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[Leafsnail]

What are the criteria for seeking asylum in the US?  If he meets those then he should be allowed to claim it.

[Lord Dullard]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/fraying-deal-on-blind-chinese-dissident-points-to-power-of-security-apparatus/2012/05/03/gIQAN5O7yT_story.html

[scriver]

I always enjoy your posts on China, RedKing. They are very interesting and enlightening, and I often parrot what I can remember to people around me ;)

By the way, are the fenqing (also what means what of that?) also "physical" troublemakers and thugs like for example skinheads and gopniki, or are they mostly just hacker activists like you described them as before?

[Lord Dullard]

That's a win for Chen (sort of...being forced into asylum in a foreign country probably isn't high on his list of life goals), and it's a win for the Shandong officials, because he's out of sight, out of mind, and they'll likely get off without a penalty. It's a loss for Beijing, because they look powerless to punish corruption in their territory, powerless to prevent their citizenry from fleeing the country, and powerless to keep the US out of its domestic affairs. It's also a loss for the US because it makes it look like we're trying to intervene, and it opens up the door for more and more dissidents to try and use the US as an escape plan when things get too hot. Honestly, Beijing needs these sort of people to remain in China and help them root out corruption at the local levels. They know it's there, they probably even know which officials are the worst, but without hard evidence and some weight of popular opinion on their side, it's incredibly difficult for them to penetrate the web of favors and kickbacks and entrenched interests and actually remove the worst offenders.

RedKing, I'm interested in knowing why you'd think the top levels of the party have any interest in actually rooting out corruption? I know they'd want to root out the kinds of corruption that might be extremely unpopular with the public, but other than that, I can't think of any particular reason they'd do so, considering they themselves are basically entrenched in their positions specifically because of the top levels of government being corrupt.

[RedKing]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/fraying-deal-on-blind-chinese-dissident-points-to-power-of-security-apparatus/2012/05/03/gIQAN5O7yT_story.html

There's also that. Although in this instance, my gut feeling is that the a significant part of the Party in Beijing is sympathetic to Chen.

WP has another good article here re: what I've been describing -- an authoritarian state, but shan gao huang di yuan ("mountains are high, the Emperor is far away" -- an old saying referring to the tendency of provincial authorities to ignore or even contramand the directives of the central government). Although I disagree with Bequelin's analysis that this is somehow outsourcing repression to the local level. The local level has always been the primary locus of repression, even in Mao's day. The Red Guards acted without central coordination or direction, and it was finally their excesses that caused Mao to act to crush them because they got out of control and began to threaten the central government itself.

@scriver: Thanks.
愤, fèn: anger, resentment
青, qīng: youth (although the same character and pronunciation can also mean blue-green. Go-go-gadget-contextual-language-weirdness!)

For the time being, the anger has been mostly online or in angry but nonviolent protests. However, it has gotten violent from time to time, as when groups of young men attacked the Japanese embassy in 2005. The PRC had been engaging in its regular tradition of a little anti-Japanese Two-Minute Hate, this time over some new textbooks with a serious right-wing slant that whitewashed the Japanese war record in WWII, and also because Japan was lobbying for a permanent seat on the Security Council at the time. (Should also be noted that there were protests in both Koreas as well).

State media outlets had plenty of editorials criticizing Japan, CCTV was running a slate of old war movies (where the Japanese Army are depicted as uniformly, almost laughably, evil), etc. Then people start trashing any businesses with a Japanese name (even when they were Chinese-owned and operated franchises) and attacked the embassy itself in Beijing. Suddenly the editorial tone changed bigtime, and all efforts went into restoring calm. That episode really spooked the authorities, because an angry mob is one of the most dangerous things in Chinese history. They saw that with the advent of modern communications, they can't just turn on and turn off popular outrage like a water faucet. As a result, I've never seen anywhere near the concentrated level of anti-Japanese agitprop on state media since. State media was even sympathetic to the Japanese after the tsunami, which had the interesting effect of sending the fenqing into a frenzy, accusing the state-run media of being traitors for daring to say anything nice about the hated Japanese devils. Thankfully, most people online just rolled their eyes and said things along the line of "STFU troll, you're giving us all a bad name".

I've been in more than a few flame wars on the China Daily forums, not least because how dare a laowai like me dare make any criticism of anything in China, especially when I'm not even an expat resident? Fucking imperialist white devil. They're the Chinese version of "America #1 or GTFO, u commiepinkofag!!" but thankfully not that numerous.

Where it gets worrisome is when they even start attacking respected academics and former government officials over things like saying, "Yeah, Mao kinda screwed us up in some ways, like the Cultural Revolution." It's kinda analogous to the young men in Russia who are all into Stalin nowadays, because they didn't have to actually live through his crazy-ass rule. People who were there....not so much love.

That's a win for Chen (sort of...being forced into asylum in a foreign country probably isn't high on his list of life goals), and it's a win for the Shandong officials, because he's out of sight, out of mind, and they'll likely get off without a penalty. It's a loss for Beijing, because they look powerless to punish corruption in their territory, powerless to prevent their citizenry from fleeing the country, and powerless to keep the US out of its domestic affairs. It's also a loss for the US because it makes it look like we're trying to intervene, and it opens up the door for more and more dissidents to try and use the US as an escape plan when things get too hot. Honestly, Beijing needs these sort of people to remain in China and help them root out corruption at the local levels. They know it's there, they probably even know which officials are the worst, but without hard evidence and some weight of popular opinion on their side, it's incredibly difficult for them to penetrate the web of favors and kickbacks and entrenched interests and actually remove the worst offenders.

RedKing, I'm interested in knowing why you'd think the top levels of the party have any interest in actually rooting out corruption? I know they'd want to root out the kinds of corruption that might be extremely unpopular with the public, but other than that, I can't think of any particular reason they'd do so, considering they themselves are basically entrenched in their positions specifically because of the top levels of government being corrupt.

Because it's bad for business. And it makes running the country a bitch and a half when you make a corrective action and then have to push, pull and beg to get anyone to follow it. Couple of examples:

1. Several years ago, somebody crunched the numbers in Beijing and decided that the economy was growing too fast and they were risking getting into a bubble and burning out. So they tried to think of good ways to slow down the economy that wouldn't just be wasteful. One idea was to shut down a lot of little private steel-making operations in Guangdong. See, back in Mao's day, he had this "great" idea of how to increase China's steel production: give every peasant a small forge. Then, when they're not out in the rice fields, they can spend their spare time making steel! Of course, they had minimal training and the raw materials they had to work with were total crap, so the quality of the steel they made was laughable. Most of it was utterly unusable, but hey...on paper at least, China's steel production skyrocketed.

Most of these fell into disuse once the central government realized the steel was worthless. With the advent of the SEZ in Guangdong, and the rising price of steel worldwide, enterprising Chinese entrepeneurs went around buying up all these old forges and making "steel factories", which were basically warehouses full of mini-forges with a bunch of guys smelting and hammering away. The training was only marginally better, but the raw inputs tended to be at least a little more uniform. The resulting output was low-quality but usuable. And the construction boom meant that there was a voracious market for any kind of steel, so these places were insanely profitable. And more or less utterly unregulated.

So suddenly they're illegal, but the local officials down there have been getting kickbacks from the "factory" owners for some time. They have an invested interest in not shutting them down. So they would either "shut them down" and let them reopen the next day without officially notifying the government, and then report them as shut down, or they'd just say "Sorry, there are no illegal factories in our district." Estimates are that less than 15% of the factories slated for shutdown were actually shut down.

2. There was a directive to encourage "green development" at the local level. Officials were urged to find ways to make their district/village/province/whatever more green. In Shaanxi, there was an official who ordered hundreds of workers to go to a nearby open-pit quarry and paint the entire quarry with green paint. Mission Accomplished. 

[nenjin]

There was a directive to encourage "green development" at the local level. Officials were urged to find ways to make their district/village/province/whatever more green. In Shaanxi, there was an official who ordered hundreds of workers to go to a nearby open-pit quarry and paint the entire quarry with green paint. Mission Accomplished.

Good lord, I knew how that would end when I read the first sentence.

I know you're the man on East Asian goings on, Red King. I just don't know if I buy that the party really, at its core, would like to let Chen go quietly. Because either way that comes back to their ability to enforce policy, either at the local level or at the level of the individual. For a country that is willing to execute government officials for lying and/or countermanding orders (when it's publicly reported), it seems too? nice of them to sympathize with a dissident. I'd expect an even harsher take on what to do with them. Now, if the argument was not letting Chen go could touch off a revolt in China by the repressed masses....that I could see. But you're not really describing that as a threat.

[RedKing]

What Chen has been crusading against is a fairly narrow thing, and it's been focused on policies and practices *in* Shandong, not national-level policies. In fact, the actions being carried out in Shandong were (if substantiated) explicitly in violation of national policy (which forbids forced abortion and/or forced sterilization -- the one-child policy is accomplished through deterrent fines). In an earlier instance, he was being taxed, wherein the disabled are supposed to be exempt from taxes. He managed to win a lawsuit in the Chinese legal system (itself no mean feat) against the local government, and then began getting other disabled people's taxes stopped.

I think if there's any embarassment to the core of the party in this, it's that things in this corner of Shandong had gotten so bad without their knowledge (or with their knowledge but lack of care) and that they've known about the troubles there for at least 6 or 7 years now but haven't done a major purge of officials in the region. The courts that have been finding against him and the authorities that have been putting him under arrest are *all* local (Yinan county and Linyi prefecture). When he's had his day in front of authorities in Beijing, he's typically won his cases. He fled house arrest a few years ago, and headed to Beijing to try and get the government's ear again. I think the difference this time is that he doesn't just expect to get beaten, he's expecting them to come kill him and his family.


There's also the fact that this is coming on the heels of a major scandal a couple of months ago, wherein the police chief of Chongqing (the biggest city in western China, and a major, major key region...think the geopolitical importance of a Texas or California) had implicated the local Communist Party chief for the region, Bo Xilai, in a murder cover-up scandal of a British businessman (and associate of Bo). He then left for Beijing "for medical reasons" under armed guard , which has been interpreted as fleeing to the PSB (national level internal security/police) for protection from Bo's henchmen.

It should be noted that Bo was also a member of the Politburo (i.e. dude was *bigtime*) and a leading member of the Chinese New Left (i.e. one of the people who feels like China's economic liberalization and opening society are mistakes and wants to go back to the way it was). The last few premiers and army chiefs have all been on the side of economic liberalization and gradual reform. There were genuine concerns that he might try to rally support and attempt something like Gennady Yanayev did in 1991 in the Soviet Union, organizing a hardliner attempted coup against a reformist government. Chongqing is a industrial and military hub of China, because its location deep inside China makes it difficult to strike at. That's also one thing that makes the posting so prestigious and powerful politically. It is also (because it was made into an SEZ far later than the coastal regions) still a bastion of old-school Maoist culture.

He was finally removed from his post in mid-March, which has been a topic of some discussion online. It does not reflect well on the CPC when one of its top members is implicated like that. But others (those of a more leftist bent) claim the whole thing is a conspiracy to get Bo out of the way because he's not Reformist.

But then the issues in Shandong have been going on for years. So....I dunno. I don't see this as anything that could touch off a revolt. But it definitely has the potential to deepen a growing cynicism and apathy towards the CPC. Party membership as a percentage of population has been dropping for decades, even since liberalization began in 1979. People are beginning to ask what good the central government is when it can't do anything about corrupt officials under its watch. And that line of thinking does not sit well with the national folks, because that's the kind of question that always got asked in the years before a dynasty would fall, when people would talk about the Imperial Household "losing the Mandate of Heaven". In some ways, it's a recursive notion: wicked officials are proof of Heaven's displeasure with the ruling regime, because it's become full of wicked officials. 

[Johuotar]

Subject interests me but I just dont know enough to comment so just PTW for now.

[nenjin]

There's also the fact that this is coming on the heels of a major scandal a couple of months ago, wherein the police chief of Chongqing (the biggest city in western China, and a major, major key region...think the geopolitical importance of a Texas or California) had implicated the local Communist Party chief for the region, Bo Xilai, in a murder cover-up scandal of a British businessman (and associate of Bo). He then left for Beijing "for medical reasons" under armed guard , which has been interpreted as fleeing to the PSB (national level internal security/police) for protection from Bo's henchmen.

Yeah, I've been following that one as well. Right now I feel like the party is running out of legs to stand on and to try to keep Chen in China against his will....seems like they're just digging a deeper hole for themselves. If people in China really are losing faith in the central government's ability to do anything....wouldn't it be an affirmation of their power let Chen leave, as a direct "We have more say than the local provincials" action? I know it's not that cut and dry and it speaks to a lessening of their powers as well.....but this would be one time where I think making amends would help, not hurt, the party.

[RedKing]

There's also the fact that this is coming on the heels of a major scandal a couple of months ago, wherein the police chief of Chongqing (the biggest city in western China, and a major, major key region...think the geopolitical importance of a Texas or California) had implicated the local Communist Party chief for the region, Bo Xilai, in a murder cover-up scandal of a British businessman (and associate of Bo). He then left for Beijing "for medical reasons" under armed guard , which has been interpreted as fleeing to the PSB (national level internal security/police) for protection from Bo's henchmen.

Yeah, I've been following that one as well. Right now I feel like the party is running out of legs to stand on and to try to keep Chen in China against his will....seems like they're just digging a deeper hole for themselves. If people in China really are losing faith in the central government's ability to do anything....wouldn't it be an affirmation of their power let Chen leave, as a direct "We have more say than the local provincials" action? I know it's not that cut and dry and it speaks to a lessening of their powers as well.....but this would be one time where I think making amends would help, not hurt, the party.

Yeah, I dunno. I think the fact that Chen *has* to leave to ensure his safety is a blatant admission that the central government doesn't have sufficient control over the local officials. Him leaving is tantamount to saying "We can't guarantee the safety of one of our own citizens in our own country, from our own government officials." That's not a good thing to have to say.

I don't know what options they have though. Provide him and his family with PSB escorts for the remainder of their lives? Then the question becomes "Why Chen, and not the thousands of other activists who face beatings and death and extortion from corrupt local officials?"

[nenjin]

Then the question becomes "Why Chen, and not the thousands of other activists who face beatings and death and extortion from corrupt local officials?"

Indeed. Which, I'll admit, is a question I want asked because it becomes a catalyst for social change. I can understand the party's reasons for trying to keep Chen on THAT basis, because they don't want to have to answer that question. But as Americans, it's the question we wanted asked because it also aligns with our stance on human rights.

A reasonable response from the party to the question might go like "Chen has served time for his thought crimes, whereas other dissidents have not."

[Leafsnail]

Because none of the others have claimed asylum?

[Zangi]

Because none of the others have claimed asylum?

Answer might be along the lines of being cowed or more likely being incapable of even being in a position to ask for it.
"Blind man's daring escape to the US Embassy."

[RedKing]

Then the question becomes "Why Chen, and not the thousands of other activists who face beatings and death and extortion from corrupt local officials?"

Indeed. Which, I'll admit, is a question I want asked because it becomes a catalyst for social change. I can understand the party's reasons for trying to keep Chen on THAT basis, because they don't want to have to answer that question. But as Americans, it's the question we wanted asked because it also aligns with our stance on human rights.

You mean like, "Why did the US intervene in Libya but not in Syria?" Or "Why did the US repudiate a savage despot in Uzbekistan, until it faced the prospect of losing its airbase in Tajikistan, and now we're courting a guy who literally boiled his opponents alive?"

Not trying to deflect the attention from China here, but frankly the US lost any kind of moral high ground decades ago.

[nenjin]

"Why did the US intervene in Libya but not in Syria?"

I imagine the reply to that would be "Because China along with Russia have blocked any attempt by the security council to do anything more significant than sending in monitors into Syria." I don't disagree that we don't have any moral high ground. But we can choose to act along the moral high ground. (Could have chose, I guess? Since we already released him from the embassy?)