China’s communist authorities’ harassment of signatories of Charter 08, the democratic dissidents’ manifesto, reflects an anxiety that the economic crisis will “spur calls for swifter political reform and challenge its monopoly on power.”
“Many people in the west think China is afraid of elections and democracy,” charges Premier Wen Jiabao, currently on a European charm offensive, approvingly quoting Adam Smith’s observation that centralized power is a recipe for social instability.
As a good Marxist, Wen is, of course, well aware of the distinction between theory and practice, and the party consistently adopts democratic discourse to legitimize authoritarian rule. Yet, as the excellent China Government Watch observes, Beijing seems concerned that the recent US election is exciting interest in the real thing:
Perhaps there is something attractive about a system, whatever its flaws may be, that allows a country to go from George W. Bush to Barack Obama, from one party to another, peacefully, without any of the deep social turmoil or instability that the [Chinese Communist Party] insists is inseparable from changes in leadership.
It quotes Rebecca McKinnon’s analysis of Charter 08 which suggests that it is “one of many symptoms” of growing unrest and that the regime is taking bigger hits to its legitimacy from public sympathy for Yang Jia, New Year train ticket mis-management and the melamine poisoned milk scandal than from Charter 08.
An ongoing crackdown on bloggers and the internet is a further sign of official concern at burgeoning social unrest and citizens’ use of the internet to expose corruption. The number of web activists – or netizens – approached 298 million at the end of 2008, an annual increase of 41.9 per cent, according to the official China Internet Network Information Center.
A new generation of political bloggers has struck a chord with younger netizens, many of whom were previously dismissive of politics. “Political ideals are being popularized among everyday Chinese,” one account suggests, noting that the new bloggers are “merging politics with fashionability and that’s very dangerous for the authorities.”
“The Internet has become a very effective way to mobilise disgruntled groups, and the government is aware of that,” said Zheng Yongnian, a professor at Singapore’s East Asian Institute.
Online agitation has recently prompted public demonstrations in China, reports Xiao Qiang, director of Berkeley’s China Internet Project. The authorities struggle to cope with the sheer number of bloggers and netizens.
“Individual bloggers say a few things… but aggregating them together is making a bigger public opinion,” he said. “That is something the Chinese government is really battling.”
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