No religious discrimination in China?

Beijing insists that there is no religious discrimination in China, particularly against the Muslim populations (Uyghurs) of Xinjiang.
Religious freedom has reached an ‘unparalleled’ level; it is at least what a document published by the State Council Information Office in Beijing on religious freedom in Xinjiang says. The publication coincides with the sensitive month of Ramadan.
The White Paper asserts that today, freedom of religious belief in Xinjiang “cannot be matched by that in any other historical period, and is undeniable to anyone who respects the facts.”
The White Paper even asserts that restaurants in Xinjiang are free to stay open or close during the Ramadan. At a public meeting, Zhang Chunxian, the Communist Party’s boss, wished all Muslims a happy Ramadan: “Ramadan is about peace and self-reflection, as well as dedication and self-discipline," he remarked.
This sounds good, but it is official rhetoric only: a ban on fasting has been declared on several categories of people.
AFP mentioned a notice posted on the government website which says: “Party members, cadres, civil servants, students and minors must not fast for Ramadan and must not take part in religious activities,” adding: “During the Ramadan month, food and drink businesses must not close."
This shows the dichotomy in which the Chinese government has put itself. Beijing wants to show its critics that it is a ‘normal’ secular nation, but at the same time, it fears faiths often more popular than the Communist creed.
In the recent years, each time that the region witnessed several clashes between the local Uyghur minority and the security forces, Beijing blamed some ‘militants’ seeking independence from China. It is not so simple because discrimination exists. Take the example of people living in border prefectures in Xinjiang, they must now give DNA samples while applying for travel documents, even within China.
The newspaper Yili Daily announced that residents of the Yili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture who wanted to apply for any type of immigration documents had to go to the police station near their ‘registered’ homes and provide DNA samples, fingerprints, voice-prints and a three-dimensional photo: “Applicants who failed to provide all the biological identification/information would have their applications refused,” says the newspaper.
The prefecture of Yili, bordering Kazakhstan has an ethnically diverse population of 2.5 million people; while 64.7 per cent belongs to ethnic minorities, the rest are Han Chinese.
The number of applications for travel documents in Yili had ‘skyrocketed’ in the past year, from 20,000 in 2014 to 100,000 in 2015. Why did more than 200,000 apply for travel documents this year? The answer is simple: discrimination in Xinjiang. Will the lives of the migrants be better elsewhere in China? Doubtful!
For the foreign-based Uyghur rights groups, restrictions based on religion or discrimination have added to ethnic tensions in the region.
Buddhist areas suffer from ‘restrictions’ too.
Radio Free Asia (RFA) quoting a Tibetan source reported that Beijing has decided to destroy large sections of a monastery in Eastern Tibet: “Massive cuts are being planned for the number of monks and nuns allowed to live at a large Buddhist study center.” The Larung Gar Buddhist Academy is located in Serthar county of Kardze (or Ganzi) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture (Sichuan province).
The monastery probably enjoys a dangerously great popularity from Chinese people: between 20,000 and 30,000 monks and nuns, (a large proportion from the mainland) have joined the Institute over the years. By September 30, 2017, the Institute’s population will be capped at 5,000.
In September 2014, an article on China Tibet Online, a subsidiary of Xinhua, praised Larung Gar Five Sciences Buddhist Academy saying out that Jigme Phuntsok Rinpoche, the founder was “a teacher of His Holiness [sic] the Thirteenth Dalai Lama” (the article forgets to mention that the same Khenpo Phuntsok visited Dharamsala and shared teachings with the present Dalai Lama).
The Chinese website explained that Jigme Phuntsok established the Larung Gar Academy in 1980, with the aim to revitalize the Dharma: “The reason behind the selection of Serthar as the building place is primarily because it is a historically sacred place in Vajrayana. Monks go to achieve 'rainbow body' (a high level of spiritual achievement)… Thirteen disciples attained a rainbow body at the place.”
Amazing Communist China, speaking of ‘rainbow bodies’ (advanced lamas who can dissolve their bodies in a rainbow at the time of death)!
The Institute is today one of the world’s largest and most important centers for the study of Tibetan Buddhism in Tibet …and in China.
Following the demolition in 2001 of more than 1,000 dwellings at Larung Gar and the expulsion of hundreds of monks and nuns, the monastery, such a phoenix reappeared; today the Chinese authorities have decided to reduce its size again.
According to RFA: “This year, the authorities are talking about 1,200 members who will have to leave,” adding that, “Government officials are now marking houses that block the passage of firefighting vehicles or the construction of roads, and dwellings targeted for demolition will be torn down by force if necessary. About 60 to 70 percent of the houses of monks and nuns are being marked for demolition.”
China’s dilemma between ‘normality’ and imposition of the Party’s diktats is best shown in a declaration of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI). Its inspectors recently criticized the Propaganda Department because “it has failed to take tough or effective action to promote ideology, control the media and the internet, and oversee universities and colleges.”
In February, the CCDI inspectors had launched a two-month review of the Department. As a result, “Dozens of rights lawyers, activists and petitioners have also been detained over the past year and the government has warned universities against using textbooks that promote Western values” says The South China Morning Post.
Despite the fact that Beijing is trying to put up a brave ‘normal’ face in the world media, religious and political intolerance has grown tremendously under Xi Jinping. In every field, the government has stepped up to control the media, the internet and even what is taught in the universities.
In these circumstances, one understands that Islam in Xinjiang or Buddhism in Tibet are both seen as subversive ‘splittist’ ideologies.
The sad part is that some foreign companies are also sanctioning Beijing’s policies; the latest example is the cosmetic brand Lancôme, a subsidiary of L’Oréal of France, which cancelled a concert by Canto-pop star Denise Ho in Hong Kong.
The crime of the young lady was to have dared to meet the Dalai Lama.
No good, said Beijing, you will not be allowed to sing in Hong Kong, and Lancôme complied.
The most ironic part of the story is that Beijing is trying to take the lead of the Buddhist world, investing billions of yuans in ‘soft’ diplomacy.
How can China be taken seriously on this?

Enough is enough

This advertisement in a Hong Kong newspaper and its parodies all over China are the symptom of a larger 'enough' in the Middle Kingdom (and elsewhere in the world).
As the result, parochialism increases everywhere.
Historically, it has always been the prelude to rebellions or revolutions.
In 1968, the French students were chanting in the streets of Paris "Ras le Bol" (To the brim).
But it is the Tibetans who should write posters.

The People of Tibet have had enough.

• Because of 60 years of colonization
• Because we don't like violence
• Because we have no religious freedom
• Because we don't want an atheist government
• Because the Dalai Lama is not allowed to be amongst us on the Roof of the World
• Because too many migrants are been poured onto Tibet from the mainland
• Because we do not want a militarized plateau. We don't need to be ready for another war with India
• Because we want the environment of the Land of Snows to remain pure
• etc. etc.

President Hu, please meet the Dalai Lama and sort out these issues with him.

In many ways, this 'We have had Enough' movement is similar to the Indignez-vous (Time for Outrage) of Stephane Hessel in Europe.

Anti-Mainlander Hong Kong Ad Parodied, Becomes Internet Memeby Fauna on Saturday,
February 4, 2012
ChinaSmack
(click on this likn to see the posters)
Hong Kong netizens print a full-page advertisement in Apple Daily newspaper demanding that Article 24 of Hong Kong Basic Law be revised to stop mainland pregnant women from going to Hong Kong. to give birth

Mutual resentment between Hong Kongers and mainlanders is nothing new, and has been both long-standing and widespread. Many Hong Kongers look down upon mainlanders as being crude and uncivilized, while many mainlanders in return chafe at Hong Kongers’ arrogance and sense of superiority.

Last month, a video of Hong Kongers and mainlanders arguing on the Hong Kong subway circulated online. What began as mainlanders eating on the Hong Kong subway violating the subway’s rules immediately expanded to all sorts of resentments by both sides. Controversial Peking University professor Kong Qingdong’s subsequent public rant that “many Hong Kongers are dogs” only escalated things further.

On Sina Weibo:
A group of Hong Kong netizens donated money to print a full-page advertisement in today’s Apple Daily newspaper:

Translation of the above Hong Kong advertisement:

Do you want Hong Kong to spend $1,000,000 HKD every 18 minutes raising “double negative” children? ["double negative" refers to when neither parent is from Hong Kong.]

Hong Kong people have had enough!

• Because we understand that you are victimized by poisonous milk powder, we’ve tolerated you coming to panic buy milk powder;
• Because we understand that you have no freedom, we’ve welcome you to “travel freely” to Hong Kong;
• Because we understand that your education is backwards, we’ve shared our educational resources with you;
• Because we understand that you don’t read complete [traditional] Chinese characters, we’ve used crippled [simplified] Chinese characters below:
• “When coming to Hong Kong, please respect local culture, [because] if it weren’t for Hong Kong, you would all be doomed.”
• Strongly demand that the government revise the Article 24 of Basic Law!
• Stop mainland “double negative” pregnant women from limitless invasion of Hong Kong!

On Sina Weibo:

"Had Enough! Collection" Ever since Hong Kong’s “Apple Daily” newspaper printed the [locust] advertisement, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen netizens have one after another posted images in response, and soon various major cities one after another also expressed their unwillingness to be left out… Tianjin version / Chengdu version / Chongqing version / Xiamen version / American version, then a Naruto version, a time travel version, and finally a dove version!! Netizens are such geniuses!! [哈哈] (Images from the internet)

Beijing version of the Hong Kong Apple Daily full-page "had enough" "locusts" anti-mainlander advertisement, made by Beijing netizens in parody.
Translation of the above parody:

• Do you want Beijing’s migrant population to continue increasing?
• Beijingers won’t tolerate it anymore! [have had enough!]
• Beijing has already accommodated 20 million migrants.
• Beijing has already accepted 478 thousand children that came along.

But!

• You still ruin Beijing’s culture, disturb Beijing’s order, push up Beijing property prices, have too many children who then take their gaokao collect examinations here, eat Beijing’s food and drink Beijing’s water and still curse Beijing as worthless. So please do us a favor, Go build up your hometown first, then come build up Beijing.
• Strongly demand that the government revise the law!
• Stop the endless influx of migrants into Beijing!

Shanghai version of the Hong Kong Apple Daily full-page "had enough" "locusts" anti-mainlander advertisement, made by Shanghai netizens in parody.

Translation of the above parody (which was written in Shanghainese dialect):

Do you want to spend 4 billion RMB every year subsidizing the migrant population?
Shanghainese can’t take it anymore! [have had enough!]

• Because you’ve come to make money, we’ve accommodated 17,566,700 migrants;
• Because you’ve come to establish a home, we’ve accepted 380,000 migrant children;
• Because you want to be filial to your parents, we’ve taken in 159,500 migrant seniors.
• But!
• We have to put up with you ruining our culture;
• We have to put up with the accusations by your fellow villagers;
• We have to put up with the uncivilized behavior of your fellow villagers.
• Strongly demand that the government revise the law!
• Stop the endless influx of migrants into Shanghai!

Guangzhou version of the Hong Kong Apple Daily full-page "had enough" "locusts" anti-mainlander advertisement, made by Guangzhou netizens in parody.

Translation of the above parody:

Do you want to take out your wallet and spend another 990,000,000 yuan to foot the bill for the water company?

Guangzhou people have had enough!

• Because you wanted to speed up the city, we took out 700 million to build the BRT.
• Because you wanted to look new to welcome the Asian Games, we took out 300 million to foot the bill.
• Because you to do lighting projects, every year we have to take out 130 million.
• Only except
• Some people take our money and eat, drink, and live large having us pay for it.
• Some people hold legislative hearings that then become price increasing hearings.
• Some people the moment they hear feasibility reports they begin passing the buck.
• Strongly demand the government to amend the law!
• Guangzhou people are not fish that anyone can do with as they please!

Shenzhen version of the Hong Kong Apple Daily full-page "had enough" "locusts" anti-mainlander advertisement, made by Shenzhen netizens in parody.

Translation of the above parody:
If you’ve come,
then you’re one of us [a Shenzhen person].

Shenzhen welcomes you!

• Because we’re all people who have left home, we welcome you;
• Because this is a circle that Grandpa Deng drew for all of us [as an SEZ], we welcome you;
• Because you the driving force behind Shenzhen’s development, Shenzhen welcomes you;
• Because you are the reason behind Shenzhen’s glorious 30 years, Shenzhen welcomes you;
• Because we want to tell all the people in the world, we’ve used “ying ge li shi” [English] below:
• Welcome to “Hometown Shenzhen”.

Warmly welcome everyone struggling to make a life for themselves to Shenzhen!
May all Shenzhen people a happy new year and all your wishes come true!
Note: Shenzhen is a young city whose population is all “migrant workers” from other parts of the country.

Tianjin version of the Hong Kong Apple Daily full-page "had enough" "locusts" anti-mainlander advertisement, made by Tianjin netizens in parody.
Chengdu version of the Hong Kong Apple Daily full-page "had enough" "locusts" anti-mainlander advertisement, made by Chengdu netizens in parody.

Chongqing version of the Hong Kong Apple Daily full-page "had enough" "locusts" anti-mainlander advertisement, made by Chongqing netizens in parody.

Gulangyu version of the Hong Kong Apple Daily full-page "had enough" "locusts" anti-mainlander advertisement, made by Xiamen netizens in parody.
United States version of the Hong Kong Apple Daily full-page "had enough" "locusts" anti-mainlander advertisement, made by Chinese netizens in parody.

Translation of the above parody:

Do you want America to have 1 Chinese amongst 100 people to be their neighbor?
Americans have had enough!

•  You have no democracy, we do, and so you come here?
•  You have no freedom, we do, and so you come here?
•  We have no corrupt officials, you do, and you will bring them with you!
•  We have no corruption, you do, and you will bring it with you!
•  Strongly demand that the United States government reenact the  Chinese  Exclusion Act!
•  You denigrate our culture, and yet you come to study our culture?
•  You disparage our lifestyle, and yet you come to enjoy our lifestyle?
•  You attack our export of universal values, and yet you build Confucius Institutes everywhere on United States campuses?

Think the United States isn’t good? Then go back to China!

Naruto version of the Hong Kong Apple Daily full-page "had enough" "locusts" anti-mainlander advertisement, made by Chinese netizens in parody.

• Time travel version of the Hong Kong Apple Daily full-page "had enough" "locusts" anti-mainlander advertisement, made by Chinese netizens in parody.
• Dove version of the Hong Kong Apple Daily full-page "had enough" "locusts" anti-mainlander advertisement, made by Chinese netizens in parody.

Less ideology, more compassion, please!

Though Beijing is trying hard to promote Buddhism abroad (particularly in Lumbini, Nepal or in Nalanda), the leadership in Beijing does not seem aware of the Words of the Buddha: "As the wise test gold by burning, cutting and rubbing it on a piece of touchstone, so are you to accept my words only after examining them and not merely out of regard for me."
On the contrary, Beijing is trying to force Marxist ideology in the throats of the Chinese people without "burning, cutting and rubbing it on a piece of touchstone".
This article in the Red Flag Manuscript affirms: "We must fully recognize the extreme importance of ideology work, always adhere to Marxism’s guiding position in the ideology field, always remain clear and firm in our thinking and political activities, and prevent influence and interference from all kinds of wrong ideas."
But 'ideology' will not solve the problems of China. 
The Communist regime has been trying for the past 60 years to use 'ideology' to give a direction to the Middle Kingdom, but China has only been successful in the fields where she was able to put ideology behind.
Ideology has never helped to solve the practical problems of the masses:  last year only China has witnessed more than 1,20,000 riots/unrests.
The Chinese people want something more concrete and more human than ideology.
In the meantime, it was confirmed that two Tibetan died after security forces opened fire on protesters on 24 January at Serta County in Kardze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture (Sichuan Province).
Some 10 Tibetans were seriously injured and some 40 others have been arrested. Over 300 Tibetans gathered and shouted slogans calling for the return of the Dalai Lama and Tibetan freedom. Later, a large number of security forces arrived on the scene and started beating and kicking the protesters.
Let us hope that the new leadership, to be chosen at the end of the year, will use less ideology and repression, but more compassion.

Red Flag Manuscript: Watch Out for the West’s Infiltration and Sabotage in the Arena of Ideology

[Editor’s Note: Red Flag Manuscript published an article on the importance of safeguarding China’s ideology. [1] The author, Zheng Weiping, Director of the Political Department of Guangzhou Military Region, argued that “It has always been the core mission of each country and political (ruling) party to fight for the discourse power in ideology and be proactive in safeguarding the nation’s ideology.” Zheng stated that China should adhere to its Marxist ideology and socialist path and be fully alert to the West’s infiltration and attempts to overthrow the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) leadership. The following is an excerpt from the article.]

Ideology is an important issue that is directly related to core national interests, national security, and development. It has always been the core mission of each country and political (ruling) party to fight for the discourse power in ideology and be proactive in safeguarding the nation’s ideology. Given the current complex international and domestic situation, a correct understanding and a proper response to the challenges in the arena of ideology are major practical issues for us.

I. Consciously Adhere to the Marxist Ideology

The Marxist theory of ideology is a sharp weapon for us to use in our ideology work. To have a comprehensive and systematic understanding of the Marxist theory of ideology, one must deeply comprehend its basic ideas: First, the mode of production of material determines the nature of ideology. ... Second, ideology is based on an interpretation of the real world. Politics, law, morality, art, philosophy, religion, and other ideas form the ideological superstructure which includes ideals, beliefs, values, and other important spiritual notions. These, in turn, affect and restrict people's values and spiritual life. Third, class is the essential characteristic of ideology. … Fourth, ideology is the thought system of the dominant social class. ... Fifth, ideology must not only interpret the world, but also transform the world. ... Sixth, the core value system is the soul of ideology. Ideologies are built around the core value system of a social class and social group. … The battles among ideologies are basically clashes between the core value systems. These Marxist concepts of ideology are the guidelines for our work in the arena of ideology.

II. Accurately Grasp the Nature of Socialist Ideology with Chinese Characteristics

Marxism is the soul of socialist ideology with Chinese characteristics. ...

The common goal of socialism with Chinese characteristics is the subject of socialist ideology with Chinese characteristics. ...

The national spirit with patriotism as its core and the spirit of the times with reform and innovation as their core are the essence of the socialist ideology with Chinese characteristics.

III. Deeply Recognize the Complex Situation in the Arena of Ideology

First, in the context of economic globalization, the struggle between ideologies has become more intense and complex. Specific manifestations are:

1) The main ideological struggle has not changed. Since the socialist system was established, Western capitalism has committed to peaceful evolution and Westernization. Its attempt to constrain and strangle socialism has never changed. The main ideological struggle between socialism and capitalism still revolves around who will defeat the other.

2) The pattern of ideological struggle is more complex. There are mainstream conflicts between capitalism and socialism, non-mainstream ideological debates that impact political and social values, and ideological differences that stem from ethnic, religious, sovereignty, and territorial disputes. Different ideologies confront, penetrate, and influence each other, making the ideological struggle more complex.

3) The ideological struggle has entered into more areas. It is not limited to the ideological and cultural fields, but also permeates politics, economics, technology, the military, international relations, and other fields. It has also become more popular in the areas of culture, academics, and life in general. Ideology’s appearance and essence are more and more separated from each other, but its impact has become more and more lasting and strong.

4) Ideology plays a more obvious role in international strategic battles these days. The U.S.-led Western countries implement their ideological strategy, encouraging and supporting so-called "color revolutions," which are, in fact, the Western-styled "democratic reform" to change other countries. On the surface, the struggle between maintaining and changing the regime in a targeted country looks like non-violent revolution and political action carried out in the streets by the locals, but actually it is the West’s ideological hegemony that plays a leading role behind it. The recent "Rose Revolution," "Orange Revolution," and "Jasmine Revolution" are examples.

Second, Western countries have strengthened their efforts to infiltrate and sabotage our ideology. The U.S.-led Western countries do not want to see a strong socialist China. They attempt to use their Westernization and separation strategy to drastically change China, just as they did to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. They have deliberately intensified political pressure, stepped up economic development constraints, continued to demonize us, and ideologically and culturally infiltrated us, using more diverse means and higher technology. It is more and more difficult for us to fend them off and respond to them.

For example, they push ideological hegemony under the banner of Western freedom, democracy, and human rights; they promote the multi-party system and a separation of powers; they attack our political system, maliciously stir up discussions of social hot issues, incite separation using ethnic and religious issues, support "dissidents" to challenge our political bottom line, deny the party's leadership in the name of "restoring history" and "reforming by reflecting,” strengthen ideological and cultural infiltration, and sabotage our country by using their advantage in network technology. Overall, they effect ideological infiltration and sabotage by taking capitalist values as the core ideological export content, stirring up discussions on sensitive issues, penetrating to and competing for the grassroots level, using "dissidents" and “opinion leaders" as their supporters, forging collusion between internal and external forces, targeting the military, and taking the Internet and mobile phones as a key battlefield.

The reality shows that the complexity and sharp struggle in the ideological field do not change based on our will. The struggle is a contest between the socialist and capitalist value systems. The hostile forces’ fundamental goal is to overthrow the CCP’s leadership and subvert our country's socialist system.

Third, one cannot ignore the impact that the complicated struggle in the ideological field has on our society.

IV. Fighting the Ideological Battle Proactively

Ideology work is related to the Party’s and the country’s overall work, the steady development of socialism with Chinese characteristics, social harmony, and the stability of the nation. We must fully recognize the extreme importance of ideology work, always adhere to Marxism’s guiding position in the ideology field, always remain clear and firm in our thinking and political activities, and prevent influence and interference from all kinds of wrong ideas. At present, we should utilize mainstream media, the Internet, mobile phones, and other new media to build a modern communications system with wide coverage and advanced technology, strengthen and improve our leadership over ideology work, and improve our ability to establish ideology.

[1] Red Flag Manuscript, “Properly Deal with the Challenges in the Arena of Ideology,” November 29, 2011.
http://www.qstheory.cn/hqwg/2011/201122/201111/t20111129_126348.htm.

Discuss wisely, calmly and properly with the Dalai Lama

WE ARE HUMAN from Lhaksam on Vimeo.

According to Louise Watt of the Associated Press: "Dozens of Tibetans, including monks, held up a portrait of the Dalai Lama in a community in southwestern China in an act of defiance days after other Tibetans set themselves on fire to protest Chinese rule."
She quoted a unnamed Chinese official of Seda County's Public Security Bureau in Sichuan province:  "On Monday, fewer than 100 Tibetans gathered and held a portrait of the Dalai Lama. The New Year festival is coming up so they want to draw attention by creating an incident."
This protest was related to the immolation of Sopa Rinpoche, a local revered Lama of Golok country.
Before visiting India for border talks. China's Special Representative and State Councillor Dai Bingguo said that both countries should to settle their disputes “wisely, calmly and properly”. He travelled to New Delhi  for the Special Representative's 15th round of talks (since 2003) on the boundary dispute.
Dai also stated that both countries needed to “deepen political trust.”
China also needs to "deepen political trust" with the Dalai Lama and the Tibetans in general. Don't you think that the issue of Tibet should also be solved "wisely, calmly and properly"?
Repression has not helped and will not help.
Why can't Dai Bingguo and his colleagues of the State Council who are intelligent people understand this?
In fact, Dai should have taken the opportunity of his visit to Delhi to discuss wisely and camly with the Dalai Lama the Tibetan issue.
Let us be clear, unless the Tibetan issue is solved, the border issue CAN NOT be solved.
All those who have been involved in the 'talks' since 1960 are aware of this.

Thousands attend Sopa Rinpoche's funeral; Protests reported
Phayul
January 17, 2012
DHARAMSHALA, January 17: Thousands of Tibetans from around the Golok region of eastern Tibet attended the funeral of Sonam Wangyal Sopa Rinpoche on Sunday morning.
Sopa Rinpoche, a respected spiritual figure in his early forties passed away on the spot after drinking and spraying kerosene all over his body before lighting himself up on January 8.
According to the Beijing based award winning Tibetan writer, Woeser, Tibetans in Amdo Golok and in the neighbouring regions of Qinghai, Gansu, and Sichuan were in deep mourning at the passing away of Rinpoche.
Writing on her blog, Woeser said thousands of Tibetans participated in the funeral ceremony of Sopa Rinpoche in Darlag (in Chinese, Dari) county of Golok.
Elsewhere in Golok, hundreds of Tibetans took out a daylong peaceful demonstration following Sopa Rinpoche's funeral ceremony.
Citing contacts within the region, an exile Tibetan, Khenpo Ogyen Rigzin told US based radio service VOA that over a hundred Tibetans carryong photos of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Gyalwang Karmapa in Amdo Golok Pema district carried protests from around 9:30 am to 5 pm.
“The demonstration was carried out in solidarity with Tibetans who have sacrificed their lives since the 2008 mass uprisings in Tibet,” Kehnpo Rigzin said.
“The demonstrators were raising slogans for the return of the Dalai Lama to Tibet and freedom in Tibet,” Khenpo Rigzin said while adding that he also heard people wailing and crying through a phone conversation he had with a local Tibetan while the demonstration was being carried out.
“The demonstrators were also carrying banners urging Tibetans to rise up in solidarity with all those who have sacrificed their lives for Tibet,” Khenpo Rigzin said.
Chinese security personnel had apparently let the demonstration go on while taking pictures and videos of the demonstrators.
Sopa Rinpoche set himself ablaze in front of the police station of Darlag County in Golog after shouting slogans calling for Tibet's freedom and the long life of Tibet's spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.
In leaflets that Sopa Rinpoche distributed just before his fatal self-immolation, he stated his fiery sacrifice was not for his “personal glory but for Tibet and the happiness of Tibetans."
"The Tibetans should not lose their determination. The day of happiness will come for sure. For the Dalai Lama to live long, the Tibetans should not lose track of their path," Sopa Rinpoche said in his last statement.
In the past 11 months, 16 Tibetans have set their bodies on fire demanding the return of the Tibetan spiritual leader His Holiness the Dalai Lama from exile and protesting China’s continued occupation of Tibet.

Oh, Indian Youth, aren't you outraged yet?

My article Oh, Indian Youth, aren't you outraged yet? appeared yesterday in the DNA.
Click here to read.

More unrest, more cameras

To deal with the growing unrest in China, the  Government in Beijing has found the solution: to install more and more surveillance cameras.
The only question is: will it make people happier, will the society be more harmonious and the country more stable?
We may soon have the answer to these questions.

Wuhan Installed a Quarter Million Monitoring Cameras
Chinascope
January3, 2012
People’s Daily recently reported on the completion of a government funded two-year project to install a quarter million monitoring cameras in Wuhan, the largest city in central China. The camera network is built on three levels. The top level monitors major transportation spots, large squares, schools, and colleges. The second level monitors main connecting roads and district-level locations. The third level monitors 225,000 “social check-points.” The whole system is divided into layers of “cells” in a “grid.” Mobile monitoring cameras are also mounted on police vehicles. There are seven different types of cameras deployed and the vast majority of them provide high definition digital video. The police operate the central control of this monitoring network.
Source: People’s Daily, December 29
http://politics.people.com.cn/GB/70731/16752912.html

Leadership’s control of thought is the most important

The Chinese Communist Party lives in another world or in another time.
The ideologues still dreams of a Great Socialist Revolution. They quote Comrade Mao: "the leadership’s control of thought is the most important leadership control."
The author of this article translated by Chinascope tells us: "Our Party has attached great importance to strengthening its position as the sole leader in the field of ideology ...For the Party to lead politically in the field of ideology, it must use the scientific theory of Marxism and the Party's strategies, principles, and policies to guide the development of socialist ideology; for the Party to maintain its leadership over thoughts in the field of ideology, it must vigorously promote socialist ideology, resist and criticize all erroneous thoughts, and ensure that socialist ideology gradually occupies the entire field of ideology."
The question is what is 'socialist ideology' in practice?
The Wall Street Journal recently reported about Chinese princelings: 

One evening early this year, a red Ferrari pulled up at the U.S. ambassador's residence in Beijing, and the son of one of China's top leaders stepped out, dressed in a tuxedo. Bo Guagua, 23, was expected. He had a dinner appointment with a daughter of the then-ambassador, Jon Huntsman.
The car, though, was a surprise. The driver's father, Bo Xilai, was in the midst of a controversial campaign to revive the spirit of Mao Zedong through mass renditions of old revolutionary anthems, known as "red singing." He had ordered students and officials to work stints on farms to reconnect with the countryside. His son, meanwhile, was driving a car worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and as red as the Chinese flag, in a country where the average household income last year was about $3,300.

This is probably was is known as 'socialism with Chinese characteristics'. 
Whether or not, Bo Xilai is be able to make it to the Standing Committee of the Politburo (one of the nine bosses of China) in 2012, the problem will remain the same. 
As we have seen in my previous posting, China is in turmoil and it is not ideology that will convince the people of China that their leaders are not sincere.
It is like in India, ministers exploiting mines in Jharkand, Goa or Karnataka, telling the people: "Anna Hazare is not representing the people. We are the legitimate representatives".
Who believes them?

Maintaining Tight Control over Ideology    
22 November 2011
Chinascope
[Editor’s Note: Qiushi Journal republished an article from the Contemporary World and Socialism magazine on the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) control over ideology work, which includes establishing, deciding on, shaping, and disseminating ideology. [1] The author, Wang Yonggui, is a scholar at the School of Marxist Studies at Nanjing Normal University. In the article, Wang stressed that the Party’s control over ideology “cannot be loosened for a single moment” and that “strengthening the Party’s sole leadership over work in ideology is an important weapon for the CCP’s success.” The following are excerpts from the article.]

I. Emphasizing the Strategic Importance of Ideology Work and Tightly Controlling Its Direction
Managing ideology work has always been a very important function for our Party. Missteps in managing the economy will cause big problems. Missteps in managing ideology will also cause big problems. Therefore, we should not slacken in our work on ideology while focusing on economic development. Strengthening the Party’s sole leadership over ideology, firmly controlling the direction of that ideology, and strengthening our motivation and foresight are important magic weapons for our continued victories.

1. Establish a central standing organization and strengthen the Party's control over ideology. Back when the Chinese Communist Party was first established in 1921, our Party created a propaganda agency responsible for propaganda and agitation and for promoting revolutionary development. After the Sixth CCP Congress, the Central Propaganda Department became a permanent branch (of the government) and assumed its responsibilities and functions as the supreme organization for propaganda, for the education of the whole country, and for the political thought education of CCP cadres and the general public. In July 1942, Comrade Mao Zedong stressed that "the leadership’s control of thought is the most important leadership control."

2. Strengthen the development of the CCP organization and consolidate the Party's leadership over ideology. Our Party has attached great importance to strengthening its position as the sole leader in the field of ideology, which has been achieved mainly through the Party's political leadership, leadership over thoughts, and its organizational leadership. For the Party to lead politically in the field of ideology, it must use the scientific theory of Marxism and the Party's strategies, principles, and policies to guide the development of socialist ideology; for the Party to maintain its leadership over thoughts in the field of ideology, it must vigorously promote socialist ideology, resist and criticize all erroneous thoughts, and ensure that socialist ideology gradually occupies the entire field of ideology; for the Party to execute its organizational leadership  in the field of ideology, it must establish Party organizations in all ideology sectors. These organizations will be responsible for publicizing and implementing the Party's strategies, principles, and policies, especially the establishment of the propaganda departments from the central to the local Party committees at all levels. …
Because of the extreme importance of ideology, we must regard the improvement of the CCP’s ability to lead in ideology as the keystone to improving our ability as a ruling Party, and we must firmly control the Party’s leadership over ideology. This is the key to maintaining the invincible position of our Party and our socialist cause.

II. Responding to Confrontation between Ideologies and Scientifically Controlling the Correct Direction of the Development of Ideology
We must carry out a clear-cut battle between the two opposing ideologies (socialist ideology vs. the capitalist ideology) to provide a powerful guarantee that the direction of our reform and opening-up policy will be correct. Since the reform and opening-up, our Party has attached great importance to the confrontation and struggle between ideologies, actively responded to domestic and overseas challenges, and scientifically led in the development of ideology. Deng Xiaoping stressed that "liberalization itself is bourgeois; there is no such thing as proletarian or socialist liberalization. ... Promoting liberalization will lead us to the capitalist path." This suggested that fighting bourgeois liberalization is a long-term task. … Since the beginning of the 21st century, in responding to some erroneous thoughts and views questioning the current reform and the Party's basic policies, the Central Propaganda Department and other departments have edited “The Six Whys - the Answers to Several Major Issues," "Seven ‘How to Understand,’" and the "Learning Guide on Drawing ‘Four Major Boundaries’" to help cadres and the general public clarify some major issues and consciously resist the infiltration of erroneous ideas.

III. Actively Moving the Development of Ideology Forward with Innovative Styles and Methods
We should use propaganda, education, and scientific indoctrination to enhance the attractiveness and fighting power of Marxism-Leninism. Lenin once pointed out that, in the course of the proletarian revolutionary struggle, "socialist consciousness is something instilled from outside of the proletarian class struggle, rather than spontaneously generated from the struggle itself." Using Lenin's "concept of indoctrination" as our guide, our Party has actively promoted positive education, vigorously disseminated Marxism and the theory of the new democratic revolution, and strongly accelerated the process of democratic revolution.

IV. Consolidating the Social Foundation for Developing Ideology
We need to combine the sole leadership over socialist ideology with the concept of the diversity of cultural development. Since the reform and opening up, the development of social thoughts has been very active, and social consciousness has become diversified. This requires us to handle the relationship between the sole leadership over socialist ideology and the diversity of cultural values.
We should combine the development of socialist ideology with our efforts to expand the opening-up and development of the socialist market economy. Since the reform and opening-up began, we have adhered to the development of socialist ideology. At the same time we also expanded the opening-up and development of the market economy. As a whole, we correctly handled the relationship between the development of ideology and the expansion of the policy of opening-up and developing the socialist market economy. In fact, we prevented the ideology "centralization" and "enforcement" theories, and also paid attention to guarding against the ideology "useless" and "dilution" theories.
In all, since the establishment of the CCP 90 years ago, our experience and history in controlling  ideology tells us that the strategic position and function of managing ideology should not be neglected and that the Party's leadership over ideology cannot be relaxed. We must unswervingly adhere to Marxism as our guide in the field of ideology and scientifically educate and correctly guide the changes in people's moral and value systems.

Source: Qiushi Journal, “The Chinese Communist Party’s 90 Years of Experiences in Managing Ideology Work,” September 5, 2011.
http://www.qstheory.cn/zz/zgtsshzyll/201109/t20110906_108391.htm.

China in Turmoil

While more and more 'serious' analysts have begun predicting that China will soon be the Number 1 Super Economic Power of the planet, turmoil and unrest are increasing by the day in the Middle Kingdom.
The repression is often ferocious as we can see from this video which has recently emerged on YouTube. It was shot during the months of March/April 2008, near Sera Monastery in the outskirts of Lhasa.
According to The International Campaign for Tibet:

The footage shows a total of eight people – seven men and one woman – being detained, although a list that appears in the hands of police in the video suggests police were targeting at least ten people for detention. The sheer display of force to detain these unarmed individuals, who are mostly in bed at home when the police arrive, is notable; the video shows personnel from at least three branches of the police involved in the sweep.

The security personnel in black uniforms and helmets, many of whom are carrying assault weapons – and who appear to be leading the operation – are Special Police, although some are also seen carrying long sticks; several of whom have plain clothes beneath their vests and helmets, and not all of these personnel appear to be armed. The normal civilian police are involved, identified in some instances by the characters “Jing Cha” and “Police” in English on their vests; while those in green camouflage uniforms and black helmets often seen carrying only a truncheon, are from the People’s Armed Police Border Defense, according to the characters clearly seen on the sides of their helmets throughout the video.

Last week, Michael Bristow reported for BBC News about a grave incident between villagers and the authorities in a village of the southern province of Guangdong. Bristow said:

Police have blocked roads leading to the village of Wukan. Local people are trying to keep them out. The row - over village land taken by the local government - has been simmering for some time.
A new wave of protests broke out several days ago after the death of a villager while in police custody.
It is not easy to get information about what is going on in the area. One local official denied there was a problem.
But it appears that villagers have held a series of protest rallies over recent days involving hundreds of people.
A video of one demonstration, posted online, shows angry protesters shouting slogans such as "Down with corrupt officials.

Someone told Bristow: "We will continue our fight until the end."
Since then, 'Silence': it is so serious that the incident has been blocked on Internet sites, blogs and microblogs.

Even more ominous is an incident between Han Chinese and Tibetans in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province.
Some 3000 Chinese students went on a rampage on December 15, beating Tibetan students and breaking into their dormitories and class rooms at the Railways Vocational Institute.
Tibetan poetess Woeser reported on her blog:

The incident took place at a Chinese railway engineering vocational institute in the provincial capital city of Chengdu. Around 200 Tibetan students were held hostage as 3000 Chinese students attacked their dormitory, trashing the Tibetan students and breaking the doors, windows, and furniture. The Chinese students shouted 'Beat a Tibetan, Get an extra credit,’ and broke the doors of the Tibetan dormitories in the institute.
Many Tibetan students have been reportedly hospitalised carrying severe injuries. After the school authorities failed to quell the clashes, police had to be called to control the situation. More than 1000 People’s Armed Police personnel arrived at the scene and reportedly hurled tear gas to disperse the crowd. Several police and school vehicles were also damaged in the clashes.

It appears that when then Tibetans students came for lunch at the school mess the next day, the Chinese students started shouting: ‘Han Chinese have been victorious over the proud Tibetans’. 

This demonstrates the seriousness of the ethnic tensions between Han Chinese and other 'minority' groups.
China has today become World No 1 for unrest and riots (all categories).

Why the deep Chinese gloom?

Armed Police in Tibet

It is not only Tibet which has witnessed unrest in the recent weeks.
The Financial Times mentions: "Beijing has underlined its concern that an economic slowdown could lead to social unrest in China, with the country’s security chief urging local officials to do more to prepare for the 'negative effects of the market economy'."
It quotes Zhou Yongkang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Politburo telling some provincial officials that they needed "to find better methods of 'social management' – a euphemism which can include everything from better internet censorship and strategic policing of violent unrest, to a better social safety net. It is an urgent task for us to think how to establish a social management system with Chinese characteristics to suit our socialist market economy.”
Gordon C. Chang says in The Daily: "An economically weak China could be more dangerous than a strong one".
He considers that "after 35 years of virtually uninterrupted growth, the Chinese economy has reached an inflection point. September may have been the peak. Since then, the signs of contraction are unmistakable: falling car sales, declining electricity consumption, plunging industrial output, collapsing property prices, you name it. There were large transfers of money out of the country in October. The deterioration has been as rapid as it was unexpected. In short, the wheels are coming off the Chinese economy".
Chang says that "protests — 'mass incidents' in Communist lingo — have been skyrocketing, especially during the last couple years, going from around 127,000 in 2008 to perhaps as many as 280,000 in 2010". 
It might be exaggerated, but the point is that China (and India) will find it more and more difficult to escape the effects of 'economic crisis'. 
If the Chinese leaders are worried, it does not seem the case of their Indian counterparts.

Are China's leaders worried?
BBC
Damian
December 2, 2011
This has been the week when China's economy suddenly looked vulnerable and its Communist Party leaders sounded worried.
That may sound hard to believe. China's GDP is growing at around 9% a year, its foreign exchange reserves are the biggest in the world and Western nations keep looking to China suggesting, perhaps implausibly, that it may be able to help them out.
But listen to what China's Vice Finance Minster Zhu Guangyao told a forum in Beijing on Thursday about the global economy. "The current crisis is grimmer and more challenging than the global financial crisis triggered by the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy in 2008," he said.
That's right - here in China, the place most people look to with economic envy, senior officials think things are "grimmer and more challenging" than the dark days of 2008.

So why the deep Chinese gloom?
Mr Zhu gave some clues when he went on: "At that time, the world economy maintained growth, and world leaders... rolled out a massive fiscal stimulus and monetary measures... so that the crisis was to a large extent contained and economic recovery was achieved in a relatively short time."
China's fear seems to be that the world economy as a whole could shrink, something it avoided three years ago in large part because China and others kept growing.
The problem is that now things are different. It is far harder for China and other nations to roll out new stimulus measures.
So China's senior Communist officials seem to be deeply troubled by what is happening in the world around them. The deepening debt crisis in the Eurozone and the anaemic state of the US economy, China's two biggest export markets, are already hurting China's own economy.
But I think what is probably worrying them even more is the difficult position they now seem to be in at home.

Housing market woes
The shock this week was the news that China's massive factory sector, responsible some say for 40% of GDP, is now contracting for the first time since 2008.
The reasons are revealing. The official Purchasing Managers Index showed a sharp drop in export orders was responsible for one part of the contraction, but there was also a fall in domestic orders too.
The unpleasant message had two components. First China has not "decoupled" from the rest of the world - its economy is still, in part, export dependent and vulnerable to what happens elsewhere.
But crucially too, the idea that China's domestic economy is sailing ahead and can pick up the slack is also looking shaky.
While China's manufacturing is having a tough time, so too is another important part of its economy, the housing sector.
After 2008 China splurged vast amounts of money in a huge expansion of credit to keep the economy growing at 10%. House prices soared. That led in recent months to worries about inflation and asset bubbles.
So China had been tightening bank lending, trying to curb price rises and rein in property purchases.
The credit squeeze has had a visible impact. Businesses are hurting, while in October house prices in many cities started falling fast and the number of transactions is declining fast too. The OECD warned in a report that property price falls risk triggering the collapse of big developers.
That warning was repeated by the People's Bank of China on Friday after officials met representatives of commercial banks and property companies.
"Some banks think the banking system and developers can withstand home price falls of 20-30%," it said in a statement on its website. "But they are more concerned about whether a fall of 20% in home prices will trigger panic sales and whether the government can take effective measures to control chain reactions afterwards."
We have already, this week, had a signal of how worried Chinese officials are. On Wednesday the People's Bank of China cut bank reserve ratio requirements by 0.5%, basically meaning banks have to hold less cash and can lend more.
It was a surprise to many, and taken as a signal that all of a sudden China's leaders have shifted - over-riding their fears about inflation are now new fears about how to keep the economy growing fast.
Their problem is that inflation still stands at 5.5%, well above the government's target. So if they free up lending once more they risk fuelling new price rises and inflating the bubble again. More reason to be worried.
Patrick Chovanec, professor at Tsinghua University's School of Economics and Management in Beijing, says the People's Bank of China had been resisting pressure to ease up for months but has reluctantly conceded.
"The PBOC resisted loosening because it fears - and I agree with them - that pumping more money into the economy will reignite inflation and reinflate the property bubble," he wrote on his blog this week.
"Chinese leaders were hoping that vibrant export demand would offset the need for a more substantive adjustment within the Chinese economy, and that hasn't materialised. So their sole - and highly problematic - alternative is to try to reflate China's investment boom through monetary easing. The PBOC, and China's more perceptive leaders, know this is not a sustainable solution, but they're stuck."
As he put it: "One-time Fed Chairman William Mcchesney Martin famously observed that the job of a central banker is to 'take away the punch bowl just when the party is getting started'. To put it simply, the PBOC just handed back the punch bowl."

Strike fears
China, like the West, Professor Chovanec says, is facing a domestic credit crunch, but they are crucially different: "China stands at the peak of a bubble, while Europe and the US stand in the trough of a recession."
So China's leaders have many reasons to be worried. Export markets are grim. Manufacturing is contracting. Inflation is higher than they would like. The central bank is warning about events that could "trigger panic" in the property market. They need to sustain growth but without inflating the bubble even more.
China's leaders are, of course, still in a much more enviable position than their Western counterparts. The central government has cash to spend and the economy is growing.
But there is one more reason why China's authoritarian rulers might be worried. All the economic concerns are having a very real impact and it can be seen in growing labour unrest.
Friday brought news of a new strike in Shanghai. Several hundred workers were striking outside a factory. Their employer Hi-P international, a supplier to the electronics, automotive and telecoms industries, was reported to be cutting jobs and shifting production elsewhere.
Hi-P's latest financial report on its website indicated that the costs of its labour and materials had gone up so its net profit margin had plunged from 10% to just 2%.
A group of the workers outside the factory was displaying a banner reading: "We want an explanation! We want truth! Where is Hi-P's truth? Where is the government's credibility?"
The Communist Party's credibility is now built on the idea it can keep the economy growing fast and keep creating jobs. These look like troubling economic times.

The Office 610

This excellent article published in the China Brief of the Jamestown Foundation demonstrates the seriousness of the law and order situation in China.
Beijing is setting up more and more 'extrajudicial' structures to take care of the growing restlessness of the masses.
It was recently reported that the Chinese government was contemplating making changes in its criminal code in order to legalize detention up to six months without formal charges.
This would give the Chinese authorities a free hand to arrest and keep suspects under 'residential surveillance' in undisclosed locations for up to six months without any formal charges or notice to the family or lawyer. 
The targeted people should be involved in cases of 'terrorism, crimes endangering national security, or major corruption'; this is vague enough to detail any political dissidents.
Nicholas Bequelin, a Hong Kong-based senior researcher for Human Rights Watch explained: “If you are taking somebody elsewhere than a lawfully supervised place of detention without notice, it greatly increases the risk of torture.”
The point is: can China pretends to be a major world power while taking such backwards steps on important and universal topics?
But the leadership in Beijing seems more and more nervous to lose the control over the Middle Kingdom.  
On September 9, Huanqiu, the Chinese edition of Global Times published an article "The Loss of Media Control in the Soviet Union Accelerated the Death of the Soviet Communist Party” written by Zhu Jidong, an executive director of the World Socialism Research Center at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. 
Zhu blamed Mikhail Gorbachev for abolishing media censorship and inviting Western media into the Soviet Union: “As the Soviet Union's media surrendered themselves to the West, the people of the Soviet Union gradually lost both their trust in the Party and the country and their faith in socialism. In just two years, from January 1989 to January 1991, over 2.9 million Soviet Communist Party members denounced the Party. Relinquishing leadership over the media resulted in the loss of control that destroyed the foundation of Soviet ideology, did away with the Soviet Union’s core value system and idealistic beliefs, and accelerated the death of the Soviet Communist Party.”
Similarly, the leadership believe that if they lose the control over the judiciary the Heaven will fall on their heads.
It is perhaps true, but censorship and 'extrajudicial' process do not rhyme with respectable power.

The 610 Office: Policing the Chinese Spirit
China Brief Volume: 11 Issue: 17
September 16, 2011
Sarah Cook, Leeshai Lemish

Numerous official websites from the past six months—in Beijing, Qingdao, Shandong, and Jiangsu among others—mention the 610 Office, an entity engaged in efforts to “carry out comprehensive investigations,” strengthen “transformation,” and prevent unwanted incidents (Pingyin.gov.cn, September 5; Jsrm.gov.cn, August 15; Laoshan.gov.cn, April 2011). A June 2011 article in a reputable Chinese magazine briefly referenced the 610 Office as a key component of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “stability-preservation work” (Caijing, June 6). What is the 610 Office? How and why did it come to exist? Why is it carrying out measures ostensibly under the purview of the Ministry of Public Security?
The answers to these questions point to the establishment of a CCP-based, rather than a state-based, security organization, as well as a revival of the use of security agencies to enforce ideological compliance. Moreover, the 610 Office signifies a systemic arrangement by CCP leaders to avoid the reach of legal reforms when dealing with a perceived existential threat to their power. The willingness and ability of CCP leaders to take such actions has implications not only for how we understand the trajectory of rule of law development in China, but also for how we might anticipate the regime responding to present and future threats to its security.
The 610 Office’s beginnings lie partly in the CCP’s tradition of “leading groups.” Since 1958, the CCP has used leading small groups (lingdao xiaozu) to coordinate and guide action on various issue areas. They are typically secretive, arbitrarily created and dissolved, and headed by members of the CCP Politburo Standing Committee. In 2008, Alice Miller counted eight such “primary” leading groups in operation, their responsibilities ranging from foreign affairs to economics, with subsidiary entities running down the Party’s system and State Council offices to execute policy ("The CCP Central Committee's Leading Small Groups," China Leadership Monitor, September 2, 2008).
There is however another key leading group strikingly out of character with the broad focus of each of the other leading groups: “The Leading Small Group for Preventing and Handling the Problem of Heretical Organizations” (zhongyang fangfan he chuli xiejiao wenti lingdao xiaozu). Originally called “The Leading Small Group for Handling the Falun Gong Issue” (falun gong wenti lingdao xiaozu), the name change suggests its activity has expanded since 1999 (Lstdww.gov.cn, August 10, 2011; Gxbobai.gov.cn, April 2010). Though Falun Gong remains the primary focus, its targets now include house church Christians, Buddhists and other religious or spiritual groups, and it has been renamed accordingly.
The 610 Office was formed concurrently as this leading group’s implementing body and is named after the date of its creation: June 10, 1999. “Six-ten” functions outside the state system without any official standing. At its core, the 610 Office is a plainclothes CCP-based extra-ministerial security force focused on suppressing the Falun Gong spiritual group. The leading group sets the policy direction, which the 610 Office executes.
After featuring briefly in news articles in 2000, the 610 Office has since garnered only occasional international attention, leading to a common misperception that it is defunct. Recent evidence—including eyewitness accounts, official online documents, United Nations reports, and Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) analysis—however, all points to an agency that remains active nationwide at all levels of Chinese governance. It was particularly involved in crackdowns surrounding the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai (Hnebp.edu.cn, November 6, 2008; Xzqs.gov.cn, June 23, 2010). Today, based on extrapolating from district-level numbers on local government websites, we estimate it retains at least 15,000 officers.

The 610 Office is Born
This office's story begins on June 7, 1999, when then-Party Secretary General Jiang Zemin called a special Politburo meeting. Jiang was determined to resolve what he perceived as a serious challenge to the regime’s authority, “something unprecedented in the country since its founding 50 years ago” that “did not occur even during the Cultural Revolution”—a group of meditators who practice Falun Gong [1].
According to government sources, Western media reports, and Falun Gong witnesses, tens of millions of Chinese—from peasants to young professionals to military officers—were practicing the discipline at the time. With so many individuals dedicated to spiritual self-fulfillment independent of Party control or ideology, several top cadres began viewing Falun Gong as a threat (Associated Press, April 26, 1999; New York Times, April 27, 1999).
This translated into repression that showed first signs in 1996, and escalated to beatings and arrests in Tianjin in April 1999. On April 25, over 10,000 adherents of the meditative religious movement gathered outside the national petitions office in Beijing, adjacent to the Zhongnanhai government compound, asking for an end to abuses. According to the memoirs collection, Zhu Rongji in 1999, Premier Zhu took an appeasing stance toward Falun Gong and was prepared to resolve the grievances before Jiang intervened [2].
In a June 7 directive, Jiang ordered the creation of a special leading group within the Party’s Central Committee to “swiftly handle and solve the ‘Falun Gong problem’.” He ordered that the team, placed under the responsibility of Politburo Standing Committee member Li Lanqing, “should immediately organize forces” and “get fully prepared for the work of disintegrating [Falun Gong]” [3].
A few days later, the CCP also established an office to handle day-to-day operations. This office was internally named 610, or "liu yao ling" for its June 10 creation. No legislation was passed establishing it. No provisions formally outlined its mandate. This extralegal flexibility has proved critical in recent years, as its responsibilities have expanded.
Given that the CCP already had control over a range of security agencies and military forces, forming yet another entity seems unnecessary. Several factors may have contributed to Jiang’s decision:

• Numbering in the tens of millions, Falun Gong practitioners included many individuals within the military and security establishment. This contributed to a sense that Falun Gong had quietly infiltrated the CCP and state apparatus. Jiang may have felt the need to create a trusted network of security agents to counter Falun Gong’s influence.
• Given the task’s scale, Jiang needed an entity that would act quickly and forcefully with no holds barred. He may not have envisioned that twelve years later millions would still be practicing with new believers joining and the 610 Office seemingly permanent.
• The creation of a new leading group quickly sent a signal down CCP ranks that countering Falun Gong was a new priority.
• Given that the entire anti-Falun Gong campaign functioned outside Chinese law, Jiang needed a security force that could operate outside the existing legal system and its potential restrictions [4].

Over the following months, 610 Office branches were created throughout China and a chain of command emerged, closely linked to the Political-Legal Committee (PLC) structure. Hao Fengjun, a former 610 Office official selected from the Tianjin Public Security Bureau, stated that the office's orders come directly from the Party’s top echelons, then trickle down to cities and neighborhoods [5]. Much of this structure overlaps with the CCP’s Political-Legal Committee (PLC). For example, after Li Lanqing retired in 2003, Jiang’s confidant and politburo member Luo Gan took over the leading group overseeing the 610 Office, while also heading the PLC. In 2007, Zhou Yongkang replaced him as head of both the leading group and the PLC.
Hao’s description of a nationwide network of 610 Office branches closely linked to the PLC apparatus is corroborated by a range of official sources. An online search reveals scores of recent references, pointing to the existence of active branches even in small cities and districts of Jiangxi, Guangdong, Zhejiang, and Shandong. A website of the Leiyang Municipal Party Committee in Hunan Province states its local 610 branch “reports to and is under the supervision of the municipal Party Committee’s Political-Legal Committee,” and is located in the Party Committee’s office building (Leiyang.gov.cn, December 12, 2008).

Functions of the 610 Office
The 610 Office has two main functions: coordinating personnel at state institutions to assist in fulfilling the office's mandate and directly conducting operations against Falun Gong and other forbidden spiritual groups. The first coordination role can involve pressuring staff from state bodies to act according to the 610 Office’s wishes, even when these run counter to their legal authority. Several lawyers who have defended Falun Gong practitioners report 610 Office personnel subverting the ability of judges and prison wardens to carry out their duties as outlined by Chinese law. Attorney Jiang Tianyong says compromised judges decide Falun Gong cases without recourse to Chinese legal standards but, instead, based on extrajudicial intervention from the 610 Office (Radio Free Asia, April 13, 2010). Meanwhile, Gao Zhisheng, Guo Guoting, and Wang Yajun have reported 610 Office interference in their efforts to meet with clients held in labor camps, prisons and detention centers (“Lawyer Barred from Representing Client by “6-10” Agents,” Human Rights in China, September 10. 2010).
Second, the 610 Office also has an immediate role in executing the leading group's policies. In the process, the 610 Office appears largely exempt from even the basics of China's judicial and legal reforms, often employing methods that are technically illegal under Chinese law. Various credible sources describe 610 Office agents directly participating in extrajudicial killings, torture, sexual assault, and illegal confiscation of property. For example, the 2009 report of the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Killings cited 610 Office involvement in pre-Olympic cases of Falun Gong deaths in custody [6]. Other Chinese dissidents and activists have detailed extra-legal detentions and torture on a scale and severity that appear to go beyond commonly-cited abuses in the law enforcement system. [7].

Reviving Thought Reform
610 Office activities also differ from those carried out under other leading groups in that its mandate does not relate to policy areas, like foreign affairs or economic reform. Rather, it targets Chinese citizens for thought reform.
Millions of Falun Gong practitioners place their moral teachings, revolving around Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance, as their spiritual compass. CCP leaders arbitrarily deemed these beliefs “heretical” in 1999 and “transformation” quickly became a key aim of 610 Office operations. Like “patriotic education” tactics used in Tibet, the purpose of this ideological reprogramming is to break the will of subjects by coercing them—reportedly including physical and psychiatric torture, sleep deprivation and manipulation of family members—to renounce Falun Gong, profess loyalty to the CCP, and ultimately participate in the forced conversion of others (Washington Post, August 5, 2001) [8].
Today, this objective remains fundamental to 610 operations, a testament to the Party’s difficulty crushing a decentralized groups of dedicated believers. In March, an analysis of local 610 Office-related references on official websites indicated that the Central 610 Office launched a renewed campaign to “transform” Falun Gong practitioners nationwide scheduled to last from 2010 to 2012 (Congressional-Executive Commission on China, March 22).
The 610 Office’s transformation work—like other aspects of the campaign against Falun Gong, such as the extensive use of labor camps and nationwide propaganda—is a throwback to Maoist-era practices. In the 1980s, reformers pushed for entities like the Ministry of Public Security to get out of the business of “resolving ideological questions” (People's Daily, April 5, 1979). The rise of the 610 Office however suggests a retrogression of the security apparatus to address thought crimes.

Conclusion
The 610 Office’s operations long ago expanded beyond its core task of wiping out Falun Gong. Testifying before the European Parliament, Hao Fengjun said that in April 2003 Party leaders ordered the 610 Office to dispose of 28 other “heretical organizations” and “harmful qigong organizations” [9]. The broadened functions remain in effect today as local government websites detail 610 Office investigations of other spiritual groups (See, for example, Hlong.gov.cn, May 2009).
The expanded mandate points to the entrenchment of the 610 Office in the CCP apparatus. What began as a temporary leading small group and task force has become a permanent fixture. It also highlights how 610 Office’s existence undermines rule of law—whatever official state policy towards religion might be, this entity operates at the direction of a small group of CCP leaders with no official standing.
Such conclusions take on even greater significance at a time when the 610 Office may be serving as a model for new CCP initiatives. Since 2008, official reports, speeches and circulars have referenced a novel set of CCP “leading groups” maintaining stability. Reportedly, branches of the Office of Maintaining Stability “are being set up in every district and major street” in rich coastal cities. They are charged with “ferreting out ‘anti-CCP elements’" (Wall Street Journal, December 9, 2009).
Multiple official sources indicate that these new entities and the 610 Office are working closely together. In at least one district in Guangdong’s Foshan City, for example, the 610 Office and the “leading group office for maintaining stability” were listed side-by-side in an online description of the local PLC’s internal functioning and staff (Chongchuan.gov.cn, June 7, 2010). In some localities, staff and even the leadership of the two entities seem to overlap. A March 2010 notice from Zhejiang’s Pingyang County government states that the same person was appointed to direct both 610 Office and the local stability maintenance office.
The rise of the 610 Office and stability maintenance offices suggests a sense among CCP leaders that existing internal security services, like the Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of State Security, are not satisfactorily effective. That these officials are increasingly relying on more arbitrary, extra-legal, and personalized security forces to protect their hold on power does not only bode badly for China’s human rights record. It also threatens the stability of internal CCP politics should 610 Office work become politicized—just as counterespionage was corrupted prior to Reform and Opening—amid the jockeying for power ahead of and beyond the upcoming 18th Party Congress.

Where is Confucius gone?

“China is the developing country with the strongest potential, but is still lagging behind the US, the EU and Japan in terms of soft power, including the maturity of economy, technology, education and culture. [China] is an important Asian player with global interests and impact, but is still unable to take a leadership role in the region. [China] is a socialist country with unique governing and value systems, but is experiencing deep reforms and awaiting territorial unification as well as threatened by national separatism and social unrest.”
Thus spoke Wang Jisi, the Dean of the School of International Studies in Beijing University, also a member of President Hu Jintao’s personal think tank. Wang’s message was clear: China will continue to stick to a ‘peaceful rise’. Wang, who expressed himself in the very official Global Times, even disapproved of some Chinese analysts who, in 2010, made provocative statements extending China's ‘core interests’ to the South China Sea.
Soon after Dr Manmohan Singh returned from his trip to the island of Hainan (to attend the Third Summit of BRICS nations,) Willy Lam, the veteran China watcher wrote in East-Asia-Intel.com: “Call it damage-control diplomacy. Since President Hu Jintao's American visit in January, Chinese diplomats and ‘official’ academics have been trying to reassure the world of Beijing's non-aggressive, ‘peaceful development’ diplomatic posture.”
The Indian press also noted a thaw and immediately rejoiced about the renewed possibility of the recurrent friendship between India and China.
But there is another side to the ‘peaceful’ coin.
When the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Liu Xiaobo, (he had initiated the Charter 08 which calls for the introduction of democratic reforms in China) Beijing went wild. It enraged Beijing so much that a Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson described the award as 'obscene'.
Though Lui’s demands were rather mild, he was jailed for daring to speak about ‘reforms’.
Since February, when the Arab world began to ask for ‘reforms’, Beijing started trembling. The regime became nervous. Already in late January, an article entitled Major Social Unrest Every Five Days in 2010 appeared, quoting a report published by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University on social unrest in China. It affirmed that in 2010, there has been a major incident of social unrest in the Middle Kingdom every five days. This represented a 20% increase over 2009. While 60 major incidents of social unrest were reported in 2009, it climbed to 72 in 2010: “Social unrest had spread throughout 29 provinces and cities (over 90%), with most occurring in Henan, Beijing, and Guangdong.”
The unexpected upheavals in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya did not amuse the leadership in Beijing. According to The People’s Daily, in February Wu Banguo, a member of the all-powerful Standing Committee Politburo of the CCP stated: “Based on China's national conditions, [we] solemnly declare that we will not engage in a multi-party political system or in diversity of the guiding ideology. We will not pursue the ‘separation of powers’ and the bicameral system, or engage in federalism or privatization of property.”
Beijing's response was extremely tough when an online campaign called for weekly rallies all around China. The Sydney Morning Herald reported that during one of these rallies: “Hundreds of uniformed and plainclothes police smothered Beijing's designated rally site on the Wangfujing shopping street, aggressively pushing away foreign reporters with cameras and briefly detaining several.”
Soon after meeting, Zhou Yongkang, the member in charge of national and public security confirmed that a national database containing basic information on the different strata of the population would soon be set up. He also announced that an early warning system will be put in place to alert the authorities in case of social grievances to diffuse possible incidents before they happen.
Then Ai Weiwei was arrested. The artist-activist is famous in China for having worked as the artistic consultant for the Beijing National Stadium for the 2008 Olympics. His mistake was probably to have questioned the government on corruption, particularly about the construction of Sichuan schools which collapsed during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake.
In China, many had thought that Weiwei was ‘untouchable’. But even when several foreign governments and human rights groups called for the artist's release, Beijing officials did not move, except to say that he was accused of ‘economic crimes’.
Nicholas Bequelin who works for Human Rights Watch believes that his arrest was calculated to send the message that no one would be immune, in Chinese terms, ‘you kill the chicken to scare the monkey’.
The green light for the operation probably came from the top leadership. The Guardian analyzed: “Chinese authorities have made their biggest move against dissidents and activists for years, including artist Ai Weiwei. The crackdown followed an anonymous online call for protests inspired by Middle Eastern uprisings, although it is unclear if any of those held or missing were connected to the appeal.”
We are far from the ‘peaceful rise’ trumpeted by Wang Jisi and other academics.
Wei Jingsheng, the exiled ‘father’ of the democratic movement in China commented: “ Since this happened to one of China's most well-known cultural figures, it has prompted many to remember the opening shots of the Cultural Revolution, when the Maoist regime removed ideologically inconvenient artists, writers and intellectuals from the scene at will without even any pretense to legal procedures”.
More ironically, a 31 foot-high statue of Confucius erected three months earlier with great pomp in front of the National Museum (formerly The Museum of the Revolution, but the word ‘revolution is taboo in China today) near the famous portrait of Mao on Tiananmen Square, was suddenly removed on April 22.
Where did the statue mysteriously go? Nobody seems to know. But as Wei Jingsheng wrote: “no one in China is safe from the whims and anxieties of those [officials] in power”. Not even Confucius, said a commentator.
Even more brutal.
On 16 March 2011, the self-immolation of Phuntsok, a Tibetan monk belonging to Ngaba Kirti Monastery in Sichuan province triggered violent protests by several thousand monks in Eastern Tibet.

According to the Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy: “Chinese security forces have cordoned the monastery and additional contingents of armed security forces (estimated to be around 800) have been brought in on 9 April 2011 to reinforce security clampdown in Ngaba County. The movement of the monks is totally restricted with no one being allowed to go in or come out of the monastery.”
Since then, more depressing news have circulated, particularly the increased presence of Chinese security forces in all Tibetan areas of Sichuan, Gansu and Yunnan.
According to other information, Chinese Communist cadres are roaming around villages “and talking about harmony and patriotism”.
After some 300 monks of Kirti monastery were trucked away by Chinese police to an unknown destination on April 21, some Tibetan prefectures of Eastern Tibet have been closed to foreign tourists. The latest reports affirm that the situation is extremely tense in the entire region.
The present leaders in Beijing may be less corrupt than the Qaddafis or the Mubaraks, but the repression of the ordinary people's aspirations is the same in China, in Libya or in Tunisia. Of course, the West is too scared of China and will not intervene or even condem the happenings there, but ultimately Beijing’s attitude does not lead to stability and peace and its recognition as a responsible power.

The Red Blue Print

The Dalai Lama recently  said that China needs to learn from India about democracy. According to him, it has brought harmony among people of different languages and ethnic backgrounds: "In India, because of the rule of law, there is harmony in society, which has different languages and scripts.
Democracy in this country is very deeply rooted not because of the country's poor conditions, but because of transparency." 
In an interview to The Nation, Thailand's leading English daily, he noted that the world trend was the rule of law, transparency, fairness, honesty and respect for human values and that "military occupation would not solve problems... People in China should learn from India's experience."   
As this article, in the China Brief of the Jamestown Foundation explains huge amounts of money are 'invested' in implementing 'social management'. 
The budget for 2011 is 624.4 billion yuan ($95.18 billion), 23.3 billion yuan ($3.55 billion) more than that of the PLA. 
It is quite unbelievable.
And at the end, nothing is solved. Rule of law, transparency, fairness, honesty and respect for human values is far more sustainable (and cheaper). 
Is China ready to learn from India? Probably not yet!
It raises another issue, what will happen if China does not earn these billions in foreign currency? After a short period of chaos, perhaps more harmony and democracy!
History of mankind has shown that you can suppress the aspirations of the masses for sometime, but not forever.

Beijing's blueprint for Tackling mass Incidents and social management
Chief Brief
Jamestown Fondation
Volume XI Issue 5  March 25, 2011
Willy Lam
China’s previous five-year plans were generally focused on the economy and little else. Yet, the outline of the 12th Five-Year Blueprint on Economic and Social Development for 2011 to 2015 (hereafter Blueprint), which was released at the end of the National People’s Congress (NPC) last week, had a lot to say about the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) new imperative of imposing tighter control over the populace (See “Beijing’s ‘Wei-Wen’ Imperative Steals the Thunder at NPC,” China Brief, March 10). The Blueprint contained lengthy sections on buttressing public security, tackling “mass incidents,” as well as implementing “social management” (shehui guanli), which are code words for boosting socio-political stability.
The conservative turn in Chinese politics was honed in by NPC Chairman Wu Bangguo’s hard-line Legislative Work Report at the plenary parliamentary session. Wu, also a Politburo Standing Committee (PBSC) member, warned that abandoning CCP leadership and orthodox socialist precepts would “plunge the country into the abyss of internal chaos” (Xinhua News Agency, March 10; Ming Pao [Hong Kong], March 11).
The Blueprint began by pointing out that due to deep-seated changes in the domestic and global arenas, the Chinese leadership was “up against risks and uncertainties that are both anticipated and hard to foretell.” “We must raise our consciousness about opportunities as well as risks—and take the initiative in adapting to changes in the environment,” the document said. It added that Beijing “must effectively defuse various kinds of contradictions” in order to attain socio-economic goals in the coming five years. While the Blueprint enumerated challenges in fields ranging from resources and technology to human resources, it was obvious that internal political stability was a key concern. It cited “obviously increasing social contradictions” as a primary impediment to the nation’s grand modernization objectives (Xinhua News Agency, March 17; China News Service, March 17).
The Blueprint disclosed for the first time the CCP leadership’s elaborate plans to build a nationwide “yingji xitong [rapid-response system] for tackling emergency incidents.” This was an apparent reaction to the estimated 100,000-odd mass incidents—including riots and disturbances—that had struck the country annually since the late 2000s. While the document did not mention “color revolutions,” the CCP leadership has both before and after the NPC played up its resolve to prevent “hostile anti-Chinese forces” from fomenting disorder in the country (Christian Science Monitor, March 3; Reuters, March 21).
The Blueprint pointed out that the planned yingji xitong “must be under a comprehensive, unified command, rationally structured, capable of nimble reactions—and that it must have guaranteed capability and high-efficiency operations.” The “backbone” of this mechanism would consist of the police, People’s Armed Police (PAP) and People’s Liberation Army (PLA) officers. The latter would be supplemented by public security experts and professionals, full-time and part-time staff in security-related enterprises; as well as volunteers. While no deadline has been mentioned, this labyrinthine wei-wen (“upholding stability”) apparatus, which is under the overall supervision of the CCP’s Central Commission for Political and Legal Affairs (CCPLA), is expected to be put together by 2015. It is apparently due to the huge costs involved that the wei-wen budget for 2011 was set at 624.4 billion yuan ($95.18 billion), which was 23.3 billion yuan ($3.55 billion) more than that of the PLA (See “The Wen-Wen Imperative Steals the Thunder at NPC,” China Brief, March 10).
A related section of the Blueprint, which was devoted to the new concept of “social management,” is focused on bolstering public order and harmony. As President Hu Jintao instructed at a Politburo meeting in February, social management was geared toward “promoting benevolent social order, and ensuring that society will be full of vigor on the one hand, and harmony and stability on the other” (Xinhua News Agency, February 19; People’s Daily, February 20). To this end, social-management offices are being set up nationwide: there will be at least one such unit for every major street in big cities as well as for each of the country’s 40,000-odd towns and rural townships. The Blueprint noted that apart from handling matters relating to public services and social-welfare provisions, the new offices would take charge of the “comprehensive treatment of law-and-order problems,” enhancing socio-political stability, and handling petitions filed by citizens with grievances against party and government departments. It is envisaged that these social-management outfits will work closely with the Wei-Wen Offices that have been established in most provinces and major cities since 2008 (New York Times, February 28; Wall Street Journal, December 9, 2009).
The CCP’s much more aggressive approach to wei-wen requires the large-scale recruitment of volunteers. The Blueprint indicated that one out of ten residents in most community districts would become a “registered social volunteer.” The massive deployment of wei-wen volunteers is apparently based on the experience of the Summer Olympics of 2008 and the Shanghai Expo of 2010, when up to 1 million vigilantes were recruited by the Beijing and Shanghai municipalities to maintain law and order. It was also during the Beijing Olympics that CCPLA officers first came up with the idea of putting together
a “people’s warfare-style” public-security apparatus to combat destabilizing forces (See “Beijing Revives Mao’s ‘People’s Warfare’ to Ensure Trouble-Free Olympics, China Brief, July 1, 2008).
Also significant is the Blueprint’s recommendation that “social organizations” (shehui zuzhi), which is the official term of Chinese-style NGOs, be put under
tighter government surveillance. Various party and government departments were urged to “institute a set of code of practices and criteria for social organizations’ activities, and to raise the effectiveness of government supervision.” The document noted that NGOs should be subject to a system of controls that consists of “a synthesis of legal supervision, government supervision, social supervision and self-supervision.” Given the role that NGOs have played in color revolutions in Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, it is perhaps not surprising that Beijing is anxious about keeping close tabs on non-government-affiliated organizations, particularly those that seem to have ties with Western countries. The Chinese government’s guarded approach was clearly demonstrated last year when the China branch of Oxfam, a London-based poverty-alleviation organization, was accused by the Chinese government of seeking to “infiltrate” the country (The Guardian, February 23, 2010; BBC News, February 23, 2010).
The Blueprint included a section on junmin ronghe, or the “synthesis between the military and civilians.” The document laid utmost emphasis on “the fundamental principle and system of the party’s absolute leadership over army.” It also highlighted the ideal of the “unity between the army and the government, as well as between the army and the people.” The PAP, whose major task is combating threats to internal security, should “boost its ability to handle emergency incidents, fight terrorism and uphold stability.” As late patriarch Deng Xiaoping pointed out soon after the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, the PLA and PAP were a “Great Wall of Steel” that safeguarded the CCP’s power and prerogatives (Asia Times, March 11; Far Eastern Economic Review, September 2009). Under the junmin ronghe rubric, the PLA and the PAP are free to tap economic, technological and human resources in civilian sectors in peacetime as well as during a national crisis.
How about more political participation by the people as a means to defusing the country’s mushrooming internal contradictions? The Blueprint did contain a section on “developing socialist democratic politics,” where it indicated that Chinese citizens had “the right to know, the right to participate [in politics], the right to express themselves, and the right to supervise [the government].” It also pledged that Beijing would push forward “democratic elections, democratic decision-making, democratic management and democratic supervision” according to law. It is true, however, these and similar pledges made by the CCP leadership in recent years have been more rhetorical than substantial. For example, since Deng introduced village-level elections in 1979, little efforts have been made to extend the polls to higher-level administrations. While talking to reporters at the end of the NPC last week, Premier Wen apparently tried to explain the lack of progress on elections by saying that “this requires a [long] procedure and duration.” He added that political reform could only be “implemented in an orderly fashion under a stable, harmonious social environment—and under the party’s leadership” (China News Service, March 14; Ming Pao, March 15).
The CCP’s call for tighter “social management” has come in the wake of a major swing toward conservatism— and quasi-Maoist ideals—in Chinese politics. This was attested to by the tough NPC address made by Chairman Wu Bangguo. Wu’s “seven nos” viewpoint on Chinese politics attracted international attention. They included no adoption of Western values; no adoption of a “system of multiple parties holding office in rotation”; no pluralization of the guiding [state] dogma; no tripartite division of power among the executive, legislature and judiciary; no adoption of a bicameral legislature; no to a federal system, and no privatization. He added that to
ensure China’s “correct political orientation,” China’s institutions, Constitution and the laws must safeguard “the status of the CCP as the country’s leading core” (China News Service, March 9; The Associated Press, March 9; BBC News, March 10).
Moreover, President of the Supreme People’s Court Wang Shengjun pledged in his NPC report that the courts would “diligently uphold social harmony and stability.” “We will strengthen and be innovative about social management so as to bolster social harmony and stability,” Wang said. “We will severely punish criminal activities that jeopardize state security and social stability.” In an apparent repudiation of the principle of the independence of the judiciary,
Wang vowed to boost senior judicial officials’ “education in the party’s [ideological] nature, party style and party discipline” so as to “enhance their resistance against corruption and against degeneration [into adherents of Western values].” The chief judge also urged his junior colleagues to follow the “strong leadership of the CCP central authorities under comrade Hu Jintao and to raise high the great flag of Chinese socialism” (Xinhua News
Agency, March 19; Sina.com, March 19).
According to liberal intellectual Bao Tong, the CCP’s renewed determination to spurn so-called Western norms would only exacerbate the country’s socio-political tensions. Bao, once a close aide to ousted party chief Zhao Ziyang, pointed out that values such as privatization, pluralistic political norms and the tripartite division of power were “good systems universally recognized by the
international community.” He added that only by adopting global democratic standards can the CCP “achieve real stability and real social harmony” (Radio Free Asia, March 19). The methodical way in which the Blueprint— and senior CCP cadres—has gone about reinstating quasi-Maoist ideas and institutions, however, means that the hopes of Bao and other progressive intellectuals may be dashed at least in the short-to-medium term.
Willy Wo-Lap Lam, Ph.D., is a Senior Fellow at The Jamestown Foundation. He has worked in senior editorial positions in international media including Asiaweek newsmagazine, South China Morning Post, and the Asia-Pacific Headquarters of CNN. He is the author of five books on China, including the
recently published “Chinese Politics in the Hu Jintao Era: New Leaders, New Challenges.” Lam is an Adjunct Professor of China studies at Akita International University, Japan, and at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.