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PUBLIC INTELLECTUALS IN CHINA

ROUNDTABLE

BEFORE THE

CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE

COMMISSION ON CHINA

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

MARCH 10, 2005

Printed for the use of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.cecc.gov

CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA

LEGISLATIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS

Senate House

CHUCK HAGEL, Nebraska, Chairman

SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas

GORDON SMITH, Oregon

JIM DEMINT, South Carolina

MEL MARTINEZ, Florida

MAX BAUCUS, Montana

CARL LEVIN, Michigan

DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California

BYRON DORGAN, North Dakota

MEMBERS TO BE APPOINTED

EXECUTIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS

STEPHEN J. LAW, Department of Labor

PAULA DOBRIANSKY, Department of State

GRANT ALDONAS, Department of Commerce

DAVID DORMAN, Staff Director (Chairman)

JOHN FOARDE, Staff Director (Co-Chairman)

(II)

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

STATEMENTS

Goldman, Merle, professor emerita of Chinese history, Boston University

and executive committee member, Fairbank Center for East Asia Research,

Harvard University, Cambridge, MA ................................................................. 2

Link, Perry, professor of Chinese language and literature, Princeton, University, Princeton, NJ ............................................................................................... 4

Hu, Ping, chief editor, Beijing Spring, board member, Human Rights in

China, and a regular commentator for Radio Free Asia, New York, NY ........ 8

APPENDIX

PREPARED STATEMENTS

Goldman, Merle ....................................................................................................... 24

Hu, Ping ................................................................................................................... 27

(1)

PUBLIC INTELLECTUALS IN CHINA

THURSDAY, MARCH 10, 2005

CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE

COMMISSION ON CHINA,

Washington, DC.

The roundtable was convened, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m.,

in room 385, Russell Senate Office Building, John Foarde (staff director) presiding.

Also present: Susan Weld, general counsel; Carl Minzner, senior

counsel; Adam Bobrow, senior counsel; Katherine Kaup, senior advisor; Keith Hand, senior counsel; and William Farris, senior specialist.

Also present: Michael Yan, U.S. Department of State, interpreter.

Mr. FOARDE. Good morning. Welcome, on behalf of the Members

of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, to this issues

roundtable.

I wanted to bring to everyone’s attention that the statements of

our panelists this morning will be up on the Commission’s Web

site, which is www.cecc.gov, and that you should routinely check

the Web site for witness statements for our issues roundtables. The

full transcript of the proceedings will be there in a few weeks, as

well as copies of previous roundtables and hearing transcripts.

In addition to those items, we have on the Web site news, information and analysis about human rights and the development of

the rule of law in China. The part of the Web site known as the

‘‘Virtual Academy,’’ I recommend to you because it is becoming an

increasingly popular part of our site.

This morning we are gathered to hear from three quite distinguished panelists about the current crackdown on Chinese intellectuals, and its implications. Throughout the history of modern

China, scholars and intellectuals have helped to guide China’s

political and social development. They have served as voices of

introspection, reform, and in some cases dissent, against the excesses of China’s leaders. Some observers had expressed hope that

the succession of Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao to the top leadership

posts in the Party and the Chinese state might usher in a new period of openness for Chinese intellectuals. In recent months, however, government intimidation and harassment of public intellectuals appears to have intensified.

In September 2004, the publication Southern People’s Weekly, a

publication in the relatively progressive Southern Daily group, published a cover story entitled, ‘‘Fifty Public Intellectuals Who Influenced China.’’ Later that fall, official newspapers published a series

of editorials critical of the concept of public intellectuals. Since

2

then, numerous prominent intellectuals, many of whom have published writings critical of the Chinese government, have been detained, demoted, or blacklisted from publishing.

To help us understand these developments, we have three enormously distinguished panelists this morning. I will introduce each

before he or she speaks, but I wanted to remind our panelists and

the audience about the format of our roundtables.

Each of the panelists will be asked to make a 10-minute opening

presentation. After about eight minutes, I will let you know that

you have two minutes remaining. After all panelists have spoken,

we will go to a question and answer session. Each of our staff panel

here will have about five minutes each to ask a question and hear

the answer, and we will continue to go around in questioning until

either the subject matter is exhausted, which hardly seems possible, or 11:30 arrives, whichever comes first.

So it is my great pleasure to introduce our first panelist, Professor Merle Goldman, who is Professor Emerita of Chinese History

at Boston University, and executive committee member of the

Fairbank Center for East Asia Research at Harvard University.

Professor Goldman is the author of numerous books and articles on

Chinese intellectuals and their role in modern China, including

‘‘China’s Intellectuals: Advise and Dissent,’’ from 1981; ‘‘Sowing the

Seeds of Democracy in China: Political Reform in the Deng

Xiaoping Decade,’’ from 1994, and she is currently completing a

new book entitled, ‘‘From Comrade to Citizen: The Struggle for Political Rights in China.’’ In addition to her teaching duties and

scholarship, Professor Goldman serves as an adjunct professor at

the Foreign Service Institute of the U.S. Department of State here

in Washington. I had the enormous pleasure, many years ago, of

being her student there.

Welcome. Over to you for your presentation.

STATEMENT OF MERLE GOLDMAN, PROFESSOR EMERITA OF

CHINESE HISTORY, BOSTON UNIVERSITY AND EXECUTIVE

COMMITTEE MEMBER, FAIRBANK CENTER FOR EAST ASIA

RESEARCH, HARVARD UNIVERSITY, CAMBRIDGE, MA

Ms. GOLDMAN. In the short paper I wrote, I said that ‘‘public intellectuals’’ are not just a modern phenomenon in China. They actually existed back in the Confucian era. It was the responsibility

of Confucian literati to criticize the leaders if they diverged from

Confucian morals or if they were engaged in unjust kinds of practices. As I see it, this is a tradition that is not unique to Western

civilization. This is also part of Chinese civilization. It was only

under Mao Zedong that the public intellectuals were silenced and

not allowed to speak.

In the post-Mao era, there is a reemergence of public intellectuals, but there has been a change from the traditional role of public intellectuals. In the 1980s, most of the public intellectuals were

people who became part of the reform process; they were members

of the intellectual networks of reform leaders, such as Hu Yaobang

and Zhao Ziyang. So they were part of the establishment.

After June 4, 1989, however, they lost their positions. Some of

them were imprisoned; others were forced to find work as workers

or small businessmen. Therefore, in the 1990s, something new beVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:07 Apr 25, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00006 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 20180.TXT China1 PsN: China1
3

gins to happen. Public intellectuals emerge who are not part of an

official establishment and do not have political mentors who can

protect them. So the 1990s sees the emergence, I believe, of independent public intellectuals. Some of them had participated in the

Democracy Wall movement in 1978 and 1979. Some of them were

the participants in the 1989 Tiananmen movement and were put

in prison. When they were released, they went back to being public

intellectuals. Since they were no longer members of the establishment, they became freelancers.

Something very new was happening here. They had access to

publishing through private contractors. They were able to get their

ideas across through the foreign press because the Chinese were

opening to the outside world so that they could give interviews on

Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, the BBC, and in Hong Kong

that would be broadcast back to China. They also publicized their

ideas on the Internet. These were all areas in which they were able

to express themselves and get their ideas before the public.

By the late 1990s, a new phenomenon developed: the effort to establish an opposition political party, the China Democracy Party.

This party is the first time there is a joining together of intellectuals with workers and small business people in an unofficial political organization. The party included veterans of Democracy Wall

and the 1989 Tiananmen movements; it also included workers who

were dissatisfied with increasing exploitative working conditions.

Among the members of the opposition party were small business

people who were once public intellectuals. They had been thrown

out of the establishment, and then turned to the market to make

a living. It is not the large entrepreneurs or the middle entrepreneurs, but the small entrepreneurs, who were once intellectuals,

who helped finance the effort to build an opposition party.

So what you see developing are freelance intellectuals, in combination with other social groups—workers and small business people

who help to establish an opposition party. That, to me, is something very new in the People’s Republic of China. The question I

have always had is what role can the United States, or human

rights activists outside of China, play in helping these people?

I mean, the United States cannot be right there on the scene as

it is today in Iraq. We can only be a catalyst. But I think there

are ways in which we can help and I am sure other speakers will

talk about that as well. Because China, unlike under Mao, really

does care what the outside world thinks about it and wants to become a respected member of the international community, it is

open to outside pressure. I saw that when I was a member of the

U.S. delegation to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights during

the Clinton era. At Geneva I saw how much effort the Chinese put

in to making sure they were not criticized in that forum.

My belief is that the threat of criticism plays a great role in influencing China’s actions on human rights. One area in which I

think we can make a specific difference is on the issue of having

the National People’s Congress ratify the U.N. Covenant on Civil

and Political Rights. The Chinese signed onto the covenant in 1998,

but they say it is not operable until it is ratified by the National

People’s Congress. We can bring pressure on the National People’s

Congress to ratify the Covenant.

4

I think the very fact that the Chinese have already released political prisoners early, before their term is up, is an indication that

they seek to stop any kind of criticism of them at the annual meeting of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights. Even though China’s

having signed the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights may not

affect what the leadership does, it does affect the people who are

demanding human rights in China. We saw the same thing in the

former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The Helsinki Accords

played a great role in activating the dissidents and the human

rights activists, though it did not play much of a role on the Soviet

leaders until Gorbachev. Nevertheless, it did play a role in bringing

pressure from below.

So, I guess I would like to conclude with saying that I believe

that the way we are going to see change on the issue of human

rights in China is through pressure from below, coming from intellectuals, workers, small business people, plus pressure from outside. Hopefully someday there will be a leader in China who will

say, ‘‘All right, we are moving toward some kind of democracy here,

let us recognize it,’’ as occurred in Taiwan in the late 1980s.

So, on that optimistic note, I will conclude.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Merle Goldman appears in the

appendix.]

Mr. FOARDE. Thank you very much for giving us a good start

with a lot of rich issues to explore during our question and answer

session.

I would now go on to recognize Professor Perry Link, Professor

of Chinese Language and Literature at Princeton University. Professor Link has been a distinguished scholar for many years, specializing in 20th century Chinese literature. He has written widely

on Chinese literature and culture. His publications include:

‘‘Evening Chats in Beijing,’’ (1993), a discussion of modern China

as viewed through the eyes of Chinese intellectuals; and ‘‘The Uses

of Literature: Life in the Socialist Chinese Literary System,’’ in

2000.

Professor Link, of course, also co-edited the ‘‘Tiananmen Papers,’’

which provided an inside account of key leadership deliberations

over the Tiananmen democracy protests in 1989. In addition to this

teaching duties at Princeton, Perry Link serves on the Board of Advisors of Beijing Spring, a Chinese language magazine dedicated to

the promotion of human rights, democracy, and social justice in

China.

Perry Link, welcome. Over to you for your comments.

STATEMENT OF PERRY LINK, PROFESSOR OF CHINESE LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY,

PRINCETON, NJ

Mr. LINK. Thank you. I want to try to make three points in my

10 minutes.

One is that public intellectuals’ willingness to speak out has declined, in my view, over the last 15 years. You just heard about my

book, ‘‘Evening Chats in Beijing,’’ which makes a lot of what Merle

just mentioned about the traditional role of the Chinese intellectual

to ‘‘take responsibility for all under heaven,’’ (yi tianxia wei ji ren)

and to speak truth to power.

5

I regret to say that I think there has been a considerable decline

in that spirit, partly because the Communist Party has been successful in co-opting intellectuals by using higher salaries, better

housing, higher status, access to travel abroad, more publishing

freedom for writers who can write just about whatever they want

to now—as long as you do not cross the government—and so on.

The second main point I would like to make, and here I will take

a little more time, is that, despite my pessimistic first note, I think

that public intellectuals do remain, and are, important. They are

fewer than before, and fall into several kinds of fairly disparate

spheres, which I will call (1) Internet essayists, (2) journalists, (3)

muckraking novelists, (4) special cause activists, and (5) lawyers.

1. Internet essayists. We know about the recent detentions of Yu

Jie and Liu Xiaobo. People like this are important because they

provide a critical voice. But if we ask what their impact is, we need

to divide the question between an international, external impact

and the internal impact inside China.

Inside China, the impact is not as great as one would hope.

These writers are banned from print publication. They do publish

on the Internet, and there are, of course, about 90 million Internet

users in China. But the Internet users are blocked, usually successfully, by 50,000 or more Internet police. The actual readers of these

Internet essayists are primarily the overseas diaspora. Inside

China, only a small group of sophisticated computer users who can

get around the government’s firewall get access to these writings.

It is worth asking why the ruling authorities allow these dissident voices onto the Internet at all. They could easily detain them

and keep them off the Internet if they wanted. One answer, of

course, is that there would be an international outcry if such famous voices were squelched. But an even more important factor, in

my view—if I imagine myself in the place of the authorities—is

that outside China it enhances the government’s image to be able

to show that people are publishing what looks like liberal thought

from inside China. Defenders of the regime—at the U.N. Human

Rights meetings in Geneva, for example—can point to them and

say, ‘‘Look, Liu Xiaobo is publishing pretty wild stuff, so is China’s

media control not loosening up? ’’ But this induces a fundamental

misperception, because most media control—the bottom of the iceberg—is not loosening up at all.

2. Journalists. The journalist He Qinglian has written a couple

of very important books in the last five years: ‘‘China’s Quagmire’’

(Zhongguo de xianjing) and ‘‘How the Chinese Government Controls the Media’’ (Zhongguo zhengfu ruhe kongzhi meiti). She, of

course, is in exile from China now. But inside China—and I don’t

have time to go into detail here—Liao Yiwu, with his ‘‘Interviews

from the Bottom of Chinese Society’’ (Zhongguo diceng fangtanlu),

Xiao Shu, with his ‘‘Harbingers of History’’ (Lishi de xiansheng),

Chen Guidi and Wu Chuntao, with their ‘‘Investigation of the Chinese Peasantry’’ (Zhongguo nongmin diaocha) have all written very

important books. Some in this group are sociologists, like Cao

Jinqing, with his ‘‘China Along the Yellow River’’ (Huanghebian de

Zhongguo). These are all important works that remind people that

there are basic truths beneath the fluff and the rosy surfaces that

6

get projected not only by the Communist Party but by rosy-eyed

Westerners.

It is worth noting, though, that there are fewer of these books

now than there were even a few years ago under Jiang Zemin. I

am not enthusiastic about making Jiang Zemin look good, yet this

statement is true.

3. Muckraking novelists. Here again, a professor could go on for

hours, but let me be brief. In the 1990s, long novels by Lu

Tianming, Chen Fang, Zhang Ping, Wang Yuewen, Liu Ping, and

others have exposed corruption in China. These are partly entertainment, to be sure. There is murder, sex, detectives, and so on.

But they are more than that. They expose wrongdoing, and thrive

on a strong public interest in watching wrongdoing get exposed and

allow readers to let off steam vicariously.

Things can be said in this fiction that are remarkably bold, so

long as they come out of the mouths of villains. A villain can say

the Communist Party is done for, that it is not going to last even

a couple of more years—and so long as the character is a villain,

the novelist can get away with the statement. When it reaches a

reader, though, the reader can take it as he or she likes.

4. Special case advocates. Here I mean people like Ding Zilin and

her Tiananmen Mothers Movement, or the very important movement for AIDS activism led by Dr. Gao Yaojie, Hu Jia, Wan

Yanhai, and others. Efforts like this do a lot of good. Here intellectuals engage people ‘‘on the ground,’’ making a difference where, in

the American cliche ́, ‘‘the rubber hits the road.’’ 5. Lawyers. I want to spend a little time on this topic because

I think this is becoming a very interesting and important kind of

public intellectual. Beginning with Zhang Sizhi, who defended

Wang Juntao, to Mo Shaoping, who defended several dissidents, to

Zheng Enchong, imprisoned for his defense work, to Guo Guoting,

who defends journalists and Falun Gong believers, to Pu Zhiqiang,

who is defending the authors of ‘‘Investigation of the Chinese Peasantry’’—and several others—quite a cadre of very useful legal ‘‘public intellectuals’’ seems to be emerging.

Let me read a few sentences from Vaclav Havel, ‘‘The Power of

the Powerless,’’ that tell why even futile legal activity can be important under Communist rule. Havel writes—of Communist

Czechoslovakia—‘‘Because the system cannot do without the law,

because it is hopelessly tied down by the necessity of pretending

the laws are observed, it is compelled to react in some way to these

kinds of appeals that lawyers can make. Demanding that the laws

be upheld is, thus, an act of living within the truth.’’

At a minimum, appeal to the law in China today has this same

function of exposure of hypocrisy. Increasingly, though, it has been

doing more than that. Lawyers are actually getting some very good

things done these days, and for a couple of very interesting reasons.

Twenty years ago, the ‘‘work unit’’ (gongzuo danwei) system still

held sway in Chinese cities, and virtually all social conflicts were

settled by work unit leaders. Today the power and scope of work

units both are greatly reduced, but of course there are still conflicts

in society, and they still need to be settled somehow, so courts and

lawyers have become much more important even if the leaders had

7

not planned that this happen. The increased role for lawyers makes

space for those among them who want to try to nudge political

rights forward.

Another interesting aspect of the role of lawyers is that they by

nature abstract the question of rights. Traditionally in Chinese politics, and especially in Communist Chinese politics, battles were

conceived as having only two sides: I’m right and you’re wrong; the

Party is right and Falun Gong is wrong, etc. There was no in-between position. But a lawyer, now, can distance himself from a

‘‘wrong’’ point of view but still defend the person who holds it. He

can defend Falun Gong without being vulnerable to the charge of

believing Falun Gong. Hence his position serves the function of ‘‘abstracting’’ the concept of rights above the question of substantive

right-or-wrong. This is a first step to universalizing rights. The

Communist Party is not used to handling this kind of problem. Rulers may come to realize that lawyers are undermining authoritarian power, but they will not easily be able to crack down on the

trend, because, as Havel points out, their legitimacy depends on

the pretense that rule of law is observed.

I want to turn to my third main point now, but make it only

briefly because of time constraints. It is this: if there is hope for

political reform in China, or—dare we say it—regime change, I am

not sure it will come from intellectuals. I am not as optimistic

about them as I was 15 years ago. I think the impetus for change

is more likely to come from the less educated classes.

The West tends to underestimate the sea of change in popular

Chinese thinking that grew out of the Cultural Revolution. Although these results were hardly what Mao Zedong planned, the

Cultural Revolution years did revolutionize the way a generation of

people think about their rights and their ability to protest.

The distinguished writer Liu Binyan made a very interesting

point to me the other day. He asked: why was the suicide rate in

China in the 1990s so much higher than it was in the 1940s? There

certainly was much more money in society, generally, in the 1990s

than the 1940s, yet more people killed themselves in the 1990s.

He says that this was because in the 1940s, the poor and the

destitute did not much expect that they should have respect or

rights. But during the Cultural Revolution, with its combination of

egalitarian ideology and social chaos, there grew a notion that ‘‘I

ought to get respect if I am a worker or farmer—and if I don’t,

there’d better be a good reason why not.’’ But now, when you look

around at society, there do not seem to be any fair reasons why the

rich are rich and the poor are poor. It looks like corruption and

unequal opportunity are the reasons. The ‘‘losers’’ feel insulted, humiliated, disgusted—hence the higher suicide rate.

The other source from which change might come—Merle referred

to this briefly a moment ago—is a move by a top leader. Frankly,

I do not pin any hopes on Hu Jintao in this regard.

The compiler of the Tiananmen Papers recently told me he does

not think that top-inspired political reform can happen in China

until about 2020, or at the very best maybe 2010. But to me it is

significant that he still believes top-down change to be a possibility.

A top leader could look at the situation and see the historic opportunity to be a world-class figure in Chinese history by ending the

8

rickety, corrupt, and very un-modern political system that still burdens the Chinese people today.

Mr. FOARDE. Thank you very much, Perry. Again, a rich presentation with many issues to go into during our question and answer

session.

It is now my privilege to introduce Mr. Hu Ping. Mr. Hu is chief

editor of Beijing Spring. He has been the chief editor of this monthly Chinese-language magazine that is dedicated to the promotion of

human rights, democracy, and social justice in China since 1993.

He is also a board member of Human Rights in China, the respected NGO, and a regular commentator for Radio Free Asia. Mr.

Hu received his master’s degree in philosophy from Beijing University and studied at Harvard University. During the Democracy

Wall movement of 1979 in Beijing, Mr. Hu published a long essay

entitled, ‘‘On Freedom of Speech.’’ In 1980, he was elected as a People’s Delegate in China’s first free local election, and he is also

former chairman of the Chinese Alliance for Democracy.

Mr. Hu will speak in the Chinese language and will be assisted

this morning by our friend and colleague, Mr. Michael Yan, one of

the premier interpreters and translators from the U.S. Department

of State.

Michael, welcome, and thank you for your help.

Mr. YAN. Thank you, sir.

Mr. FOARDE. Mr. Hu.

STATEMENT OF HU PING, CHIEF EDITOR, BEIJING SPRING,

BOARD MEMBER, HUMAN RIGHTS IN CHINA, NEW YORK, NY;

INTERPRETED BY MICHAEL YAN, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF

STATE

Mr. HU. I would like to thank everybody for giving me this honor

to be here today.

Today I will be talking on three issues. The first is the fact that

since Hu Jintao took office, the plight of the public intellectuals in

China has not improved; in fact, it has worsened. As a matter of

fact, the lack of improvement, in itself, is tantamount to worsening,

because the same oppression becomes more and more onerous as

time goes on, and the consequences of that oppression become more

and more severe. Not long ago, the Hu Jintao regime unleashed a

new crackdown on intellectual circles. This shows that Hu Jintao

and his predecessor, Jiang Zemin, are cut from the same cloth.

The Chinese Communist leaders are deeply cognizant of the fact

that their political power is entirely based on the fear of the

masses. Consequently, if they are to preserve their own rule, they

must keep the people in fear. This means they cannot appear amicable and big-hearted in front of the masses. In their mind, if the

people feel the authorities are amicable and big-hearted, they will

dare to speak out, saying things they would never have dared otherwise. Then they would dare to speak out demands they would not

have dared otherwise. If that happens, of course, the authorities

would have to make more efforts to crack down. That is why, after

Hu Jintao took office, he took a hard-line approach to everything,

with a goal of consolidating the rule of his Party. That way he

would nip it in the bud, and that way he really does not have to

crack down on a bigger number of people. That is why many people

9

outside of China are feeling disappointed by what Hu Jintao has

done, but actually that is precisely what he wanted to achieve in

the first place.

After Hu Jintao took office, he reiterated time and time again his

concerns for the disadvantaged groups. However, he absolutely

does not permit the people to initiate any open collective actions or

to stand up to defend their own rights, because they are really

afraid of the possibility that the people would obtain the ability to

engage in independent collective activities. Also, the Chinese authorities are well aware of the fact that the allocation of wealth in

China is based on injustice, and all that allocation is illegitimate.

In China, the poverty of the poor exists for different reasons. It is

not the product of history. It is not the product of the market. It

is the product of political power.

As we can imagine, if the people do have their political power,

do have their rights, they are not going to be satisfied with a tad

more added to the unemployment, or a small additional subsidy for

the poor. They will, first, demand that a group of people who use

their power to enrich themselves turn over the property they plundered, and that, of course, will be a threat to the regime itself.

That is why the so-called concern for the disadvantaged touted by

the Hu Jintao regime, in reality, is no more than a desire to employ controlled oppression and to maintain continued squeezing.

Second, I would like to talk about the control that the Chinese

Communist regime has on the intellectuals in China. On the surface, it seems that the intellectuals in China are very active in today’s politics. On the Internet, even in the official media, discussion

of certain public issues is quite open, and even quite likely. Some

dissidents express themselves without fear and nothing happens to

them. They sit at home quite well. Nothing happens. However, I

must bring to your attention the fact of a principle being implemented by authorities in China today, and that principle is that all

people are not equal before the law.

When the authorities handle issues related to expression and

speech, there is no single standard measure used. The standards

vary by person, by time, and by place. That is why we cannot draw

the conclusion, based solely on the situation of a few well-known

dissidents, that freedom of speech in China has expanded. Of

course, the number of people who have been arrested and who have

been detained is very high, and that puts China in first place in

the world. However, this should not be the only yardstick with

which we measure freedom of speech in China. Nations that arrest

a smaller number of dissidents do not necessarily have more freedom of expression than those that arrest many.

We know that traditional autocratic regimes use investigation

and punishment after the act to control freedom of speech, whereas, the Communist Party in China takes a preventive approach before anything even happens.

If we liken the traditional method of autocracy and its treatment

of free expression to killing people or butchering children, then the

Communist autocratic methods are not limited to killing people

and slaughtering babies, but also includes abortion and contraception.

10

Now, the effects of this oppression are not only more severe and

far-reaching, they are also more insidious and more apt to fool people. On the surface, the yardstick used as a measure for the control

of free speech by the authorities is broader than before, with the

standards not only looser than those of the Mao era, but also even

looser than those of the 1980s. Now, there are many factors that

resulted in this. One, with the June 4th massacre as the landmark,

the Chinese Communist regime has lost the traditional support of

belief. It has been transformed into a rule of naked violence. Violent rule results in people’s passiveness and political apathy. It

means widespread cynicism. Under these circumstances, the role

that the intellectuals play is much, much smaller in today’s China.

Simply put, the government really does not care about your criticism any more. The attitude is, ‘‘You yell about what you want, and

I will do what I like, all the same; what can you do to me? ’’ I think

Wang Shuo put it very well by saying, ‘‘I’m a rogue, who should

I fear?’’ That means the authorities have become even more shameless.

So that is why liberal intellectuals all over feel that their situation has worsened in these circumstances. These activities still hold

on tenaciously among the people, but it is very difficult for them

to develop any further.

Third, I would like to talk about the fact that, contrary to the

early hopes of many people, economic reforms and economic growth

in China have not put China on a pathway to freedom and democracy. On the contrary, the reform and the economic growth have

become the main reason the authorities use to claim to one-party

rule and to deny freedom and democracy.

From Li Peng and Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao,

leaders have taken China’s successful economic growth as their

basis to justify the crackdown on June 4th as necessary and right.

They use it to show that a one-party autocracy is necessary and

right. In reality, China’s privatization of the ‘‘China model’’ or the

‘‘China miracle,’’ has not brought out democracy and freedom. They

have thrown obstacles to developing democracy and freedom.

If the truth can be told here, privatization in China was nothing

more than officials using their power to misappropriate resources

that originally belonged to all the people. This sort of privatization

reduces the ‘‘transaction cost’’ to a minimum, making it far quicker

and more effective than privatization accomplished with democratic

participation. However, such reforms are bound to be of the type

that can never be approved by the people. The blocks, the groups

of people who profit immensely from all this, are those who are

most in fear of democracy and most stoutly oppose it. This is because these officials know very well that if they open the door to

freedom and democracy, they will not only lose their monopoly on

political power, but also, very possibly, will be called out by the

people on charges of economic corruption.

I would like to close this by saying that in today’s China, the

Mao era is gone forever. Even the ruling class itself is not willing

to go back to the days of Mao. Today’s China must concern herself

with something that seems even more old-fashioned, but which

could be an even more persistent type of oppression: that of rule

11

by people who believe in no ‘‘ism’’ but wield enormous power, and

are determined to use every means at their disposal to preserve it.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Hu appears in the appendix.]

Mr. FOARDE. Thank you, Mr. Hu, for, also, a very rich and deep

presentation. We will be coming back to some of your themes in our

question period.

I would like to give our panelists a moment to rest their voices

and gather their thoughts, and make a brief administrative announcement.

The next CECC issues roundtable will be held next Monday,

March 14, at 2 p.m. in room 2255 of the Rayburn House Office

Building, over on the other side of the Capitol, entitled, ‘‘China’s

New Regulation on Religious Affairs: A Paradigm Shift?’’ This

roundtable will examine the Chinese government’s new regulation

on religion, which became effective on March 1.

We have three quite distinguished panelists for that roundtable

as well: Dr. Carol Lee Hamrin from George Mason University, here

in the area; Professor Daniel Bays of the William Spoelhof TeacherScholar in History at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI; and

Mickey Spiegel, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch/Asia in

New York City. So we hope to see all of you on Monday afternoon

at 2 p.m. in 2255 Rayburn.

With that, let us go to our question and answer period. I will exercise the prerogative of the chair and address this question to all

of our panelists.

Given that you have given us an extremely sobering assessment

of the condition of the public intellectual in China, and given the

history of public intellectuals in China that you have limned for us

since 1949, what would possess anyone in China to want to become

one of the members of the four categories, Perry Link, that you

traced in today’s environment? What motivates people to do this?

Anyone can begin.

Mr. LINK. Well, for some, idealism. I think that the traditional

Confucian ideal of serving the good of society and thinking that

that is a right thing to do still has life. It is somewhat in recess

now, but it is too big and too strong to have died completely.

To put another possibility on the table, though, it is sometimes

hard to separate idealism from careerism in contexts like this.

There can be a certain careerist benefit in making a name for oneself as a dissident intellectual. People occasionally make a splash

in hopes of becoming well-known for having made the splash. But

to view them as purely so motivated is usually too cynical. Often

idealism and careerism are both there, mixed.

Ms. GOLDMAN. But besides that tradition, I think, also, Chinese

are very much influenced by the West. The West does have a big

influence through the Internet. The Internet is censored; there is

no question about that. But they find all kinds of ways, as I find

out when I interview these people, to get around the censorship. I

am amazed of what they can do to get around the censorship. If

they are blocked at one Web site, they go to another one, and so

forth. So, they learn about the West and there is a great attraction

to those interested in the free exchange of ideas.

12

You are right. Even under Mao, there were intellectuals, like Liu

Binyan, who spoke out. The difference was that under Mao they

did it when he let them do it, as in the ‘‘Hundred Flowers movement.’’ Now they speak out and act politically whenever they want to.

I would just like to add one other thing. I do not necessarily

agree with Hu Ping. I believe that the move to the market and the

move to the outside world has really made the political system less

rigid. Let me put it this way. The oppression is less rigid; they

have found ways to get around it. There is more freedom of speech,

at least in private meetings and even in academic meetings. I am

amazed, when I go to some academic meetings in China, at the

kinds of things they say.

What there is not, is more freedom of association. Any group that

wants to join together for some kind of political purpose will quickly be repressed.

But on the whole, among themselves, they can say almost anything—Perry has written about this very well. So, I am not as pessimistic as the others here.

I do agree that the Chinese young people, students are less politically involved than in the 1980s. But they also want more freedom and more political participation.

My two fellow panelists have said intellectuals are not going to

play the political role they had in the past. In the last part of my

forthcoming book, I deal with ordinary people demanding human

rights, whether they are peasants or they are workers who are beginning to demand political rights. Usually, it is an intellectual

among them who helps them articulate what they believe or helps

them in what they are doing. So even if the intellectuals, as a

group, are not going to play a role in political affairs, they will play

a role, I believe, with other social classes. That is where I think

they get their clout.

Mr. FOARDE. Useful. Thank you.

Mr. Hu, do you have a comment?

Mr. HU. Now, that is a very interesting issue. A lot of times we

find ourselves asking ourselves the same questions. ‘‘Why did we

put ourselves in situations like that? Why did we speak out, saying

things that the authorities did not want to hear? Why did we, as

intellectuals, do that? ’’

In addition to the reasons that Professor Link and Professor

Goldman have listed just now, there is another reason. That is, in

recent years there is a bigger and bigger group of young people who

do have some religious beliefs. They have to somehow find some

sort of moral support to prop themselves up so that they can keep

doing what they think is right, but not officiated by other people.

Another fact I would like to draw everybody’s attention to is that

compared to the 1980s, or compared to even the 1990s, the role

that intellectuals in today’s China play is much more marginalized.

Of course, there is another fact which is that in today’s China,

intellectuals have become really meek and docile. They know what

to say, at what time, and they know what not to say under what

circumstances. So when they do speak out, the outside world would

be under the impression that these are daring people, they are

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ing out are speaking within the dictates of what they can and cannot do.

Mr. FOARDE. Thank you all very much. A useful set of responses.

These roundtables take a great deal of teamwork to organize, but

there is always at least one person at the head of the organizational pyramid. I am happy today to recognize that person, my colleague, Keith Hand, who is a senior counsel with the Commission

staff. Over to you for some questions, Keith.

Mr. HAND. Thanks, John. Thanks to all of you for coming and for

a fascinating set of presentations.

I wanted to discuss a bit more deeply an issue that Professor

Goldman just touched on, that is the relationship between intellectuals and the public at large. We have talked a lot about state repression and how the new regime is dealing with intellectuals. Has

the public view of the role of intellectuals changed? Do intellectuals

still hold a special place in the eyes of the public? If intellectuals

were able to circumvent some of the state controls we have talked

about today, would they be able to mobilize public opinion?

Ms. GOLDMAN. That is a good question. Here, I guess I agree

with my colleagues on this. The intellectuals today do not have the

kind of honorable role that they had in the Confucian era, or even

in the Mao era. Today they are seen as part of the commercialization of Chinese society. They are out to get as much as they can;

they are less interested in political issues. There is no question

about that.

Yet, I still think—and this gets back to the other question—there

is a residual desire to play a political role and a residual respect

for intellectuals. If someone has a little more education and they

become part of some kind of a protest movement, they usually

move to the fore. They usually are the ones who help organize it

or help articulate what the participants want. So, whether it is

workers or it is peasants, it is usually the one with a little more

education who plays a leadership role and is able not only to mobilize, but also articulate what these views are.

I would agree with my panelists here that the ordinary people

are getting a sense of rights. You can see this all over China today.

Last summer, I was in Xi’an and I saw huge posters in front of the

Big Goose Pagoda. They were put up by peasants who were complaining about their land being taken away for modernization

projects. But what arguments did they use? The posters said that

their rights had been taken away. They said that they wanted back

their land and wanted back their rights. In other words, they were

not just acting to demand their rights. They are beginning to articulate those rights as well.

Now, it is not clear whether the intellectuals have gotten to them

with that concept or it is coming out of their own experience, it is

probably both. So even though the intellectuals are seen as part of

China’s modern commercialization, I still think they play this residual role as public intellectuals.

Mr. LINK. Let me take another crack at what I tried to say about

the groundswell of secular change during the last 50 years in ordinary

Chinese people’s consciousness of their independence. I hesitate to

use the word ‘‘rights,’’ because that almost crosses a borderline that

is a little bit too modern and Western for what I mean. But just

14

to try to put a nub on it, let’s go back to the protest movement in

1989 when, of course, at Tiananmen Square there was lots of superficial representation of Western democratic influences. You will

remember students bandying Lord Acton’s famous phrase about absolute power corrupting absolutely. Dan Rather was at the square,

Mikhail Gorbachev came, and so on. It was all called a Democracy

Movement and seemed to spring from Western influence. In fact,

though, the power of the movement came from the bottom up. The

discontent and the demonstrations were not just in Western-influenced Beijing but all over China—as the Tiananmen Papers make

clear. There was hardly a provincial capital that did not see major

demonstrations, and many middle-sized cities had them as well. All

this was not because Dan Rather was in the square in Beijing. It

was because of discontent that came deep out of China’s recent historical experience.

Much of it originated in the Cultural Revolution years, when,

along with all the hate and turmoil, people began to think, ‘‘I am

a person, I can stand up, I can argue back, I can criticize my leadership.’’ Again: I do not believe that Mao foresaw the effects of

what his movement was doing, but his movement unleashed the effects nonetheless. Then, when the unfairness of the 1980s became

so obvious—when people saw the massive misappropriation of

resources by officials called guandao—they grew angry and indignant. We need to understand that long-term groundswell in popular thought.

Still—with all that said—I do agree with Merle that it tends to

be true in Chinese history that disaffection gets channeled through

or captured by an intellectual, or a quasi-intellectual. This pattern

is visible in many of the peasant revolts at the ends of earlier dynasties. Rebellions usually had a quasi-intellectual or religious

leader. This, of course, is one reason why Falun Gong looks so

frightening to the current regime: the spark that a charismatic

leader provides can be important.

Mr. HAND. Thank you.

Mr. FOARDE. Let me go on and recognize our friend and colleague

Kate Kaup, who is with us as a special advisor here during 2005

on her sabbatical year from her professorship at Furman University in Greenville, SC. Kate, please.

Ms. KAUP. Thank you. And thank you to all the panelists for

coming, and for your interesting comments.

I would like to pick up the discussion of the role of the peasantry

and the workers that both Dr. Goldman and Dr. Link mentioned.

Several political theorists have noted the contribution of the middle

class in democratic transitions outside of Asia. Bruce Dickson and

other China specialists have discussed the role of the middle class

in China as being somewhat unique, however. Will you speak a bit

about whether or not there are any public intellectuals emerging

from the entrepreneurial and middle classes?

Ms. GOLDMAN. Certainly, in Western history it was what we

have called the bourgeoisie who made the revolution, and they became an independent middle class.

I think one of the big differences in China is that there is a fastgrowing middle class, getting very wealthy, but they are not independent. They do not have an independent status. They do not

15

have the rule of law to help them maintain their independent status. Most important, they have been co-opted into the Party. The

largest percentage of people going into the Party today are the new

business people. That is what the ‘‘Three Represents’’ of Jiang

Zemin is all about.

So like the literati who were co-opted into the establishment, this

large middle class is being co-opted. However, the people I am talking about—members of the small entrepreneurs—are people who

the Party will not take because of their past political activities. In

other words, some people who were in the Democracy Wall movement and the Tiananmen demonstrations or demonstrations that

Perry mentioned that are going on all over China. What do they

do to make a living? They have gone into some kind of business,

and it is not at a very high level.

But whether they are engaged in private contracting, or whether

they are in some kind of technology, they are willing to put money

into some kind of political activity such as the China Democracy

Party. Some of its members were on the fringes of the emerging

middle class.

So, I think where you are going to see the change in China coming, is from ordinary people, workers, peasants, as well as some of

these intellectuals we talked about, and some of these marginal

people in the middle class. It is not going to come from an independent bourgeoisie. I would like to think it would, but so far there

is no evidence of that.

Mr. FOARDE. Would anyone else like to remark?

Mr. LINK. I agree with that.

Mr. HU. In China, what is happening is that it is very hard to

come to a conclusion by a very simple process, predicting what is

going to happen in China. It really depends on the big picture, on

the environment in which these events happen. To put it very simply, the June 4th movement, in 1989, was a big watershed. Before

the June 4th event, with the deepening of economic reforms, people

were coming up with more and more demands for political reforms.

However, after the June 4th event, the opposite became true. The

more successful the economic reform was, the less demand there

was for political reform. The same thing can be said of the intellectuals, as well as of the middle class.

Before the June 4th event, the status of intellectuals got higher

and higher. With that ascending status, they had more and more

political demands. However, after the June 4th event, some of

these people got well-to-do and some of these people got better

treatment from the authorities. With that, they had fewer and

fewer political demands.

Ms. GOLDMAN. Can I just say, I really disagree with Hu Ping on

this one. Before the 1980s, intellectuals were talking about political

reforms within the Marxist-Leninist framework. In other words,

they were humanistic Marxists, and in some ways they echoed

what was going on in Eastern Europe. After June 4th, MarxismLeninism, as a motivating ideology, I believe, became bankrupt. So

for the first time, intellectuals are beginning to contemplate another political system.

What is unusual is that they use Marx to do this. They do it very

cleverly. Marx, after all, talked about, when you have a change in

16

the substructure then you have to have a change in your superstructure. So, obviously as China moves to a market economy, it

must also move to a different political structure. They are talking

about systems of checks and balances and some are talking about

an opposition political party. The ones who are talking about political reform are asking for much more radical reforms than they

were in the 1980s.

Mr. FOARDE. Thank you. Useful.

Let me recognize Susan Roosevelt Weld, who is our general counsel on the Commission staff, for another round of questions. Susan.

Ms. WELD. My first question is quite simple. It is whether Wen

Jiabao has any influence on Hu Jintao in the tenor of the leadership’s attitude toward intellectuals. Just after the two came into

power we saw, on May 4, at a speech on the campus of Qinghua

University, Wen Jiabao calling on the ideals of the May 4th movement, and saying China should push forward with them. Is there

anything you could tell us about that?

Ms. GOLDMAN. Let me put it this way. I think there was great

anticipation that a younger generation of leaders would be more

liberal and more open. Initially, it seemed that way, especially because they were interested in dealing with the growing inequalities, especially in the countryside. We thought that they were

going to be a much more receptive, or certainly flexible kind of

leadership. But in some ways—and this comes from the people I

have talked to in China—they say it is much more repressive today

than it was in the later years of Jiang Zemin.

Even a famous political scientist—I mentioned him in my statement, Liu Junning, who was thrown out of the Chinese Academy

of Social Sciences by Jiang Zemin personally, said he could say

more, and he could do more under Jiang Zemin than he can today.

He is the one whose Web site is being closed down constantly.

I will give you another example of increasing repression of public

intellectuals. The leadership says they are concerned about the increasing inequalities among the peasants. Yet, when a survey of

the Chinese peasants, written by a couple based on their work in

Anhui province, came out describing the inequalities and showing

what caused them, China’s new leaders banned the book the next

month.

Unless the leadership approves, public intellectuals cannot express their own criticisms. And if they do it is likely they will be

repressed. If it is not a designated representative, an intellectual

that represents the leadership, then they crack down. So, I see this

as a much more repressive regime than the later years of Jiang

Zemin.

Because Hu Jintao came out of the China Youth League, which

was always considered to be the center for more liberal political

views, such as those of Hu Yaobang, we expected more of the new

leadership .

Mr. FOARDE. Do either of the other panelists want to address

that question?

Mr. HU. Well, talking about Hu Jintao and Wen Jiaobao’s concerns for the disadvantaged groups, one example I would like to

cite here is the attention they are paying to ‘‘xinfang,’’ which means

to appeal to a higher authority with your concerns.

17

Now, as a result of the reforms over the years, there emerged a

lot of disadvantaged groups who find themselves in difficulty. They

find it necessary to cut across several layers and appeal to higher

authorities with their concerns.

On the other hand, since Hu and Wen took power, they have

been saying that they are close to the people. That, in itself, kind

of encouraged these ‘‘letters and visits.’’ But, as a matter of fact,

both of them know very well that this method of appealing to the

higher authorities, cutting across several layers of authority, by

doing this, nothing can be resolved. It does not really help at all.

Of course, both of them know very well that a democratic system

would very easily take care of issues like this. Either you have a

very independent media or you have an independent judiciary system, and all these problems would be taken care of automatically.

Of course, they reject the adoption of democracy, they reject the

emergence of an independent media, an independent judiciary system. Instead, they do it with what is in place. That is why the

whole situation remains the same.

Mr. FOARDE. Thank you very much.

Let me now recognize my friend and colleague, Carl Minzner,

who is a senior counsel with the Commission staff. Carl.

Mr. MINZNER. Thank you very much, John. Thanks to all of our

participants for coming here today.

I want to address the portrayal in the American or Western

media that all Chinese public intellectuals are cut from the same

cloth; that they are all promoting democracy, that they are all promoting limited government. I want to ask the question, is that

true? Is that an accurate portrayal? To what extent are public intellectuals in China taking up the flag of nationalism, such as with

the book, ‘‘China Can Say No,’’ espousing policies that might be

more hard line than government policies? That would be the first

question.

The second question is, is there a difference in treatment by the

Chinese government of these intellectuals vis-a-vis those who are

promoting democracy and limited government?

Ms. GOLDMAN. There is certainly much greater intellectual pluralism today in China than there was under Mao, and in fact, more

even than there was in the 1980s. There is, I think, also an increase in nationalist feeling. I have not yet been able to pinpoint

it in the intellectual community and I have not seen any recent

works on that. But that certainly is a rising source.

The more nationalist views appear to be coming from the younger generation. This is also true of what we call the ‘‘new left.’’ They

want to go back to some of the ideals of the Mao era in the Great

Leap Forward, and even in the Cultural Revolution. In other

words, some form of collective ownership, some form of direct democracy. They give those as their two major examples.

Of all the ideological groups, the one that the leadership has

most directly repressed is the neo-Maoists. But they are dying out.

The neo-Maoists wanted to go back to Mao before the Great Leap.

This was something the leadership did not want to do. The next

group that the leadership has repressed are the liberal intellectuals

because they are calling for a change in the political system. They

18

are losing their positions in the establishment. They have now become part of this non-establishment group.

The leadership has not yet turned against the new left nor the

nationalists. Now, it could be that if some of these intellectuals,

particularly the nationalists become too fervent and too jingoistic,

they might crack down because jingoists would hurt the leadership

in their relations with the outside world. Thus, so far the only intellectuals who have been criticized by the new leaders have been

the liberals and neo-Maoists.

Mr. LINK. I would say that we need to notice two things about

independent thinking in China—and maybe anywhere. One is that,

almost by definition, it exhibits variety. So what Merle sketches

here about liberal intellectuals, about the more radical cryptoMaoists—and, of course, there are many shades in between—are

all there.

The other thing to say, though, is that from the current government’s point of view, no independent political thinking is really

welcome. The government does not like people to think differently

from the way they are supposed to think—to put it very bluntly.

So the government takes what you might call a pragmatic attitude toward this variety of opinion: it is ready to cooperate with

those who express views that are supportive of or compatible with

its own views—but will ignore or repress others. The question of

the difference between the ‘‘new left’’ (xinzuopai) and the government is subtle, because sometimes the new left thinking coincides

with and is useful to the government, but other times not. I do not

think there is a fundamental trust there.

And if you go all the way over to the ‘‘China Can Say No’’ people,

then the confluence of what the Party wants and what intellectuals

are saying is pretty complete. But in cases like that, one has to ask

whether we are observing a ‘‘natural confluence’’ of opinion or a

case of people who lack intellectual integrity saying what they calculate that the Party would like to hear. With ‘‘China Can Say No’’ or ‘‘Behind the Demonization of China,’’ certainly the latter is involved. The result is what one might call ersatz intellectual opinion.

Mr. HU. There are two things I would like to point out here. One,

is before June 4th, it was very obvious that most of the intellectuals in China were for more freedom and democracy. Afterward,

there appeared to be a division among the intellectuals in China.

Now there is a group of intellectuals who have come out openly expressing their opposition to freedom and democracy. However, the

impact that these intellectuals have on society, by and large, is

very limited, the reason being very simple: they do not have a substitute for freedom and democracy. They do not have another choice

to replace what they are opposed to. That is why, among intellectuals circles nowadays in China, a popular view is that democracy

is a good thing for China, but China is not ready for it now. Of

course, this is exactly what the Chinese leadership has been saying. The Chinese leadership would say, from time to time, that

what they want is a ‘‘socialist democracy,’’ and what they do not

want is Western democracy. However, if you follow up by asking,

what is ‘‘socialist democracy,’’ they cannot explain themselves.

Of course, sometimes they resort to this tactic by saying, ‘‘Well,

the United States has been there for over 200 years and we are

19

much younger in that respect,’’ meaning that it would take them

much longer to get into this developmental stage. What they do not

want to discuss with you is whether concrete steps would be taken,

what we should do as the first step, what we should do as the second step, and whether people can reach agreement on an over-arching principle regarding democracy. They are not willing to talk

about all these issues. So on this very issue, they have taken a defensive approach.

Mr. FOARDE. Thank you. Public intellectuals are involved in

nothing if they are not involved in expression. Our staff expert on

freedom of expression issues is my friend and colleague, William

Farris. William.

Mr. FARRIS. I would like to ask two related questions. Mr. Link

mentioned that people today are free to publish anything as long

as they do not cross the line. I would be interested in hearing what

the three of you think that line is. What is it that people cannot

actually say?

In a related matter, Mr. Hu mentioned the preventive measures

and how important a role they play in preventing people from

speaking freely and publishing freely. I would be interested to hear

if any of you have any thoughts on the role of the General Administration of Press and Publication, and the Central Propaganda Department, in squelching public intellectuals’ right to publish.

Perhaps, Professor Link, you could maybe just expound a bit on

what you think that line is, to start.

Mr. LINK. It is a very fuzzy line. I wrote a piece a few years ago

called ‘‘The Anaconda in the Chandelier,’’ that shows how the line

is intentionally made fuzzy. If the line between what is permitted

and what is prohibited were clear, that would let people, whatever

they said, know for sure either that ‘‘I am safe’’ or that ‘‘I am risking something.’’ But if I don’t know exactly where the line is, I need

to guess, and guessing turns me subtly into my own policeman— and in most cases pulling back even further than I would need to,

just to ‘‘be safe.’’ From very early in the Communist movement—

right from Yan’an times—it has been a standard ploy to keep the

borderlines fuzzy.

That said, though, in a nutshell, what is prohibited is anything

that threatens the power of the regime, directly or indirectly. Directly, by saying that policy toward Taiwan is wrong, or that Hu

Jintao or other top leaders are mistaken, and so on; indirectly, by

saying something good about Falun Gong or famous political dissidents, because these are viewed as forces that could become rivals

for power. One way or the other, the nub is always the question

of whether the current regime can keep its grip on power. That is

the principle that determines what you can and cannot say in public. But even then, it is fuzzy, because who you are, as Hu Ping

said, and under what circumstances you are speaking, matters in

a number of different ways as well. It is a very complex question.

Mr. FOARDE. Anyone else want to comment?

Mr. HU. Of course, this situation brings us back to the changes

that China saw in 1989. In the aftermath of the June 4th event,

the Chinese people, whether they were in China or overseas, many

of them burst out cursing the Communist Party of China. Of

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body un-say what they had said. So now their approach is, ‘‘just

say whatever you want, but do not say it in the open.’’ Another result of the June 4 event in 1989 is that even though

people are still clear about what is right and what is wrong, they

are not holding the government, the regime, to that standard any

more. So, they kind of leave the government alone to do whatever

it wants, whether it is right or wrong.

The story of Zhao Ziyang is a case in point. No rules or regulations stipulated that he should have been under house arrest for

that long a period of time. However, he was. After his death, while

there were no rules and regulations prohibiting people from attending his funeral, the authorities simply said, ‘‘If you attend, you will

be in trouble.’’ So, the authorities have really resorted to this

undisguised method of controlling.

In the past, when the authorities wanted to ban a book, they

would go to all the trouble of letting people know what the contents

of the book were about. The authorities would try to mobilize the

masses to criticize the book in question. Now if the authorities

want to ban a book, they do not really have to do any of that. The

authorities would simply issue an order and the book is banned.

Ms. GOLDMAN. Let me just say something about that, if I could.

Mr. FOARDE. Please.

Ms. GOLDMAN. That is true, the book is banned. But one of the

differences now even from the 1980s is that because China has

moved to the market and, because there is more economic freedom,

these books are banned, but they can still be bought on the black

market, even in airports and on street corners. People continue to

sell them.

So the point is that they are daring in what they publish. The

book will be banned, yet the book still circulates because the market situation is open and freer, and these ideas and these books are

able to circulate. So, I am not as pessimistic as Hu Ping on this

issue.

Mr. FOARDE. Thank you for that observation.

Let me recognize my friend and colleague, Adam Bobrow, who is

our senior counsel for commercial rule of law. Adam.

Mr. BOBROW. That was, Professor Goldman, the perfect segue

into the issues that we have been discussing in terms of the difference of opinion that the panelists have expressed about the effects of economic legal reform and how the kaifang gaige, the

reform and opening up, have actually interacted with this movement for public intellectuals.

I am going to ask a wide-open question, because I would just like

to see the debate continue a little bit. That is, what has been the

most direct effect of the dramatic economic, commercial, and legal

changes on public intellectual in China? I would throw that open

to the whole panel.

Ms. GOLDMAN. The Party emphasizes the rule of law. Of course,

it is rule of law to carry on business. Yet, we have seen, in the

1990s, in particular, the emergence of some very brave defense lawyers who defend some of these people when they are brought to

trial, and do it very effectively. Of course, they never win, but the

point is that they are making a statement there. So that is another

real change in that a group of lawyers now are willing to take on

21

politically sensitive cases, even though they know they are going to

get in trouble.

Certainly, the opening to the outside world is also a major factor.

Yu Jie, for example, certainly is a public intellectual. He travels

abroad a couple of times a year. He gets new ideas. He gets his

ideas discussed in China. He is able to function in China, even

though he has been periodically detained, and he is under surveillance. The point is, these people are not locked away. They are not

totally silenced. They do have contacts at home and abroad. So

they are very brave people, there is no question about that. But the

big difference is that they are not silent the way they were in the

Mao era. Also, public intellectuals are more independent than they

were in the 1980s.

So my view is not as pessimistic as my colleagues. I really do see

some positive changes coming out of this loosening up, opening up

economically, and engagement with the outside world.

Mr. LINK. I would agree that opening up has had good effects,

but would separate that from the question of whether the effects

of more money-making have been uniformly good. To highlight a

couple of the ways in which more money-making has had a deleterious effect on intellectuals speaking out in the public interest, I

would go back to the first point I made in my presentation about

the phenomenon of being ‘‘bought off’’ in the last 15 years.

In 1988 and 1989, when the intellectuals were complaining so

articulately, they still felt they suffered from the stigma of the

‘‘stinking bottom’’ of society (chou lao jiu). Their expression of discontent was couched as social idealism but was considerably fueled

by self-advocacy.

Deng Xiaoping and the Party, quite cleverly said, ‘‘All right, here

is some money, some status, some housing, some artistic freedom.’’

In this case money—not by force but by inducement, has led people

to be much less critical than they were before. In particular, in the

field of creative literature, which I study professionally, I think the

trend is pretty obvious. Creative writers were getting more and

more deeply probing and reflective in the 1980s, but in the 1990s

and after either went into fairly arcane kinds of a vanguard experimentalism or turned toward money-making by writing popular

entertainment or by writing for television or film. The Chinese intellectual’s ideal of loyal remonstrance, of speaking truth to power

on behalf of the populace, has been hurt by the rampant makemoney-quick atmosphere of the last 15 years.

Can I make one last comment, and then sign off? In answer to

William’s question about the controls, there is one aspect of the

complexity that I did not mention, and I really want to. It is, the

public/private distinction. Of course, there are layers within this

distinction. But what you can say in private and what you can say

in public, as I am sure you know, varies immensely.

A few years ago, I did a paper on the popular ‘‘rhythmic sayings’’ that abound within China’s underground grapevine. They are wry

sayings and, I believe, are created primarily by intellectuals. They

are very blunt and hard-hitting, skewering Jiang Zemin, Hu

Jintao, and virtually any top leader by name. They not only survive

but travel all over China orally—a state office collects them to

monitor popular opinion for the leaders.

22

All this happens except: you cannot put them into print, or onto

a broadcast, or recite them openly in a public place—if you do get

a few into public media, they are bowdlerized. The public/private

distinction is not absolute, it too admits a certain spectrum. But

the two ends of the spectrum are very different.

Mr. HU. Of course, there is no question that China today is very

different from China in the Mao era. There is room for the intellectuals in China to express their political opinions. What I want to

emphasize here is the fact that this room will not be expanding as

time goes. For instance, if we compare China with China 16 years

ago in 1989, I do not think that room has expanded any.

By the same token, if you asked Chinese dissidents, whether

they are still in China or they are overseas, if you asked them their

expectations for political reforms, for democratic reforms in China,

I think their expectations are much, much lower than 10 years ago.

Mr. FOARDE. Thank you very much. Unfortunately, the time that

we have available this morning for our conversation is gone. So, it

is my duty, on behalf of the members of the Congressional-Executive

Commission on China, to first thank our three panelists, Professor

Goldman, Professor Link, and Mr. Hu, for coming and sharing your

expertise with us this morning.

Next, I would like to thank all of the members of the audience

who came to attend today, and hope that we will see you next Monday, March 14, at 2 p.m. over on the House side for our roundtable

on the new religious regulations, and that you will continue to follow our roundtables and hearings series this year for the Congressional-Executive Commission on China.

Thank you all. We will adjourn this one for today.

[Whereupon, at 11:41 a.m. the issues roundtable was concluded.]

(23)

A P P E N D I X

24

PREPARED STATEMENTS

PREPARED STATEMENT OF MERLE GOLDMAN

MARCH 10, 2005

THE ROLE OF CHINA’S PUBLIC INTELLECTUALS AT THE START OF THE TWENTY-FIRST

CENTURY

‘‘Public intellectuals’’ are not unique to Western civilization. Public intellectuals

have played a role throughout Chinese history. It was the responsibility of the Confucian literati to criticize officials and even the Emperor when they diverged from

the Confucian ideals of morality and fairness. Public intellectuals helped to bring

about the end of the dynastic system and prepare the way for the 1911 revolution.

Sun Yatsen personified a public intellectual. Even though the Kuomintang government of Chiang Kai-shek (1927–1949) attempted to stifle criticism and dissent, it

was too weak to silence the public intellectuals, who continued to criticize repressive

officials and policies and advocate political reforms. With exception of during the

Hundred Flowers period (1956–June 1957) and a short time in the early 1960s, it

was only during the era of Mao Zedong (1949–76) that public intellectuals were silenced and unable to play their traditional role. Of course, one major difference between the West and China is that during the dynastic, Kuomintang, and Mao

Zedong eras there were no laws to protect public intellectuals when what they said

displeased the leadership, who could silence them with relative impunity.

In the post-Mao period, beginning soon after Mao’s death in 1976, during the era

of Deng Xiaoping (1978–97), there were also no laws to protect political and civil

rights. Nevertheless, virtually all the intellectuals whom Mao had persecuted were

rehabilitated and most found positions in the political and intellectual establishment.

The public space for political discourse opened up in the media, books, universities,

and research centers. Yet, even though a number of the rehabilitated intellectuals

became members of the intellectual networks of party general secretary Hu Yaobang

(1980–1986) and his successor, Zhao Ziyang (1987–89), when these intellectuals

called for reform of the Communist party-state, they were purged once again. But

unlike in the Mao era, though they were silenced for a while, China’s move to the

market made it possible for them to make a living, speak out, and publish on political issues by means of the new communications technologies, private publishing,

and contact with the foreign media, such as VOA, BBC and Radio Free Asia, which

would then beam back their views into China. For example, though the prominent

political scientist Liu Junning was purged in 2000 from the Institute of Political

Science of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences for having criticized party secretary Jiang Zemin (1989–2002) for demanding that the Nation rally around his

leadership, Liu was not jailed and completely silenced. He was able to get his ideas

discussed by setting up his own website and as a free-lance writer, often publishing

under pseudonyms.

When the fourth generation of leaders, led by Hu Jintao came to power in 2002–

2004, it appeared that they would continue the opening up of public space for political discourse, though circumscribed within certain limits, as we see in the case of

Liu Junning. But that has not proven to be the case. In fact, there has been a contraction of public space for political discourse since Jiang Zemin announced he

would step down from his last position as head of the state military commission in

the fall 2004 and Hu gained full power over the government. The Hu leadership has

cracked down on a number of people who use the Internet or publish their own

websites to discuss political issues. A number of cyber-dissidents have been imprisoned as a warning to others as to how far they can go in discussing political reforms

on the Internet. Independent intellectuals who speak out on controversial issues

have been briefly detained as well. For example, the military doctor, Jiang Yanyong,

who had countered the party’s assertion in 2003 that the SARS epidemic had been

brought under control, was detained and then put under surveillance when in 2004

he called on the party to reassess the 1989 Tiananmen demonstrations as a ‘‘patriotic’’ movement.

Ironically, the Hu Jintao crackdown coincided with the publication of a list of ‘‘Top

Fifty Public Intellectuals’’ in September 2004 in the Southern People’s Weekly

(Nanfang renwu zhoukan), connected to the Guangzhou Southern Daily media

group. With China’s move to the market, most of China’s media were no longer

funded by the state and were forced to be self-financing. One result has been a more

daring and interesting media in an effort to gain readership and survive financially.

25

1 ‘‘Under Fire Again, Intellectuals in China,’’ The Economist, Dec 11, 2004. 2David A. Kelly, ‘‘The Importance of Being Public: Gagging China’s Thinkers,’’ China Review

(London), Issue 31 (Winter 2004/2005), pp. 28–37. 3 Chen Guidi and Chun Tao, Zhongguo nongmin diaocha (A Survey of Chinese Peasants) (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 2004).

The Guangzhou Southern Daily media group is one of the most daring. In an accompanying commentary, the Weekly praised public intellectuals, pointing out that ‘‘this

is the time when China is facing the most problems in its unprecedented transformation, and when it most needs public intellectuals to be on the scene and to

speak out.’’ 1 Although the list included intellectuals in a variety of professions— writers, artists, film directors, cartoonists, lawyers, environmentalists, and a number of overseas Chinese intellectuals—the list was dominated by intellectuals who

in the 1990s had called for political reforms, free speech and association and greater

political participation.

On November 23, an article in the Shanghai Party Committee’s hard-line Liberation Daily (Jiefang Ribao) attacked the concept of ‘‘public intellectuals,’’ claiming

that their ‘‘independence . . . drives a wedge’’ between the intellectuals and the

party and the intellectuals and the masses.2 It insisted that China’s intellectuals

belonged to the working class, under the leadership of the party and therefore could

not be independent. Moreover, it called the concept of ‘‘public intellectuals’’ a foreign

import. The Liberation Daily article was then reprinted in the party’s official newspaper, People’s Daily, giving the criticism of public intellectuals the party’s official

imprimatur.

Although the Hu Jintao leadership is much more concerned with the increasing

inequalities spawned by China’s economic reforms, and particularly with alleviating

poverty in the countryside than Jiang Zemin, the Hu leadership has suppressed the

very people, other than those they officially designate, who try to draw public attention to the growing inequalities and distress in the countryside. This can be seen

in its treatment of A Survey of Chinese Peasants, written by Chen Guidi and Wu

Chuntao and published in January 2004, based on interviews over several years

with farmers in the poor province of Anhui.3 This husband and wife team, who were

both born in the countryside and had spent their early years there, described the

developers’ seizure of the land of rural residents without providing adequate compensation, the imposition of unfair taxes by local officials, and the lack of recourse

available to farmers to right these wrongs. Their vivid depiction of the increasingly

impoverished lives of peasants was exactly what the new generation of leadership

had declared it sought to alleviate. Most importantly, the survey revealed the official abuse of power, which the new leadership seeks to remedy because of fears it

would undermine the party’s hold on power. Yet, in February 2004, just one month

after its publication, their book was banned. Nevertheless, because of China’s mar- ket economy it continued to be sold on the black market and by private book-sellers.

At the close of 2004, the party detained a number of well-known public intellectuals. In December, the writers Yu Jie and Liu Xiaobo, both typical examples of

public intellectuals, were taken into custody, supposedly because their independent

chapter of PEN had given an award to the writer Zhang Yihe for her memoir The

Past is Not Like (Dissipating) Smoke about the party’s 1957 Anti-rightist campaign

against intellectuals. Ironically, even the Deng Xiaoping leadership had denounced

the campaign in the 1980s. Though the book was banned, it too continued to be sold

on streets corners and pirated copies continued to circulate. The political theorist

Zhang Zuhua was likewise detained. All three were criticized for articles they had

originally published in overseas journals and then had found their way back to

China via the Internet. Although the three were later released, they remained

under surveillance and served as a further warning to public intellectuals.

Along with the crackdown on a number of well-known independent intellectuals

and the banning of discussion of ‘‘public intellectuals,’’ the Hu Jintao government

tightened controls over the media. Reports on the growing protests against corruption, abusive officials, and property confiscation as well as reports on peasant and

worker demonstrations were banned from the media. Journalism professor, Jiao

Guobiao, who on the Internet had criticized the repressive controls of the media by

the Propaganda Department (now referred to as the Publicity Department) was no

longer allowed to teach at Peking University. Another public intellectual Wang Yi,

a law lecturer at Chengdu University, who called for a system of checks and balances, has also been barred from teaching. The journal Strategy and Management

that had been an outlet for intellectuals of a liberal persuasion such as Liu Junning

was closed down. The administrative editor in chief of the monthly China Reform

magazine, Chen Min was briefly detained. Using the penname Xiao Shu, or Smiling

Sichuanese, Chen had declared in one of his commentaries that a natural gas exploVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:07 Apr 25, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00029 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 20180.TXT China1 PsN: China1
26

4 Hong Kong: AFP Dec. 22, 2004.

5Merle Goldman, Sowing the Seeds of Democracy in China (Cambridge: Harvard University

Press, 1994).

sion in December 2003 in Chongqing that had killed several hundreds of people

demonstrated a lack of concern for human lives.4 The China Reform magazine also

published many articles on the plight of the peasants. Even the editor in chief of

the China Youth Daily, the newspaper affiliated with Hu Jintao’s China Youth

League power base, which had been very aggressive in exposing official corruption,

was detained.

Nevertheless, despite the crackdown on public intellectuals and the media, unlike

during the Mao period when millions were harshly persecuted for the acts of a small

number, in the post-Mao period persecution for political dissent has not reached far

beyond the accused and their immediate associates. Moreover, though they might

lose their jobs and may be briefly detained, they have been able to find jobs and

outlets for their views in China’s expanding market economy. Thus, unlike during

the Mao era, they are not completely silenced. Some still try to function as citizens,

either on their own or with others and they continue to express their political views

in unofficial publications, on the Internet, and in increasingly organized petitions

and protests. In addition, though their writings may be officially banned, they continue to be distributed over the Internet and sold on street corners.

There were also differences between the public intellectuals in the 1990s and at

the start of the twenty-first century from the public intellectuals in the Hundred

Flowers or even in the 1980s. It was not so much that the 1990s public intellectuals

are imbued with a different political consciousness, but that they use different political strategies. Unlike their Marxist humanist predecessors of the 1980s and earlier,5 most public intellectuals in the 1990s came to believe that more had to be

done than just educating the people ideologically in order to bring about political

change. It is necessary to establish new institutions to make possible the practice

of democracy. Moreover, whereas until the 1989 Tiananmen demonstrations, public

intellectuals acted as an elite who did not join with other social classes in political

actions, in the 1990s they began to join with workers and small business people in

organized petition drives and political groups to try to bring about political change.

Therefore, at the start of the twenty-first century there has been a qualitative

change among public intellectuals, a willingness to join with other social groups in

political actions, that may make them increasingly independent actors in China’s

struggles and may allow them to have a greater impact on China’s political scene.

Clearly, it is in the U.S. interest that China move in the direction of political reform. Although the United States can bring pressure on China to release public intellectuals from detention and imprisonment, it is difficult for the United States to

make China’s political reform the central issue in the America’s policy toward

China. Not only is China becoming a power with considerable international economic and strategic clout, there are other interests in the U.S. relationship with

China, such as prodding China to put more pressure on North Korea, reducing

China’s huge trade imbalance with the United States, and negotiating a peaceful

resolution of the Taiwan issue. The United States can use external pressure to encourage China to live up to the two U.N. Covenants on Human Rights which it

signed onto in 1997–98 and to have its National People’s Congress (NPC) ratify the

Covenant on Political and Civil Rights. (The NPC has already ratified the Covenant

on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.)

A genuine transformation of China’s Communist party-state into a democracy,

however, can only be achieved by the Chinese themselves. Although China’s public

intellectuals are unable to speak freely, it is through their efforts in alliance with

other social groups, that can bring pressure on the Chinese government to reform.

One way to help those seeking political change in China is for the U.S. Government

to criticize China’s repression of public intellectuals. Since China’s present leadership wants to be considered a responsible member of the international community,

it is sensitive to U.S. and European criticism of its human rights abuses. It does

not want to seen as a pariah in the international community. Therefore, while the

United States cannot be a major actor, it can be a catalyst in the effort to democratize China’s Communist party-state.

* Merle Goldman is Professor of History, Emerita of Boston University and a

member of the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research at Harvard University. Her

forthcoming book is From Comrade To Citizen: The Struggle for Political Rights in

China, published by Harvard University Press will, be out in fall 2005.

27

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HU PING

MARCH 10, 2005

WHAT DOES THIS NEW CRACKDOWN TELL US?

Since Hu Jintao took office, the plight of the intellectuals in public life in China

has not been bettered; in fact, it has worsened. In reality, the lack of improvement

in and of itself is tantamount to worsening, because the same oppression becomes

more onerous as time goes on, and the consequences of that oppression more and

more severe.

Not long ago, the Hu Jintao regime unleashed a new crackdown on intellectual

circles. The authorities once more raised aloft the banner of ‘‘anti-liberalization,’’

and stridently criticized ‘‘liberalized thought’’ and ‘‘public intellectuals.’’ The Central

Propaganda Department brought out a list of names and banned a number of liberal

intellectuals who had a tiny foothold in the official media from making more statements. The Ministry also demanded that the media implement rigorous checks, as

they ‘‘may not report on premeditated bombings, riots, demonstrations or strikes.’’

A batch of books was banned, and a number of Web sites were closed down. At the

same time, the authorities also utilized administrative means and autocratic methods to persecute some liberal intellectuals. Some were discharged from their jobs,

some had their houses searched and notes confiscated, some received very stern

warnings, and others were arrested and sentenced. When Zhao Ziyang died, it was

as though the CCP authorities were on their guard for all possible danger. They

took all sorts of measures to strengthen their control, and many dissidents were

subjected to house arrest, with others taken into custody. Those inside the system

received harsh warnings: they were not to participate in any memorial event on

pain of losing their posts. Moreover, we must not forget the world-renowned Dr.

Jiang Yanyong, who fought against SARS. For no greater reason than the fact that

the letter he wrote to the National People’s Congress and the Chinese Political Consultative Conference last Spring asking for a rectification of names for the June 4th

event was published overseas, he was kidnapped and held in custody, and continues

under house arrest today.

The facts demonstrate that Hu Jintao and his predecessor Jiang Zemin are cut

from the same cloth. In 1991, Jiang Zemin quoted a literary reference from the

‘‘Commentary of Zuo,’’ a famous Classical Chinese work, while speaking privately

to a visitor from Taiwan. The passage basically holds that in politics it is better to

be fierce than lenient. Fire is fierce, and everyone who sees it is frightened and

hides away. As a result, very few people are burned to death. Water seems to be

gentle and weak, so many people do not respect it. They fool around in the water,

and even more people end up drowning. (Later on, this exchange was published in

the August, 1996 issue of ‘‘The 90s,’’ a Hong Kong magazine.) The Chinese Communist leaders are deeply cognizant of the fact that their political power is entirely

based on the fear of the masses. Consequently, if they are to preserve their own

rule, they must keep the people in fear. That means they cannot seem warm or enlightened in front of the masses. If the people feel the authorities are kind or enlightened they will dare to speak out, saying things they would never have dared

otherwise. The more they dare to speak out with demands they would not have

dared offer otherwise, the greater the pressure and the challenges become facing the

authorities. The authorities must invest a great deal of energy if they are to repress

(if indeed they are able to do so). At the end, their image may be even more severely

tarnished. Hu Jintao showed his true face of cruelty the moment major power was

within his grasp. His primary goal was to maintain and consolidate the power of

intimidation by force and the effect of fear that the autocratic Chinese government

had enjoyed since ‘‘June 4.’’ By so doing, he would then nip any unrest in the bud.

There was no need to use force or violate any taboos on killing. Everything Hu

Jintao has done since taking office has been the cause of widespread disappointment

in him on the part of the outside world. It has also given people the impression that

he has not gone overboard in any way. However, in reality, that is precisely the effect he wished to achieve by implementing this sort of strategy.

After Hu Jintao took office, he reiterated time and time again his concern for disadvantaged groups. Many people mistakenly thought that Hu would permit events

that would safeguard the rights of these groups, but that simply wasn’t the case.

For example, Li Boguang, a PhD in law from Beijing, has helped peasants to guard

their rights, always within the dictates of current law. Not long ago, he was detained by the local government on suspicion of fraud (he recently made bail and is

currently awaiting trial). This proves that while it’s not necessarily true that Hu

Jintao’s regime was not thinking of shrinking the huge disparity between rich and

28

poor to some extent, of putting the brakes on corruption to some degree, and of improving the lot of disadvantaged groups a bit, they absolutely do not permit the people to initiate any open group action or to stand up to defend their own rights. The

authorities can partially satisfy the material needs of the people, but the thing they

fear most is that the people might thus obtain the ability to engage in independent

group activity. Additionally, the authorities also refuse to implement a true rule of

law, in which everyone is equal before the law. This is because they know full well

that the existing allocation of wealth is based on a huge injustice that is essentially

illegitimate. The gap between rich and poor in China is unique in that it is not a

product of history or of the market but is mainly due to power. In China, the poverty of the poor exists in large part because the products of their labor have been

appropriated by those in power. The wealth of the rich is in large measure due to

their use of power to steal the prosperity created by others. The moment that the

people are able to argue strongly based on law and rationality, the moment they

have the ability to band together to make a stand, they will absolutely no longer

be satisfied with a tad more aid to the unemployed or a small additional subsidy

for the poor. They will first demand that the group of people who used power to

first become rich turn over the property they plundered, and there may very well

be a day of reckoning for privileged rich privatization that will threaten the autocratic government itself. Naturally, this is not the wish of the Hu Jintao regime.

As a result, the so-called ‘‘concern for the disadvantaged’’ touted by Hu Jintao’s re- gime is in reality no more than a desire to employ ‘‘controlled oppression’’ and to

maintain ‘‘continued squeezing.’’ Yes, on the surface it seems that the intelligentsia are very active in today’s China. On the Internet, even in the official media, discussion certain public issues

is quite open and even quite lively. Some dissidents express themselves without

fear, and nothing happens, they sit at home, quite well. But what I must bring to

your attention is the principle being implemented by authorities in China today,

that principle is ‘‘all people are not equal before the law.’’ When the authorities handle issues related to expression and speech, there is no single standard measure

used. The standards vary by person, by time, and by place. When the authorities

oppress the intellectuals, they often consider a multitude of factors, such as; do you

have any position within the establishment? Are you known internationally? What’s your social network of ‘‘connections’’ like? And so on. We cannot draw the conclusion

based solely from the situation of a few well-known dissidents that freedom of

speech in China has expanded greatly. Again, we cannot forget that the means the

Chinese Communists use to squash freedom of speech have taken on many forms

over the years. For example, during the Anti-Rightist movement only a handful of

the over 500,000 Rightists were actually imprisoned and sentenced, some Rightists

were fired from their jobs and sent to the countryside to do manual labor. Some

were demoted, had their salaries cut, or were forced to move to other posts. Some

Rightists were permitted to show their faces in the official media to say a word or

two. The situation today is the same.

At this point I should mention that when the outside world assesses the degree

of freedom of speech in China, it quite often focuses on how many people have been

arrested or imprisoned. Without a doubt, a shocking number of dissidents have been

locked up in China, a number that puts China in first place in such matters. However, this is but one standard by which we assess the amount of freedom of expression and the plight of intellectuals in China. First I want to say that precisely

because there is still no freedom of the press in China, the outside world does not

have an accurate figure on the number of dissidents in prison there. The figures the

world gets are usually greatly understated. Second, another point that must be

made is that the number of dissidents in custody isn’t really as important as it

might seem at first blush. Nations that arrest smaller numbers of dissidents do not

necessarily have a more serious lack of freedom of expression than nations that arrest many. At times, the situation may be quite the opposite. We all know that traditional autocratic governments use investigation and punishment after the act to

control freedom of speech. When the media does not get government approval on

articles or news it puts out, then the chances greatly increase that articles or news

items not favored by the government will become known to the world. Moreover, it

also greatly increases the difficulty the government faces in penalizing the articles

or news items it does not like. This results in the government being unable to cover

up its oppression and makes its evil deeds obvious. But Communist autocracy

doesn’t work this way. The Communist Party takes a preventative approach before

anything even happens. The Communist Party government not only has its book

and newspapers supervisory structures in place (such as propaganda offices at various levels), but also, quite simply, has a direct hold on all the media. Party faithful

are sent out to lead the defense effort. This is tantamount to a double layer of insurVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:07 Apr 25, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00032 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 20180.TXT China1 PsN: China1
29

ance. Under these circumstances, opinions or news items that displease the Party

have no chance of making it to the media. And there is no need to run out and lock

up the occasional minnow that manages to elude the net. The only thing needed is

to mobilize Party sanctions and administrative sanctions, which are generally

enough to resolve the problem. Doubtless the advent of the Internet has made control more difficult, particularly when users can post articles on their own, and it’s almost impossible to censor in advance. Accordingly, the Chinese government has

established the largest network surveillance system in the world. On the one hand,

screening programs search for ‘‘sensitive’’ words and phrases, while on the other

hand the instant any writings with a ‘‘dangerous bent’’ are detected, they are immediately erased. If necessary, the poster of the content can be found and punished

afterwards. As a result, in a country that undertakes this sort of rigorous beforethe-fact preventive actions, the government has no need to lock up too many dissidents. In reality, of the dissidents the Chinese government has in prison at

present, quite a few were brought in for issuing articles or placing news items either

on the Internet or in the foreign media. This is a benefit accrued from today’s high

technology and from being opened up to the outside world. If it were not so, these

people would not even have the opportunity to ‘‘commit a crime,’’ and the government would very likely catch fewer of them. If we liken the traditional model of autocracy and its treatment of free expression to killing people or butchering children,

then the Communist autocracy’s methods are not limited to killing people and

slaughtering babies but also include abortion and contraception. The effects of this

oppression are not only more severe and far-reaching; they are also more insidious

and more apt to fool people.

On the surface, the yardstick used as a measure for the control of free speech by

the authorities is broader than before, with the standards not only looser than those

of the Mao era but also as loose as or even looser than those of the 1980s. But this

doesn’t mean enlightenment on the part of the authorities. It should be said that

it is a number of other factors that are creating this situation. First and foremost

is the impact of the 1989 democracy movement. During that movement, tens of

thousands of people took to the streets shouting ‘‘We want democracy, we want freedom!’’ The butchery of the June 4 incident caused the common people to be even

more incensed. Throughout China, people of both high and low status began to curse

the Communist Party in untold numbers. No matter what means the authorities

adopt, they are unable to completely return the hearts of the people to their former

cramped and limited space. As a result, the government was forced to turn a blind

eye to many expressions of opinion that are outside the ‘‘norms.’’ Second we have

the breakdown of the international Communist fraternity and the bankruptcy of

Communist ideology. This includes the economic reforms promoted by the authorities themselves, in which, theoretically, they overturned the golden rules of theory

that they themselves had enshrined. This provided the opportunity for all sorts of

other ideologies to have their moment in the sun. At the present stage, the Chinese

Communist authorities are still working hard to put together a new ideology, doing

their utmost to find a theme and striving in vain to once more unify thought. However, their efforts are falling short and they have been forced to turn to largely

defensive principles. This means that in the current phase, when the Chinese Communist authorities are controlling speech, they are largely looking not at whether

something that is said is in line with the official ideology, but rather thinking about

whether it poses a direct challenge to the current regime. This provides relatively

more space for other thought and speech. Also, with the June 4th massacre as their

landmark, the Chinese Communist government has lost the traditional support of

belief. It has been transformed into a rule of naked violence. Violent rule means

negative indifference toward government by the people; it means widespread cynicism; and in today’s China, the power of thought and speech to appeal lags far

behind the force these carried in the 1980s. This has increased a certain type of immunity on the part of the authorities to resist criticism. Violence does not care much

for people’s criticism. That is because violence is forced upon people without the

need for the consent of a third party. You yell about what you want, and I’ll comply

about what I like. What can you do to me? Simply put, the authorities have become

even more shameless (‘‘I’m a rogue, who should I fear?’’) so the ‘‘degree of tolerance’’

for dissidents has, on the contrary, increased. However, at the same time, the authorities have adopted a more straightforward means of implementing oppression

than they previously had regarding speech they simply cannot tolerate. In the past,

officials who toed the Party ideological line were all recognized by the entire Party

as having theoretical authority (in more cases, the tone was personally set by the

‘‘Great Leader’’). It was said that only they could accurately discern what conforming speech was and what was not. At that time, if the authorities wanted to

crack down on some type of opinion, they would always take care to cobble up some

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sort of reason, to show that they had a basis for their actions. Quite often the offending speech was trotted out and shown to everyone so that the masses could

judge it and criticize it jointly. But now, today’s guardians of ideology don’t need

to trouble themselves overly much. If they say ban, it’s banned; if they say wipe

it out, it’s wiped out; and if they say ‘‘arrest him,’’ he’s under arrest. They don’t need

to give any reason. Sometimes they don’t even need to issue formal paperwork. It

can all be done with a single phone call, avoiding all the other formalities. Today,

the Chinese Communist authorities control over speech is in no way truly looser

than it was in the past.

Beijing Film Academy Professor Hao Jian once gave this explanation. He said,

‘‘We definitely know when we can strike the table in anger and speak with the force

of justice behind us. We also know when we have to stay quiet about things we are

perfectly clear on and keep our lips sealed. We do something else that’s even scarier,

we go for the underbelly, picking the softest, easiest targets and making a great

deal of noise for justice and truth, but in fact it is all a sham. We also know when

to say what so that we can get right to the top for a nod of approval and what will

enrage everyone. For myself, I’ve perfected this sort of calculation to a fine art. And

it’s already become a part of my subconscious.’’ This statement can help us understand the extent to which pretense flourishes among the intellectuals of today’s

China.

Long-term oppression produces very negative results. Up until the 1990s, there

were still quite a number of dissidents in China who dared to speak out that held

high posts within the system. For example, some held posts in Party media organizations, higher research institutes or in famous universities. Some were even in

leadership positions. They had more chances to speak out and faced less risk. As

the years went on, there were constant purges, and fewer and fewer of this kind

of person remained. What’s more, the party authorities stepped up their control of

the media, and liberal intellectuals all over felt their situation worsen. In these circumstances, dissenter activities still hold on tenaciously among the people, but it’s

very difficult for them to develop any further.

In direct opposition to the early hopes of many Chinese and Westerners, the economic reforms and economic development in China have not put China on a pathway to freedom and democracy. On the contrary, reform and development have

become the main reason the authorities use to cling to one-party rule and deny freedom and democracy. From Li Peng and Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao,

leaders have taken China’s successful economic development as their basis to justify

the crackdown on June 4th as necessary and right. They use it to show that a one

party autocracy is necessary and right. In reality, China’s privatization reforms not

only were not aimed at setting down a foundation for democratization; they were

actually aimed at throwing up more obstacles to democracy. The privatization and

reform in China, if the truth be told, was nothing more than officials using their

power to misappropriate resources that originally belonged to all the people. This

sort of privatization reduces the ‘‘transaction cost’’ to a minimum, making it far

quicker and more effective than privatization accomplished with democratic participation. However, such reforms are necessarily of the type that can never be approved by the people. The great blocs who profit immediately from all this are those

who are most in fear of democracy and most stoutly oppose it. That is because these

officials know very well that if they open the door to free democracy, they will not

only lose their monopoly on political power but also, very possibly, will be called out

by the people on charges of economic corruption.

In today’s China, the Mao era is water under the bridge, and there is no going

back. Even the ruling blocs themselves are not willing to go back to the days of Mao.

China today must concern herself with something that seems even more old-fashioned, but which could be an even more persistent type of oppression: that of rule

by people who believe in no ‘‘ism’’ but wield enormous power, and are determined

to use every means at their disposal to preserve it.

Æ