Now Executive Director of the China Media Project, leading the project’s research and partnerships, David originally joined the project in Hong Kong in 2004. He is the author of Dragons in Diamond Village (Penguin), a book of reportage about urbanization and social activism in China, and co-editor of Investigative Journalism in China (HKU Press).
Professor Yu Jianrong is head of the Rural Development Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Born in Hengyang, Hunan Province, in 1962, he studied politics and law at Hunan Normal University in the 1980s, and in 2001 received his post-doctorate in legal studies from Huazhong Normal University. Professor Yu’s writings include “Change in Political Structures at the Village Level in Transitional China,” “Rights Defense and the Modern Rural Population: An Investigation of Hengyang, Hunan” and “Class and the Contemporary Chinese Worker.”
This afternoon Sohu.com posted a very interesting special page dealing with a recent series of conservative articles appearing in the official People’s Daily, including this one, which we fully translated here at CMP. Topped with a Cultural Revolution-era image of Party writers — an image uncomfortable to many Chinese, who would rather not repeat the ideological rancor of those days — the special page asked who the writer of these editorials, identified as Zheng Qingyuan (郑青原), really is.
The page also included a table revealing the flesh-and-blood people behind a number of prominent official editorial pen names.
We barely had time to pull the content on the page down and save it before the link to the special page was “harmonized.” Many of the links at Sohu for content included on the special page, such as an article from Beijing Evening News headlined, “Who is Zheng Qingyuan?”, were also removed, yielding “404” messages.
Here is a PDF of the full page: Sohu Missing Page 11.2
According to recent Chinese media reports, the Cultural Market Management Office of Weinan (渭南) in China’s northern Shaanxi province, an office under the local Cultural Department, has been running a lucrative racket by charging monthly “management fees” (管理费) of 1,000 yuan to the hundreds of local Internet cafes it is charged with overseeing, and by levying sky-high penalties for the smallest of infractions. Local Internet cafe operators who spoke with Chinese media said the levying of penalty fees generally happened at lavish dinners at which the cafe operators were asked to foot the bill. Media reports said the office’s lucrative rent seeking activities have necessitated the office’s personnel expansion far beyond the eight officials under formal contract (编制). At least 62 additional people are listed as earning wages from the office, and a total of 54 work there regularly. In this cartoon, posted by artist Fan Jianping (范建平) to his QQ blog, an octopus stretches its tentacles of self-interest out of the “Cultural Market Management Office,” grabbing piles of cash from frowning Internet cafes.
According to a recent news report in Guangzhou Daily, the official Party newspaper of the southern city of Guangzhou [view on the CMP Media Map], a recent survey of migrant workers in China found that 80 percent of those born before 1980 did not wish to change their rural identity registration, or hukou, in exchange for urban registration. Of those who were willing to change their identity registration, only half said they would agree to relinquish their claims to contract land, or chengbaodi (承包地), in their place of original registration in the countryside. The survey results, if accurate, seem to suggest that many rural migrants still associate the land with security and are unwilling to formally part from it. In this cartoon, posted by the Kunming-based studio Yuan Jiao Man’s Space (圆觉漫时空) to QQ.com, a rural resident holds on tenaciously to his plot of land — even though it is devastated by environmental damage — as a local official tries to yank him away with the promise of a new urban flat. A digger stands behind, suggesting the land is slated for a new development project
When a recent forum in Beijing brought together deans from law schools around the world, the most stirring moment came as Zhou Yongkang (周永康), the most senior Communist Party leader in charge of legal affairs in China, delivered an address stressing his support for a strong legal system. Zhou said China must “comply with the universal principles of law” and “adopt and learn from all great human precedents in the area of rule of law.”
The idea of building a “rule of law culture” is now all the rage in China’s media, and a look at recent major news stories tells us exactly why. Rule of law is no longer just about protecting the rights of the weak in China, but concerns the safety and security of government elites as well.
The first news story to make ripples lately is the bribery case against Long Xiaole (龙小乐), a senior Party official at Wuhan University in China’s inland Hubei province. Not long after the trial began, Long Xiaole told the court his confession had been extracted through torture, involving three consecutive days and nights of interrogation during which he was subjected to beatings and extreme cold. Long’s prosecutors acknowledged dismissively that “the interrogation had been rather long.” But they countered that “there are no laws or regulations [in China] about the length of interrogations, and so there no illegalities were involved.”
Legal scholars, including Ding Dafan (丁大帆), quickly pointed out that China signed and ratified the United Nations Convention Against Torture more than twenty years ago. Article I of the convention states that “torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession . . . ” Insofar as the convention applies to criminal law in China, any infliction of physical or mental suffering by public officers is illegal and constitutes torture.
The second major news story was the trial of Yang Jiannong (杨建农), a top police official in Hunan province. Shortly before Yang’s arrest, his wife, Chen Ling (陈玲), had made an internet post exposing a hornet’s nest of “dark plots” within the Hunan Public Security Department. Right on the heels of these online revelations, the department announced on its official website that Yang Jiannong was under investigation by provincial discipline inspectors for alleged acts of bribery reaching into the millions.
Both husband and wife are now prisoners. We can only speculate as to what connection this has to Chen Ling’s online muckraking.
Lawyers on the Hunan case have pointed to all sorts of problems in how the cases against Yang Jiannong and his wife have been handled. To begin with, Yang’s telephone line was reportedly monitored secretly while he was serving in his post. According to China’s Criminal Procedural Law, the family of Yang Jiannong’s wife, who was subsequently arrested for “fraudulent registration of assets”, should have been notified within twenty-four hours — they were not. Nor was the paperwork for her arrest handled properly.
Chen Ling has still been unable to meet with her lawyers, Hunan authorities claiming the case deals with “national secrets.” This explanation is ludicrous considering that “fraudulent registration of assets” is a common criminal offense, having nothing at all to do with matters of national secrecy. Everything gives the appearance local authorities are acting as they please, in utter contempt for the law and procedure.
Long Xiaole and Yang Jiannong are elites within China’s political system. They are, to use a popular phrase, “men of men.” But regardless of their privilege and status, their fates are fragile and every step is fraught with danger. Knocked down a notch, they find no more protection for their most basic rights than the most ordinary of Chinese. The system deals with them as it deals with all those who fall through the cracks and find themselves in positions of weakness.
In China, where modern rule of law effectively does not exist, and where experts say more than 70 percent of total social wealth is now concentrated in state hands, the national grab for wealth by those within the system operates by the law of the jungle. There are no rules or boundaries. This means the prospects for those inside the system, like Long Xiaole and Yang Jiannong, are as unpredictable as for anyone else. No one enjoys security, and the nightmare facing Long and Yang is shared by all those in positions of power and privilege. The system offers no guarantees, and might at any moment pull them down into the maelstrom.
We often assume the purpose of rule of law is to protect the weak. But this couldn’t be further from the truth. Rule of law is about protecting the rights of everyone, regardless of how much wealth or power they have, and it should mean anyone can plan for the future with a sense of security.
If China’s ruling elite want this kind of security, the only way forward is developing a culture of rule of law in China. This is why Zhou Yongkang’s words were so timely and understandable. It is not enough for the weak to clamor for rule of law. The resources of our society are not in their hands, after all.
Only when both weak and strong reach a broad consensus on the urgency of this issue can we turn the resources of our country toward the development of rule of law. And only then will change truly come. Clearly, the time is already here. A version of this article originally appeared in Chinese at Time Weekly. [View Time Weekly on the China Media Map].
According to recent media reports, Li Shujian (李树建), chairman of the Henan Theater Association, said after a recent audience with Henan’s top leader, party secretary Lu Zhangong (卢展工), “I was beside myself with excitement, and my face was washed with tears.” Almost immediately, the phrase, “My face [was] washed with tears,” became an internet sensation in China, Chinese heaping ridicule on this anachronistic expression of fealty to a leader pledged (at least in name) to serve the people. This cartoon, posted by artist Li Jianing (李嘉宁) to his QQ blog, satirizes Li Shujian’s excessive pro-CCP emotion by contrasting it with real public need. At left, a man tries to wash his face but finds no water running in the tap. Li Shujian, at right, perches dramatically on his stage, a toilet, and intones: “Just think of the graces bestowed on us by our leaders, and wash your face with tears!”
A recent report in People’s Forum magazine, published by China’s official People’s Daily newspaper, a recent study found that more than 70 percent of Chinese officials suffer from a condition known as “internet terror” (网络恐惧症). According to the study, the magazine reported, the condition is most acute among officials at the county (县级) and departmental (处级) levels. The condition is apparently an abiding fear on the part of Party and government officials that they might at any moment become the focus of an online campaign making their conduct a topic of national concern and ridicule. In this cartoon, posted by the Kunming-based studio Yuan Jiao Man’s Space (圆觉漫时空) to QQ.com, government officials (recognizable by the imperial-style official caps) cower and perspire with fear at a large computer screen over their heads, representing China’s vigilant masses of internet users, looms overhead.
Earlier this month Beijing’s Sanwei Shuwu bookstore [blog here] organized a lecture by Xin Ziling (辛子陵) called “The Political Reform Question.” The lecture, scheduled for 3 p.m. on Saturday, October 16, was suddenly cancelled and replaced with another lecture on rule of law by Xiao Han (萧瀚), a professor at China University of Political Science and Law.
Sanwei did not specify the reason for the cancellation, but it should be noted that Xin Ziling was one of the 23 Party elders who penned an open letter on October 11 calling for freedom of speech in China.
Xin, a former official at the China National Defence University, is also the author of The Accomplishments and Sins of Mao Zedong (千秋功罪毛澤東), a book assessing the legacy of Mao.
Xin Jiling’s original lecture for Sanwei Shuwu has now been posted online, and the piece has drawn a flurry of interest today.
A portion of the lecture follows. In it, Xin attacks those who seek, as he sees it, to hijack the political reform debate with the outdated “theory of delimitation” — distinguishing between “proletarian” democracy and “bourgeois” democracy — which he calls a “protective amulet . . . for single-party dictatorship” handed down by Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin.
We recommend that readers of Chinese review the comments beneath Xin’s essay at Chinavalue.net, including Xin’s own remarks. There is plenty of discussion there of yesterday’s People’s Daily piece as well, which is a good counterpoint to Xin’s arguments.
The Political Reform Question
October 16, 2010
By Xin Ziling (辛子陵)
Political reforms in China have dragged behind and scarcely budged, retarded by instinctual resistance from networks of influence and power. The protective amulet of their Leninism is the “theory of delimitation” (划界论). I’ve written an essay called, “Challenging One Paper and Two Magazines, Overturning the Theory of Delimitation,” which I posted online. It sets out to thoroughly overturn and shatter this “theory of delimitation.” [NOTE: “One paper and two magazines” (两报一刊) refers to the complete monopolization of the press by political power, particularly under Mao Zedong, but refers more directly in this case to recent pieces of conservatism on political reform appearing in prominent Communist Party newspapers.]
As soon as the winds of political reform start to blow, the writing hands of the mainstream media [NOTE: this means “Party media”] turn out to clearly delimit the issue. They ask whether we are surnamed Proletariat or surnamed Capitalist (姓无姓资), and they draw a clear line between bourgeois democracy and proletarian democracy. On September 4, the Guangming Daily came out with this piece called, “Two Democracies of Different Natures Must Not Be Confused,” [https://chinamediaproject.org/2010/09/06/7345/]. The same day, the Liberation Army Daily issued a piece written by Jiang Ganlin (蒋干麟), the head of the People’s Liberation Army’s Nanjing Political Studies Academy, which spoke of the need to delimit “four crucial boundaries.” Issue 18 of the journal Seeking Truth ran a piece under the headline, “The Institutional Superiority and Basic Characteristics of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics,” which also urged the need to “clearly delimit the differences between the democracy of socialism with Chinese characteristics and Western capitalist democracy.” The Party media [NOTE: The term used here is “one newspaper and two magazines.”] are lining up for battle, puffing up for opposition to political reform.
This theory of “delimitation” is a legacy passed down from Lenin, our patriarch, and the representative work in question is, “The Proletarian Revolution and the Traitor [Karl] Kautsky.” Lenin said at the time that “proletarian democracy is more democratic by a factor of 100 than any other form of democracy; Soviet political power is more democratic by a factor of 100 than even the most democratic bourgeois republic.”
[1]. There are two key positions behind this thinking. The first is class theory, that in the democratic system of the proletariat, the worker’s classes, the peasants the masses of ordinary people rule the country, and this has class superiority. Then there is [the superiority arising] from numbers theory, in that the worker’s classes, peasants and the ordinary masses account for more than 90 percent of the national population, and this means superiority of numbers. Lenin said: “The proletarian democratic system (of which Soviet political power is one form) exists for the vast majority of people, and for the expansion of democracy across the world to a level never before seen for the sake of exploited labor.”
[2]. Once these two positions were admitted, the opposition withered. For decades ever after, the Communist Parties of the various socialist nations of the world took this up as their protective amulet, confidently going ahead with their single-party dictatorships.
The people still subscribed to this idea was during the first generation in these socialist nations. Once political power had been violently seized, who would rule if the chiefs did not? With the second generation, a crisis of legitimacy emerged, and by the third generation we had the disintegration of the Soviet Union, dramatic change in Eastern Europe, and new paths of reform and opening in China and Vietnam.
This protective amulet that Lenin created for single-party dictatorship was issued in 1918, more than 90 years ago. There have been fundamental changes since to the proletarian democratic system and the bourgeois democratic system. These fundamental changes can be seen in the transposition of these two. The so-called “proletarian democratic system” has gradually transformed into a system representing a small capitalist elite holding political power (in China and North Korea, for example), and the “bourgeois democratic system” has grown beyond the scope of the wealthy to become a democratic system of the whole people (as in the United States and the nations of the European Union) in which the vote has become a powerful weapon by which ordinary people protect their rights and interests.
According to a recent news report in Guangdong’s official Nanfang Daily newspaper, a 22 year-old woman went in for a surgical abortion at a clinic in Shenzhen’s Bao’an District and had been fully prepped for surgery, her legs immobilized by epidural anesthesia, when her surgeon said suddenly that he intended to perform two additional surgeries (at additional cost, of course). The woman refused and was kept on the surgical table for three hours. She was released only after her boyfriend notified police. In this cartoon, posted by the Kunming-based studio Yuan Jiao Man’s Space (圆觉漫时空) to QQ.com, a young woman is trapped and immobilized on the operating table as her surgeon turns willfully away, refusing to release her until she has agreed to additional surgeries. On the sheet between the woman’s legs is emblazoned a large red Yuan symbol, signifying the act of gross extortion.
