II. Introduction: Growing Social Unrest and the Chinese Leadership's Counterproductive Response

Growing Social Unrest and the Roots of Instability | The Leadership's Counterproductive Response

Growing Social Unrest and the Roots of Instability

Social unrest in China is growing. According to official Chinese statistics, the number of public protests in China increased every year between 1993 and 2004. In 2003, public security authorities reported 58,000 public protests involving more than 3 million people. In 2004, public security authorities reported 74,000 public protests involving more than 3.5 million people, and a seven-fold rise from the 10,000 protests recorded in 1994. In October 2004 alone, more than 2 million farmers reportedly took part in more than 700 protests.

Many problems fuel China's social unrest. Unlawful land seizures and embezzled compensation payments led to numerous land disputes, with one Chinese social scientist warning of "turbulence" if the government does not solve these problems. Laid off workers and pensioners protested unpaid wages, poor labor conditions, and unemployment, with some incidents involving tens of thousands of protestors. Abusive police behavior sparked large-scale protests in Chongqing, Gansu, Guangdong, Sichuan, and Yunnan last year. Environmental degradation is also a growing cause of citizen protests. The number of collective petitioning efforts, involving hundreds or thousands of protestors trying to present their grievances to officials at successively higher levels of government, is growing. Public anger also manifests itself on the Internet, where reports on law enforcement abuse sometimes generate waves of media criticism and individual commentary.

Most demonstrations begin peacefully, but some turn violent, often in response to government crackdowns. Last fall in Chongqing, for example, an official's alleged abuse of a vendor during a minor street scuffle led to a riot involving more than 10,000 citizens. In November 2004, authorities in Sichuan province dispatched more than 10,000 troops and police to control a demonstration involving nearly 100,000 farmers angry over a hydroelectric project and related land confiscations. In June 2005, hundreds of armed thugs linked to a local development project reportedly killed 10 villagers and seriously wounded more than 100 while trying to evict the villagers from their land in Henan province.

The inability of government institutions and legal mechanisms to address corruption and social conflicts magnifies public anger. Official statistics indicate that the number of citizen petitions to government offices is growing rapidly, but according to Chinese scholars, government agencies address only about 0.2 percent of them. Chinese citizens may sue government officials under the Administrative Litigation Law, but they face a number of obstacles in successfully bringing such claims. These obstacles include a lack of legal representation, weak judicial capacity, Party and government interference in the courts, judicial corruption, and the prospect of official resistance or even retribution. In some cases, authorities specifically instruct courts not to accept too many administrative claims. Chinese law prohibits citizens from forming independent civil society organizations to support citizen complaints, and the Party limits political participation to channels that it designates, monitors, and controls. Without effective administrative, legal, and political channels through which to redress their grievances, citizens often have little choice but to protest.

The Leadership's Counterproductive Response

China's leaders rank social stability as a key priority, and officials are attempting to address some of the immediate causes of social unrest. In the past year, the government passed laws and initiated campaigns with the stated goals of combating corruption, curbing law enforcement abuse, limiting administrative discretion, and resolving such problems as unlawful land seizures and unpaid wages. In an effort to defuse resentment of law enforcement agencies, for example, the Ministry of Public Security and the Supreme People's Procuratorate initiated campaigns to address corruption, unlawful detention, and torture. The government has also undertaken efforts to ensure that employers pay migrant laborers.

While taking some steps to address public anger, the leadership has also imposed new controls that intensify the underlying causes of social unrest. Over the past year, the Chinese government launched a campaign to increase restrictions on the free flow of information. As part of this campaign, officials banned hundreds of "illegal" political publications, established a licensing system for reporters, and imposed new registration requirements for Web sites. Officials also prosecuted journalists and editors who reported too aggressively on local abuses and prohibited the use of text messaging and other media to circulate "rumors" and other "harmful" information. The Central Propaganda Department prohibited reporting on political and social topics the Party deemed sensitive or embarrassing. In May 2005, for example, the Department issued a new directive limiting the ability of news media to publish exposés on corruption and abuse in other locales. In late 2004, censors banned reports on land seizures, warning news media against "inducing and intensifying contradictions." Authorities also restricted public reporting on demonstrations and disturbances. These controls undermine the press, one of the few existing checks on local abuse, and leave officials and powerful private interests free to engage in the corrupt practices that are generating unrest across China.

The government also launched a new crackdown on intellectuals, social critics, and public activists. In the fall of 2004, the Liberation Daily published a critique of "public intellectuals," declaring that "the concept of public intellectuals had been introduced to drive wedges between intellectuals and the Party and between intellectuals and the general public." Since then, authorities have harassed, detained, and imprisoned many intellectuals and activists, including some who were working to address social and economic problems that the central leadership had acknowledged. For example, police arrested Li Boguang, who had been helping farmers petition the central government over local land abuses in Fujian province; Yang Tianshui, an advocate for migrant laborers; and Chen Guangcheng, a blind lawyer who had been campaigning against forced sterilizations and abortions in Shandong province. Police also detained Ye Guozhu and Ni Yulan, two Beijing housing activists, after they attempted to follow legal procedures and applied for a permit to protest forced evictions in Beijing.

Similarly, the Chinese government has increased controls over civil society and autonomous social organizations. The government continues to subordinate China's state-run union to the interests of the Party and prohibit the formation of independent labor unions that could address worker grievances. Early in 2005, authorities took steps to curb the growing activism of environmental groups that had challenged government development decisions by pressuring them to join a government-controlled umbrella organization. Officials also began a crackdown on social groups registered as business organizations and continued to enforce restrictive registration and sponsorship requirements for civil society organizations. Government and Party officials have acknowledged the important role that voluntary social organizations play in helping to address China's social problems. Instead of supporting the development of civil society organizations that could help resolve social and economic issues, however, the Chinese leadership has imposed new restrictions on these groups that undermine their ability to provide assistance, forcing many to operate underground.

Government repression of unregistered religious believers and ethnic minorities also contributes to instability. In 2005, the Chinese leadership refocused government attention on the traditional Party fear that religion and ethnicity are being used by "hostile outside forces" to infiltrate and destabilize Chinese society. As a result, instead of implementing China's new Regulation on Religious Affairs in a way that offers new redress to believers against errors and abuses by the state's religious bureaucracy and encourages faith-based social organizations, the Party directed local officials to "control" believers. Such tactics force religious expression underground and push otherwise law-abiding believers into conflict with the government.

The Chinese government relies on a combination of top-down rectification campaigns, political controls, and repression to achieve its version of social stability. These measures have failed to control corruption, local abuses, and social unrest, fueling additional resentment on the part of China's citizens. Citizen efforts to address government abuses are driven underground, while local officials enjoy even greater discretion to violate rights. Without full transparency, free information flow, independent political participation, a vibrant civil society, genuine autonomy for ethnic minorities and religious believers, enforceable constitutional and legal rights, and effective checks on administrative discretion, China's leaders will not achieve the goal of maintaining a stable internal environment as the foundation for continued national development.