From Spring to Fall
A seemingly more tolerant attitude in Beijing gives way to an all too familiar crackdown on dissidents
By NISID HAJARI
The displeasure of Beijing is an old story to China's dissidents. In recent months many activists thought they saw a more relaxed line in a series of small leniencies--a call for human rights allowed here, a book of reformist essays published there. One of the more experienced among them also recognized that a backlash was possible, perhaps inevitable. He had already been arrested more than 10 times in his life, Wuhan-based campaigner Qin Yongmin told journalists in July. What was one more?
Last week he found out. On Monday night police in Wuhan arrested Qin for "threatening state security"--a crime that could land him behind bars for life. At the same time, agents searched the Beijing home of Xu Wenli--another prominent dissident active in the movement to register the opposition China Democracy Party (CDP)--and dragged the longtime activist off to a detention center. The same week police also formally charged Wang Youcai, one of the CDP's founders, in Hangzhou. Many found the timing of the crackdown odd, both because of the liberal signals given off by Beijing recently and because the government had signed the United Nations Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in October. More jaded eyes, however, now view that brief period of tolerance as the true aberration. "What's surprising is that people like Xu have been able to go on for some while with these activities," says Sophia Woodman, Hong Kong-based research director of Human Rights in China. "China never said it was moving toward reform."
If authorities had any thought of signaling a new attitude, this week's 50th anniversary of the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights would have presented the ideal opportunity. Instead, the onset of the Dec. 10 commemoration may have prompted the wave of arrests: officials fear that the CDP may have had public activities planned, and the prospect of a string of upcoming, equally significant dates (including the 10th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre next June) only added to their anxiety. Since its inception in June, the CDP has attracted at least 500 public members across nine provinces and two major cities (including a Beijing-Tianjin chapter founded by Xu last month). Its undeclared numbers are far greater and--thanks in part to the spread of electronic mail--are growing at a rate that clearly makes hardliners uneasy.
That may have given conservatives an excuse to shed the relatively low profile they have maintained recently. Ex-Premier Li Peng returned to the spotlight a week before the arrests and only days before Chinese President Jiang Zemin embarked on a visit to Japan. In an interview with the German daily Handelsblatt, Li lashed out at the "boisterous chaos" of Western democracies and vowed that any group opposing the Communist Party "will not be allowed to exist." (At about that time, says Xu's wife He Xintong, security agents stepped up their surveillance of the dissident.) The CDP's charter carefully acknowledges the "leading role" of the Communist Party. But given the wellspring of potential discontent now furnished by China's unemployed millions, authorities have no tolerance for even a skeletal organized opposition.
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R E L A T E D S T O R I E S :
MESSAGE RECEIVED Sending e-mail is one of the charges hurled at Chinese activist Wang Youcai
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