China silences

With a replacement of Mr. Hu Jintao getting nearer, ironic and futile hopes are put in day-dreams of more democratic road-signs presenting themselves in due course. That, however, is not at all what the party leaders have in mind. The establishment in Beijing continues to put hard efforts in polishing the country’s image by idolizing stability and national pride.

Of course this is not what many Chinese people, and the rest of the world, were hoping for. The global economy has much to thank China for in 2009. Without the huge ‘stability packs’ to bend the economy, the world would probably have got a much tougher blow. (China’s economy didn’t even decline; the growing-pace just shrunk.) But everyone was hoping for more democratic rights, for China to re-shape its political structure, if even a little, like it had done with its economy over the past decade.

Some put their hopes in the words of Hu Jintao’s, China’s leader still, who claimed before that ‘the party needs to be democratized’. Sadly the way in which the concept democracy is defined by him and his backing, is totally different from what we are used to. Mr. Hu’s philosophy speaks of ‘personal freedoms’ and little public (read: political) ones. How much actually remains of the first, if the latter is not there?

And this is important. With the west’s downfall, the Asian tigers struck and usurped much of the vacuum. Now the west is recovering too; though most expect that not all countries will be assigned their former share of power. Together with economies, images have been hit hard as well. Many, understandably but wrongly, feel that America ‘got what it deserved’, and that China is now a good alternative. A nation so tightly controlled is not a good alternative.  Certainly huge government spending, infrastructural projects and industries will fire up any economy, but it will not make it keep going indefinitely. The same political structure that made these projects will also cause its downfall it no measures are taken.

Eyeing the statistics, you would be inclined to conclude that the communist party still holds great sway over the people. And in a sense it does; only not because of its ideals, popularity or political support. There a more simple explanation: People that want to work, earn money and gain as much control over their own futures as possible need the contacts the party provides. The party has become a strategic institution as much as a political one.

Since it is such a powerful institution, it is hard to hold a public opinion that differs from that of the institutionalized establishment, as we saw again last week. Liu Xjaobo has been sentenced to eleven years in prison. Two of these years will be without any political rights, destroying any opportunity of displaying his opinion publicly (and getting away with it).

The 53 year-old Xjaobo is one of the best known critics of the way in which China deals with human-rights. He has been jailed before, among other things because he co-authored the Charta 08-petition, which aimed at changing China’s one-party system and has gathered about 10.000 signatures so far. Pick a search engine, and find more on this man. I had no particular idea of this small text in mind, except for the wish to express my utterly useless, though nevertheless sincere, sympathy with this man, and likewise with the many unknown men and women who crossed the path of Beijing’s leaders.