The Cross Strait Times

Fighting pirates, Charter 08, and the future

December 26th, 2008

As I write this, the PRC is sending its navy to the coast of Somalia, to do its part in contributing to the stability of the global community. I think it’s refreshing that Beijing, usually isolationist, is stepping up to take on more of the world’s responsibilities. Surely, part of the PRC’s motivation must come from self-interest. The Red Sea is a valuable trade link connecting East Asia with Europe, and rerouting ships around Africa means using more fuel and reaping fewer profits. But it is from knowing one’s self-interest can one be aware of the interests of others. As the PRC wants to be a regional power, by contributing to the anti-piracy fight it is starting to use its power responsibly. A small step, but at least it’s been taken.

Charter 08 by now is probably old news to anyone reading this blog. I admire their outspokenness and agree that democracy must come to China. Interestingly, only one arrest so far has happened as a result of 300 intellectuals signing this document. Perhaps Beijing has learned that withholding the iron fist prevents PR disasters, but it’s also led to a lot more people being unafraid to come out in support of the controversial document.

The other side: a leftist argument calling for the maintenance of a Communist “tutelage” (quotes mine) until Chinese civil society is ready for democracy. The link brings up real problems with civil society in Taiwan, but I don’t think it really should stop democracy from being implemented. The idea that young democracy and an inexperienced electorate could be hijacked by fascists, however, is a legitimate concern.

Is democracy in the Mainland inevitable? I will say some form of “freer government” definitely is. That is, if the current regime intends to continue trade further its ambitions of making the PRC a global player. Naysayers who think that China will remain authoritarian “forever” while becoming a major economic and trading world power tend to forget their history and geography.

Island and peninsular countries with long coastlines and busy, open ports are susceptible to new ideas with people freely going in and out, relying on businesses and a multitude of institutions that keep government in check. As a result, these countries become progressive and free thinking due to economic competition and the free flow of ideas (e.g., Western Europe).
Landlocked countries (or countries with frozen coastlines) are less likely to have people move freely and exchange ideas because transportation limitations don’t allow it. Government becomes the main authority of reliance because trade and wealth generation is harder without trade ports. As a result, the country trends towards authoritarianism (e.g., Russia).

What does this say about China? China has a long eastern coastline and the rest is bound by land, mostly mountains and desert. This results in what tdaxp calls a “red-blue divide” that people in the US are probably familiar with [1]. New ideas are constantly coming into China through trade, making democracy, or something like it, pretty much inevitable. The only way the Communist Party can prevent the spread of democratic ideals is by shutting off China from the rest of the world in an imitation of North Korea. Doing so will destroy China’s and the world’s economy, plummeting the Chinese people into poverty and obviating the Communists’ source of governmental legitimacy. Of course, such a scenario will never happen. The Communists may want to hold onto their power, but they are not stupid. China must engage the world through trade and politics to become the great power that its leaders want China to be. Geography is destiny, and the Communist Party will have to manage a democratic transition.

How to manage the transition?

I propose that the CCP actually groom an opposition party into existence to ensure a stable back-and-forth handover between parties. There are two ways to go about this. One is to turn the factions within the CCP into de facto parties with separate names that people can vote for. The other is to build up the KMT as an alternative party by making the Revolutionary Committee of the KMT the mainland branch of Taiwan’s KMT. As evidenced by the forums between the CCP and KMT, the two parties are capitalistic and bureaucratic enough (and arguably, corrupt enough) to understand each other. The two can then set up a framework that passes the power between the two sides, easing China into a two-party system while preventing state collapse as seen in the former USSR and Qing Dynasty. Hopefully the eventual competition between the parties will grind the corruption out of both sides, but hey, a political party without corruption ain’t a party, right?

[1] http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2008/08/14/russia-is-bad.html

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Tibetan window of opportunity closing

November 9th, 2008

The Dalai Lama issued a recent statement saying that his hope of reaching a compromise with the PRC government is “thinning, thinning, thinning” and is about to give up. He has stated that he wants to turn the issue of Tibet’s future to the Tibetan people. Now, amongst the Tibetan people is a wide political spectrum: of course, there are those who support the Dalai Lama’s “greater autonomy” call, but on the very extreme are those calling for Tibetan independence, something that the Dalai Lama himself has renounced.

Beijing, instead of offering more dialogue, has only blasted the Dalai Lama for making such statements. They also have not been willing to disclose the details of the negotiations going on right now about Tibet. Does the PRC understand that their approach to the Tibetan situation is not helpful and must be looked at from another point of view? Do they know that without actively working on a compromise with the Dalai Lama, and with the Dalai Lama handing the power to decide Tibet’s future to the people (who obviously include pro-independence supporters), that future agreements will be harder to reach?

Granted, I don’t think all of the Dalai Lama’s requests are workable (for example, an ethnically pure Tibetan state), but compromises on both sides can lead to a win-win situation. That is the true spirit of the Dalai Lama’s pleas. The Dalai Lama himself has OKed Tibet being a part of China, he just wants the political atmosphere to change. He sees the economic benefits and national security Tibet gets from being Chinese, but the way things are done now must change to improve living conditions.

Perhaps the idea that pro-Tibetan independence supporters will take matters into their own hands is the stick necessary to balance out the Dalai Lama’s carrot for a mutually agreeable Tibet policy.

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The Atlantic: Their Own Worst Enemy

October 28th, 2008

The Atlantic: “Their Own Worst Enemy”

October 28, 2008

Comment: Lots of great insight into what’s wrong with the PRC PR machine. Great improvements in the quality of life are happening in the Mainland and no one outside the PRC seems to know about them; all that people ever hear are about the flaws in the current system. A PRC that can gauge and understand international opinions will be a PRC that can assume a responsible leadership role in the world.

The Atlantic: “Their Own Worst Enemy”

AS CHINA PREPARES to take its place as the world’s dominant power, it faces confounding obstacles: its insularity and sheer stupidity in delivering the genuine good news about its own progress.

by James Fallows

After two years in China, there are still so many things I can’t figure out. Is it really true, as is always rumored but never proved, that the Chinese military runs most of the pirate-DVD business—which would in turn explain why that business is so difficult to control? At what point in Chinese culture did it become mandatory for business and political leaders to dye away every gray hair, so that gatherings of powerful men in their 50s and up are seas of perfect pitch-black heads? How can corporations and government agencies invest huge sums producing annual reports and brochures and advertisements in English, yet manifestly never bother to ask a native English speaker whether they’ve made some howler-style mistake? (Last year, a museum in Shanghai put on a highly publicized exhibit of photos from the Three Gorges Dam area. In front, elegant banners said in six-foot-high letters The Three Georges.) Why do Beijing taxi drivers almost never have maps—and almost always have their own crates or buckets filling the trunks of their cars when they pick up baggage-laden passengers at the airport? I could go on.

But here is by far the most important of these mysteries: How can official China possibly do such a clumsy and self-defeating job of presenting itself to the world? China, like any big, complex country, is a mixture of goods and bads. But I have rarely seen a governing and “communications” structure as consistent in hiding the good sides and highlighting the bad.

I come across examples every day, but let me start with a publicly reported event. Early this year, I learned of a tantalizing piece of news about an unpublicized government plan for the Beijing Olympics. In a conversation with someone involved in the preparations, I learned of a brilliant scheme to blunt potential foreign criticism during the Games. The Chinese government had drawn up a list of hotels, work spaces, Internet cafés, and other places where visiting journalists and dignitaries were most likely to use the Internet. At those places, and only there, normal “Great Firewall” restrictions would be removed during the Olympics. The idea, as I pointed out in an article about Chinese controls (“‘The Connection Has Been Reset,’” March Atlantic), was to make foreigners happier during their visit—and likelier to tell friends back home that, based on what they’d seen on their own computer screens, China was a much more open place than they had heard. This was subtle influence of the sort that would have made strategists from Sun Tzu onward proud.

The scheme displayed a sophisticated insight into outsiders’ mentality and interests. It recognized that foreigners, especially reporters, like being able to poke around unsupervised, try harder to see anything they’re told is out-of-bounds, and place extra weight on things they believe they have found without guidance. By saying nothing at all about this plan, the government could let influential visitors “discover” how freely information was flowing in China, with all that that implied. In exchange, the government would give up absolutely nothing. If visiting dignitaries, athletes, and commentators searched for a “Free Tibet” site or found porn that is usually banned in China, what’s the harm? They had seen worse back at home.

When the Olympics actually started, things did not go exactly according to plan. As soon as journalists began checking in at their Olympic hotels, they began complaining about all the Web sites they couldn’t reach. Chinese officials replied woodenly that this was China, and established Chinese procedures must be obeyed: Were the arrogant foreigners somehow suggesting that they were too good to comply with China’s sovereign laws? Unlike the brilliant advance scheme, all this was reported.

After huddling with officials from the International Olympic Committee, who had been touting China’s commitment to free information flow during the Games, the Chinese government quietly reversed its stance. For a few days, controls seemed to have been lifted for Internet users in many parts of Beijing—in my apartment, far from the main Olympic areas, I could get to usually blocked sites, like any BlogSpot blog, without using a Virtual Private Network (VPN). Eventually the controls came back on for everyone except users in the special Olympic areas. By then the Chinese government had turned a potential PR masterstroke into a fiasco. Now what the foreign visitors could tell friends back home was that they knew firsthand that China’s Internet is indeed censored, that its government could casually break its promise of free information flow during the Games, and that foreign complaints could bully it back into line.

From the outside, this blunder might not seem noteworthy or surprising, given the dim image of the Chinese government generally conveyed in the Western press. It might not even be thought of as a blunder—rather, as a sign that the government had, for once, been caught trying to sneak out of its commitments and repress whatever it could. To me it was puzzling because of its sheer stupidity: Did they think none of the 10,000 foreign reporters would notice? Did they think there was anything to gain?

The government’s decision was more complicated but even more damaging in another celebrated Olympics case, this one the most blatantly Orwellian: the offer to open three areas for “authorized protests” during the Olympics—followed by the rejection of every single request to hold a demonstration, and the arrest of several people who asked. It’s true that even if China is wide-open in many ways, public demonstrations that might lead to organized political opposition are, in effect, taboo. But why guarantee international criticism by opening the zones in the first place? Who could have thought this was a good idea?

Such self-inflicted damage occurs routinely, without the pressure of the Olympics. Whenever a Chinese official or the state-run Xinhua News Agency puts out a release in English calling the Dalai Lama “a jackal clad in Buddhist monk’s robes” or a man “with a human face and the heart of a beast,” it only builds international sympathy for him and members of his “splittist clique.” A special exhibit about Tibet in Beijing’s Cultural Palace of Minorities this year illustrated the blessings of China’s supervision by showing photos of grinning Tibetans opening refrigerators full of beer, and of new factories including a cement plant in Lhasa. Such basic material improvements are huge parts of the success story modern China has to tell. But the exhibit revealed total naïveté in dealing with the complaints about religious freedom made by the “Dalai clique.” It was as if the government had hired The Onion as its image consultant.

Let’s assume for the sake of argument that reporters are viewed with suspicion or loathing by the political or business leaders they cover. That doesn’t keep governments in many countries from understanding the crass value of cultivating the press. Anyone with experience in neighboring South Korea, Taiwan, or Japan knows how skillful their business-governmental establishments are at mounting “charm offensives” to make influential foreigners feel cosseted and part of the team. Official China sometimes launches a successful charm offensive on visiting dignitaries. When it comes to dealing with foreign reporters—who after all will do much to shape the outside world’s view of their country—Chinese spokesmen and spinners barely seem to try. Maybe I’m biased; my application for a journalist visa to China was turned down because of “uncertainty” about what I might be looking for in the country (I have been here on other kinds of visas). But China’s press policy seems similar to, say, Dick Cheney’s (if without the purposeful stiff-arming) and reflects the same view—that scrutiny from the Western press is not really necessary. I’m convinced that usually these are blunders rather than calculated manipulation.

This is inept on China’s part. Why do I consider it puzzling? Because of two additional facts I would not have guessed before coming to China: it’s a better country than its leaders and spokesmen make it seem, and those same leaders look more impressive in their home territory.

Almost everything the outside world thinks is wrong with China is indeed a genuine problem. Perhaps not the most extreme allegations, of large-scale forced organ-harvesting and similar barbarities. But brutal extremes of wealth and poverty? Arbitrary and prolonged detentions for those who rock the boat? Dangerous working conditions? Factories that take shortcuts on health and safety standards? Me-first materialism and an absence of ethics? I’ve met people affected by every problem on the list, and more.

But China’s reality includes more than its defects. Most people are far better off than they were 20 years ago, and they are generally optimistic about what life will hold 20 years from now. This summer’s Pew Global Attitudes Project finding that 86 percent of the Chinese public was satisfied with the country’s overall direction—the highest of all the countries surveyed—was not some enforced or robotic consensus. It rings true with most of what I’ve seen in cities and across most of the country’s provinces and autonomous regions, something I wouldn’t have guessed from afar.

Americans are used to the idea that a country’s problems don’t tell its entire story. When I lived in Japan, I had to reassure fearful travelers to America that not every street corner had a daily drive-by shooting and not every passing stranger would beat them up out of bigotry. When foreigners travel or study in America, they usually put the problems in perspective and come to see the offsetting virtues and strengths. For all the differences between modern China and America, most outsiders go through a similar process here: they see that China is a country with huge problems but also one with great strengths and openness.

It’s authoritarian, sure—and you put yourself at great risk if you cross the government in the several areas it considers sacrosanct, from media control to “national security” in the broadest sense. (The closest I have come to trouble with the law was when I stopped to tie my shoe on Chang’an Boulevard, near Tiananmen Square in Beijing—and obliviously put my foot on what turned out to be a low pedestal around the main flagpole at Xinhua Gate, outside the headquarters of the country’s ruling State Council. Three guards rushed at me and pushed me away to end this sacrilege.) But China is full of conflicting trends and impulses, every generalization about it is both true and false, and it is genuinely diverse in a way the Stalin-esque official line rarely conveys.

One other Olympics example: the opening ceremonies paid homage to China’s harmonious embrace of its minority peoples with a giant national flag carried in by 56 children, each dressed in the native costume of one of China’s recognized minority groups, including Tibetans, Mongolians, and Uighurs. Contrary to initial assurances from Chinese officials, it turned out that every one of the children was from the country’s ethnic majority, Han Chinese. This was reminiscent of Western practices of yesteryear, as when Al Jolson wore blackface or the Swedish actor Warner Oland was cast as Charlie Chan in 1930s films. And it was criticized by the Western sensibilities of today.

Another element of the mystery is the deftness gap. Inside the country, China’s national leadership rarely seems as tin-eared as it is when dealing with the outside world. National-level democracy might come to China or it might not—ever. No one can be sure. But from the national level down to villages, where local officials are now elected, the government is by all reports becoming accountable in ways it wasn’t before. As farmers have struggled financially, a long-standing agricultural tax has been removed. As migrant workers have become an exploited underclass in big cities, hukou (residence-permit) rules have been liberalized so that people can get medical care and send their children to school without having to return to their “official” residence back in the countryside. Whenever necessary, the government turns to repression, but that’s usually not the first response.

The system prides itself on learning about problems as they arise and relieving social pressure before it erupts. In this regard it learned a lesson earlier this year, when its reaction to the first big natural disaster of 2008 turned into its own version of Hurricane Katrina. Unusual blizzards in central and southern China paralyzed roads and rail lines, and stranded millions of people traveling home for the Chinese New Year holidays; the central government seemed taken by surprise and was slow to respond. That didn’t happen with the next disaster, three months later. When the Sichuan earthquake occurred, Premier Wen Jiabao was on an airplane to the stricken area the same afternoon.

So I return to the puzzle: Why does a society that, like America, impresses most people who spend time here project such a poor image and scare people as much as it attracts them? Why do China’s leaders, who survive partly by listening to their own people, develop such tin ears when dealing with the outside world? I don’t pretend to have a solution. But here are some possible explanations, and some reasons why the situation matters to people other than the misunderstood Chinese.

There is no politer way to put the main problem than to call it “ignorance.” Most Americans are parochial, but (surprise!) most Chinese and their leaders are more so. American politicians may not be good at understanding foreign sensitivities or phrasing their arguments in ways likely to be effective around the world, as foreigners have mentioned once or twice in recent years. But collectively they understand that America is part of an ongoing, centuries-long, worldwide experiment and discussion about political systems and human values, and that making their case well matters.

After the 9/11 attacks, America went through a round of “Why do they hate us?” inquiry. Whether or not that brought the United States closer to understanding its problems in parts of the Islamic world, it did represent a more serious effort to understand how the country was seen than anything I have heard of in China. When the Olympic torch relay this spring was plagued by boos and protests over Tibet in places ranging from France to the United States, the reaction at every level of the Chinese system seemed to be not just insult but genuine shock. Most Chinese people were familiar only with the idea that China has always been a generous elder brother to the (often ungrateful) Tibetans. By all evidence, no one in command anticipated or prepared for this ugly response. The same Pew survey that said most Chinese felt good about their country also found that they thought the rest of the world shared their view. That belief is touching, especially considering how much of China’s history is marked by episodes of its feeling unloved and victimized. Unfortunately, it is also wrong. In many of the countries surveyed, China’s popularity and reputation were low and falling. According to a report last year by Joshua Cooper Ramo of Kissinger Associates, most people in China considered their country very “trustworthy.” Most people outside China thought the country was not trustworthy at all.

“The underlying problem is that very few people in China really understand how foreign opinion works, what the outside world reacts to and why,” Sidney Rittenberg told me. Rittenberg is in a position to judge. He came to China with the U.S. Army in 1945 and spent 35 years here, including 16 in prison for suspected disloyalty to Chairman Mao. “Now very few people understand the importance of foreign opinion to China”—that is, the damage China does to itself by locking up those who apply for demonstration permits, or insisting on “jackal” talk.

During the Chinese Communist Party’s rise to power and the civil war against Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists through the 1940s, the coterie around Mao knew how to spin the outside world, because they had to. One important goal was what Mao called “roping the whale”: keeping the United States from intervening directly on Chiang’s side. The future prime minister and foreign minister Zhou Enlai was especially skilled at handling foreigners. “He laid out battle plans and political strategies, in advance, with remarkable clarity,” the muckraker Jack Anderson, who was a cub reporter in China, said of Zhou in his memoirs. “These truths made him so believable that a reporter would be inclined to accept his assurances, too, that the Chinese Communists weren’t really Communists but just agrarian reformers.”

Of course, most official voices of China now have the opposite effect. Their minor, provable lies—the sky is blue, no one wants to protest—inevitably build mistrust of larger claims that are closer to being true. And those are the claims the government most wants the world to listen to: that the country is moving forward and is less repressive and more open than official actions and explanations (or lack of them) make China seem. Many Chinese who have seen the world are very canny about it, and have just the skills government spokesmen lack—for instance, understanding the root of foreign concerns and addressing them not with special pleading (“This is China…”) but on their own terms. Worldly Chinese demonstrate this every day in the businesses, universities, and nongovernmental organizations where they generally work. But the closer Chinese officials are to centers of political power, the less they know what they don’t know about the world.

Even as the top leadership tries to expand its international exposure and experience, much of the country’s daily reality is determined by mayors and governors and police. “It’s like the local sheriff in the old days in South Carolina,” said Sidney Rittenberg, who grew up there. “He’d say, ‘They can talk and talk in Washington, but I’m the law down here.’” Thus one hypothesis for the embarrassment of the “authorized” protest sites during the Olympics: Hu Jintao’s vice president and heir apparent, Xi Jinping, was officially in charge of all preparations for the Games; hobnobbing with the IOC, he would see the payoff to China of allowing some people to protest. But the applications went to the local police, who had no interest in letting troublemakers congregate. A similar mix-up may well have led to the embarrassment over whether to open the Internet during the Olympics, and could also explain many of the other fumbles that get so much more attention than the news the government wants to give.

The Communist Party schools that train the country’s leadership are constantly expanding their curricula to meet the needs of the times; but for advancement in party ranks what matters is loyalty, predictability, and party-line conformity. The United States saw just how well a similar approach paid off in worldwide respect and effectiveness when it staffed its Embassy in Baghdad’s Green Zone mainly with people who followed the party line in Washington.

The damage China does to itself by its clumsy public presentation is obvious—though apparently not yet obvious enough to its leadership. For outsiders, the central problem is that a country that will inevitably have increasing and perhaps dominant influence on the world still has surprisingly little idea of how the world sees it. That, in turn, raises the possibility of blunders and unnecessary showdowns, and in general the predicament of a new world power stomping around, Gargantua-like, making onlookers tremble. The world has known this predicament before. It is what the previously established powers have feared about America, starting a hundred years ago and with periodic recurrences since then, most recently starting in March of 2003. Maybe that puts America in a good position to help China take this next step.

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Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the future of Chinese democracy

January 1st, 2008

A new year brings new hope.

The postponement of democracy in Hong Kong until 2017 is news that has rocked the Sinosphere and a disappointment to supporters of democracy. What do current trends hold for the future of Chinese democracy?

Taiwan has looked at Hong Kong as how “One Country, Two Systems” as an unsatisfactory arrangement that has not lived up to its hype. Despite the preservation of most social freedoms and unabated economic growth since 1997, democracy has been delayed, and Beijing still has the last word in the governance of the territory. The last two points make Taiwan particularly nervous, and Taiwan-based Hong Kong watchers have been particularly vigilant at calling out any PRC violations of Hong Kong’s social freedoms, which have been guaranteed to the special administrative region for 50 years.

Conversely, from the Mainland Chinese point of view, democracy on Taiwan hasn’t lived up to its hype either. Rival political parties are corrupt to the core - the KMT is now joined by the DPP in having stolen assets. Interparty competition that, in theory, sharpens the democratic process, in the short-term has led to political deadlock; while some point fingers at the Pan-Blues, the fact remains that the majority of Taiwanese voted them into the legislature (hence their majority), and are thus doing the job that the people appointed them to do. Furthermore, when the minority Pan-Greens don’t have enough votes to vote down a distasteful bill, they don’t debate endlessly or filibuster, instead, they resort to violence in the legislative hall against their Pan-Blue colleagues, making democracy in Taiwan an international mockery.

If that weren’t bad enough, the current DPP Chen administration has shown just as much desire as martial-law KMT regimes to curtail civil liberties for regime security. Their failure to do so was only due to the administration’s own lack of actual power. For example, the Chen administration has tried to curtail free speech by attempting to shut down the news station TVBS for exposing scandal after scandal in the Chen administration. Nevermind that TVBS’s own criticisms of the previous KMT regimes helped Chen into the presidential office in the first place.

Of course, Taiwan’s democracy has more merits than disadvantages. The end of the KMT-imposed martial law has led to people being able to live freer lives, and the peaceful transfer of power between political parties has upstaged any possible future uprisings or civil wars. The problem Taiwan has seems to be lack of civil society, where ethnic differences are easily exploited, legislative debates easily degenerate into fistfights, and supporters of ROC and ROT see each other as traitors instead of neighbors standing together for democracy. A civil society must form, as it surely must for Taiwan’s democracy to continue.

I have hope that such a civil society will form, and its development is inherent in the maturation of democracy. Short-term legislative deadlocks lead to long-term political competitions to gain the trust of the people and mutual cooperation to get things done. Even the global model for democracy, the United States, had its fair share of turbulence in its early years — just ask Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner. The United States in its maturity is a much more efficient, well-oiled democratic machine, even if it is still far from ideal. Likewise, a mature, civil democracy on Taiwan would be a much better inspiration for the future of China’s governance than the chaos, corruption, and lust for money and power that routinely make headlines in Taiwan.

As for Hong Kong, hopefully Beijing will rethink their strategy and see that there is no need to delay full democracy from 2012 to 2017. The PRC has many self-evident concerns about letting loose the tide of people power that comes with democracy; the Mainland is no stranger to mass protests gone ugly. Therefore, why the PRC would draw up a timetable for democracy and keep power with elite factions is understandable, but as far as a mature, stable, western-oriented place like Hong Kong, it is still paranoid.

But don’t forget: for the PRC, Hong Kong is their testing ground, their “great experiment,” for democracy. How Hong Kong develops would be a barometer for how democracy could be implemented on Mainland China. The PRC has stated time again that it plans to embrace Western-styled democracy, even if that plan is slated far, far into the future. Should democracy in Hong Kong succeed, as it surely will, we may see a peaceful transfer to democracy in Mainland China within our lifetimes.

But what does this mean for democracy in Mainland China?

A proposal: If Beijing is serious about wooing Taiwan, what about letting Hong Kong run its natural course to have democracy by 2012 and make Fujian the PRC testing ground for democracy? Fujian is the natural option: cultural and linguistic commonalities with Taiwan, not to mention geographic proximity. Encourage the growth of Fujian-based political parties, heck, even invite Taiwan’s political parties to come to Fujian to campaign, have local elections, and build democracy in Fujian. A democratic Fujian (provided that Three Links open) would blur a number of political differences and knock down barriers between Taiwan and Fujian, and by inference, Mainland China.

What will likely happen: In the short term, President Hu Jintao has promised to strengthen democracy within the Communist Party. Now the CPC, being as large as it is, has large factions within, at one extreme being the Maoist hardliners and the other extreme being those in favor of democratic socialism as practiced in Europe. Clearly, the CPC has no intention of giving up power in the immediate future for democracy to happen. What this could mean is that the factions within the CPC would act like rivalling political parties, and to vote for the faction that you support, you need to be a CPC member. Hence, a democratic process is born within the framework of a single-party. For clarity’s sake, here’s a theoretical chart.

Western-democratic equivalent / PRC equivalent
Voter enfranchisement = CPC membership
Political party = CPC faction
Party faction = faction within CPC faction

As intraparty democracy matures, the one-party framework could be removed to have the factions operate as full-fledged, separate political parties. While in my mind this scenario is not ideal, is it a method of ensuring stability and political choice as the PRC transitions towards full democracy. Ideally, I would like to see competing political parties, as I believe that be it CPC, KMT, or DPP, there is nothing inherently wrong with any of their ideologies, only in unopposed power. Any political party that has too much power and wants to remain in power can become brutal, no matter how idealistic its original intent. Any political party that used to be totalitarian can be tempered into just another, ordinary political party with competition keeping power in check. The KMT is an example of a party that has gone through all these evolutions.

The other aspect of Chinese democracy on the Mainland to keep in mind is Mainland China’s enormous population. The American House of Representatives seats 435 people to represent 300 million people. To properly apportion that to China would mean to a House of Representatives well over 1,000 people. A House that size would be unbelievably chaotic. A House any smaller would not adequately represent the billion plus people of the nation. So what would the solution be?

A proposal: A European-Union styled federation on steroids.

With Chinese provinces having populations comparable to those of European nations, it would be appropriate to federalize or even confederate powers from the central authority from Beijing to the provinces. Each province run is own affairs like a European republic that is then responsible for the people in its own province, and sending delegates to a looser, umbrella government. The federal or confederal government would then handle matters mostly relating to foreign affairs and representation, armed forces, and interprovince infrastructure. In this manner, the provincial governments can give their constituents the attention that a larger government would be less adept at, satisfying the balance between effective democracy and a large population.

Again, a new year brings new perspectives and thoughts on the future of Chinese democracy, and the continuing hope that someday, whenever that may be, that all of China can be democratic, stable, and content, just as Sun Yat-sen wanted it to be.

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Letters: Hu Jintao should not snub the Dalai Lama

November 1st, 2007

Letters: Hu Jintao should not snub the Dalai Lama

The China Post news staff

October 27, 2007

Comment: I have personally been hoping for a resolution to the Tibetan situation that would be satisfactory to both the PRC government and the Dalai Lama and his supporters within the Dalai Lama’s lifetime, perhaps as soon as the 2008 Olympics. The Dalai Lama’s current call for “autonomy as guaranteed in the constitution, not independence,” I think, is reasonable and a fair compromise for both sides to settle on. While perhaps it is true that deep in the Dalai Lama’s heart, he may not want Tibet to be a part of China, he has conceded the point that Tibet is now a part of China and he wants it to remain that way. The Dalai Lama has even pleaded internationally for the PRC against the containment of China by her neighbors. The Dalai Lama himself has stated here (China Post mirror here):

The very idea of total victory for one’s own side and the total defeat of one’s enemy is untenable. . . . Today, the only viable solution to human conflicts will come through dialogue and reconciliation based on the spirit of compromise.

While it is true that what the Dalai Lama is calling for in Tibet will decentralize the country, it is truthfully not much different from “One Country, Two Systems” currently in place in Hong Kong and Macau. The separate governance of these areas has not irreparably harmed China. Increased autonomy for Tibet is not a wedge the Dalai Lama is driving towards Tibetan independence — it is a guarantee in the PRC constitution that has not been upheld that the government should actually honor.

So, listen up, PRC, you have nothing to lose and much diplomatic currency to gain. The time is ripe for a good deal. The Dalai Lama is not a splittist. Even if he were, the increasing infrastructural and economic links with the Chinese heartland would make an independent Tibet an economic vassal to her giant neighbor to the north and east. No, the Dalai Lama just wants the most peaceful and most satisfactory way to resolve this dispute so that he, and all the Tibetans that fled with him in ‘59, can be free to go home without fear.

Letters: Hu Jintao should not snub the Dalai Lama

The China Post news staff

Saturday, October 27, 2007

Hu Jintao is to begin his second five-year term as president of the People[’s] Republic of China after winning re-election as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party at the just-concluded Communist Party Congress. But he is facing a series of daunting challenges in the next five years on numerous issues, including improving human rights and religious freedom.

Underscoring these issues was a high-profile ceremony honoring the Dalai Lama by the U.S. Congress, which accorded the spiritual leader of Tibet with its highest honor — the Gold Medal. U.S. President George W. Bush and first lady Laura Bush attended the ceremony, held Oct. 16 on Capitol Hill, despite strong protests from Beijing which views the Dalai Lama as a separatist.

The Dalai Lama denies the accusation, saying he is seeking nothing more than “meaningful autonomy” for Tibet under the PRC flag. The Buddhist monk, who has been in exile since 1959, said he regarded himself as “Chinese” (and “a refugee” as well), and that he has long abandoned his pursuit of Tibet’s independence. He told Chinese reporters in Washington that his homeland would be “weak and poor” on its own, without help and support from China.

This is a clear and unequivocal statement of his position, a position that can hardly qualify him as a separatist or “splittist.” He once was, to be sure, but he renounced the effort in 1987, in favor of what he calls “meaningful autonomy.” It is unclear what that means, because Tibet has already been one of the autonomous regions in the People’s Republic of China. What is known is that negotiations on that issue have been going on and off for quite a long period of time, with the last attempt, the sixth, breaking off in July.

What caused the breakdown of the July talks, held in Shanghai and Nanjing, is unknown to the outside world, except the Dalai Lama’s revelation that Beijing “suddenly got tough.” Why the change in attitude? It is difficult to gauge, judging from the secrecy surrounding the talks. Whatever the reason, it is in the interest of mainland China to re-open dialogue with the Dalai Lama to resolve the issue once and for all. Hu Jintao appears to be the best person to take charge of the issue, because he worked for a long time in Tibet as party commissar — the man wielding the highest power in Tibet.

Hu, who has made “harmony” a hallmark of his policy, should know that a successful settlement of the Tibet problem would be a monument and legacy of his reign. He has the wisdom and ability to negotiate a settlement through which Tibet will become a harmonious society. Also, Tibetan culture will be preserved and respected, and Tibetans will live in harmony with the Han immigrants — China’s dominant ethnic group poised to become the region’s majority.

Hu and the new leadership in Beijing should have less fear for trouble in Tibet once the Dalai Lama, now 72, returns to the once-isolated serfdom ruled by monks. Tibet today is no longer the mysterious Shangrila it once was, especially after the completion last year of the Qinghai-Tibet railroad, linking the “ridge of the world” with the rest of China. The Dalai Lama is aware that Tibetan independence is all but impossible as China’s rise continues to soar. He may have realized that “meaningful autonomy” is in the best interest of Tibetans, who in recent years have been benefited from Beijing’s economic largess. No doubt, Beijing is in the driver’s seat in talks with the Dalai Lama, who has much fewer bargaining chips. But to achieve harmony for China in general and Tibet in particular, Beijing should show magnanimity and goodwill to a small group of religious dissidents in exile. Their campaign has largely been peaceful, and the Dalai Lama “has asked little more than that Beijing respect its own laws and allow Tibetans to maintain their own religion and culture — under the Chinese flag,” says rightly the Wall Street Journal.

Beijing has little to lose — and much to gain — if the regime under Hu Jintao indeed heeds the calls of the free world to achieve a negotiated settlement on the Tibet problem. In so doing, Beijing would neutralize some of the criticism of its human right abuses and suppression of religious freedom. If Beijing really wants to “integrate China with the rest of the world,” (與世界接軌) this would be a big step to take.

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