LeveragedBuyout
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@Genesis , we in the West are often skeptical of the transition you describe because of cases such as this:
http://online.wsj.com/articles/a-verdict-against-guo-feixiong-is-a-verdict-against-china-1410365877
A Dark Verdict on China's Future
If China continues to take a hard line against human-rights activists like Guo Feixiong, Beijing's worst fears may soon come true.
By
XIAO SHU
Sept. 10, 2014 12:17 p.m. ET
On Friday my friend will face trial and likely be sentenced to prison in Guangzhou, a city in southern China. He has broken no laws. In fact, he is going to go to jail for saying publicly what many Chinese leaders have said publicly themselves. Yet the state will almost certainly deem him guilty of "gathering crowds to disturb public order." This prosecution carries dark significance for all of China.
My friend is Guo Feixiong, a legal activist whose real name is Yang Maodong. He has already served one five-year prison sentence, from 2006 to 2011, during which he was tortured. The reason: Helping a group of villagers to advocate for their land rights against corrupt officials.
Mr. Guo's latest ordeal began when he was detained by police on Aug. 8, 2013. The recently released indictment reveals his supposed crimes: In 2013, amid a censorship scandal at the prominent state-owned newspaper Southern Weekend, he gave a public speech and helped organize demonstrators who held placards on the streets. Nowhere does the indictment say how Mr. Guo's conduct disturbed social order.
Speaking in public and holding placards is not uncommon in China. Street performers, dancers and salespeople hold placards all the time. Yet the government targets activists like Mr. Guo because of what their placards say.
Mr. Guo's speech and placards made only two demands—that the government disclose the wealth of officials, and that the National People's Congress approve the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The two requests are the minimum demand from China's civil society, but the state considers them threatening, dangerous beasts.
Enlarge Image
Protesting censorship in China comes at great risk.AFP/Getty Images
Mr. Guo and other political prisoners, such as anticorruption advocate Xu Zhiyong, ask not for political power but only human and civil rights. These rights are guaranteed by international treaties and by the Constitution of the People's Republic of China. In other words, these activists' demands are not aggressive—they are defensive.
As more of my friends have gone to jail in recent years for conduct like Mr. Guo's, the Chinese government has sent a clear signal to society: For citizens to demand their rights is a form of provocation, an attack, and the state will repress such behavior without restraint. There is a zero-sum relationship between the government's repressive system and the people's basic rights; there is no longer flexibility.
The government is afraid of a "color revolution" and has reportedly sent agents to Russia and Central Asia to study how to prevent such events. Beijing's newly established National Security Commission has apparently investigated foreign-funded nongovernmental organizations in China, and several well-known NGOs are now at risk. All of which exposes one thing: The Chinese authorities are fearful.
The power of civil society in China is growing. The public's rights consciousness is awakening. Yet our civil society is still extremely weak compared with the world's strongest ruling state.
The Chinese authorities' overconfidence in hard power and underconfidence in soft power has rendered them incapable of assessing the situation objectively. So officials are fearful and treat the slowly growing rights movement as a mortal enemy. They probably don't realize that this extreme policy has antagonized people on all sides, stimulating powerful counterforces.
If the government gives no space to the people, it cannot expect the people to give it space in return. If the government gives no retreat route to civil society, it cannot expect civil society to offer a retreat route in return. The government's imagined "hostile forces" and "color revolution" will turn into self-fulfilling prophecies. If the authorities don't change direction, they will eventually reap what they sow.
So when the verdict against my friend Guo Feixiong is read out soon, please don't understand it as an accurate assessment of his conduct or of Chinese law. Rather, it is a verdict on the Chinese regime's future.
Xiao Shu is the pen name of Chen Min, a researcher at the Transition Institute in Beijing and a visiting fellow at Columbia University and National Chengchi University in Taiwan. He is a former columnist at Southern Weekend newspaper.
http://online.wsj.com/articles/a-verdict-against-guo-feixiong-is-a-verdict-against-china-1410365877
A Dark Verdict on China's Future
If China continues to take a hard line against human-rights activists like Guo Feixiong, Beijing's worst fears may soon come true.
By
XIAO SHU
Sept. 10, 2014 12:17 p.m. ET
On Friday my friend will face trial and likely be sentenced to prison in Guangzhou, a city in southern China. He has broken no laws. In fact, he is going to go to jail for saying publicly what many Chinese leaders have said publicly themselves. Yet the state will almost certainly deem him guilty of "gathering crowds to disturb public order." This prosecution carries dark significance for all of China.
My friend is Guo Feixiong, a legal activist whose real name is Yang Maodong. He has already served one five-year prison sentence, from 2006 to 2011, during which he was tortured. The reason: Helping a group of villagers to advocate for their land rights against corrupt officials.
Mr. Guo's latest ordeal began when he was detained by police on Aug. 8, 2013. The recently released indictment reveals his supposed crimes: In 2013, amid a censorship scandal at the prominent state-owned newspaper Southern Weekend, he gave a public speech and helped organize demonstrators who held placards on the streets. Nowhere does the indictment say how Mr. Guo's conduct disturbed social order.
Speaking in public and holding placards is not uncommon in China. Street performers, dancers and salespeople hold placards all the time. Yet the government targets activists like Mr. Guo because of what their placards say.
Mr. Guo's speech and placards made only two demands—that the government disclose the wealth of officials, and that the National People's Congress approve the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The two requests are the minimum demand from China's civil society, but the state considers them threatening, dangerous beasts.
Enlarge Image
Protesting censorship in China comes at great risk.AFP/Getty Images
Mr. Guo and other political prisoners, such as anticorruption advocate Xu Zhiyong, ask not for political power but only human and civil rights. These rights are guaranteed by international treaties and by the Constitution of the People's Republic of China. In other words, these activists' demands are not aggressive—they are defensive.
As more of my friends have gone to jail in recent years for conduct like Mr. Guo's, the Chinese government has sent a clear signal to society: For citizens to demand their rights is a form of provocation, an attack, and the state will repress such behavior without restraint. There is a zero-sum relationship between the government's repressive system and the people's basic rights; there is no longer flexibility.
The government is afraid of a "color revolution" and has reportedly sent agents to Russia and Central Asia to study how to prevent such events. Beijing's newly established National Security Commission has apparently investigated foreign-funded nongovernmental organizations in China, and several well-known NGOs are now at risk. All of which exposes one thing: The Chinese authorities are fearful.
The power of civil society in China is growing. The public's rights consciousness is awakening. Yet our civil society is still extremely weak compared with the world's strongest ruling state.
The Chinese authorities' overconfidence in hard power and underconfidence in soft power has rendered them incapable of assessing the situation objectively. So officials are fearful and treat the slowly growing rights movement as a mortal enemy. They probably don't realize that this extreme policy has antagonized people on all sides, stimulating powerful counterforces.
If the government gives no space to the people, it cannot expect the people to give it space in return. If the government gives no retreat route to civil society, it cannot expect civil society to offer a retreat route in return. The government's imagined "hostile forces" and "color revolution" will turn into self-fulfilling prophecies. If the authorities don't change direction, they will eventually reap what they sow.
So when the verdict against my friend Guo Feixiong is read out soon, please don't understand it as an accurate assessment of his conduct or of Chinese law. Rather, it is a verdict on the Chinese regime's future.
Xiao Shu is the pen name of Chen Min, a researcher at the Transition Institute in Beijing and a visiting fellow at Columbia University and National Chengchi University in Taiwan. He is a former columnist at Southern Weekend newspaper.