The Perfect Dictatorship: China in the 21st Century by Stein Ringen

Author:Stein Ringen [Ringen, Stein]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Political Science / China Politics
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
Published: 2016-08-15T23:00:00+00:00

Control capacity

If public administration is reasonably up to the job, it is, however, when we turn to social control that we see the state with its true and awesome capacity. In a population of close to 1.4 billion people spread out over the vast territory, its apparatus of control is everywhere, including through ‘thought work’ into the minds of Chinese women and men. The new leadership as of 2012–13 raised hopes of some liberalisation but soon turned instead to more intensive and systematic controls and crackdowns against and detentions of activists and refusenicks. We outside of China would mostly think, by instinct, that as China grows more affluent and confident, political controls would be relaxed. In fact, the trend is the other way. China may be opening up economically, but politically it is being shut down. Foreign journalists, foreign or foreign-supported NGOs, human rights lawyers, and university academics have experienced increasingly difficult working conditions and tighter controls. Both legislation and practice in these areas are being consistently tightened, for example, in expansively restrictive legislation on foreign NGOs as of 2015. Gradually, more people in such areas of work have become affected by political pressure, including moderates who had not previously expected that they would be of much interest to the authorities of control. The present leadership appears to be genuinely fearful of ‘Western’ ideas and influences. Activism and reasonably free expression of opinion in academia is not supressed in any blanket way, but the space for autonomy has been narrowed and become more enclosed. The Chinese leaders continue to abide by the wisdom ascribed to Lenin that trust is good but control better.

Here, summarising dispersed observations so far, is what this tight ship apparatus looks like and how it works.

(1) A constant duty of all party and state organs, in particular party organs in localities, businesses, and organisations, is information gathering. This even reaches beyond state borders. Chinese students in foreign universities, like other expatriates, are observed, as are their China scholarship teachers. Anything that is or might become dangerous is likely to be known of. The Chinese know this. When a brave mainland student in Hong Kong after much agony wrote an open letter in support of the 2014 revolt there, she did so under a pseudonym, since otherwise her future life and career in China would be in ruins.

(2) The security services are on hand to strike down on anyone anywhere who is in any way engaged in activities that are seen to be politically threatening. What is officially called ‘stability maintenance’—weiwen—works. By and large citizens look after themselves. The controls are such that active opposition is not only difficult and dangerous but also futile.

It remains dangerous in present-day China to engage in political activity, manifestations, and social organisation. It is getting more dangerous. The organisation Chinese Human Rights Defenders documented 955 rights activists detained in 2014, almost as many as in the two previous years combined.22 In coordinated raids in most of the country’s provinces in early

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