Bo Xilai: Welcome to Modern China

[fuji]

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90785/7785555.html

What we are witnessing it's the slow wrenching change of the rule of law and public accountability being forced through the political system of China by an increasingly empowered Chinese people, by way of the internet and their new found affluence.

A long way to go, but also a long way from October 1978.

 

[onthebottom]

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90785/7785555.html

What we are witnessing it's the slow wrenching change of the rule of law and public accountability being forced through the political system of China by an increasingly empowered Chinese people, by way of the internet and their new found affluence.

A long way to go, but also a long way from October 1978.

Yes, it's one of the largest lifts of people out of abject poverty in the history of the world, and still a long way to go. One wonders how anyone who understands this could be critical of globalization of the world economy.....

OTB

 

[Aardvark154]

However, one wonders how much of Bo Xilai's current situation is that he was actually corrupt, and how much is that as a leading reformer he made powerful enemies, higher up the Party food chain who have now taken action.

 

[fuji]

However, one wonders how much of Bo Xilai's current situation is that he was actually corrupt, and how much is that as a leading reformer he made powerful enemies, higher up the Party food chain who have now taken action.

There is some of that. Political change is slow, and messy, and the factors that lead to it are never clear cut. Certainly his enemies in powerful places are leveraging the forces at work against him.

However, those forces are very much at work, and in a sense, his cases is just the highest profile in a recent string of cases of the Chinese people holding their public officials to account in ways that never previously happen. In the last couple of years there have been many cases of family and friends of powerful people at first being let off the hook for crimes, only to be re-arrested and prosecuted after public outcry.

This case, being so much higher profile, is also much more managed, murky, and convoluted.

However, the force at work--manipulated though it may be--is a growing intolerance by the Chinese people of the notion that their leaders should be above the law.

 

[fuji]

You are completely off base. Here is the most pertinent extract from the "People Daily"

I chose the "People's Daily" on purpose, although it gives probably the most oblique account of what's going on of any publication on the matter, and as you point out, tries to spin it in a way that the CPC prefers. However, everybody in China knows what the People's Daily has not printed, that Bo Xilai's wife is implicated in a murder, that he tried to cover it up, that the police assigned to the case tried to resign out of fear for their lives, and that one of them fled to the US Consulate in Congqing. The idea that Bo Xilai should be above the law in this way provoked powerful anger all over China that has forced a response from the government. Certainly the government and the CPC are trying to direct that response in their interests, but they are incapable of containing it.

The People's Daily won't tell you any of that, but everybody in China knows it, the government knows it, and at some level the government of China is incapable of resisting the collective anger it's generating. They are certainly doing their level best to spin, direct, and control it. But they are having to deal with it.

In fact, what's remarkable is that several times the People's Daily has now been out ahead of the story, breaking news that had not yet appeared elsewhere. That in itself is remarkable, despite the muted ways in which it reports the information.

 

[fuji]

It is not remarkable at all that the People's Daily is now "ahead of the story." They are leading the official destruction of Bo Xilal. Pure and simple. To repeat: if Bo Xilal had toed the official line, the cause of death of Neil Heywood would have remained the official line of excessive drinking. To wit, not even the British government was clamoring for an investigation - until the People Daily and the rest of the CCP propaganda machine began their assault on Bo Xilal.

Actually, I think it was the Chinese blogosophere that brought down the hammer, with all the threads and posts about "vacation style medical treatment" that preceded the story unfolding in the media. The People's Daily information was already widely circulating in China before they published it. The photos of the police presence at the consulate, etc., were already all over Weibo before that, and subsequently all the parodies of the official story about Wang's whereabouts.

For example, this is from Feb 8th: http://weibo.com/2309623245/y4wyc3LpY mocking the official story about Wang's whereabouts ("vacation-style medical treatment", the blog post is someone volunteering to attend to Wang at his treatment location to help him get better, by serving as his lawyer and ensuring that the treatment does not include torture and that the patient gets a fair trial), and in the context of general speculation about why so many Chinese police turned out to the US Consulate. While it may seem like mild criticism, mocking the official story with this sort of parody is the tried and true Chinese way of calling bullshit, and it went viral in China.

On Feb 9th the rumours started swirling that Wang was out because he had dirt on Bo, and on it went. At that time People's Daily's was only carrying the news that Wang had been to the US Consulate and that "investigations" were underway. Throughout Feb these articles were being intermittently blocked by Chinese censors, but basically spreading fast, with People's Daily reporting this stuff only after it had been all over Weibo. I think the CPC and their People's Daily trailed this story, not lead.

If you want to claim that the CPC orchestrated this, then you would have to say it was pretty sophisticated--orchestrated through Weibo, but when you look at the identities of the people who posted the most damaging and viral posts there, they weren't CPC functionaries but rather well known Chinese bloggers.

No doubt by April the letters you posted are examples of the Chinese government trying to get control of the story, but the fork was stuck in Bo in the blogosophere by Feb 9th or 10th, in other words, within 2-3 days of the actual event.

 

[great bear]

I hope the Chinese people keep their Chins up.

 

[danmand]

from the Wall Street journal:


The U.S. has expressed "disgust" with the Chinese and Russian vetoes of a United Nations resolution to condemn the Syrian regime, and rightly so. So why is the Obama Administration saying so little when it comes to ongoing violence against another repressed people?


Do mounting protests in the restive region set the stage for a 'Tibetan Spring'? Hugo Restall discusses.
.We're talking about China's crackdown in Tibet, where at least 19 Tibetans have burned themselves to death over the last year in protest at Chinese rule, most recently last Friday. Senator John McCain may have been right when he told China's Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Zhijun in Munich last week that China could be seeing the start of an Arab Spring-like movement. "It is a matter of concern when Tibetans are burning themselves to death because of the continued repression of the Tibetan people in your country," he warned.

As expected, Mr. Zhang dismissed this possibility. But Beijing's actions show that it appreciates the danger. As the Tibetan New Year holiday and the anniversary of the 2008 Lhasa riots approach, the government is moving troops into restive regions and rounding up suspected troublemakers. Internet access and mobile phone networks have been shut down, and foreign journalists shut out. Lest any officials think of going soft, Tibet's official newspaper warned that leaders who fail to maintain stability would lose their jobs. A "thankfulness education" campaign requires Tibetans to hang the portraits of Chinese leaders in homes.

The use of brute force often succeeds in preventing unrest for a time. But it also fuels resistance in the long term and increases the danger of a more violent movement forming. The latest self-immolations could presage another outbreak of riots.

As usual, Beijing blames the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government in exile for encouraging the self-immolations. In fact, the suicides are a rebuke to the Dalai Lama's "middle way," which asks the Tibetan people to be patient while exile leaders offer to negotiate with China on their behalf. As calls for violence and extremism echo on both sides, the Dalai Lama looks increasingly irrelevant.

Self-immolation is forbidden by Tibetan Buddhism and it was practically unknown to Tibetans as a form of protest until 1998, when a former monk named Thupten Ngodup burned himself to death in New Delhi. His suicide, which came as Indian police broke up a hunger strike by the pro-independence Tibetan Youth Congress, was an expression of frustration with the Dalai Lama's failure to achieve any alleviation of the suffering in Tibet. Prominent Youth Congress leaders have long called for an end to the nonviolent resistance insisted on by the Dalai Lama.

Some Tibetans hope that the new generation of Chinese leaders who are due to assume power later this year will take a more humane approach to governing Tibet. While there is little evidence to support this, the possibility should be kept alive. If violence breaks out next month it will become even more difficult for the authorities to reverse direction. Statements like Mr. McCain's can get the message to the Chinese that Congress hasn't forsaken Tibet. A statement from President Obama would be even better.

 

[fuji]

Many of the well known bloggers are either CCP functionaries or blog at the leisure of the CCP. Otherwise, they would have been banned. This is an indisputable fact.

An indisputable fact, aside from being untrue. When the story first broke it was intermittently censored and the well known bloggers are not CCP functionaries, but rather... Well known. You should look into their identities.

"As it announced the purge, the party unleashed the full arsenal of its propaganda machine against Mr. Bo, pressing news organizations across the nation into an extraordinary campaign urging support for the party’s decision to oust Mr. Bo, editors and media executives say. It has arguably been the greatest mobilization to support a decision by the party since the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989."

You are confusing events in late March and April with events from early February.

What the NYT is taking about is the damage control campaign the CCP launched in reaction to the story. It sacked Bo and proceeded as the NYT described, with a very well orchestrated campaign to try and control the story. Their goal is to contain it to Bo Xilai and set a narrative of one bad guy who abused his position.

What they don't want its for it to turn into a general protest against the power of officials everywhere.

But that was in March and April, whereas the blogs that brought him down were from February and at that time the story was banned on and off. The People's Daily was clearly trailing the blogs at that time and that campaign mentioned in the NYT was still a month away.

Clearly once the story had legs there were people who used it for their own ends, enemies of Bo who found it useful, and others. The point is that the underlying power is there. The CCP is trying to direct it and manage it, ultimately as all governments do. But it cannot ignore it.

 

[fuji]

I have been to China many times, in fact, I have been in Chongqing many times, and I have seen the Great Firewall in action, as well as their attempts at censoring blogs. You're over-rating their ability to clamp down on stuff. Their censorship has always been hit or miss--stuff will be blocked on one ISP, but not on another, or in one city, and not in another. Obviously for some well known sensitive topics it's pretty good--so if you are blogging about Tibet, they will eventually notice that, and come and have a chat with you about it.

Your idea that they can get ahead of a breaking story and block it in the first few days is really over-estimating their capability. They simply can't do that. That is what happened here--in the first few days the story broke there was hit and miss censorship. They did in fact take stuff down, sometimes, on some ISPs, and then put it back up, and then take it back down. That is just how they work--they don't really know what to do in a situation like that until they get their marching orders. It takes a few days, if not weeks, for them to figure out how to respond. Which is quite different than, say, Tibet, where they all know already how to respond, because it's not a new issue.

So, basically, what you described is what happened in March and April, once the wheels had started moving, and everybody had their marching orders, and they were starting to get out ahead of the story.

But back in February they were as confused as anybody else as to how to respond, and by the time they got their PR machine engaged the story was way out ahead of them. Yes, ever since then they have been managing it--and no doubt Bo's enemies saw it as a great opportunity too dog pile on and finish off not only him, but his ideas and such.

My point is just that by that time they didn't really have the option of suppressing the story and doing nothing, people wouldn't have accepted that. They had to do something, and they have since decided WHAT that is--and the bit about discrediting the whole Chongqing model is obviously part of their spin.

But the part about people in China getting mad about people who think they are above the law, and that anger scaring the shit out out of the party, that is very real.

 

[Optimus Prime]

I have been to China many times. I am happy so long as I see porn lol

 

[WoodPeckr]

Yes, it's one of the largest lifts of people out of abject poverty in the history of the world, and still a long way to go. One wonders how anyone who understands this could be critical of globalization of the world economy.....

OTB

Spoken like a true 'card carrying' commie lovin' Pinko!....:crazy:

Perhaps YOU should move over there with your commie pals in the Foxconn compound.....:eyebrows:

 

[friendz4evr]

Seems you have never been to China. I am a frequent visitor so let me explain how the society operates.

Liu Xiaobo is the imprisoned Chinese human rights lawyer awarded Nobel Peace Price in 2010. When his name featured prominently in the news in the west, search of his name was blocked in China. Completely. His name drew a blank among friends of mine who considered themselves knowledgeable of global affairs. His name is stilll blocked today. Falun Gong is blocked. Dalai Lama is blocked. Tibet is blocked. And so are thousands of names and subjects. The CCP employs thousands who monitor the net 24/7 and they block anything they deem offensive or embarrasing.

Now, Bo Xilai was a member of the powerful 25-member Politburo. If he was a member in good standing, the CCP would have blocked anything about him they deemed offensive. If even a subject as innocuous as Tibet is blocked, you can bet Bo Xilai would have been blocked. The fact that rumours about Bo Xilai were allowed to fester when they appeared was not accidental. It was part of a campaign to demolish him before he ascended to the 9-person standing committee of the Politburo. His policies and hero worship were anathema to the rest of the ruling class. Those were his crimes. And he had to be brought down by hook or crook.

As Senator Daniel Moynihan famously said" "You are entitled to your own opinion but you are not entitled to your own facts."

Seems that Bo Xilai spied on other leaders.
BEIJING — When Hu Jintao, China’s top leader, picked up the telephone last August to talk to a senior anticorruption official visiting Chongqing, special devices detected that he was being wiretapped.

The discovery of that and other wiretapping led to an official investigation that helped topple Chongqing’s charismatic leader, Bo Xilai, in a political cataclysm that has yet to reach a conclusion.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/26/w...e-spied-on-top-china-officials.html?ref=world

 

[Aardvark154]

Chen Guangcheng and colleagues

So what are we going to say about the case of Chen Guangcheng and the arrest of numerous members of his family and colleagues such as He Peirong, sure sounds like the political and legal system changes in the PRC are still nowhere near keeping up with the economic changes.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...efoot-lawyer-Chen-Gaungcheng-U-S-Embassy.html

 

[fuji]

So what are we going to say about the case of Chen Guangcheng and the arrest of numerous members of his family and colleagues such as He Peirong, sure sounds like the political and legal system changes in the PRC are still nowhere near keeping up with the economic changes.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...efoot-lawyer-Chen-Gaungcheng-U-S-Embassy.html

You can say that both are cases relating to the status of the rule of law in China, but they are quite different. One case is about whether senior politicians in China can operate above the law in a personal sense, for their own benefit. The other has rather more to do with the implementation of state policy, whether there should be limits on it, and what are the right ways to disagree with the way it is being done.

To a greater or lesser extent, the Chinese people have some level of tolerance of fairly harsh measures being imposed, when those imposing them believe that they are acting in the best interests of the country. On the other hand, I think there is not so much tolerance for the idea that those at the top ought to be able to act in their own self interest, without regard to the laws that apply to other people.

I'm not disputing that the Chen case exposes problems with the rule of law in China, but in terms of the evolution of the rule of law there, these are quite different concepts.