Censorship and Social Harmony

Two interesting and tangentially related China stories in the New York Times the other day. The first deals with China's rapidly growing gulf between the rich and the poor, and the new Chinese administration's emphasis on the problem. President Hu Jintao has made "building a harmonious society through scientific development" the ideological centerpiece of his policies:

The ideological campaign emphasizes the need to reduce social conflict and take a step back from the pro-growth orientation of previous leadership.

All of this will no doubt be the major topic of discussion at the 2005 National People's Conference, which opens in Beijing this weekend.

"At past meetings, the stress was on fast growth - how many bridges were built, how tall the new buildings are," said Hu Jinguang, a legal scholar at People's University in Beijing who follows the workings of the legislature. "Now the main emphasis is on social well-being and spreading the wealth."

...Delegates will also discuss changing land development laws to make it harder for local governments to seize farmland to build factories, offices, hotels or shopping malls. China now has millions of landless peasants, and their circumstances and growing discontent are not entirely unlike the conditions the Communists exploited to rise to power in 1949.

Questions remain, however, as to whether the proposed changes will occur at the structural level necessary to fundamentally improve the lives of the rural poor and those otherwise left behind in China's booming economy.

"This new leadership is much more concerned with disadvantaged groups," said Hu Xingdou, a management expert at the Beijing Institute of Technology and an outspoken critic of the government. "But they have to consider institutionalizing this stream of thought so it is not just the idea of a benevolent leader."

Moreover, since becoming Party chief, Hu has clamped down on public discourse about such issues, increasing media censorship. Which brings us to story number two, about the ongoing battle between Chinese censors and Chinese internet users.

For many China watchers, the holding of a National People's Congress beginning this weekend is an ideal occasion for gleaning the inner workings of this country's closed political system. For specialists in China's Internet controls, though, the gathering of legislators and top political leaders offers a chance to measure the state of the art of Web censorship.

The authorities set the tone earlier this week, summoning the managers of the country's main Internet providers, major portals and Internet cafe chains and warning them against allowing "subversive content" to appear online.

China's "Great Firewall" is the most sophisticated systems of internet control and censorship in the world. But of course, users will find their way around practically anything.

"What they are doing is a little bit like sticking fingers into the dike," said Stephen Hsu, a physicist at the University of Oregon who formerly developed technologies for allowing ordinary Chinese to avoid government censorship. "Beijing is investing heavily in keeping the lid on, and they've been pretty successful at controlling what appears. But there is always going to be uncontrolled activity around the edges."

The article reports on how the government's efforts to control internet discourse seemed to have paid off after the death of Zhao Ziyang, with little overt discussion on media websites and web forums. Underneath that, however, web surfers used euphemism, mispellings, encryption and so on, to divert government censors. On college campuses, "University bulletin boards lit up with heavy traffic just after Mr. Zhao's death was announced. But for all of the hits on the news item related to his death, virtually no comments were posted, creating a false impression of lack of interest."

It's hard to understand through what logic President Hu arrived at the conclusion that restricting public discussion of problems will somehow lead to greater social harmony - if we don't talk about it, then it doesn't exist, maybe? But Hu has acknowledged these problems exist; addressing these inequalities has been one of the biggest distinctions between his administration and that of and his predecessor, Jiang Zemin. Does the government fear that if too many of the left-behind are able to give public voice to their discontent, this will somehow lead to greater unrest and chaos? Or, worse: that they will find each other and organize, demand their own power rather than count on a system that has failed them?

Some in China are publicly questioning this logic, advocating that the government stop internet censorship.

"All of the big mistakes made in China since 1949 have had to do with a lack of information," said Guo Liang, an Internet expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. "Lower levels of government have come to understand this, and I believe that since the SARS epidemic, upper levels may be beginning to understand this, too."

This, at least, is a reason for optimism in my book: that in today's China, there are "experts" like Guo Liang and Hu Xingdou who feel compelled to speak out and seem unafraid to do so. Twenty or thirty years ago, such frank discussion was pretty much unheard of. Now, as squeamish as the government might be of the notion of "public intellectuals," it seems the intellectuals are helping to create a true "public" discourse, a real dialog between the rulers and the ruled. Maybe, someday soon, the masses will have a voice in this conversation as well.