The Economist
January 5, 2013
China’s new leaders seek to present a friendlier public face, but oppose bold new demands for democratic reform.
On January 2nd front pages of many Chinese newspapers carried identical headlines. “Greater political courage”, they proclaimed, was needed in the execution of reforms. But even as they try to signal their openness to change, China’s new leaders are nervous of demands that they move faster to loosen the Communist Party’s grip. Most worryingly for them, some of the boldest calls are coming from within the establishment.
Since the leaders, headed by Xi Jinping, were installed in November the party’s propaganda machinery has been working hard to make them look reformist and open-minded. Newspapers trumpeted Mr Xi’s decision to visit the reformist mecca of Shenzhen in early December on his first out-of-town tour. Later in the month the state news-agency, Xinhua, published profiles of Mr Xi and the party’s six other most powerful men. With the articles were rare photographs, including some from years past of Mr Xi with his wife, Peng Liyuan, a well known folk-singer, his daughter, who now attends Harvard, and his father, who has since died. Seldom have the official media sought to portray the party boss as a family man. The hint was that a more human touch can be expected.
Such tweaking of the leaders’ image has done little to mute demands for more radical change. For many years these have commonly surfaced, especially in conjunction with important political events, in the form of petitions and open letters issued by a few outspoken scholars and members of China’s beleaguered community of dissidents. Party officials almost invariably ignore them. But on December 25th one group issued a radical prospectus that is likely to concern the leadership; the 72 people who signed it, mainly academics and lawyers, are much closer to the party mainstream than the usual petitioners.
Their “Proposal for a Consensus on Reform” gives a stark warning of the dangers of inaction. If systemic reforms are not carried out, it says, public dissatisfaction will escalate to a “critical point” and the country will “fall into the turmoil and chaos of violent revolution”. Zhang Qianfan, a legal scholar at Peking University who organised the petition, says an Arab-style upheaval is possible, particularly if the economy were to stall. Worries about stability have increased, he says, amid growing numbers of protests around the country.
Such doom-laden language is not so different from some of the new leaders’ own rhetoric aimed at galvanising support for reform. Mr Xi himself has hinted at an Arab-style outcome if the party fails to tackle corruption. In late December he even implied that the party might fall if it fails to reform politically. This was suggested by a reference he made to a meeting in 1945 between Mao Zedong and Huang Yanpei, the leader of a Communist-leaning party. Huang told Mao that many Chinese dynasties had collapsed because of their inertia after many years in power. Mao replied that the Communist Party had found a remedy for this: democracy. Mr Xi probably did not spell out the irony of Mao’s response, but by alluding to it he implied that more democracy was now needed.
By this Mr Xi almost certainly did not mean the kind of approach called for in the recent petition. Its authors, many of whom are from leading universities and government-affiliated think-tanks, say their proposals amount to no more than implementing the country’s constitution. But this is far more radical than it sounds. As they point out, the constitution guarantees freedom of speech, assembly and publication as well as the right to demonstrate. Proper implementation, they say, would require lifting controls on the internet, on the formation of NGOs (they carefully avoid mentioning opposition parties) and on the press. Banning demonstrations should be the exception instead of the rule as it is now. The judiciary should be allowed to work independently, free of the party’s interference. Non-party-sponsored candidates should be welcome to stand for election to legislatures, which should wield real power instead of acting as “rubber stamps” for the party. And the party should implement its own charter, letting members elect their own leaders freely.
Few expect imminent progress on any of these fronts. Within a day of the petition’s appearance on websites in China, censors had begun to erase it. Searches for it on Sina Weibo, a popular microblog service, produce a message saying results cannot be displayed because of “relevant laws, regulations and policies”. In recent weeks, there have been signs of a tightening of internet curbs. Some users in China have reported greater difficulty using foreign-based “virtual private networks” which help to circumvent censorship mechanisms. On December 28th a new law was passed requiring real-name registration of internet subscribers. Some fear this will deter criticism of the government.
Mr Xi is unlikely to respond as aggressively to the petition as his predecessor, Hu Jintao, did to another high-profile appeal for political change, known as Charter 08, which was signed by several thousand people four years ago. Its drafter, Liu Xiaobo, was given an 11-year prison sentence for his pains (and, to Mr Hu’s chagrin, a Nobel peace prize). As a veteran dissident, Mr Liu was vulnerable. It would be harder for the party to arrest the signatories of the recent petition given their more conformist backgrounds.
In its new-year edition, a reformist journal, Yanhuang Chunqiu, echoed the petition’s sentiments in an editorial calling for a movement to “protect the constitution” and ensure its guarantees are carried out. But Mr Xi, whose call for political courage inspired the headlines on January 2nd, made clear his bottom line. “Stability is the prerequisite for reform”, he told fellow members of the Politburo. China’s liberals, however, see this as the party’s age-old excuse for dithering.
