China Law Blog

Hmmm. Lemme think about that one.

BTW, I needed a proxy to get here. Am I special, or did I miss something?

The classic example I like to use for this was APP's illegal logging operations in Yunnan. After a national campaign (2004-05), the central govt declared illegal logging had been halted. Surprise surprise this turned out not to be the case, but when campaigners began to point this out the central authorities ended up backing the provincial government in silencing the campaign. More on it from Asia Times ( http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/GH09Ad02.html )

With the Hangzhou Zhongce tire problem looming large now, one would think this would be an ideal time for the "center" to initiate a nationwide campaign of corporate responsibility. Slogans and all. However, if the center does this openly, it might amount, in their minds, to an unacceptable admission of prior wrongdoing, no matter whether negligent or intentional, no matter whether by the center or the provinces/municipalities. It is more convenient to find a culprit at the top and discipline the person, with the hope that the center is "sending a message" to the local authorities, and the domestic and foreign public. Unfortunately, as we see, systemwide reform of enforcement of standards of production is not changing fast enough (query whether there has been any change). This is not a matter of China-bashing, and it would be a severe mistake to oversimplify the situation as such, by China or others. It is a function of (1) a failure of creation and enforcement of appropriate and adequate standards; and (2)the time lag in identifying problems in the planning and production of the massive quantity of exports. We in the USA saw such problems arise on a grand scale a century ago during our explosive growth, and great novels describing the industrial abuses, social movements, legislation, and landmark judicial decisions were born of that experience. I am optimistic that the Mandate of Heaven will stay with the current establishment in China so long as it responsibly adapts to changing circumstances.

Talking with a lot of people in China, I've found that often people are cynical about the central government, pessimistic about their chances for getting justice, it's just that they have no other real options or hope, and the center does respond often enough so that people have a small glimmer of hope that keeps people from wanting to overturn the system.

One thing to note is that I disagree that the center is unable or unwilling to act because lack of vigor. What happens is that Wen Jiabao simply cannot snap his fingers and have something happen, and I think it would be a *bad* situation if Wen Jiabao could do that. You really want some level of tension and conflict between the center and local officials so that no one gets too powerful.

Also, I think that people often tend to see elections as a panacea to governance problems, when they really aren't (look at the Philliphines). Ironically, elections function in the United States as something of a "glimmer of hope" that keep people from rebelling. Your odds of getting the government to change a policy by running for office and unseating an incumbent are really quite low. It happens from time to time, but it doesn't happen that often. As with China, if you want to do something political in the United States, your best bet is to hire a lobbyist that knows how to work the system.

However, the "Mr. Smith goes to Washington" myth keeps people from rebelling against the system, just like the "Mr. Chen goes to Beijing" myth works in China. In the United States, just like in China, the political system will ignore you if you are by yourself, and to get anything done you need to organize. The US system is "better" because people have had a few hundred years to work out rules that keep the system away from the extremes of both anarchy and tyranny, but I do think that China will work out these sorts of rules over the next few decades.

A recently published book �Grassroots Political Reform in Contemporary China� edited by Elizabeth J. Perry and Merle Goldman talks about the tactics of grassroots organizations. One reason why some of these bottoms-up organizations have been able to grow and survive has to do with their unique and paradoxical strategy of what one of the book�s authors calls �protest opportunism.� In this strategy �troublemaking� tactics and �obedient� tactics are engaged in at the same time. Typically these groups make use of authorized channels of communication to air grievances with a strong tendency to overstep officially prescribed bounds. They employ the rhetoric of the powerful as they seek to locate and exploit divisions among the them. And they use strong symbolic tactics while employing finely tuned disruptions of business-as-usual. AIDS activism is case in point.

"I am optimistic that the Mandate of Heaven will stay with the current establishment in China so long as it responsibly adapts to changing circumstances."

Todd: I think you misunderstand the Mandate of Heaven, the Mandate is what the ruler(s) say it is, just as the Sun King of France, Holy Roman Emporers, Pharoahs, etc.

"However, the "Mr. Smith goes to Washington" myth keeps people from rebelling against the system, just like the "Mr. Chen goes to Beijing" myth works in China. In the United States, just like in China, the political system will ignore you if you are by yourself, and to get anything done you need to organize."

Mr. Smith embodies the ideal that someone with true passion for a just cause can rally others, inspire doubters and even win over opponents.
There is no Chinese equivalent, an ancient emporer named Wang Meng tried do disperse land among the peasantry long before communism or "Utopia" to promote harmony and increase general prosperity. He was stabbed in the back more times than Ceasar by the landed gentry who then lit candle wicks in his body fat as a joke.

The US system works because of the checks and balances of power, including power given to each citizen. These checks and balances keep people from being beaten by the police when they try to have their grievances redressed by the government or the courts. And the power of a free media is powerful in humiliating misbehaving officials.

Ooh, it's one tailor made for me. I completely agree with Twofish: people appeal to higher (i.e. more central) authorities not because they believe those authorities are more just, but because that's the only avenue open to them.

Interestingly, this has even started to extend beyond China's borders. A guy at the Xiamen PX march said to me, "It doesn't matter what happens here today. We're doing this so that the foreign media will take notice. That's the only way we can change anything." He apparently thinks that the foreign media can be a power higher even than the central government.

The Shanxi thing is a case in point. The reports have all be coming out these past few weeks, but this story is *a year old*. Parents have been hunting for their children and finding them in Shanxi for many months. Of course, they were in touch with local police, so all of this will have been logged and recorded. Can we say it's just bad Shanxi police for not telling Beijing what was going on in their illegal kilns? More accurate, I think, to picture Beijing with its hands clapped firmly over its eyes and ears, seeing no evil and hearing no evil.

Even now, when it's plain to anyone with half a braincell that hundreds of kids are still unaccounted for, Beijing is doing nothing. It has realised that this is yesterday's story. They've freed "hundreds" of people (from over 6,000 illegal kilns - you start to see the disjunct in the figures) and some children. They've "acted" and written their own headlines saying how impressive they are (check out this particularly odious example: news.qq.com/a/20070614/000709.htm). The problem is not solved, and the slavery will most likely start up again very soon. But the story is gone, and Wang Zhaoguo and his politburo mates are satisfied.

Twofish made excellent points up there. Gotta run for dinner appointment, will come back to give more detailed responce.

[q]More accurate, I think, to picture Beijing with its hands clapped firmly over its eyes and ears, seeing no evil and hearing no evil.[/q]

I don't think this is an accurate picture of what usually happens. Most government bureaucrats I've met in both China and the United States are decent people who are trying to deal with more problems that they can handle. Unless someone screams in their ears, it's someone else's problem because they are up to their ears in their own issues.

I've found that it is terribly important to sympathize with government bureaucrats, because if you don't acknowledge that some of them are trying to do what they can, then the good ones burn out.

The press is very useful at drawing attention to an issue. The problem with prioritizing problems with press reports is that people have a lot of interest in shocking, lurid details, but they lose interest quickly. Ultimately, newspapers print articles about these things because they sell papers, but if you run the same story over and over, people lose interest.

What is likely to happen isn't that Beijing is trying to intentionally bury the story. What I think will happen is that next month, another lurid and sensational story will come up demanding Beijing's attention, and what is happening in Shanxi is going to get forgotten.

nan: Mr. Smith embodies the ideal that someone with true passion for a just cause can rally others, inspire doubters and even win over opponents.
There is no Chinese equivalent.

Yes there is. The trouble with Mr. Smith (both Chinese and American) is that they function in a world of moral absolutes, and don't work too well in situations when you have to make tradeoffs and compromises.

Twofish:
The Chinese version of Mr. Smith ends up getting his teeth knocked out, sent to labor camps, decades in jail and house arrest after he is "reformed".
Or do I have to start listing various activists in China who met with such fates?

nan: And I personally know people that fought the system and managed to get something out of it.

If you stand up and say you are trying to overthrow the government, you will get stomped on hard. If your goal is something else (getting a piece of confiscated property returned, trying to get permission for construction), then you can usually get something.

I think Twofish says it pretty well. I'd only add that the petition system Pacific Narrows is referring to isn't really a good system for addressing injustice, and it's by nature undemocratic. Federal or central governments should not be in the business of rectifying individual cases - see Terri Schiavo. Federal or central courts, fine, but that's a whole different issue.

Sorry for coming late to the party, but I had to use a proxy to get in.

Nanhe said, "the Mandate is what the ruler(s) say it is, just as the Sun King of France, Holy Roman Emporers, Pharoahs, etc."

I would disagree with this and I would advise going back and rechecking your Mencius. The mandate superseded whoever the emperor might be. If he lost his throne, it was accepted that somehow he had lost the mandate. And it was one reason why rulers were always conscious of anything that might be construed as a portent of change. In fact in our undergraduate seminars, we point out that "The Mandate" was quite different from the European notion of the "divine right of kings."

As for the center/local (and I've gone 12 rounds with Dave on this before), we see much of the same rhetoric from the late Qing period as well. There was this idea that local officials might be venal and corrupt but if only the emperor could be made aware of this situation...

For this reason, local officials faced severe penalties for failure to report disturbances or problems in their areas. But even with this rule, the archives are full of dissembling local officials trying to play CYA whenever hardship, corruption, or disaster plagued their district.

By the end of the Qing, and especially after the 1911 revolution, local officials had started to abandon the ideology of Confucian service/reciprocity that in theory held their baser instincts in check. Moreover, when the center collapsed in the 1910s and 1920s, local officials lost all checks on their authority resulting in widespread misery.

This was one reason why the CCP tried after 1949 to reestablish strong central control over local officials and at the same time indoctrinate cadres with an ideology--this time Marxist-Leninist Revolution--that would encourage officials to serve selflessly. Sometimes this system kinda worked, and sometimes it really, really didn't but I do think that in the post-Deng "To Get Rich is Glorious" China, whatever tenuous ideological restraints may have kept avarice at bay have been frayed to their breaking point.

And so we get slave labor in Shanxi, and poison lakes in Jiangnan, and chemical spills, and defective products and on and on.

Bad form I know, but I did write a little something about this last October: "Banging the Grievance Drum"

davesgonechina --

You are special. Or as I kid my 9 year old, you are special in your own special way.

The GFFW (yes the extra "f" in there was intentional) has nabbed us but we are in the midst of a workaround and expect to be back up in China by tomorrow (Monday at the latest), twice as good as before.

Duncan --

Good example, but it only takes us halfway. I do not doubt that Beijing does not appreciate it when its "goodness" is questioned, but is there "goodness" there or is that a complete myth. I think there is, just as I think there is in Washington DC. It is the goodness enforced by a constituency.

Todd Platek --

I buy all that. The third season of Deadwood came out last week and I have been wholly immersed in it. Sometimes I think I learn more about Chinese governance through that show than anywhere else. Just going with your US history reference.

Twofish --

Man, that is a cynical view of democracy to which I cannot abide. I hold a very cynical view of politicians and I do not for a moment think one individual holds much sway, but the desires of one individual are so often the desires of many individuals and voting the bums out can work. So what if it only happens 20% of the time and not 50%, the 20% can still strike real fear.

Alfred J. Fortin --

Very interesting and makes good sense. Thanks for checking in.

nh --

There you go again, saying something pretty darn sensible. Kudos.

Phil --

I pretty much agree with you, but I still believe Beijing hates things like Shanxi because it embarrasses them and weakens their legitimacy. Beijing is smart and it knows it is in its own interest to prevent a Shanxi II. Right?

Handan --

Good food?

TwoFish --

You make a very interesting point about the need to sympathize with government bureaucrats. I never thought of it that way.

Those who function in a world of moral absolutes are oftentimes great effecters of change. Now I agree they should not be Presidents, but good can certainly result from them. Were Martin Luther King and Mahatma Ghandi moral absolutists?

nh --

True enough, but are you forgetting people like Martin Luther King?

Twofish --

Yes, oftentimes true.

davesgonechina --

Good point.

Jeremiah --

I'm warning you, I watched a TV show on the Great Wall the other day so my knowledge of the Qing Dynasty now rivals yours.

I think you are right and I do not think it bad form to refer to a relevant document. Not at all.

Relevant paper

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=995330

In the case of MLK and Gandhi, both were willing to negotiate and compromise with what was at times an unjust government, and neither demonized their political opponents. This is different from the "moral absolutism" that I've seen from democracy activists.

As far as my views on democracy. It's been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all of the others, and that's something I do believe in. The problem with using the example of MLK and Gandhi is that most issues in government involve things in which different people have different legitimate interests, issues in which most people don't care about, or complex issues that aren't solvable with an obvious, easy fix.

Interestingly, the one thing that I strongly disagree with is that one person can't make a difference. One problem with the "heroic model of politics" is that it implies that one has to be a Gandhi to get anything done in politics and most people aren't Gandhi's. Knowledge is power, and the knowledge on how political systems work, and how to effectively lobby one's interests isn't particularly difficult to come by.

One of the points that the paper that I cited makes is that protests help the government monitor officials, but for that to work, it's necessary to distinguish between "loyalist" protests which the government would like to tolerate or even encourage and "revolutionary" ones, which threaten the government.

Invoking loyalty to the emperor/party is a way of identifying oneself as a "loyalist". Saying good things about the Premier might not get you any help, but saying nasty things about him will have the central government come crashing down on you.

Twofish --

"In the case of MLK and Gandhi, both were willing to negotiate and compromise with what was at times an unjust government, and neither demonized their political opponents. This is different from the "moral absolutism" that I've seen from democracy activists."

I am sure there are plenty of democracy activists willing to compromise as much as MLK and Gandhi.

Bit late coming back to this, but I am struck by a horrible (and probably overly cynical) thought.

"Beijing is smart and it knows it is in its own interest to prevent a Shanxi II. Right?"

I wonder. I just went and read some of the commentary that's been coming out on this, and it's unbelievable stuff. This from Danwei's translation of a blog"

"After the exposure of the situation, Zhongnanhai was furious. The State Council held emergency sessions, the Shanxi government launched sweeping searches, the underground slaves were rescued, the forces of evil were arrested..."

Don't you wonder if this story doesn't actually help Beijing? Once again the white knights storming in to sort out local problems. As Jeremiah says above, *the* political narrative in China is that you need a strong centre to prevent chaos and misery. And doesn't the Shanxi case (as it's played out in the media) just confirm that story? You face a stark choice: go along with Hu and the gang, or your children will be in slavery.

Now, I'm not so jaded as to actually imagine that there is someone sitting in Beijing plotting crime and natural disaster at a local level so that the Beijing stormtroopers can look good. I just want to raise the question of ___cui bono___?

Some children and slaves have benefited, but I haven't seen any reports that make me think the problem has really been uprooted. Heng Tinghan was the scapegoat representing a lot of gangbosses who slipped through the net. Shanxi authorities have lost some face, and temporarily some income. The big winner in this case is heroic Beijing, once again portraying itself in the media the only bastion against the nastiness (that lurks inside every Chinese person - which is why democracy would be a disaster).

That might all be a bit rhetorical - but I'm reading this as a question of rhetoric and image.

I thought the point of a dictatorship was so this stuff didnt happen? What happened to the old line thats says democracy doesnt work because its too hard to control everyting and decisions take a long time. When have you ever seen a Chinese leader make a quick decision and eradicate crap like this?

This kind of thing will keep on happening unless Chinese people take responsibility for their own countries future instead of having blind faith in their government. Those who don't take responsibility for thier future cannot have one (and don't deserve one).