Amid growing unrest, will China change its ways?
Posted: Thursday, December 11, 2008 7:50 AM
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Beijing, China
By Eric Baculinao, NBC News Beijing Bureau Chief
BEIJING – Against the bleak winter sky, the white-tiled two-story building in the southwestern outskirts of Beijing looked depressing and non-descript.
But the location, iron-grilled windows and the colored gate with Olympic mascots, fit the description of the "black jail" where Li Chunxia and Men Aijing say they spent several days and nights in forced confinement.
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| Eric Baculinao / NBC News |
| Exterior of alleged “black jail” on the southwestern outskirts of Beijing. |
The so-called black jail, used to temporarily detain disgruntled citizens to prevent them from holding embarrassing protests in Beijing, is just one of the methods of control used by China's officialdom to protect political stability.
However, as the pain of global economic crisis spreads across China, with thousands of factories closed and millions laid off, there is growing fear among experts that China's social unrest could exceed the intensity of previous years, and that old methods may no longer suffice to forestall greater turmoil.
Looking for help, finding detention instead
Li and Men are protesters from Henan province in central China, who came to Beijing to see if they could find a more receptive audience for their complaints about local corruption.
"Coming to Beijing, seeking out President Hu Jintao, is like looking for one's own parents to ask for help," Men said as she explained her efforts to seek government attention to the fact that her husband’s pension was unpaid.
Li, on the other hand, was seeking compensation for the closure of her clothing factory, which she blamed on the corruption of a local court. The two said they were detained in the black jail for several days and released.
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| Eric Baculinao / NBC News |
| Li Chunxia, left, and Men Aijing, right, the two protesters who said they were temporarily detained in a “black jail” in Beijing. |
In previous years, protesters across China were routinely rounded up and taken to homeless transfer centers. In 2003, the government banned homeless transfer centers, and soon after, so-called black jails emerged as alternative places to temporarily detain petitioners.
The latest trends however show the growing complexity of social unrest in recent years, with disparate and individualized grievances now sometimes exploding into unprecedented "mass incidents" – prompting a significant rethinking of government strategy.
From small protests to ‘mass incidents’
China's foremost scholar on the issue is sociologist Yu Jianrong. He described the new phenomenon as "anger-venting incidents," when generalized anger that has built up over time gets released after an incident – sometimes a relatively minor one – resulting in the quick mobilization of a large number of people who sometimes engage in extremely violent behavior.
In a pioneering study, Yu attributes the increasing frequency of mass incidents in China, now estimated at close to 80,000 a year, to the predatory nature of the capitalist system and unequal benefits for the citizenry from economic development, the greater and improper use of the police, and the popular distrust of the judiciary.
The most dramatic recent example was the Longnan incident in the northwest province of Gansu in November. Disputes over the government land seizures for development erupted into violent protests where people used iron rods, axes, hoes and even bricks and flowerpots to attack local Communist Party officials and policemen. Some estimates put the number of anti-government protestors as high as 10,000.
In turn, the handling of the Longnan incident has illustrated a significant change in government strategy, according to observers.
Changing police response
In its aftermath, China's public security chief Meng Jianzhu called on the police to "be fully aware of the challenge brought by the global financial crisis and try their best to maintain social stability."
Projecting a softer side to police enforcement, Meng declared that "in the handling mass incidents, we must be clear that the chief tasks of the public security authorities are to maintain order at the scene, ease conflicts, avoid excessive steps and prevent the situation from getting out of control." In a coordinated move, Gansu's governor invited representatives of the rioters to a dialogue.
The changing role of the police, and the greater use of dialogue and persuasion in the handling of conflict, has not been lost on Hu Xingdou, professor of economics and humanities at the Beijing Institute of Technology.
"The excessive use of police force in the past was damaging to the public image of the police," he said. "The method of dialogue and assuaging the people, and not lightly using the police to deal with economic disputes, is the correct method."
Mao Shoulong, professor of public administration at Renmin University in Beijing, agrees that recent trends point to a "more service-oriented" approach by China's police force. "The new approach is quite effective and should help develop a new sense of trust between the police and the citizens, between the government and the people," Mao said.
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| Eric Baculinao / NBC News |
| Iron grill windows of suspected “black jail.” |
How serious a crisis?
There are divergent views about how serious the future challenges could be, but China's President Hu Jintao himself set the tone with a rare warning that the crisis will be a "test of governance" for the ruling Communist Party.
For Zhou Tianyang, a leading Communist party scholar, the prospect of mass unemployment could dramatically increase theft and robbery and other "menaces to social stability." He wrote in the China Economic Times that this will likely generate "mass-scale social turmoil."
Professor Mao agreed, and warned that the social unrest gathering could turn into the "most serious challenge since the 1989," referring to the Tiananmen uprising.
"The difference, however, is that the students were demanding democracy then, while the people this time have very specific complaints," he said. The sense of danger will likely drive the government to adjust strategy and adopt "more scientific and democratic governance," he added.
Others have dismissed fears that increasing unrest could shake China. "There is no serious challenge to the status quo," said Damien Ma, a China analyst at Eurasia Group, a global political risk research and consulting firm based in New York.
"One should remember that in 1989, it was the elites who protested in Tiananmen, not rural farmers," he explained. "Elites are also the ones who are best equipped to organize for mass events through technology such as the Internet and mobile phones."
"The likely scenario will be isolated incidents among workers," Ma added, "but nothing on the scale that could threaten the party-state's survival."
But one area Ma believes is important to watch is whether rising unemployment will seriously affect college graduates and the middle class who have benefited from China's economic policies. Like the elites who organized Tiananmen, they could prove a force to contend with.
‘We don't do that to our people’
Meantime, a party official from Henan Province's Nanyang City liaison office based in Beijing agreed to a brief telephone interview about the reported "black jail" that the women said his office oversaw.
"No, it's not true," the local official Wang Tao said. "We don't do that to our people."
His tone was diplomatic and friendly, a seeming change from the angry language that officials would invariably use when dismissing inquiries about sensitive issues in the past.
More on China and the economic downturn:
Trouble in Toyland: U.S. recession jolts China
Chinese protest on human rights anniversary
