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Concluding speech Jean-Philippe
Beja So, to sum up these one and a half days of debate ... we had an extensive presentation on the working conditions of foreign journalists in China and we have also had a comprehensive presentation of the way censorship is organized in China. There were very good papers on the way the Central Propaganda Department works, and on the structure of this department, with its local branches down to the lowest administrative echelons. And this morning, we also had a lot of information about the way the Internet is controlled, and on how the Chinese leadership is proactive where control of opinion is concerned. Of course, the authorities do control the flow of opinion towards China, using all kinds of censorship mechanisms, but they are also very proactive on Western and foreign web sites. I think this is a very interesting aspect that many people don't talk about too much. Richard Winfield asked this morning, why does the Chinese government control the press, and he recited the parable of the scorpion and the dog. [Scorpions sting because it is their nature, and Chinese Communists censor the news because it is also their nature]. I think I do not really agree with what he said because what we have seen during this day and a half is that the situation is not static. Although the censorship organizations are quite impressive, we also noted that - whether it is on the Internet, in the press, or in society - things are happening. Some journalists are trying to push the envelope. They test the limits on the Internet. It is true that some of them are arrested, but it is also true that information continues to circulate on the Internet. So this, I think, is very important. And what is interesting is that the government also makes concessions, that sometimes it changes policies. Freedom has been more and more restricted since 2001, but the authorities have never been in a position to silence divergent voices completely, and so what we are faced with is a very dynamic situation, where a society which is more and more complex is pushing for some space for expression. It is true that in times of crisis, such as we are witnessing now, the government returns to traditional methods to control opinion, to control society. But still, I think it is a cat and mouse situation. You could say that the authoritarian government is in place and that it will remain so until it changes its nature. But I think that change is possible in China. I think that this is what you, as journalists, are supposed to convey - the complexity of the situation, the multi-faceted aspects of the situation. I'll now try to provide you with some background about the political framework in which the Olympic Games are going to happen. First of all, why do the Chinese authorities consider them so important? You have to go back to the Opium Wars if you want to understand what's happening. I think that ever since the English gunships arrived in China, Chinese elites, whether political or intellectual, have had only one obsession - to make China a strong and rich country (fuguo qiangbing), to restore its place on the world scene. And this objective unites not only the political leaders but also the intelligentsia, which has been instrumental in the struggle for the democratization of China. This is where the Olympic Games come in. You have the discourse of humiliation. China was humiliated by the West in the mid-19th Century. Now, it wants to come back. Of course, one can say that the discourse of humiliation is exaggerated, that it has been a long time since China was humiliated. But it is still a part of the collective consciousness. It is important to bear this in mind when we study China, when we try to report on China. The Communist Party now is saying that the country has had 30 years of peace during which it could develop. What happened after the Tiananmen massacre in 1989 is that the Communist Party looked at the Soviet example and said that if China went on with democratization, it would follow the Soviet Union's lead and disappear. The Tibetans and the Uyghurs would take their autonomy, and the breakup of China would follow. Elites accepted the discourse of the party. Most of the intellectuals, most economic elites, most political elites agreed that it was necessary to put aside disagreements and for everyone to work for the development of China, to make it a strong country. This became clear after 1992, after Deng Xiaoping's trip to the south. The economic development triggered by the new policy, which was really impressive under Jiang Zemin, had various consequences. One was the development of huge inequalities, which started to worry the leadership during the ten years from 1992 to 2002. The elites improved their living standards, they improved their symbolic position also. They enjoyed larger freedom of expression, as long as it was not in public. But most of the working people, whom the Communist Party supposedly represented - the workers, the peasants , the laid-off workers (xiagang) and the migrant workers (mingong), who are the artisans of the Chinese miracle - were left out, and intellectuals didn't care about that, except for a very small minority. So, on the one hand, the elites -- the managers, the entrepreneurs and the intelligentsia -- supported the party, while, on the other hand, the working people, deprived of access to any channel of expression, were completely marginalized. The situation was becoming so dangerous that the leadership realized it had to do something because it threatened the cardinal principle that stability overrides everything else (wending yadao yiqie). To maintain stability, it was necessary to give something to the marginalized; and this happened in the early 21st Century. After 2003, when Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao came to power, the government decided to make a few concessions to society, giving more latitude to the media and using the rhetoric of law, while continuing to prevent the emergence of autonomous organizations. For the Communist Party, the growing inequalities were not a social problem. They were not a political problem. The government told people that if they had complaints they should go to the courts. The official media emphasized that Chinese citizens had rights, human rights, and were entitled to defend them, but these were not guaranteed by an independent judiciary. And what happened is that Chinese citizens who were victims of abuse by cadres seized on this rhetoric and tried to advance their rights by using the law. They "took the fraud at its own word" (jiaxi zhenchang). But what had been conceived by the authorities as a way to prevent social discontent from manifesting itself had the opposite effect. Part of the intelligentsia, especially legal specialists, lawyers and journalists, became interested in the claims of the people and tried to give a voice to the voiceless - to the peasants, farmers and workers deprived of their rights. What happened then, of course, was that the authorities cracked down on lawyers and on human rights activists. The situation now - we must face it - is quite bad for human rights, and quite bad for the marginalized, who have fewer possibilities than before to make their complaints heard. A good image on the international scene, as I said, is a very important element of the legitimacy of the Communist Party. It keeps telling its people that it is the only political force that can restore China's rightful place in the international community. This is why the Olympic torch relay was so important to the leaders; when they chose to make it visit the major countries, they conceived this as a way to show the world the rise of a strong, harmonious and modern China. When the riots happened in Lhasa, triggering a host of protests during the torch relay, the Chinese leaders were confronted with a contradiction. But what could they do? They couldn't back down. They couldn't make concessions in response to the demonstrations because in their minds that would have been a show of weakness. So what did they do? They chose to reinforce their legitimacy inside the country through the mobilization of nationalism, which can be strong in the emerging middle classes, at the risk of damaging China's positive image internationally. This is where we stand now. But the situation is not so simple for the party leaders. We were confronted with similar events in 1999, with the bombing by NATO of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, with the anti-Japanese demonstrations in Beijing and Shanghai in 2005. Every time, after discontent had been vented, the authorities said it was time to change the rhetoric, to "transform anger into strength," to turn this energy towards the development of the country and in the present case, for example, to work hard to organize successful Olympics. Why? Because the success of the present leadership is based on globalization and, if it mobilizes extreme nationalism for too long, it risks opening itself up to accusations of selling out the country by opening the doors to multinational companies. The nationalists could accuse the leadership of responsibility for the humiliation of the nation. So this is why, in a way, I'm quite optimistic. I think this outbreak of nationalism will pass, sooner than many people think. |
