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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/08/international/asia/08chin.html
A Democratic China? Not So Fast, Beijing Leaders Say
By JOSEPH KAHN
Published: April 8, 2004
EIJING, April 7 - When asked why China, with its surging economy and rising
power, has not yet begun to democratize, its leaders recite a standard line
. The country is too big, too poor, too uneducated and too unstable to give
political power to the people, they say.
The explanation is often delivered in a plaintive tone: China really would
like to become a more liberal country, if only it did not have unique problems
requiring the Communist Party to maintain its absolute monopoly on power
for just a while longer.
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The case of Hong Kong suggests it could be a great deal longer.
Hong Kong, a former British colony that came under Chinese control in 1997
, is a tidy, small place by Chinese standards. Its six million people are
extensively educated, multilingual and heavily Westernized. It has a low
crime rate, a nimble economy and a remarkably accommodating population that
has proven pragmatic and subdued under both British and Chinese rule.
At $24,750 in per capita annual income, its people are about 25 times wealthier
than their mainland compatriots and the 15th most affluent population in
the world, according to a World Bank tally. It is also by far the richest
place in which citizens do not have the right to elect their own leaders
, with Kuwait, its nearest competitor, ranking 34th.
So why then did Beijing decide this week to revoke Hong Kong's leeway to
chart a course toward local democracy, which many there felt was guaranteed
in a series of laws that govern its special status under Chinese rule?
Some analysts say it is Beijing's leadership that lacks the requisite conditions
, or perhaps the confidence, to allow its people a greater say in their own
affairs.
"The problem for China is not legal. It is not whether Hong Kong society
is capable of handling democracy," said Shi Yinhong, a political expert at
People's University in Beijing. "The problem is that if Hong Kong holds
direct elections now, it will probably elect people who are not loyal to
Beijing."
"Frankly speaking," Mr. Shi said, "that is something Chinese leaders are
not ready to accept."
Democracy has long been a distant and distinctly foreign concept in Communist
China. Even during the pro-democracy Tiananmen Square demonstrations in
1989, the idea was so vague to most student leaders that they expressed it
by building a papier-machｅ Goddess of Democracy that resembled the Statue
of Liberty. Democracy was like Hollywood, Ellis Island and tricorner hats
.
It is not like that now. Democracy is an immediate and direct threat to China
's leadership in Hong Kong and also in Taiwan, two places it considers vital
to its security and prestige.
Beijing considers Taiwan part of China. But the island has been drifting
further away from mainland control with its democratic development over the
past 15 years.
China's leaders view Taiwan's president, Chen Shui-bian, as determined to
make Taiwan an independent country in a legal and internationally recognized
sense, an outcome they have repeatedly warned will lead to war. Despite
those concerns, Taiwanese voters gave Mr. Chen a second term in office in
last month's presidential elections.
China once viewed Hong Kong as a golden goose that would share capitalist
expertise while demonstrating the motherland's rising power by returning
to the fold. When Deng Xiaoping negotiated the terms of its return to Chinese
rule with Britain in the 1980's, the promise of allowing the territory to
democratize in the first decade of the 21st century seemed safely distant
and risk free.
Now, after last year's mass street demonstration against a national security
bill China wanted to impose and follow-up protests demanding greater local
control, Hong Kong has joined Taiwan as a political crisis preoccupying
the top leadership.
In Mao Zedong's day, the problem would have been solved easily enough, by
calling democrats counter-revolutionaries and mobilizing the masses to silence
them. But China faces a conundrum today. It does not have a revolutionary
ideology that its own leaders believe is superior to democratic rule. The
masses are too busy making money to be mobilized.
So officials search for reasons why the time is not yet right, or the conditions
are not yet suitable, or the procedures are not yet finalized. They present
themselves as sympathetic to the democratic impulse who are troubled only
by questions of implementation.
The coup de grace in Hong Kong's case was delivered in the form of a legal
interpretation of the Basic Law, the constitutional framework governing
Hong Kong, by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress in
Beijing. The interpretation consisted of microscopic legal language in which
Beijing allotted itself a much greater role in deciding Hong Kong's future
political system. Top leaders have never squarely ad dressed the larger
political issues involved.
For China, democracy is like the law and human rights. As it seeks to create
a world-class economy and increasingly demands equal treatment with the
United States in world affairs, it has embraced democracy, legal reform and
human rights as desirable and even inevitable. It amended its Constitution
in March to explicitly guarantee human rights protections for the first
time.
But its promises, so far, are good only to the extent that these ideals work
to enhance Communist rule, not to undermine it.
"The party sees these things as tools," said a prominent Beijing lawyer who
has frequently clashed with authorities in court. "If the tool works, use
it. If the tool does not work, find another way."
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