|
As it happens, the Chinese government
has made some noteworthy progress in
these kinds of areas as well. With
regards to the rule of law, Thornton
informs us that "[t]he Chinese judicial
system has made great strides over the
past three decades," although it is
still far from satisfactory. Judges and
prosecutors, who until the mid-1980s
were "former military personnel with
little formal education of any sort,"
now actually have legal training, with a
master's degree in law being "an
unwritten prerequisite to becoming a
senior judge." Several major laws have
also been passed to protect citizens
from abuse at the hands of the
government. The problem now is "the
chasm between what is on the books and
its implementation, especially at the
local level and in politically sensitive
cases." More and more lawyers are
willing to take on the judicial system
itself, though, and pressure is mounting
to make that system more independent
from the CCP.
With regards to oversight, Thornton has
little good to say about official
government institutions designed to
fight corruption. Instead, he sees a
positive trend in "the rapid
commercialization of the Chinese press."
Despite continuing government censorship,
independent Chinese publications
jockeying for readership and advertizing
dollars are pushing the boundaries. In
January 2007, the government also
decided to "allow foreign journalists to
travel and report freely throughout
China (with the exception of Tibet)." In
addition, the Internet, hobbled though
it may be, is still a powerful force for
positive change. The government may be
able to suppress stories about the
Tiananmen Square massacre, but it simply
cannot filter out all potentially
subversive material. To take just one
example, I had unrestricted access to
Le Québécois Libre's website during
my stay in China.
In addition to some moderate progress
when it comes to elections, the rule of
law, and oversight, Thornton gives
several examples of ways in which the
Chinese have significantly more
personal freedom than they did just
a few decades ago: controls on internal
migration have been relaxed; urban
residents are no longer assigned jobs
and housing; once-segregated local
Chinese now live side by side with
foreigners; and applying for a passport
has gone from an uncertain, multi-layered,
months-long procedure to one that now
takes less than a week, with approval "nearly
as automatic as it is in the United
States." This is not democracy, but it
is liberty, and it is highly prized by
those who are living through the
changes.
But should we be surprised, or
scandalized, that economic and personal
liberty have preceded democracy? As
Thornton writes, "Some Chinese like to
point out that it took the United States
almost two centuries to achieve
universal suffrage." According to Fareed
Zakaria, in his celebrated 2003 book
The Future of Freedom: Illiberal
Democracy at Home and Abroad,
liberty (which includes the rule of law,
an independent judiciary, secure
property rights, and freedom of the
press) has historically preceded strict
democracy in our modern, liberal
societies. In fact, when it has been
tried the other way around—when people
got the vote before the institutions of
liberty were well-established, as in
much of post-colonial Africa—democracy
has collapsed into military dictatorship
in short order, with no chance of the
kind of economic success and burgeoning
personal freedom currently enjoyed by
the Chinese.
None of which is to imply that things
are rosy in China. Indeed, according to
an article in the August 2, 2008 issue
of The Economist, the Beijing
Olympic Games, which many hoped would
spur China to open up more, have
actually had the opposite effect. For
one thing, even before the Tibetan
demonstrations, "China was tightening
the screws on dissent in order to keep
the games protest-free." Amnesty
International reported "numerous
repressive measures adopted by China to
ensure an orderly games: arresting
dissidents, detaining people who try to
present their local grievances to the
central authorities in Beijing… [and]
sending people to prison camps without
trial." Many people were also forced to
move to make room for the building of
Olympic venues.
Even so, as The Economist also
reports, "many Chinese intellectuals
would argue that over the past seven
years since China was awarded the games
their ability to speak out on sensitive
topics has continued to grow."
Furthermore, the Chinese media continue
to debate the country's process of
opening itself up to greater freedom.
"No one is openly calling for
multi-party politics, at least not in
the press. But more media freedom, less
government secrecy and greater efforts
to consult the public are being commonly
demanded." Clearly, the sooner the CCP
can meet those demands, the better off
the Chinese people will be—and the more
prepared they will be to expand their
still timid experiments with actual
democracy. In wishing them a speedy
journey to that goal, however, we should
not neglect to acknowledge how far they
have already come in a relatively short
time.
|
I was able to observe for myself the effects of decades
of repression when I visited China in March 2007. On a
night train from Shanghai to the spectacular Yellow
Mountains, my friends and I were unable to sleep due to
the oppressive heat from the heater in our sleeper.
After some wrangling with an official, the heat was
finally turned off, but it had to be turned off for the
entire car. This made me wonder: wasn't every other
person in our packed car also uncomfortably hot? Why did
no one else complain? I was told by my friend, a
Canadian citizen currently living in China, that people
who have spent their entire lives in China tend to be
very reluctant to complain about anything, for fear of
attracting unwanted attention. Don't stick your neck
out, they have learned—lest it be cut off.
