Document Number Nine

Transcription

A major turning point in the history of China transpired in the last few years, and will continue to unfold through 2015. The change involves the two confusing concepts that you see on your screen. Document Number Nine and the New Mass Line Movement are major changes that have already impacted the lives of millions of people, with relatively little scrutiny from the English-speaking world, perhaps just because of the short-term preoccupation with wars elsewhere. To quickly show the scale and seriousness of the subject, here's an excerpt of some reporting by Gillian Wong. Quote, "[Mr.] Zhou, land bureau director for the city of Li Ling, was confined in the party's secret detention system at a compound in central Hunan, touted as a model center for anti-corruption efforts. Nobody on the outside could help him, because nobody knew where he was." "In a rare act of public defiance, Zhou and three other party members in Hunan described to The Associated Press the months of abuse they endured less than two years ago, in separate cases, while in detention. Zhou said he was deprived of sleep and food, nearly drowned, whipped with wires and forced to eat excrement. The others reported being turned into human punching bags, strung up by the wrists from high windows, or dragged along the floor, face down, by their feet." Quoting from elsewhere in the same article, "The party defines 'Shuāng Guī" as an order to its officials to appear at a designated time and place to account for their actions. Experts who study corruption statistics estimate at least several thousand people are secretly detained every year for weeks or months under this system." "Party anti-corruption experts acknowledge that the practice is legally problematic but say it's indispensable in fighting corruption. About 90 percent of major corruption cases involving party members in recent years were cracked through the use of 'Shuāng Guī,' a party official said last month." "Anti-graft authorities investigated 173,000 cases of corruption among members last year, officials say, and at least three people died." I have underlined the words "officials say" just to draw attention to an obvious problem with this type of statistic: if the official propaganda says 173,000, the real number could be ten times lower, or could be ten times higher. Although you might expect government propaganda to minimize the number of victims, this is an official anti-corruption program that the government is proud of, so we could instead be looking at an upward exaggeration of the figures. With this caveat stated, the number of people disappearing and being detained is certainly not small, and the shadow of fear created by the victims is much larger than their numbers alone. In contrast to the sympathy elicited by headlines that might involve the clichéd "women-and-children" of war, in this case, one of the obstacles to western reporting is the latent bias against the victims themselves. They are predominantly men in suits and ties who have become rich as part of the Chinese establishment --rightly or wrongly. When the target of repression is "corrupt government officials", there's a significant presumption of guilt in reporting, even amongst those who would not normally condone this type of repression. Although the vast majority of the victims are not famous targets of derision like Bó Xī Lái, they are (rightly or wrongly) presumed to be persecutors of the innocent, as much as victims of persecution. This is the type of moral ambiguity that fails to make headlines. Document Number Nine was a leaked document that seems to have served as a manifesto for the current round of reform and retrenchment of the Communist Party. It was linked directly to the president of China by this reporter, Gāo Yú, who was thrown in prison soon thereafter. Quote, "[Gao Yu] said in a speech in New York last October that Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, 'personally went over the whole draft [of Document Number Nine] himself'. […] In recent months, Mr Xi's administration has repeatedly stressed that China must reject the influences of 'foreign forces'. On May 6, a new national security report from Beijing's International Relations university said 'the export of democracy from the West is a threat to Chinese political thinking.' It added that 'Bourgeois Western ideology from radio, newspapers, movies, literature and education poses a severe threat to China's lifestyle and culture' […]" There's a theory that Gao Yu herself is responsible for Document Number Nine reaching the public in the first place, but whether or not she was the source of the leak, she reported on it, established the direct connection between this manifesto and the new leadership of the Communist Party, and then disappeared into the prison system soon thereafter. Gāo Yú is an interesting historical figure in her own right, and she has been imprisoned at least twice before, serving six years in the 1990s. In makeup, she might seem to be about the same age as Xí Jìn Píng, but there's a significant difference in age between them. Gāo Yú's generation will at least have an indirect memory of the failure of the "Great Leap Forward", and she will have very direct memories of the Cultural Revolution, as an adult witness to that period. At 61 years old, Xí Jìn Píng is actually too young to share that perspective. Although it seems inescapable that someone from Gāo Yú's generation would regard Document Number Nine with fear and apprehension, the attitude toward that chapter of history will be different even for someone as old as Xí Jìn Píng. If the future belongs to people under 60, it's hardly surprising that Document Number Nine itself shows so much interest in eliminating "historical nihilism", and establishing the authority of Chinese Communism in a narrow, self-congratulatory interpretation of the country's history. Nobody will be allowed to question the Communist Party's mistakes in the future, and nobody will even be allowed to evaluate the Party's mistakes in the past. There will certainly be no freedom of the press, nor even free discussion on the internet, as the document takes some time to specify. In contrast to all the vague promises of prior eras of political reform, Document Number Nine sets down a starkly totalitarian view of China's future. As with many other turning points in China's past, the new direction indicated by the manifesto has been demonstrated --first and foremost-- by the Communist Party turning against itself, purging, persecuting and imprisoning its own members. Given the difficulty of reporting on Communist Party officials persecuting one-another in the tens of thousands, here's an example of a report focussed on an aspect of the story that can more easily be construed in terms of "innocent victims", although in much smaller numbers. Quote, "In one sign of [Xi Jinping's] determination to quash all debate, China's vast and well-funded security apparatus has been encouraged not only to arrest all government critics but also to harass and in some cases assault their lawyers. In July [of 2013] at least 44 lawyers were obstructed, detained or beaten up while trying to represent their clients, according to records compiled by the lawyers and seen by the Telegraph. […] [One such lawyer] said he had been assaulted by police in the past, but that the current situation "is definitely getting worse". […] At least 50, and perhaps as many as 100 people have been arrested for supporting 'constitutionalism'." Telling the story in this way appeals to the audience's presumption that these 44 lawyers were not corrupt, but are hapless victims. Of course, we don't have any more reason to assume that the 44 lawyers reported here are upstanding men of principle than we would for the 173,000 victims reported before. In a situation where nobody gets a fair trial, and nobody expects any of the facts of a case to be established, the western press is simply left to lament that this type of persecution is happening at all. In the anecdotal discovery of what the government is doing, we get a sense of the unfolding drama without an explanation of the strange Communist Party jargon (and "dialectical materialist" reasoning) that has caused these persecutions. Quote, "[Xí Jìn Píng] has been an advocate of Maoist self-criticism since 2004 and of the mass line since at least 2006. He has been a long-term proponent of a tough party stance on corruption." "Since becoming president, Xi has required officials to study Maoist theory, particularly Mao's 'mass line,' which says that the party should be both a part of the people and capable of leading them. In turn, Xi has put limits on official banquets, gift giving, and the use of official cars, and has encouraged officials to interact with the public. He has put in appearances at Beijing restaurants and on busy shopping streets and has also mandated --and, along with his colleagues in the leadership, led-- numerous 'self-criticism' sessions, in which party cadres publicly evaluate their own success in connecting with the people." "Xi has effectively asked officials under him to give up many of the perks of office. The stakes, he says, are the very survival of the party. An educational campaign based on the famous 'Document Number Nine' has promoted what party theory calls a 'sense of danger' about the threat of the party's collapse due to internal subversion and foreign attempts to undermine it. For many officials, that has been enough: Local officials complain about the drastic drop off in official gift-giving across the country, and the luxury sector has taken a big hit as a result." "For those who refuse to buy into Xi's project, though, he has launched the biggest purge in decades. His weapon of choice is the Central Discipline Inspection Commission, the party's anti-graft organization, which Xi has greatly strengthened under the leadership of long-term friend and ally Wáng Qí Shān. Wang has presided over the detention of hundreds of officials across the party, government, industry, and academia. Those investigated effectively disappear from the face of the earth and are subjected to horrors one survivor recently described to the Associated Press as 'a living hell.'" That's an effective quotation in drawing together the threads of Document Number Nine, the Mass Line, China's new leadership, and the persecution now unfolding under the banner of an anti-corruption policy. The most fundamental fact here is, simply, that China is now in the midst of "the biggest purge in decades". That is something the outside world ought to be extremely concerned about, and politically engaged with. Although I would not say that the western world has been silent on the matter, compare the response to the kidnapping of 200 Nigerian school-girls by the terrorist group Boko Haram. That story not only had an enormous response in the press, but also entailed formal statements by political leaders, and some degree of military action. By contrast, I'd encourage you to attempt to find any statement from your own political leaders (wherever you are in the world) about China's New Mass Line, Document Number Nine, or the related persecution, imprisonment and torture of many thousands of people in China. It hasn't entered the realm of political commentary, let alone diplomatic overtures or hard foreign policy. The Nigerian kidnapping case is clearly defined in terms of inncoent victims. What's happening in China, right now, is on a vastly larger scale, with much more important long-term implications, but it can't be reduced to such a simple equation. It is, apparently, safe for western leaders to declare their moral superiority to Boko Haram, and to call for the rule of law in Nigeria; it would rather more daring to call for the rule of law in China, or to openly revile the new policy of the Communist Party, as set out in Document Number Nine. I find that those who identify themselves as left-wing have the least to say when China's political policy is stated openly and directly, as it has been under Xí Jìn Píng. The Guardian newspaper has its full archive of articles available online; I could find only two very informal mentions of Document Number Nine, and perhaps two mentions of the Mass Line campaign in passing. Although google-searches are imperfect, I don't think that either one has been addressed even once by "The Young Turks", a left-of-center American news service, not even under vaguer keywords of "China anti-corruption crackdown", and so on. To some extent, the western world is trapped in a pattern of wanting to pretend that China is going to transform itself into a democracy, despite every clear indication that it will not do so. The Communist Party is consciously and intentionally pursuing a very different direction, and they provide us with some very clear indications, that we're choosing to ignore. They're not repressing the freedom of the press and human rights by accident, but publishing manifestos that explain how the current wave of repression really is part of their long-term vision of the future of their own country, as a totalitarian state. Quote, "Six months after Xi Jinping became president, he has confounded hopes that he might tread a more liberal path. Instead, his administration has cast China in the middle of an existential battle against seven 'Western' dangers including universal values, press freedom, civil society and judicial independence. Not only have these topics been made taboo on university campuses, but an internal memo named Document No. 9 warned Party officials that these subversions could lead to the country's collapse." Perhaps western diplomats and western authors alike are reluctant to name another Great Enemy of Democracy, given that the newspapers are --for the moment-- crowded with contenders for that title. As the year 2014 comes to an end, the western world is unusually eager to have China as an ally, although Document Number Nine and the Mass Line movement have shown that China now regards western democracy as its enemy, and that they're willing to spill blood within their own Party to prove it. There's a somewhat surreal contrast between the renewed hostillities with Russia and the quiet reception of China's ideological retrenchment under the leadership of Xí Jìn Píng. Although the Ukranian border dispute is vaguely reminiscent of Russia's Communist history, the conflict with China actually is about confronting Communism, here and now. Although the Ukraine and Russia may have poor records on freedom of the press, fair elections and other human rights, their current governments would never publish a manifesto declaring that they were opposed to freedom of the press in principle, nor that they regarded universal human rights as an ideological threat. Meanwhile, China just did, and then proved their commitment through purges and political mobilization on a massive scale. That should be difficult to ignore; but it seems to be easily ignored in the context of current political distractions.