|
As popular revolts were overturning autocratic governments inTunisia, Egypt and Libya last year, a call emerged online to bringthe Arab Spring to China. Many of the conditions that triggeredunrest in the Arab world corruption, abusive officials, calcifiedpolitical systems and towering gaps between rich and poor exist inChina as well. Some overseas Chinese activists hoped the tide ofchange sweeping across North Africa and the Middle East wouldinspire a similar response in the Middle Kingdom. It did, but not aJasmine Revolution. Chinese security forces struck hard, detaininghundreds of activists, occupying planned protest sites andharassing foreign journalists. If anyone had forgotten the lessonsof the bloody crackdown on the Tiananmen movement in 1989, theywere reminded once again: China s Communist Party does nottolerate organized resistance to its rule. And yet the country boils with discontent. Last year China averaged500 large-scale protests per day, economist Niu Wenyuan, an adviserto China s State Council, told an official forum in February. Thedeath of an anticorruption investigator in police custody last Junetouched off riots in central Hubei province that had to be put downby military police in armored cars. In August, 12,000 mostlymiddle-class residents of the northeastern port city of Dalian tookto the streets to call for the closure of a huge new petrochemicalfactory. And in December thousands of residents in the coastalvillage of Wukan, angered by corrupt sales of communal land, kickedout their local government, prompting a tense standoff with police. We had made appeals to 14 different, higher governmentdepartments since 2009 but we never got an answer, says ZhangJianxing, a 27-year-old villager who posted photos and footage ofthe protests online. So we were forced to take action ourselves.When we started the whole thing, we knew we had to succeed. Weweren t going to give up. The Wukan demonstrations forced theGuangdong provincial authorities to order an investigation and anew village election. ( PHOTOS: China Stamps Out Democracy Protests ) Why is a state that can crush a potential Jasmine Revolution withease so racked by protest? The answer, paradoxically, has itsorigins in the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, whenparamount leader Deng Xiaoping said, Stability is the highestpriority. Since then, Chinese authorities have gone to greatlengths to tamp down dissent. This year China s domestic-securityspending is budgeted at $111 billion, exceeding military spendingof $106 billion just one sign of the importance authorities placeon domestic control. But by suppressing protests rather thanaddressing their root causes, the government only exacerbatesconflicts, argues Yu Jianrong, an expert on domestic unrest at theChinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. The effect of 1989was to trip this urge to control into even higher gear, saysOrville Schell, director of the Asia Society s Center onU.S.-China Relations in New York City. The sad message the Partytook out of that is if we don t control everything, we re goingto have another episode like this. But it s impossible to controleverything. You can only fail. In the two decades after 1989, China accelerated its economicgrowth to an annual average of more than 10%, a powerful antidoteto discontent. But that expansion is now causing problems of itsown. As the country has grown richer, the spoils have been lessequally divided. China doesn t regularly publish its Ginicoefficient, a statistic that measures the income gap. But in hislast public comments before being removed from office, the populistParty official Bo Xilai warned that the number had surpassed thelevel at which social unrest becomes likely. MORE: Revolt in China: After Protests, a Village Gets Blockaded by LocalAuthorities ) The upshot is that the compact between Party and people prosperityin return for acquiescence is nowhere as ironclad as before,because the Chinese dream is no longer as widely achievable asbefore. The Chinese have met with enormous economic success, butthe gap between rich and poor is growing, says Jerome Cohen, anexpert on China s legal system at New York University. It screating great resentment. Illegal land grabs by local officialsand well-connected property developers are another source ofoutrage; China has seen at least two suicide bombings over the pastyear by people angered that they weren t fairly compensated afterbeing evicted from their homes. There s anger too over the healthand safety hazards of polluting factories built with littleoversight. It s all enough to turn many ordinary citizens into activists intheir fight for dignity. The desire for justice is strong, saysCohen. The Chinese have patience, but when they ve put up withit for too long they will find an outlet. And government controlof courts and media means that outlet is often the streets. SaysLiu Yawei, director of the China program at the Carter Center, anAtlanta-based NGO that promotes human rights and conflictresolution: If China doesn t address issues of accountability,[it is] never going to be able to maintain stability. MORE: China's Crackdown on Capitalism. The e-commerce company in China offers quality products such as Miniature Model Trees Manufacturer , Custom Scale Model Cars, and more. For more , please visit Model Lamppost today!
Related Articles -
Miniature Model Trees Manufacturer, Custom Scale Model Cars,
|
