Let Freedom Ring? Not So Fast. China's Still China.(紐約時報)

[mansiID (免洗三部曲之會長再臨)]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/03/international/asia/03chin.html

Let Freedom Ring? Not So Fast. China's Still China.

By JOSEPH KAHN

Published: May 3, 2004


BEIJING, May 2 - During the Cultural Revolution, China's propaganda department
often made hyperbolic charges against intellectuals - capitalist roaders,
enemies of the people - accused of betraying Mao Zedong.

So when Jiao Guobiao, a journalism professor at Beijing University, was
searching for words to describe China's still all-powerful censors and
standard-setters more than 30 years later, he borrowed from its lexicon of
vitriol.







The department is spiteful like the Nazis, he wrote in a recent essay. It
thinks itself infallible like the pope. In the 1950's it covered up the
starvation of millions of people. Today, he charged, it lies about SARS.

"Their censorship orders are totally groundless, absolutely arbitrary, at odds
with the basic standards of civilization, and as counter to scientific common
sense as witches and wizardry," he wrote in the article - which has been widely
circulated by Internet in Beijing despite, not unpredictably, being banned by
the Communist Party's propaganda department.

Such explicit outbursts of dissent are still rare in China. But Mr. Jiao is not
 alone in expressing frustration that, even after a long-awaited transition to
a new generation of leaders some 18 months ago, China's political scene remains
 stultifying. Intellectuals, Mr. Jiao said, are "supposed to act like children
who never talk back to their parents."

The leadership team headed by the president and party chief Hu Jintao that many
 hoped would tolerate more open debate has instead slapped new restrictions on
free speech and the press that some say remind them of the repressive years
after the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.

State security agents have been scouring the Internet and pressing charges
against people who use it to distribute information or express opinions deemed
unfavorable. The authorities harassed scholars who took part in a debate about
constitutional changes, disappointing some who believed that Mr. Hu had once
invited discussion about how to strengthen the rule of law.

Last month, Beijing decided against allowing universal suffrage in Hong Kong,
even though many in the former British colony felt they were promised that
right when China assumed sovereignty in 1997.

The political environment may reflect a seasonal shift to tight controls during
 the spring Communist Party meetings and a state of high alert ahead of the
15th anniversary of the June 4, 1989, crackdown.

But some see worrying signs that the leadership remains instinctively hostile
to political discussion and more independent news media. Scholars say they now
suspect that Mr. Hu is not as forward-looking as they had once hoped, and at
any rate he must still defer to Jiang Zemin, the military chief, who handed the
 formal reins of power to Mr. Hu in late 2002 but by many accounts remains a
domineering influence.

"I don't think we had a real transfer of power or a turning point in leadership
," said He Weifang, a law professor at Beijing University. "There was a moment
after Mr. Hu took control when people were optimistic, but now things are even
tighter than before."

The most conspicuous sign of that tension is in the media. In recent years many
 newspapers, television stations and Web-based media have flourished in a more
market-driven environment. Diversity and competition seemed to foster more open
 discussion of delicate topics, including corruption, legal reforms, foreign
affairs, crime, business abuses and other matters that were once taboo.

But pressure to conform to political norms, which never went away, has been
strongly reasserted in recent months, people in the industry say.

Propaganda officials have increased their presence inside news, culture and
entertainment organizations, and have refined a system for pre-censorship that
leaves less discretion in the hands of editors.

"It used to be that they would punish people who made too many mistakes," said
the editor of a leading political magazine. "Now, you don't have the leeway to
make mistakes."

Among topics now considered off limits, the media are no longer permitted to in
vestigate corruption without approval. That limits what many had seen as one of
 the few effective checks on official wrongdoing, reporters and editors said.

Mr. Hu and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao have been promoting themselves as populist
s determined to address poverty in the countryside. But when two writers in
Anhui Province wrote an in-depth critique of the handling of such problems,
called "An Investigative Report on Chinese Peasants," the book was banned and
the publishing house that issued it came under pressure, possibly because the
book argued that the most severe problems had been caused by officials.

Authorities also stepped up their scrutiny of Web-based news and discussion
groups, closing the most popular forums and imposing registration and
monitoring requirements on others. The move came after people participating in
 Web discussions forced officials to act against abuses by the police and the
judicial system in cases that had not been extensively covered in the
mainstream press.

Mr. Jiao, a trim, intense man with close-cropped hair and wire-rimmed glasses,
was a reporter himself for a few years before becoming an academic. He was not
known as a critic of the government before he wrote his essay on propaganda
controls. But it quickly became a samizdat sensation, not only because it
expressed openly what many journalists and intellectuals say privately, but
also because he did so as pungently as possible.

"I chose a sharp way of saying things because that's their own language from
the Cultural Revolution," Mr. Jiao said in an interview. "If it's too soft and
measured, they'll just ignore it."

His treatise mocks the 10 "forbiddens" and 3 "musts" style used in propaganda
orders and describes "14 diseases" and "4 cures," one of which is abolishing
censorship.

Among his criticisms: propaganda officials "protect thugs and corrupt officials
" by banning reports on corruption. The reason, Mr. Jiao wrote, is that the
propaganda officials "use the media administration power granted them by the
Party to enrich themselves" with bribes.

During SARS, Mr. Jiao wrote, propaganda officials used the excuse of "social
stability" to prohibit reporting about the disease. In fact, he argued, social
stability was threatened because reporting was so inadequate, panicking people
who felt they could not trust official sources of information.

"There's not a shadow of scientific rigor in their brains,'' he wrote. "They
simply follow their own ignorant feelings.''

Mr. Jiao said he suspected that his phone was being tapped and complained that
a publishing house dropped plans to publish two of his books. But he said he
and his family had not suffered other reprisals.

Some experts say the resort to tight controls on President Hu's watch should
not be mistaken for a long-term policy. With the economy booming and social
freedoms more evident, politics will sooner or later have to follow, they
argue.

In fact, one close scholar of the political scene at People's University in
Beijing says recent efforts to tighten the screws on expression are signs of
weakness. The authorities are annoyed about being increasingly forced to react
to public opinion, and are resorting to old methods to defend themselves.

"When you see them using these old-style methods, it's a sign that they cannot
just set the tone and rely on people to carry it out," said the People's
University scholar, who asked to remain unidentified. "The current leaders are
lacking in confidence, and their power is weak."

Still, many complain about the glacial pace of change, which they say has bred
malaise in intellectual circles. Some say they are worried that discussion of
topics not considered off-limits in the recent past has now been restricted.

Mr. He, the legal scholar at Beijing University, said he had written a book
review for a leading newspaper mentioning the need to make China's Constitution
binding on the judicial system so that protections the Constitution offers
would have legal standing. The newspaper struck the reference, saying it was
forbidden to discuss the Constitution when the Communist Party was amending it,
he said.

Hong Kong also offered a sobering example, Mr. He said.

The former British colony has all the prerequisites - income, stability,
education - that Communist officials often say are necessary for democracy on
the mainland. And yet in Hong Kong the country's leaders have indefinitely
delayed its introduction. "If Hong Kong isn't ready yet,'' Mr. He said, "who
can tell how long before we get any here?"


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會長的真心告白.
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