The Age: Clash of worlds

June 11, 2005

As its economy liberalizes, China is winding back the clock on political rights.

Defecting Chinese diplomat Chen Yonglin has no reason to be afraid of punishment if he returns to China, according to the country's envoy in Canberra.

"There are laws which would guarantee his freedom," ambassador Fu Ying said this week. China indeed has many laws and constitutional provisions protecting the rights and freedoms of its citizens. Unfortunately, this legal protection prevails only haphazardly or not at all when those rights and freedoms come into collision with the power of the Chinese Communist Party.

Fu would find this out if, like millions of other middle-aged Chinese, she became a follower of Falun Gong. The movement has been banned in China since a protest it staged in 1999.

Fu would not get the benefit of a trial, or legal aid, but be sent off, through an arbitrary police process, to one of some 280 "Liaojiao", or "re-education through labor" camps. Falun Gong says about 100,000 of its followers have been sent to these camps, of whom 1076 have died from torture and abuse. (1)

If she were still a [steadfast] Falun Gong [practitioner], Fu would then be liable to be picked up by the local police 610 Office - named after the June 10, 1999, decision to crack down on the movement - and put through weeks of harsh thought-reform at special institutions given the Orwellian title of "law schools".

The fate of the two would-be defectors, diplomat Chen and even more so the alleged 610 Office police officer Hao Fengjun, will be influenced by the continuing offensive against Falun Gong, with which both will now be seen as associated.

While they say they are not Falun Gong followers, both say their decision to break with the Chinese Government came because of personal revulsion at suppressive tasks they were ordered to carry out against Falun Gong. Hao has also declared that he is resigning his Communist Party membership, which supports a Falun Gong media campaign claiming that a million people have recently resigned from the party in a tacit protest. (2)

What the ambassador says is quite immaterial . . . it shows they are quite keen to get this guy back."

"It's quite a coup for Falun Gong," says Dr Nicolas Becquelin, research director in Hong Kong for the respected New York-based group Human Rights in China. "It demonstrates that they still have a few sympathizers among officials."

Chen would certainly face retribution if Canberra sent him back to China, as an example to its other diplomats, Becquelin says. "Possibly he would be sentenced under state security charges for slandering the party leaders and the country - they have some provisions they can apply to this case. I think what the ambassador says is quite immaterial. If one thing, it shows they are quite keen to get this guy back," he says.

Meanwhile, the defection cases have exposed the darker side of a huge country undergoing massive social and economic upheaval - but still locked in a Leninist one-party dictatorship.

A growing proportion of China's 1.3 billion people are empowered by economic prosperity, higher education and new freedom to choose their employment, place of residence, and marriage partners.

Yet, in terms of political rights, China is not just standing still, it is winding back the clock. Communist Party General Secretary Hu Jintao is putting all the 69 million party members through intensive re-indoctrination in Marxist theory and the thoughts of China's successive communist leaders.

A pyramid of "political and legal" committees operates from national to local level, headed at the top by politburo standing committee member Luo Gan, 70, who was trained in modern police methods by East Germany's Stasi secret police. These committees tell police who to target, and judges who to convict and what sentence to pass.

The party's propaganda arm - it likes to call itself the "Publicity Department" these days - controls the media and about 30,000 police monitor the internet, while websites and weblogs have to register or face huge fines of up to 1 million yuan ($A158,000).

For all the acclaim given to scam-busting media ventures such as the magazine Caijing, it remains evident that it is mostly the approved targets for official scapegoating that get pilloried. In most cases, victims and complainants never escape suppression by local power cliques involving party, police, judges and businessmen. Parties in court cases have a single stage of appeal, meaning they rarely get accepted above the provincial level and beyond the power of local oligarchies.

Petitioning is a right guaranteed in the constitution, yet local police regularly block aggrieved people from taking their case to the combined state-party petitions office in Beijing, located in a rundown back alley in which desperate people camp for months, even years, for a hearing. When a prestigious political event is looming, Beijing police herd petitioners into a football stadium, then call in provincial police to bus them home. A new law on petitions that took effect last month tries to delegate handling of complaints back to the local level, and limits the time complainants can spend outside offices in Beijing.

Briefing the visiting International Olympic Committee last month on preparations for the 2008 Games in Beijing, party chief Liu Qi said the Games would reflect a "harmonious society", code-name for the dissentless orthodoxy that Hu Jintao is making the hallmark of his leadership. We can expect Chinese protesters to be swept out of sight. A police handbook on "Olympic Security English" suggests visitors will be told to stick strictly to watching the Games.

Still, China may be evolving faster than the controls. Its netizens include some of the world's most cunning hackers. The DVD free-for-all means that most people can watch any movie they like and banned books are sold in cheap pirated copies. Illegal satellite dishes pull down blocked foreign channels. Attendance at official and underground churches is put at about 45 million, and is growing at a rate that will soon outstrip the Communist Party's efforts to enlist more recruits.

Australian officials are now preparing for their annual human rights dialogue with Chinese counterparts. As usual, it will be a closed-door event and the Australian Parliament and public will be given no more than a bland assurance that all the right buttons are being pushed in the most effective way.

The evidence brought by the defectors Chen and Hao would be highly relevant to discussion of at least one area of grievous human rights abuse in China, the control of religious expression.

But so far, it seems, no one in Australian foreign affairs, justice or intelligence circles is keen to look at it.

The current verified death toll stands at 2,336
To date, 2,243,790 people have publicly withdrawn from the Chinese Communist Party and its affiliated organizations.