Sunday 31 January 2010

Fighting Words

Jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo reveals the extent of official corruption in his new book and argues reform is only a matter of time

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Guanyu said...

Fighting Words

Jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo reveals the extent of official corruption in his new book and argues reform is only a matter of time

Mark O’Neill
31 January 2010

“For those in power, the aim of the reforms is to save and consolidate the dictatorship of the Communist Party and turn the market economy into one they control. They want to reap the greatest possible benefits for the special interest groups that link officials and the rich”.

These words of Liu Xiaobo, written in January last year, are part of the reason why a Beijing court sentenced him on Christmas Day to 11 years in jail for “inciting subversion of state power”.

The sentence sparked a wave of protests in the west, with the United States and the European Union calling for his unconditional release, and demonstrations on his behalf in Hong Kong and Taiwan, saying that he is a political prisoner.

The best way to understand the government’s thinking is to read Lui’s Da Guo Chen Lun (Decline of a Great Power), which has just been published by the Asian Culture Company of Taipei.

The book is a damning indictment of the China of 2010, which he describes as a dictatorship controlled by leaders in alliance with the wealthy who between them control the nation’s resources and manipulate the laws and economy to their own advantage.

It paints a picture of a country in which wealth and power are concentrated in the hands of a small cabal at the top of a narrow pyramid, with hundreds of millions of farmers and workers at the bottom - a country closer to Brazil and Argentina with their extremes of wealth and poverty than the egalitarian democracies of Japan, Taiwan and northern Europe.

Liu writes: “Since the start of the reform process, the government has kept for itself and the rich class the most profitable industries - like land development, power, telecommunications, finance and transport - through laws and special licences, while giving to the market industries with low profitability.

“The law in China is the law of the dictator. The public has no system of legal protection and no ability to balance, supervise or restrain the ruling class. The law has been changed into an instrument for the will and interests of this ruling class and a licence for ‘legal corruption’. The tax income of this dictatorship has become ‘legal plunder’ and the high-profit monopolies and special-licence businesses a legal theft of public wealth.”

He says that this “official corruption”, in the form of income from monopolies and special licences, far exceeds the “illegal corruption” which the media reports in the arrest of officials.

One example he gives of this “red-black” alliance between officials and the rich is the licensing system for urban taxis; protests against it led to a wave of strikes in several cities in the autumn of 2008.

The companies buy a vehicle and rent it to a driver for eight years; from the monthly rent he pays, they recoup their investment within two years, meaning six years of pure profit. The driver bears the costs of petrol, repairs and insurance and earns 2,000 yuan (HK$2,275) a month for a 10 to 12-hour day.

“This is not a real market economy but an example of a market controlled by those in power, a market that discriminates against common people ... in a healthy market economy, there is an anti-monopoly law. In China, the government uses the legal system to create monopolies with high profits,” Liu says.

The most important asset is land. Liu says that no dynasty in history has treated farmers with the same violence and exploitation as the Communist Party. They accounted for the vast majority of the estimated 36 million who starved to death in the Great Famine of 1959-61.

Guanyu said...

“The party used the most contemptible and deceitful methods. To obtain power, it promised farmers ownership of the land. Then it took it over and formed collectives. After the reforms of 1978, the farmers have the right to use the land but ownership remains with the collective. The land beneath our feet does not belong to the state or the collective but the farmers, whose ancestors have cultivated it over the centuries.”

He says that farmers are the most powerless section of society, with no voice, no organisation and no channel for legal complaint other than the centuries-old system of petition, which rarely succeeds in righting a grievance.

Disputes over land are the cause of most large-scale protests between farmers and the government, such as the one in Shanwei, Guangdong province, in December 2005: the authorities used more than 1,000 police and armed police to suppress thousands of protesters. Using live ammunition, they killed at least three and arrested several hundred people.

Liu quoted an open letter from 250 villagers in Yixing, Jiangsu, who protested against the compulsory purchase of their land to build hotels, restaurants, dance halls and a shopping street.

“What have they to do with the public good and the interests of farmers? We want to ask: this ‘country’ is whose country? The ‘public interest’ is whose public interest? This ‘collective’ is whose collective? All the farmers whose land is being confiscated signed a public petition against it but the village head and party chief say that they ‘represent the collective’,” the farmers wrote.

In 1978, farmers in Fengyang, a poor district of Anhui, played a critical role in the reform process. They abolished their collective - a politically dangerous move at that time - and began to cultivate their own plots. Noting the increased output, the central government extended the change to the whole country - and began the dramatic reforms of the past 30 years.

“The action of the Anhui farmers was the first revolution in their liberation and set off the process of economic reform in China,” Liu says. “The second revolution, more important than the first, will be the farmers taking over their land.”

In December 2007, farmers in districts of Heilongjiang, Shaanxi and Jiangsu issued public declarations that they were taking ownership of the land they farmed - movements that were rapidly suppressed by the government.

“These were not only declarations by farmers for their land but a declaration of farmers’ rights,” Liu says.

He sees the reform process of the past 30 years as one of struggle between this alliance of the government and the rich and the people they govern.

“Officials want to allow the rich to seize the wealth of the people and divide it with them. Civil society wants a real market economy and a balance between privatisation and social justice.

“Officials want only to reform the economy and not politics. Civil society has always demanded a balance between reform of the economy and the political system. This blockage of political reform results in bottlenecks in the reform and the danger of social divisions. The official purpose of the reforms is ‘a comfortable society’, but the desire of the public is democracy, rule of law and constitutional government. No matter how fearful the Communists are and what obstacles they put up, reform of the political system is inevitable.”

He sees the current era as a time of great danger for the government and the party, since the leaders do not have the revolutionary and military credentials of the generation of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping.

“A single incident could lead again to mass protest by the public. The Communist Party leaders do not have the absolute authority [of their predecessors] nor total control of the military. They could not use the violent oppression of Deng in 1989.”

Guanyu said...

Given this lack of authority and the lessons of 1989, a similar protest movement could have a different outcome. “Part of the Communist army is very likely to disobey orders, forcing the government to make major concessions to public opinion. For its long-term survival, the party must find a new source of legitimacy, based on the universal values of human rights, freedom and democracy.”