The Chinese Crackdown Carried Out by
the Neo-Red Guards
Predates the ÒJasmine Revolution.Ó
Steven W. Mosher
President,
Population Research Institute
www.pop.org
Testimony Presented to the
House Committee on Foreign
Affairs, Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, and Human Rights
May 13th, 2011
Introduction
The revolution in Tunisia and, later, Egypt
sparked hope in the hearts of Chinese democracy and human rights activists.
They saw how online connectivity enabled people to overcome fear, rapidly
organize, and bloodlessly, or nearly so, bring down a tyrannical regime within
a few weeks. But when they attempted, rightly, to emulate this model they found
that the Chinese government had preempted key elements of their plan and
suppressed others.
It is clear that the governmentÕs response to
the call for a Chinese ÒJasmine revolutionÓ was not ad hoc, but was a continuation of an ongoing campaign to suppress
all expressions of civil society, including religious and ethnic affiliations,
that could conceivably—at least in the minds of conspiratorially minded
senior Communist Party officials—pose a threat to the power, wealth and
privileges that they currently enjoy. The neo-Red Guards who dominate the upper
reaches of the Party and government, because of their Maoist ÒeducationÓ in
deadly power politics during their formative years, seem much more likely to
brutally confront dissent than to compromise with it.
ChinaÕs Aborted Jasmine Revolution
I will only briefly summarize
recent events in China, not only because there are others testifying here today
who will ably do so, but because it seems to me only the latest chapter in BeijingÕs long and increasingly sophisticated
campaign to quell all manner of dissent.
The revolutions in the Middle East,
especially the successful and largely bloodless outcomes in Tunisia and Egypt encouraged
Chinese human rights activists to go and do likewise. Tunisia, which had languished in the grip of a dictator for
23 years, was especially instructive in illustrating how modern means of
communications enabled the mobilization of tens of thousands of people who took
to the streets, overcame fear through sheer numbers, avoided a Tiananmen-style
massacre, and were successful in overthrowing the regime in 18 days.
It is not surprising that Chinese
dissidents sought to follow this same formula in China. Sometime in
mid-February—the exact date depends upon what news source you rely
upon--the first call for a Jasmine Revolution for China appeared. In any case, on Saturday, February 19th,
the organizers released a very specific plan for the following day. The plan
named 13 Chinese cities and gathering places, directed participants to appear
at 2p.m. on Sunday, February 20th, at 13 locations in as many
cities. It even outlined specific slogans for them to shout, to wit:
ÒWe want food, we want work, we
want housing, we want fairness, we want justice, start political reform, end
one-party dictatorship, bring in freedom of the press, long live freedom, long
live democracy."
The regime responded quickly—so quickly,
in fact, that it is clear in retrospect that contingency plans for just such an
event had long been in place, dating back to at least the 2008 Olympics, and
probably first devised, in their most rudimentary form, in the aftermath of the
Tiananmen Massacre itself.
Even before the first calls for a
Jasmine Revolution for China were voiced, Chinese President Hu Jintao, as the
Commander-in-Chief of the PLA and the
Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, had issued a directive to the military
to be prepared for contingencies.
The directive, issued on February 10, specifically instructed Party
cells within the military to study a document entitled Regulation Governing the Works of the Party Committees in the Military,
whose ostensible purpose is to strengthen the PartyÕs control over the
military. According to an
explanatory note, ÒEach one of the 33 articles in the regulation centers on
ensuring the absolute control of the party over the military.Ó
In urging the military to study the
regulation at that time, Hu was anticipating that the unrest in the Arab world
might potentially spread to China.
If circumstances required him to send in the military to put down
demonstrations, he wanted his commanders ready to follow orders—whatever
those might be. Was Hu concerned that some military commanders might refuse to
enforce orders to fire on unarmed demonstrators, as they did initially in
Beijing 22 years ago? Was Hu
concerned that the military might shift allegiances in the event of a conflict
and prove to be, as happened in Tunisia and Egypt, the most potent opposition weapon
in overthrowing the current regime?
Probably both. The document pointedly reminds the military that all its
members owe their allegiance first and foremost to the party, and then to
socialism, then to the state and, finally, to the people. If the Party finds itself in a major
confrontation with the people, this prioritization intimates, the military is
to support the Party at all costs, even to the point of shedding blood.
Then on February 19th--the
same day that the dissidents issued a detailed plan for peaceful demonstrations
in 13 major cities—Hu Jintao held a meeting of top officials to combat
the perceived threat of unrest.
According to the officials Xinhua News Agency, the meeting not only
included all nine members of the CCP's powerful Politburo Standing Committee,
but also provincial heads, ministry chiefs and senior military officials.
Such a high-level meeting could not
have been organized overnight, suggesting again the preemptive nature of the
Chinese governmentÕs response to the upheavals in the Arab world and to their
possible spread to China. Hu
referred to Ònew changes in domestic and foreign situationsÓ and to the need
for senior CCP cadres to adopt a unified response from the outset. The divisions in the top leadership
that had for a time blunted the response of the CCP to the Tiananmen
demonstrations were to be avoided.
In his surprisingly blunt address,
Hu stressed that the Chinese Communist Party must strengthen its Òmanagement of
societyÓ in order to stay in power.
Hu defined the Òmanagement of
societyÓ to be Òmanaging the people as well as serving them.Ó This formulation marks
a major departure from standard Communist rhetoric, first devised by Mao
Zedong, that the CCP exists to serve the people. The purpose of this societal management, according to Hu, is
to Òmaximize harmonious factors and minimize non-harmonious ones.Ó In other words, those who adhere to the
Party line are to be encouraged, while those who depart from it are to be
crushed.
Hu went on to outline specific ways in which the Òmanagement of societyÓ
could be strengthened. These
included heightened control over cyberspace, specifically better monitoring and
control over Internet-transmitted information and improved guidance of public
opinion over the Internet. He also
called for the establishment of a national database of migrant workers and of
Òspecific groups of people,Ó which is communist parlance for political
dissidents, religious leaders, and other questionable groups, so that these
groups could be better Òmanaged.Ó
The following day—the very day, in fact, slated for the demonstrations—the
Politburo member in charge of national public security weighed in. Echoing Hu Jintao, Zhou Yongkang called
on the Party not just to serve the people, but to manage the people as well,
and announced specific ways in which this ÒmanagementÓ would be carried
out. First, a national database containing information on
everyone in the country, with a special focus on HuÕs Òspecific groups of
people,Ó would be set up. Second, with
strong leadership from the Party, cyberspace was to be brought under strict
government control with strict enforcement of anti-sedition laws. Third,
foreign non-governmental organizations in China will be
subjected to a Òdual system of supervision,Ó which can only mean that they will
be subjected to heightened scrutiny by several different Chinese government agencies. Fourth, an early warning system will be put in place to alert the authorities to
social grievances, so as to allow them to defuse problems before they
deteriorate into outright social unrest.
None of this is really new, but
rather merely an elaboration and deepening of what has gone before. The Ministry of State Security already
has extensive files on Chinese who have in the past questioned this or that
government policy. The Chinese
governmentÕs monitoring and control of the Internet has been growing for
years. Foreign organizations have
always been viewed with suspicion, and Chinese citizens have always been
monitored by Party-run social monitoring networks.
Take social-monitoring networks,
for example. From the beginning of
the PeopleÕs Republic of China, the state has kept an eye on the masses by
means of regular police patrols on the streets, mutual monitoring by peers in
the workplace, and surveillance by neighborhood committees.
By the time of the Olympic Games,
this three-tiered system had morphed into what ChinaÕs Public Security
Minister, Meng Jianzhu, called a five-tiered social-monitoring network, which
included: Camera surveillance in
public areas and Internet surveillance, as well as regular police patrols on
the streets, mutual monitoring by peers in the workplace and monitoring by
neighborhood committees. This was not, as has sometimes been reported, an ad
hoc system created in 2008 to ensure security during the Olympic Games and the
subsequent Shanghai Expo but an elaboration of what has been a constant feature
of life in the PRC from the beginning.
Those who argue that ChinaÕs economic reforms would lead to political
liberalization need to take note.
The
Preemptive Strike
As these policy pronouncements were being
made, the Chinese authorities were already preemptively moving to suppress
dissent by arresting human rights lawyers, shutting university students in
their campuses, banning the use of keywords on mobile phone messages, and by
deploying an overwhelming police presence. The China Support Network reported that some dissidents were
taken away, while others were placed under house arrest. According to the Hong
Kong Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy, over 100 people were
detained in this way. Other dissidents
were warned against attending any of the demonstrations, and questioned about
their possible role in organizing them.
The word "jasmine" was blocked by Internet filters. According
to the Associated Press, service was suspended in Beijing for multi-recipient
text messages. The 13 protest
sites were cordoned off by hundreds of plain clothes and uniformed police. On the day of the planned
demonstrations, small crowds gathered in Beijing and Shanghai. In the other cities the massive police
presence seemed the only response to the Internet calls for protests.
Some foreign observers have called these moves on the part of the regime
an Òover-reactionÓ to events. This
is a misinterpretation of what happened.
The government wasnÕt reacting to events at all, but rather anticipating
them. These actions were all taken
in advance of any major public demonstrations, and are more properly
characterized as a kind of Òpreemptive suppression.Ó The speed and thoroughness
of the Chinese governmentÕs action suggests years of planning and preparation
for just such a potential mass uprising, as much as it does the determination
of those in power to squelch all dissent using all of the manifold tools of
Òsocial managementÓ at their disposal.
This interpretation is also supported by the
speed at which the Chinese government went on the offensive, attacking websites
overseas that carry information about, or in any way encourage, a Chinese-style
Jasmine Revolution. Online calls for a ÒJasmine revolutionÓ in
China apparently first appeared at the web site Boxun.com. A few days later,
Boxun announced that it would no longer carry Jasmine-related information,
because of actions taken by the Chinese government against their servers, and
threats made against their staff and their families. In response, a federation of dissident websites announced in
early March that they would carry such material. The eight web sites of the federation are:
Jasmine on Facebook: facebook.com/chinarevolution
China Affairs: chinaaffairs.org
Huang Hua Gang magazine: huanghuagang.org
Fire of Liberty: fireofliberty.org
Wolfax: wolfax.com
Future China Forum: bbs.futurechinafourm.org
Chinese Human Rights: CNRights.com
China Support Network: chinasupport.net
These web sites in turn have
experienced cyber attacks emanating from Beijing. By March 11, the Future China Forum website was down, and
attempts to access CNRights.com returned a blank page. The front page at
wolfax.com is not served until the user solves a ÒcaptchaÓ puzzle. The other five sites remained up. The pro-Jasmine web sites continue to
experience denial-of-service attacks. Organizer Tang Baiqiao praised the
enthusiastic response to date, and vowed that all obstacles will be overcome
until a Chinese revolution successfully establishes democracy in that
land. (http://www.chinauncensored.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=332:web-presence-of-chinese-jasmine-revolution-under-attack&catid=25:real-china&Itemid=77)
Actions
Prior to the Jasmine Revolution
Well in advance of any unrest in the Arab
world, the Chinese government was tightening controls on civil society using
its five-tiered social monitoring network. This can be seen from the increased persecution of
Christians in China, including the Catholic Church and the House Church
Movement, as well as in the continuing vigorous enforcement of the most
intrusive and barbaric population control program the world has ever seen.
The
Intensifying Persecution of Christians
In the case of the Catholic Church, the Chinese
government over the past couple of years has moved away from an accommodative
stance to a more dictatorial one.
On November 20th, the Chinese
Communist Party broke its tacit agreement with the Vatican not to attempt to
ordain bishops without papal approval.
The incident occurred in the county town of Pingquan in northern Hebei
province, where a Father Joseph Guo Jincai was installed as the ÒBishopÓ of the
Diocese of Chengde.
Attempting to give a semblance of legitimacy
to the illicit proceedings, the government went to great lengths to assemble as
many bishops as possible to conduct the ordination. Days before the event, a number of North China bishops in
communion with Pope Benedict XVI were placed under house arrest, then taken
under guard to the Pingquan church.
Eight laid hands on Father Guo during the sham ordination, reported the
Asian church news agency UCA News, though with what mental reservations we can
only imagine. Others, like Bishop
John Liu Jinghe of Tangshan, refused to attend despite all the pressure, and
the government has since announced that he has been removed from his
post—an act comparable to that of attempting to install an illicit
bishop.
Hong Kong Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, who
attended the pope's creation of 24 new cardinals at the Vatican Nov. 20, said
he was saddened that some bishops had been forced to participate in ÒBishopÓ
Guo's ordination. When Beijing last carried out illicit ordinations, Cardinal
Zen told me that the attending bishops, Òwere not there not there by choice,
and most contacted the Holy See as soon as they could to apologize and ask
forgiveness for their actions.Ó
It was a bizarre parody of an ordination in
other ways as well. A good many of those present were government officials and
plainclothes police. The laity in the congregation were subdued, which may have
had something to do with the fact that the church was surrounded by about a
hundred uniformed and plainclothes police, that cameras were banned in the
church, and that mobile phones were electronically jammed.
I visited this area last year, and I have no
doubt that the laity and the priests are strong in their faith and loyal to the
Pope. Still, it would be dangerous for them to in any way protest BeijingÕs
heavy-handed actions. One Pingchuan Catholic did offer a veiled protest to UCA
News by saying "After all, Guo's reputation among the local faithful is
not bad.Ó In Chinese, saying someone or something is Ònot badÓ is tantamount to
damning it with faint praise. Note
also his omission of the ersatz bishopÕs new title. In a country where titles
are extremely important, such lapses do not happen by chance. It suggests some skepticism as to GuoÕs
legitimacy.
Why would Beijing proceed with actions that
Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, had criticized in a
statement released on November 18th Òas grave violations of freedom
of religion and freedom of conscience.
É [and] as illicit and damaging to the constructive relations that have
been developing in recent times between the People's Republic of China and the
Holy See."
It seems to me to be part and parcel of the
gradual tightening of social controls that we have seen over the past few
years. One reason why the
government suddenly elevated Father Guo to a bishopric without a papal mandate
became crystal clear two weeks after his illicit ordination when on December 8th
he was unanimously elected the secretary general of the Bishops Conference of
the Catholic Church in China (BCCCC).
Since this position is reserved for a bishop, and since Beijing wanted
someone they could control, Beijing decided to elevate Guo, with or without
RomeÕs approval
As secretary general, Guo will be based in
Beijing and will run the day-to-day operations of the Bishops Conference. Note that, unlike bishopÕs conferences
elsewhere, the BCCCC is what is called in Chinese Communist parlance a front
organization. Like its sister
organization, the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CCPA), the Bishops
Conference is for all intents and purposes run by the Chinese Communist
Party. This is why neither
organization is recognized by the Vatican.
Guo has a long history of collaboration with
the party. Previously, he served
as vice secretary-general of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association. Pope BenedictÕs letter to Chinese
Catholics of 2007 indicates that holding the CCPA position was incompatible
with Church doctrine. He was also appointed to the National People's Congress,
China's rubber-stamp parliament, as a ÒCatholic representative.Ó All in all, an
impressively meteoric rise for a young man only ordained in 1992.
I am not suggesting that Guo is an
underground member of the Chinese Communist Party, although it would be
surprising if the Chinese Ministry of State Security, like the former Soviet KGB,
did not have some agents posing as priests. More likely, he has merely proven a willing accomplice to
CCP longstanding desire to create a schismatic church in China answerable not
to Rome but to Beijing. This,
after all, was the reason the Patriotic Association was set up in 1957.
His election took place at the recently
concluded Eighth National Congress of Catholic Representatives, which was as
carefully choreographed as a Broadway musical. Aside from the 45 bishops present, there were 268 carefully
selected and vetted priests, nuns and laypersons. The Party had done its work well. There was only one candidate for each position, and the
voting, which was by a show of hands, was nearly unanimous.
Those few who abstained from voting for the
Party-approved candidates will undoubtedly have to account to their Party
handlers for their actions. But
their problems are minor compared to those of Bishop Joseph Li Liangui of
Cangzhou, who went missing rather than participate in this charade. His whereabouts are still unknown. After
ordaining Father Guo, Beijing in December chose a man
the Vatican had excommunicated, Ma Yinglin, to head
the country's Catholic bishops.
The increased scrutiny and control of the
Catholic Church in China over the past two years is of a piece with the larger
crackdown on home churches that is underway in China. People of all Christian faiths often meet in peopleÕs homes
because of a shortage of churches, which the government is reluctant to give
permission to build. Such meetings
are being subjected to an ever greater degree of scrutiny, with meetings often
invaded and participants arrested.
This will have a chilling effect on evangelization, since many parishes
send out missionaries to meet in peoplesÕ homes and share the Gospel. If the Chinese Communist Party is not
trying to drive Chinese Catholics back into the catacombs, it is trying to keep
them corralled in the state churches, discouraging them from sharing their
beliefs with others.
The
One-Child Policy, Minorities, and Child Abduction
Beijing continues to vigorously pursue its
infamous one-child policy, ignoring the massive human rights abuses that this
entails, and the labor shortages that it has produced.
Over the past two years, PRI's investigative teams have spent a total of
two weeks in China visiting UNFPA Model Birth Control Counties. During this
period, the teams spent over 80 hours interviewing several dozen witnesses to,
or victims of, ChinaÕs coercive one-child policy. Over 30 hours of testimonies were recorded on audiotape, and
approximately 5 hours of testimonies were recorded on videotape. Additional photographic evidence of
birth control directives was obtained.
The term Model Birth Control Counties originated with the UNFPA, which
in 1998 formally communicated to the U.S. House of Representatives that it had
reached an agreement with the Chinese government to take over the management of
birth control (jihua shengyu, in
Chinese) programs in 32 counties.
In these Model Birth Control Counties, the UNFPA assured the Congress
that the program would be "fully voluntary" and untainted by
coercion. UNFPA also made even more specific guarantees. It stated that in these counties that
(1) targets and quotas have been lifted, (2) "women are free to voluntarily
select the timing and spacing of their pregnancies", and (3) abortion is
not promoted as a method of family planning.[i] Several years later, maintaining that
the original program had been a success, the UNFPA added another 40 counties to
the list of model birth control counties, bringing the total to 72.
The goal of PRI's independent investigative teams was to carry out an
in-depth analysis of several UNFPA Òmodel birth control countyÓ programs. We deliberately limited our recent visits
to counties that had been included on the original 1998 list, where the UNFPA
would have had more than a decade to end abuses and bring the birth control
programs into line with generally accepted international standards of human and
parental rights.
The county programs selected for investigation were:
Fengning
Manchu Autonomous County, Hebei province.
Luan
County, Hebei province.
Wenshui
County, Shanxi province.
Sihui
County, Guangdong province.
Lipu
County, Guangxi province.
Our complete report will be published shortly. Here I summarize two important findings of our
research. First, contrary to the
claims of the Chinese government, minorities appear not to be exempt from the
one-child policy. Second, the
extraordinary police powers given to the population cadres have resulted in
numerous abuses, including the abduction and selling of ÒillegalÓ children.
Minorities Are Not Exempt from the
One-Child Policy
Fengning Autonomous Manchu County, in northern Hebei Province near what
used to be called Manchuria, is officially designated as a UNFPA ÒModel Birth Control
County.Ó Many of its residents are of Manchu descent, hence its designation as
a ÒManchu Autonomous County.Ó
From the beginning of the one-child policy, the Chinese government has
maintained that the policy does not apply to minorities like the Manchus, the
Uyghurs, and the Tibetans. Members
of such groups, instead of being restricted to one child, are supposedly
allowed to have two or even three. The rationale is obvious: Imposing a one-child policy on a
minority group would shrink its numbers over time, and could even prove
genocidal. The outside world has
generally bought into this generous-sounding claim.[ii]
PRI conducted interviews with several dozen Manchus and Han
Chinese. We conclude from these
interviews that the one child policy is just as rigorously enforced in this
UNFPA county as in other non-UNFPA counties. Moreover, we conclude that the same childbearing regulations
that are enforced on the Han Chinese are also enforced on the Manchu minority. For example, we interviewed a Manchu
dairyman who, despite being a member of a minority group, was only allowed to
have one child:
PRI: ÒDo you have any children?Ó
Manchu man:
ÒWe have one child, a son. He is
in school right now.Ó
PRI: ÒWould
you like to have more children?Ó
Manchu man:
ÒOf course we would like to,Ó he shrugged. ÒBut that is not allowed.Ó
PRI: ÒWhat happens if you have an illegal
child?Ó
Manchu man:
ÒIt depends on your income, but it can run into the tens of thousands of Chinese
Yuan.Ó
PRI: ÒAnd you are Manchus?
Manchu
man: ÒYes, we are.Ó
The Chinese government claim that all minorities are exempt from the one-child
policy, which the UNFPA has at various times repeated, is false. This is relevant because that UNFPA is
also helping to fund Òfamily planningÓ services not just in Fengning but in
other minority regions as well.[iii] This provides, inter alia, yet more evidence that the UNFPAÕs claims that it is a
moderating force in China do not accord with the reality of its complicity in
coercion.
Child Abduction, Child Trafficking,
and the One-Child Policy
It is well known that those who violate the one-child policy have
sometimes been subjected to coerced abortions or, if they have already given
birth, have been forced to pay punitive fines and have been sterilized.
But it has also recently come to our attention that Chinese villagers
who cannot afford to pay these fines have their ÒillegalÓ children abducted and
sold by Chinese population control officials.
The birth control regulations posted in one town warned that those who
violate the one-child policy shall be contracepted or sterilized:
Under the
direction of the birth control bureaucracy and the technical personnel
(assigned thereto), those married women of childbearing age who have already
had one child shall be given an IUD; those
couples that have already had a second or higher order child shall be
sterilized. (Italics added.)
This sterilization directive was confirmed in conversation with
villagers. One woman, a Chinese minority, told us that the consequence of
having a third child would be that the government Òwould take measures to
sterilize you.Ó
The fines now imposed on violators of the one-child policy are, by any
standards, enormous. In one UNFPA
ÒModel Birth Control County,Ó we photographed a billboard of birth control regulations
that warned:
Those who illegally
reproduce É will be assessed, when their illegal behavior is discovered, a
"social compensation fee" based on a unit calculated from a yearÕs
salary for urban dwellers and based on a yearÕs income after expenses for rural
dwellers;
Those who
illegally give birth to one child, will be assessed a fine 3 to 5 times their
annual income; those who illegally give birth to a second child will be
assessed a fine from 5 to 7 times their annual income; those who illegally give
birth to a third child will be assessed a fine from 7 to 9 times their annual
income; those who give birth to 4 or more illegal children will be assessed a
fine extrapolated from the above schedule of multiples; Those who illegally
take in a child, have an extramarital birth, have an out of wedlock birth, both
parties involved will be assessed a Òsocial compensation fee" according to
the above schedule of (income) multiples.
That these fines were actually imposed was clear from our discussions
with ordinary Chinese. We were
told again and again that violators are fined Òtens of thousands of renminbi,Ó or "20,000 or 30,000 renminbi." These are enormous sums of money by
Chinese standards. One woman reported
that she and her husband had been forced to take out a 10-year loan to pay the
25,000 renminbi fine that had been
assessed for each of her two illegal daughters. To pay off this Òchild mortgage,Ó her husband had been
forced to go to work in the city.
When we
asked what would happen if a couple couldnÕt afford to pay the fine, we were
told that offenders would be visited by population control officials who would Òseal
offÓ their homes, and possibly even destroy them, as punishment for
non-payment.
In Lipu county, another UNFPA Model Birth Control County, located in
northern Guangxi province, we were told by a village officials that ÒAt the
present time, if you donÕt pay the fine, they come and abduct the baby you just
gave birth to and give it to someone else."
This practice of child abduction has
recently been confirmed by the Chinese government. According to a report in the Caixin Century magazine, authorities in the southern Chinese
province of Hunan have begun investigating a report that population control
officials had seized at least 16 babies born in violation of strict family
planning rules, sent them to state-run orphanages, and then sold them abroad
for adoption. ÒBefore 1997, they
usually punished us by tearing down our houses for breaching the one-child
policy, but after 2000 they began to confiscate our children,Ó the magazine
quoted villager Yuan Chaoren as saying.
The children, reportedly from Longhui county
near Hunan provinceÕs Shaoyang city, had been abducted by who accused their parents
of breaching the one-child policy or illegally adopting children. The local family planning office then
sent the children to local orphanages, which listed them as being available for
adoption, the report said, adding the office could get 1,000 renminbi or more for each child. The orphanages in turn receive $3,000
to $5,000 for each child adopted overseas, money that is paid by the adoptive
parents. The magazine
reported that al least one migrant worker said she had found her daughter had
been adopted abroad and was now living in the United States.
It is worth noting that these two reports
come from the same general area of China and occurred in neighboring provinces. Lipu county, where we heard about the
practice of abducting and selling ÒillegalÓ children, is located in northern
Guangxi province not far from the Hunan border, while Shaoyang is located near
the southern border of Hunan not far from the Guangxi border.
Local officials deny any involvement in
child trafficking. But it is well
known that the so-called Òjob responsibility systemÓ requires them to
rigorously enforce the one-child policy, and that their success (or failure) in
this area will determine future promotions (or demotions). Abducting and selling an ÒillegalÓ baby
or child would not only enable an official to eliminate a potential black mark
on his record, it would allow him to make a profit at the same time. In this way the one-child policy,
through its system of perverse and inhumane rewards and punishment, encourages
officials to violate the fundamental right of parents to decide for themselves
the number and spacing of their children.
Child trafficking has occurred in other
countries that offer children for adoption, most notably in Cambodia, Nepal and
Vietnam, where the abuses are so rampant that the U.S. has put a moratorium on
adoptions. It may be time to
consider a similar moratorium on adoptions from China.
Neo-Red Guards Rule China
The recent crackdown on dissent in China is only the latest chapter in
an ongoing effort by the current leadership of China to assert total societal
and political control over the Chinese people. I am of the opinion that the one-party dictatorship that
rules China is quite likely the most totalitarian-minded—in the sense of
seeking total social control—in the history of mankind. This is in large part because those who
currently rule China are schooled in the art of power politics in a way that no
other leadership cadre has ever been.
Forty-five years ago, at Chairman Mao ZedongÕs instigation, the Red
Guards launched the Cultural Revolution to "crush an old world and
construct a new one." Schools
throughout the country were closed down in 1966, and for the next few years high
school and college students received an alternative education in radical
ideology, political movements, and factional fighting. Large armed clashes between factions of
Red Guards occurred
throughout the county.
Today, 45 years later, these former Red Guards are now in their sixties,
and they run China. Both China's current president, Hu Jintao, and premier, Wen
Jiaobao, were Red Guards in the late 1960s. Hu was a member of Tsinghua University's "4.14" Red
Guard group, while Wen was in Beijing Geology College's "East is Red"
organization. A majority of the 11
new officials appointed to ChinaÕs elite 25-member 17th Communist Party
Politburo in 2007 are part of this same Cultural Revolution generation.
The same story could be repeated at lower levels of government. Tibet, for
instance, is ruled by a group of aging Red Guards consisting of Mr. Meng
Jianzhu, the Minister for Public Security, Mr. Zhang Qingli, the head of the
Chinese Communist Party in Tibet, and Mr. Qiangha Puncog, the head of the
Tibetan Government. This is the group which, supported by the People's
Liberation Army (PLA), increasingly dictates the ongoing suppression of Tibet.
These are the same people who tore down and ransacked placed of worship
throughout China, struggled, tortured, and in some cases killed their own
professors and leaders, and fought bitter battles with other student groups for
power in their cities and provinces. These experiences of their formative years have left an
indelible stamp on their characters. They may, for reasons for national and
personal aggrandizement, be committed to market-oriented economic reforms, but they
are at the same time cunning political manipulators and are capable, when
necessary, of great brutality.
Eventually the increasingly severe methods
being used to police the Chinese population and suppress all dissent will create
a backlash. Many of the conditions that resulted in the collapse of the Soviet
Union and the communist regimes of Eastern Europe exist now in China. But we
cannot expect a Gorbachev to emerge in China, at least from this leadership cadre. Rather, look for one dramatic event to ignite
the discontent that now festers throughout China. There will be more Tiananmen
demonstrations, and next time they will result in real change.
[i] See: "UNFPA's County Program in China: Providing Quality Care,
Protecting Human Rights," UNFPA, August 10, 2001.
[ii] If you Google ÒChinaÕs One-Child Policy and Minorities,Ó as I have, you
will find dozens of sites blithely repeating BeijingÕs mantra that the policy
does not apply to minorities. I had doubted this claim from the beginning, and
for good reason. Back in the
eighties, I collaborated with an American doctor who documented the forced
abortion and sterilization of Tibetan women who threatened to violate the one-child
policy.
[iii] See MDGF-1692: The China Culture and Development Partnership Framework, accessed on June 21, 2009, at http://sdnhq.undp.org/opas/en/proposals/suitable/189. Here the U.N. Population Fund in involvement in a project to promote family planning among minorities. Their goal is and ÒIncreased proportion of clients seeking MCH/FP counseling services in program locations.Ó