw this quite clearly with the recent online campaign against the child abduction and the phenomenon of child begging in China, in which Chinese Academy of Social Sciences professor and CMP fellow Yu Jianrong (于建嵘) called on web users across China to photograph children begging on the streets and post the photos to special microblog accounts set up at Sina.com and QQ.com. The campaign drew broad, grassroots support from Chinese Internet users. But there were dissenting voices as well, from the likes of well-known blogger Hecaitou (和菜头) and columnist and CMP fellow Xiao Shu (笑蜀), who raised doubts about the methods and premise of the campaign.
So, will change come to China? There is great division among international experts on this question. Ever since 1989, the Chinese Communist Party has endured amid a shower of dire predictions of collapse, and it has presided over what many have called an “economic miracle.”
Economic development over the past two decades has allowed a segment of Chinese to prosper, and has engendered a middle class in China that is now a source of social stability. But the difficult question is whether China’s economic development can be sustained. Economists such as Chen Zhiwu (陈志武) have predicted that China’s economy in its present mode of development is sustainable for perhaps another five years.
If much-needed adjustments are not made, China’s population bonus, its environment and its resources will all be exhausted. The bottleneck to sustainable development is not economic, but is all about lagging political reforms.
In this information age the world has changed. One month ago, no one could have imagined such change in Egypt. China’s future too is very difficult to read, but there are two things we can say for sure. First, political change must come. As economic development and the political status quo come more and more into conflict, changes to the system will be a necessity rather than an option. Second, all Chinese, from the grassroots to the government, from intellectuals to ordinary Joes, share the view that upheaval be avoided and that bloodshed be avoided in the process of reform. If China’s leaders can initiate political reforms at the top then there is hope for China to realize its 100-year dream of democracy, which began with the Xinhai Revolution a century ago.
While China’s government may not be able to begin political reforms immediately, it can live up to the promise it has made to the people of China, that it will rule according to law, “allowing the people to live with dignity.” Further, China’s ruling Party must open up real lines of communication with the public, and with public intellectuals. It must not cast moderates as enemies. The CCP has said in the past that it has a need to “build its leadership capacity.” We can only hope this is not about strengthening its dictatorship, but rather about “ruling well” through this difficult period of transition.
Over the weekend, there were vague calls for “jasmine” movements for political reform in several Chinese cities, inspired by recent changes in the Middle East. These became a focus of a lot of activity online, and Chinese authorities moved to prevent any real gatherings. On the surface the calls seemed to fizzle. There were no banners, no shouting of slogans. But there was what some observers characterized as “a very strange atmosphere of anticipation” as activists mixed in with police, pedestrians and casual onlookers.
These scenes themselves were sufficient to illustrate the motivating power of the Internet in this age of information, and just how difficult it is to predict and control. This time, the calls did not materialize into real action, but I’m afraid that unless China’s leaders deal with underlying structure problems, future efforts at forced suppression will prove to be vain attempts.
A version of this editorial appeared in the Tuesday edition of Hong Kong Economic Times.