【经济学人】Dissent in China——A stab at reform

krypton

Dissent in China
A stab at reform
http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13788686

Jun 4th 2009 | BEIJING From The Economist print edition

Resisting nasty officials proves popular

A PEDICURIST in a mountain town in central China has become a heroine to many of the country’s internet-users and a bane to many bureaucrats. The woman, Deng Yujiao, has been accused of killing an official who allegedly attempted to molest her. Her story has unleashed an outpouring of public contempt for the sleaze that surrounds so many civil servants.

The police say Ms Deng, who is 21, stabbed the official on May 10th in the health centre of a hotel where she worked in the town of Yesanguan in the province of Hubei. Also present were two of his colleagues, one of whom was injured. The official who died had allegedly asked Ms Deng to perform “special services”, ie, sex, and was angered by her refusal. At first the police accused Ms Deng of murder, but later revised the charge to one of using excessive force to defend herself. She has returned home, under police surveillance, while prosecutors decide what to do.

The toning down of the charges is a big concession. In China police rarely change their minds and defendants are scarcely ever found innocent. Some internet commentators have hailed it as a victory for public opinion. Ms Deng’s case has been widely likened to that of Yang Jia, a man who won extraordinary public sympathy after he killed six policemen in Shanghai in July last year. Both Mr Yang and Ms Deng are seen as having been driven over the edge by brutish, arrogant officialdom. Mr Yang was executed last November.

The timing of this latest internet frenzy is awkward for the government. Recently it has been tightening controls on the internet, a sign of concern over the 20th anniversary on June 4th of the bloody suppression of the Tiananmen Square democracy movement. It has blocked access to sensitive blogs as well as to Twitter, an instant social-networking service. One Chinese newspaper, Global Times, did break ranks by publishing a story on the anniversary. It called the 1989 crackdown a “sensitive topic”, but said Chinese people were now “much more apathetic” about politics.

Indeed, for many young urban Chinese—ie, most of the country’s internet-users—cases such as Ms Deng’s are of far greater interest than the killings in Beijing in 1989. On June 1st Liaowang, a magazine published by the official news agency, Xinhua, reported that “mass incidents” involving the internet could rapidly damage the Communist Party’s image among millions of people. Many local officials, it said, lacked the ability to respond effectively.

In Yesanguan the knee-jerk response of the local government was to try to keep reporters away from Ms Deng. Some Chinese journalists complain of being beaten. Officials whisked Ms Deng off to a mental asylum, saying that antidepressant pills found in her bag showed she was psychologically unstable. But the public response, and that of more liberal-minded Chinese newspapers, prompted a change of attitude. On May 31st the government announced that the two surviving officials had been sacked. All three had worked for a local business-promotion office.


An armless act of protest  AFP

Unnamed grassroots officials quoted by Liaowang said that recent internet uproars reflected changes in the “social mood” amid the global financial crisis. One sign of this, they said, was the greater tendency of internet users to take action rather than simply vent their anger online. It did not mention the case of Ms Deng, but her story has prompted at least two small public protests, involving performance art, by women’s-rights activists in Beijing (see picture) and the central city of Wuhan.

The unrest in China 20 years ago was also fuelled by anger over corruption and other official misconduct. But the party has less to fear now. Discontent is mainly directed at the actions of local bureaucrats rather than national leaders. The Deng Yujiao case has not led to calls for an end to one-party rule, only for more enlightened government. To the extent that officials do sometimes cave in to online sentiment, change is already happening. The danger now, as an article on a Chinese legal website argued, is of trials by the media.

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