Minxin Pei : Sat Jun 09 2012 Source: Indian Express
Chen has left China, but its thuggish local governments remain
In spite of all those well-worn tales of oppression and defiance in repressive societies, the story of Chen Guangcheng, the blind, self-taught lawyer who made a daring nighttime escape from illegal house arrest to the American Embassy in Beijing in April, is too powerful and touching to be indifferent to.
Chen, whom the Chinese central government had earlier been recognised with an award for his advocacy of the rights of the disabled. But he incurred the wrath of thuggish local officials in his native province of Shandong when he led a public campaign six years ago against forced abortions carried out to meet the birth quota imposed under the infamous one-child policy. He was unjustly convicted on charges of “obstructing traffic and destroying property” — ridiculously false accusations against a blind man — and sentenced to four years of imprisonment. After Chen was released 18 months ago and became, legally speaking, a free man again, the same lawless local officials did something outrageous even by Chinese standards. They erected a high wall around Chen’s house, hired dozens of thugs to keep Chen locked inside his home, and installed a device to block cellphone signals. Such acts would be considered criminal in any society. Yet, despite protests by Chinese human rights activists and complaints from Western leaders (including American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton), Beijing refused to intervene. When Chinese human rights activists tried to visit Chen, they were beaten up and kept out of his village. Even the Oscar-winning Hollywood star, Christian Bale, was roughed up by the same thugs last year when he attempted to see Chen.
Chen’s illegal house arrest would have continued indefinitely had he and a network of activists not staged one of the greatest escapes in history. Chen fooled his captors by pretending to be bed-ridden for several months and then, on a moonless night, scaled the wall and was picked up by a friend who drove him to Beijing. After hearing Chen’s pleas for protection, Hillary Clinton authorised American diplomats to smuggle him into the embassy. On May 19 last month, Chen finally left for New York.
Thankfully, Beijing did not allow its anger at Chen to cloud its strategic judgment. After tense negotiations, the US and China reached a face-saving agreement that would allow Chen and his immediate family to go to the US. All signs since then indicate that Beijing will honour the deal, even though Chen’s relatives have been harassed and punished.
One learns of many aspects of China’s human rights violations from this story, such as the brutal enforcement of a disastrous family-planning policy, the wanton disregard of the most basic legal norms, and the shameful indifference of those in power to the sufferings of a decent fellow human being. However, one thing stands out in this whole affair — the thuggish nature of local governments in China.
An obvious fact about the anomaly of the Chen case is that those who kept him under house arrest without any court authorisation and used physical violence against citizens trying to visit him are evidently law-breakers. These thugs are no different from criminals who take innocent people hostage. Yet, such openly lawless conduct is not only condoned by the central authorities, but also sanctioned and financed by local officials.
The most troubling aspect of the mistreatment of Chen is that his case is extreme but not exceptional. In fact, the use of thugs by local governments in carrying out patently illegal or even criminal acts against ordinary citizens is a pervasive phenomenon throughout China. When they encounter urban residents who refuse to vacate their houses to make way for commercial or infrastructure developments, Chinese officials often rely on thugs (some of them ex-convicts and members of organised criminal groups) to evict such hold-outs, usually with violence, even arson. When farmers resist illegal land seizures by local authorities, officials frequently send in armed thugs to drive them off their land.
The collusion between criminal elements and local officials produces benefits for both. Clearly, criminals get paid for their dirty work. They also gain protection from local officials. As for local officials, deploying thugs is both cost-effective and politically smart. Like a contract hit man, a thug is not on a local government’s regular payroll, but can be mobilised quickly if a job needs to be done. Politically, a local government can maintain “plausible deniability” — pretending not to have any involvement with such crooks. So by employing thugs, local officials can advance their political careers within the system. They can seize land and property cheaply from defenceless citizens, build commercial developments and infrastructure projects to demonstrate their administrative capacity, and heap the blame on nameless thugs should things go awry (typically when these thugs kill somebody).
What about Beijing? It is unimaginable that top Chinese leaders are ignorant of such lawless conduct by their underlings. The sad truth is that central government officials are fully aware of such illegal acts by local governments but choose to turn a blind eye. The reason is quite simple. The central government must rely on local officials to carry out its policy. Although local officials resort to illegal tactics, their victims are disenfranchised citizens who cannot vote the Communist Party out of power. But the same abusive local officials actually constitute the power base of the ruling party. Because of such political calculations, China’s fabled “good emperors” are complicit in the systematic mistreatment of ordinary citizens at the hands of local officials.
Tellingly, even after the Chen story broke and attracted the attention of the entire world, the Chinese government’s rage was directed at the Americans, whom they accused of breaking diplomatic rules, not at the local officials who had brought so much suffering to the Chen family and damaged China’s international image. In fact, senior provincial officials who authorised Chen’s illegal house arrest have fared well in their political careers. All this makes one wonder whether justice is ever possible in a country where local officials and thugs are all but indistinguishable.
The writer is a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College in the US.
