Wen Jiabao Meets With Petitioners

Al Jazeera wrote:

Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier, has been quoted by the state media as urging citizens to voice their criticisms of the government and speak out about injustice during a visit to the country's highest petition bureau, where people are allowed to file complaints against officials.

Wen met farmers and workers condemning land grabs and unpaid wages among other complaints at the State Bureau for Letters and Calls in Beijing, official media reported on Wednesday, in a rare public show of worry about discontent with the government.

"Please don't hold anything back, and give me the facts," Wen told the people, according to a report on the central government's website.

"Our government is a government of the people, and our power is granted by the people."

The official Xinhua News Agency said late on Tuesday that it was the first time since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949 that a premier had met ordinary petitioners.

China Central Television quoted Wen as telling visitors and staff at the bureau on Monday afternoon that the government must "create conditions that allow citizens to criticise and supervise the government, and enable government to responsibly resolve the problems and difficulties of the masses".

Human rights

Millions of petitioners visit government offices across China every year to demand redress and are often treated by officials as an embarrassing nuisance, even a threat to control, despite rules that say they should be given a hearing.

People with complaints are often held in a government-run centre in Beijing to be sent home, or detained in illicit "black jails".

Al Jazeera's Melissa Chan, reporting from Beijing on Wednesday, said petitioners in some cases have been punished and even committed to mental institutions even though there was nothing wrong with them.

"To our knowledge this is the very first time for anyone from the top leadership to have stepped onto the street and try to speak to these petitioners directly," she said.

Wen has won widespread public affection in China by casting himself as a servant of the people, and he pressed that role again by meeting people who journeyed to Beijing to demand a hearing from central officials at a special petitions office.

But Wen's meeting with petitioners amounted to an unusually blunt acknowledgement that China's feverish economic growth had also brought discontent, especially over land confiscations, harsh work conditions and scant support for the many poor people.

"This may be the first time a central leader has done this. Even minor officials usually stay away from us," Liu Anjun, a veteran petitioner in Beijing who has run a support group for complainants, told the Reuters news agency.

"It may be staged, but it's a signal to people. It may be related to Hu Jintao's visit to the United States, which strengthened the focus on human rights. The petitioners reflect all the most basic human rights problems in China, and Wen may want to show that at least he's concerned."

Wary of dissent

China is extremely wary of dissent. The government does not allow protests and routinely censors the media and internet of any content that is potentially destabilising or overly critical of the leadership.

Outspoken critics of the communist regime, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, have been jailed on vague subversion charges.

Wen has spoken before about giving the public greater freedom to voice anger and frustration over social problems such as corruption. The comments have been interpreted by some as a signal that the leadership wanted to more aggressively pursue democratic reforms, but they have yet to be followed up by concrete initiatives.

Last week, after a White House summit with Obama, Hu defended his government, but said a lot still needed to be done in terms of human rights.

Wen survived the ousting of his reformist boss Zhao Ziyang after a pro-democracy movement was crushed in 1989, and has stood out as the official most forthright about the long-sensitive issues of political reform.

Last year, he said the government must rein in abuses or risk sacrificing the gains of growth to "regression and stagnation".

Wen will retire as premier in early 2013.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia- ... 95261.html

The way Premier Wen addressed petitioners reminded me a lot of the Hundred Flowers Campaign. I really wonder what this could mean for China's stability and improvement of citizen's civil liberties in China. Could this provide an avenue for counter-revolutionaries to destabilize the government, or will it make them securer for appearing "legitimate" since it supposedly paves the way for a greater expansion of democracy in the country? Are we looking at a Chinese Glasnost? I'm dead on the fence at the moment.

I doubt there is much to worry about. Giving people a channel to voice their concerns is far from allowing open mockery of a country's founders as what happened under Glasnost. The man currently expected to succede Hu Jintao has voiced some very earthy insults at China's critics.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/4637039/Chinas-next-leader-in-hardline-rant.html

I highly doubt that comments like this would come from a Chinese Gorbachev.

Well, Glasnost was a good idea.... both the USSR of the mid 80's and the China of today are in serious lack of openness.

And FC, you're really considering it a good sign that Hu's successor insults his critics? WTF?

Mabool wrote:

And FC, you're really considering it a good sign that Hu's successor insults his critics? WTF?

Telegraph wrote:

After proudly claiming that China has already made its contribution to the financial crisis by making sure its own 1.3 billion people are fed, he said that "there are a few foreigners, with full bellies, who have nothing better to do than try to point fingers at our country".
...
The phrase "having a full stomach and nothing better to do" is an earthy insult in Chinese for cynical troublemakers.

Well, to be fair, the Telegraph kind of exaggerated there. That's hardly a "hard-line rant," and those weren't really harsh insults directed at his critics, but rather an expression of frustrations at the West's constant criticisms of the PRC and support for anti-communist, anti-PRC groups. It's also not too uncommon for that expression to be heard being used in even everyday speech. It's not insulting, just a highly informal, and direct, phrase used to counter somebody else for being too critical.

Is your quoting the first part of my post supposed to mean that you agree?

Also, yeah, I didn't know whether that was an insult in Chinese or not. The way you describe it he sounds like a cool guy.

You know, I have no idea why I even did that... I'm just going to take that bit out, because I don't know where I was going with it.

I am not in the best state of mind right now.

Quote:

And FC, you're really considering it a good sign that Hu's successor insults his critics? WTF?

I couldn't think of a better word. I wanted to say criticisms but that meant using the same word twice in a sentence, so insults is what I ended up writing. Either way, my point was that Xi Jinping doesn't look like the kind of person who will make the PRC collapse becuase of poorly thought through policies.

I actually won't be surprised if US China relations take a hit after this guy comes to power, especially if the radical right comes to power in the US at the next elections. Something tells me Xi won't want to make too many concessions.

Sorry for reviving this topic, but I just thought I'd at least address this:

Quote:

Could this provide an avenue for counter-revolutionaries to destabilize the government, or will it make them securer for appearing "legitimate" since it supposedly paves the way for a greater expansion of democracy in the country? Are we looking at a Chinese Glasnost?

In actuality, it would appear to be neither, from what I saw over the summer. Wen's meeting with petitioners is partially a publicity stunt for him and the CCP, but beyond simply that, many officials do meet with people in general so that the CCP can remain in touch with the masses (with varying degrees of success, sometimes doing so well, and other times not, depending on who it is, what the issues are, and where, at least that's the impression that I'm getting).

Petitioners and protesters come out pretty frequently to draw the attention of the government toward issues related to their daily lives, usually something negative that they seek redress for, and usually they don't go to the national government, but instead keep it local. We don't hear about this because firstly, it's not anti-government activities on a massive scale, so the Western media don't really give a damn; secondly, and ironically, the CCP is a bit afraid that meetings, petitions, and protests could turn into anti-government meetings, so they keep these things on the lowdown. Whether or not the CCP's fears is paranoia or legitimate is another matter, but it's kind of both, because people in China don't want to overthrow their government, but even so, there are a lot of grievances about issues like lack of transparency, corruption, the government's failure to be fully in touch with the masses, sometimes issues that people petition about are shelved and left aside without being properly dealt with, and sometimes decisions made at the highest levels (National People's Congress and the Communist Party Congress) are not really implemented.

For things that fall into the last two categories (I am speaking generally here, and not exactly related to the issues that the petitioners have brought up) sometimes this is because the national government does not consider an issue to be a priority, but other times, this is a problem with local officials who were told to handle an issue but don't consider it to be a priority and convince the higher-ups of the same. Another situation: local officials don't do anything, and the higher-ups never really check up on it; the issue is not really dealt with as a result. There are also problems with corruption, or individuals doing things in private that the government can't check up on (so much for communist "totalitarianism" ).

Once again, speaking generally, there are times when an order from the higher levels is passed down to the local levels, and then whether or not it is carried out is simply simply a matter of whether it is in the the interests of the locality, and whether or not doing so would anger the people in that area -- and in the process of not carrying out an order that might anger the locals, the local official avoids having to deal with petitioners or protesters, gets keep his job or even receives a promotion for his "good work." The ways to get around official scrutiny and to convince the higher-ups that what was asked was done, or to convince them that it was not necessary, can get into the territory of "shadiness" and backroom deals, but needless to say, modern China is a country where personal gestures and tokens can get around bureaucracy and orders.

I need to emphasize at this point, though, that this is very much a double-edged sword. Just as one can get around "bad" orders from above, one can also get around "good" orders and use this for personal gain while ignoring petitioners with serious, legitimate complaints. Corruption is one of the biggest challenges for the CCP, and has been a problem in Chinese society for centuries. Ironically enough, during Mao's rule and even into the '80s, there were strong anti-corruption policies, which was why corruption was less of a problem, but it still existed (backroom bartering and ration tickets exchanges, for instance, or in a strange mix of being corrupt and trying to maintain a clean appearance, when local officials on People's Communes made reports about having met or exceeded production quotas to stay in office, and obviously they wouldn't have to deal with the consequences like the peasants when the national government and Party higher ups asked for the grain), but had this been more the case during Mao's period, some of the ridiculous problems with the GLF and CR might have been avoided (aside from over-reporting production and harvest, which wouldn't really happen in today's China, but that's partially because people are more likely to call you out publicly, whereas criticizing the People's Communes program back in the day would have had some pretty negative repercussions).

As for Wen Jiabao, he is in many ways the public face of the Chinese government and the Communist Party. The problem is that there's a lot of people who are pissed off at him now, for many of the same reasons why a lot of people are pissed off at Obama (and I'm not talking about right-wingers... you can't ever make these people happy), in that Wen promised a lot of things, but most of what he promised didn't yield the promised results. These petitions, have produced some results, and both national media and local media in covering domestic issues have become more willing to talk about these local problems, but maybe this meeting and other proposals by Wen have not created results to the extent as was expected or promised in reducing corruption, opening up transparency, or increasing either participatory politics or intra-Party democracy. The reason I'm getting this impression is partially due to how Hu in his latest Party Founding Day anniversary speech even criticized the Party and a number of its cadres -- without naming names -- about corruption and how the Party's democratic centralism was lacking in the "democratic" part (which for him as the Party GenSec and head of the State Council and President, it's kind of easy to say, but given China's history with autocratic monarchs and the later years of KMT rule on the Mainland and then the way Mao became seen as infallible during the GLF and then the CR, I'd imagine it would be intimidating for people to simply say, "You know, maybe this is a bad idea..." or "I disagree with..." but maybe that he was willing to point this out and chide others for it is a positive sign for perhaps substantial changes. At least, more so than when Wen talks about it.

So as to not sound too negative, sometimes small steps are needed before one can start taking big steps and running, and these are at least positive signs for the CCP and the Chinese government to become more open to the public and less like the lofty, distant autocrats of the past residing in their imperial palaces such as the last two dynasties in the Forbidden City, or Mao's appearance as the infallible savior of China due to the playing up of his revolutionary leadership and his position as the Chairman of the Party.