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Beijing Olympics 2008: Winning Press Freedom
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democratization, it would follow the Soviet Union's lead and disappear. The Tibetans and
the Uighurs 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 development of huge inequalities,
which started to worry the leadership during the 10 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.