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China Perspectives
47 | May-june 2003 Varia
Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/chinaperspectives/120 DOI: 10.4000/chinaperspectives.120 ISSN: 1996-4617
Publisher Centre d'étude français sur la Chine contemporaine
Printed version Date of publication: 1 June 2003 ISSN: 2070-3449
Electronic reference China Perspectives, 47 | May-june 2003 [Online], Online since 31 July 2006, connection on 11 November 2020. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/chinaperspectives/120 ; DOI : https://doi.org/ 10.4000/chinaperspectives.120
This text was automatically generated on 11 November 2020.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Politics
The 10th National People’s Congress and After Moving Towards a New Authoritarianism – Both Elitist and Consultative? Jean-Pierre Cabestan
The snares of modernity Internet, information and the SARS crisis in China Éric Sautedé
Law
Professional Ethics of Chinese Judges A rising issue in the landscape of judicial practice Yuwen Li
Foreign Policy
Japan’s Changing ODA Policy Towards China Masayuki Masuda
Economy
The Economic and Social Impact of GMOs in China Zhang Tao and Zhou Shudong
Politics: Taiwan
Selling Democracy: Diplomacy, Propaganda and Democratisation in Taiwan Gary D. Rawnsley
Book Reviews
Marie-Françoise Renart ed., China and its Regions: Economic Growth and Reform in the Chinese Provinces, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham (UK), 2002, 338 pp. Françoise Lemoine
China Perspectives, 47 | May-june 2003 2
Donald D. Tong, The Heart of Economic Reform: China’s Banking Reform and State Enterprise Restructuring, Ashgate, 2002. Françoise Lemoine
Gordon G. Chang, The Coming Collapse of China, New York, Random House, 2001, 344 pp. Jean-François Huchet
Randall Peerenboom, China's Long March Toward the? Rule of Law, Cambridge University Press, 2002, 673 pp. Leïla Choukroune
Vincent Gossaert ed., “L’anticléricalisme en Chine” (Anti clericalism in China), Extrême- Orient Extrême-Occident, No. 24, Saint-Denis, Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, 2002, 184 pp. Benoît Vermander
Judith Farquar, Appetites: Food and Sex in Postsocialist China (Body, Commodity, Text, Studies of Objectifying Practice), series directed by Arjun Appadurai, Jean Comaroff and Judith Farquar, Durham & London, Duke University Press, 2002, xii + 341 pp. André Lévy
Gilles Guiheux, Les grands entrepreneurs privés à Taiwan - La main visible de la prospérité, Paris, CNRS, Asie orientale, 2002, 253 pp. Philippe Chevalérias
Patricia Sieber, ed., Red Is Not The Only Color: Contemporary Chinese Fiction on Love and Sex between Women, Collected Stories. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001, 200 pp. Mirana M. Szeto
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Politics
China Perspectives, 47 | May-june 2003 4
The 10th National People’s Congress and After Moving Towards a New Authoritarianism – Both Elitist and Consultative?
Jean-Pierre Cabestan
NOTE DE L’ÉDITEUR
Translated from the French original by Philip Liddell
1 The meeting in March this year of the 10th National People’s Congress (NPC) confirmed the decisions and leadership changes approved last November by the 16th Party Congress. Four months after the delegates at the Party Congress had confirmed the smooth handover of power from the “third to the fourth generation” of Chinese leaders, the Party leadership promoted to the head of its “state façade” a new group of leaders. As expected, Hu Jintao replaced Jiang Zemin as President of the republic, Wen Jiabao succeeded Zhu Rongji as Prime Minister and Jiang stayed on as president of the powerful Central Military Commission of the state (and the Party). At the same time, the political and economic objectives approved at the Party Congress were translated into government decisions. Here again, the continuity of direction is more important than the changes, despite perceptible adjustments since last summer aimed, in the main, at preventing social unrest and thus at stabilising both society and the political regime. No real political reform was announced, while the attention of the new leaders remained focused upon economic restructuring. In particular, loss-making state enterprises were progressively to be dismantled; the Chinese economy was to be adapted to the international environment within which it is gradually becoming integrated; social inequalities were to be managed and, if possible, reduced; and the legal and institutional frameworks in which the country is developing were to be modernised.
2 This NPC meeting and more generally the aftermath of the 16th Party Congress were marked in particular by the Iraq War, the spreading epidemic of “atypical pneumonia”, or SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), in China, and the North Korean crisis.
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For all that, did they achieve anything new? Did they not help to reinforce institutional and political trends that have been developing for one, or even two, decades? This change of generation, and the early challenges that the new team has had to confront, might they not favour a gradual relaxation of China’s authoritarian system? Might they allow, if not the democratisation of the regime, at least the establishment of a more open form of authoritarianism? Could this not be characterised both by a profound elitism and also by consultative mechanisms that no regime of the Soviet type ever managed to put in place? In short, can authoritarianism be institutionalised?
3 These questions are far-reaching and, clearly, go beyond the scope of this article. Yet, we may be helped in measuring some of these developments by examining the course of the recent plenary session of the NPC (March 5th to 18th 2003) and of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC, March 3rd to 14th 2003) as well as the new distribution of responsibilities among the country’s top leaders. This study may also enable us to understand the rivalries and divisions among Party leaders and within the Chinese state. Thereby, we may attempt to foresee the political changes that may lie ahead over the coming years. The meetings of the NPC and the CPPCC 4 In many respects, the first plenary session of the 10th NPC unfolded as have previous such sessions. This year again, the NPC was composed of central and local delegates chosen by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP); for two weeks it served as a sounding board for the various economic and social problems that the country is experiencing. And, as a new legislature was taking over, this session of the NPC concentrated on electing the state’s new leaders, lending a less attentive ear to the various work reports presented to them (on the government, the NPC, the Supreme People’s Court and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate).
5 And, following institutional practice at the start of each new legislature, the first plenary session of the 10th NPC was preceded in February by a plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the CCP appointed during the recent Party Congress. This meeting formally approved the “candidates” for the various available government posts “recommended” (tuijian) by the Party, together with the agenda for this session.
6 Similarly, the 2,985 new delegates’ qualifications are hardly any different from those of their predecessors: the relative proportions of the various “socio-political” groups represented remain virtually unchanged (see Table 1). The largest grouping is still made up of cadres (32%), that is to say, the Party and state leaders at provincial and infra-provincial levels; “intellectuals” make up the next biggest grouping (21%) while “workers and peasants” (18%), delegated in the main by state enterprises and village committees, are still significantly under-represented. It is the same for women, who lose 44 deputies and whose place within the leading circles of the Party, as the 16th Congress has shown, is at best modest (the only woman sitting in the Politburo is Wu Yi, of whom more anon). By contrast, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), estimated to number 2.3 million people, is still generously over-represented: it provides 268 delegates, a number amounting to one deputy for every 8,582 soldiers, as against an average of one deputy for every 435,511 citizens and one deputy for every 1.08 million women! Reflecting Hu Jintao’s declared wish for openness towards non-communists, the only noteworthy development is the rather modest increase (480 as against 460) in the number of delegates from “democratic parties”, groupings distinct from but closely affiliated to the CCP, and from no party (wudangpai), those people formerly known as
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“fellow-travellers” of the Communist Party1. Yet, this new tendency harks back only timidly to a policy abandoned in 1998: in fact, this group made up 19.2% of the deputies in 1993 (572). Moreover, most of the remaining deputies belong to the CCP, although the exact proportion of communists has not been published since the Ninth NPC (in 1993, at the time of the Eighth NPC, 68.4% of deputies were Party members)2.
Table 1: The Membership of the 9th and the 10th NPCs (19982003)
NB: in 1998, the total number of delegates was 2,979. The twelve Macau representatives were not included in this number since Macau was still under Portuguese administration. However, five of them were then Guangdong delegates. Between 2000 and 2003, the total number of delegates has been 2,986. Source: Wenhuibao, March 3rd 2003, p.A6.
7 On the face of it, then, this first meeting of the 10th NPC is no different from the Ninth (1998) or the Eighth (1993).
8 Nevertheless, some developments may be noted reflecting a greater acceptance of deputies’ independence and bringing to light the rivalries that divide the Chinese leadership. First of all, we may wonder whether the system for selecting deputies has not gradually opened up and whether, because of this, rather than offering better representation to Chinese society, the NPC has not in reality become more elitist. We may wonder too whether the greater—and still quite modest—autonomy that the People’s Congresses enjoy, far from having lessened that tendency, has on the contrary accentuated it.
9 It is clear that, though formally elected by People’s Congresses at the provincial level, the members of the NPC are still chosen by the Central Department of the Organisation of the Communist Party, with the help of the authorities of the province that they represent (or of the PLA). Thus, because they had to belong to the NPC in order to be elected state leaders, Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao and Zeng Qinghong had themselves elected, each in one of the 31 provincial level constituencies of their choice (Shanghai, Tibet and Jiangxi, respectively). Similarly, those representing these constituencies in the NPC are mostly provincial leaders of the CCP, of the government and of the local people’s congress. At the local level also (counties, villages), numerous examples show that these elections are often no more open than formerly to citizens lacking connections in the system but wishing to take up the openings offered to them by the law—according to which anyone supported by ten electors may stand as a candidate3. The greater say that congresses have in government has generally resulted in
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strengthening the CCP’s grip over the congresses. Thus, 23 of the 31 provincial congresses are headed by the secretaries of the Party’s provincial committees. Only the most developed cities and regions (Peking, Shanghai, Tianjin, Guangdong, Hubei and Heilongjiang) and certain non-Chinese minority areas (Xinjiang, Tibet), for different reasons, have not experienced this pattern4.
10 Yet, while the NPC delegates are selected for their loyalty to the regime, they are chosen also on the basis of their high education level (in 1998, more than 80% of them were university graduates, as against 69% in 1993; in 2003 no statistical data was published), of their professional skills or of the recognition that the regime, following Jiang Zemin’s theory of the “three representations”, seeks to give to certain social groups. It is no surprise that a greater number of private entrepreneurs or, rather, “people involved in the non-public economy” (feigongyouzhi jingji renshi) are now members of the NPC (133 as against 48 in 1998)5. What is more, in a growing number of regions, because of the greater share that the local people’s congresses take in the affairs of government, being elected to these authorities has become a real political lever both for the regime’s “traditional elites” (Party and state officials, heads of enterprises and public establishments) and for members of the “new elites”, who are sometimes willing to spend substantial sums of money to ensure victory at the polls6. Although the CCP continues to screen the election (or promotion) of these deputies to congresses at higher levels, it is also more and more sensitive to deputies’ economic muscle and thus to the contribution, particularly financial, that they may bring to the collectivity.
11 The consequence of these developments is the increasingly urban and elitist character of the NPC. According to Hu Angang, city-dwellers are four times better represented than people living in the countryside (one delegate for every 960,000 country people as against one for every 260,000 city-dwellers). And the proportion of workers and peasants has dropped from 54% during the 1950s to 19%7. As formerly, delegates to the NPC embody an idealised form of political society, one designed more on the model of priorities set by the communist leadership of the moment than on that of China’s social realities. And the changing criteria for selection have not reduced the NPC’s elitist character. On the contrary, we may be tempted to advance the hypothesis—one that only an in-depth sociological study of the deputies, still a difficult task to carry out, could confirm—that the evolution of deputies’ selection criteria and the NPC’s relatively growing power have helped to make it more elitist than at the start of the Deng Xiaoping era, when its deputies were less educated, more rural, often survivors of the Cultural Revolution and, above all, less well off economically.
12 Even so, these elites do not form, politically or socially, a consistent group. While the majority of deputies still belong to the regime’s “traditional elites” (Party officials, PLA officers, workers and model peasants), a probably growing minority represents what one would be tempted to call the “new elites”8. And this hybrid mixture masks other divisions, ones that are more political or based on conflicts of economic interests that have to a certain extent manifested themselves during the leadership elections and that tend to put into perspective the stability of the socio-political groups represented in the NPC. Election surprises 13 In mid-March, seven state institutions saw their new leaders confirmed in power: the NPC, the presidency of the People’s Republic, the Central Military Commission, the
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Supreme People’s Court and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, the State Council and the CPPCC. The first six sets of appointments were ratified on the basis of a vote by all of the NPC deputies. The election procedure remained unaltered: a single candidate, the one proposed by the Party, was put forward for election. So the question was not whether a leader would be elected or not, but whether he would be more or less well elected. The only exception, as has been usual since 1988, was again the NPC’s Standing Committee, an authority for which the number of candidates was slightly above the number of available posts (167 candidates competing for 159 posts). Nevertheless, this “unequal number election” (cha’e xuanju), as before, did not include the NPC’s president, its 15 vice-presidents and its Secretary General, who also sit on the Standing Committee (whose total number went up to 175 members as against 155 in 19989.
14 These decision-making mechanisms, finely controlled as they were, came up with some surprises. Firstly, it is interesting to note a development for which there is no known precedent: the election procedure itself was rejected by 34 deputies while 64 others abstained (2,795 delegates approved it)10. Further, for the first time, during the vote, deputies were authorised to write an additional name on their ballot papers, an opportunity that a handful of them actually did grasp11.
15 And, most importantly, the overall message of the delegates was clear: the candidates close to Jiang Zemin were badly elected whereas Hu Jintao’s supporters were, on the whole, elected with overwhelming majorities. This reflected the wish of most of China’s “official elites” to see the torch passed more quickly to the “fourth generation” and in particular the powers of the “Shanghai group” (Shanghaibang) and the “Jiang Zemin faction” (Jiangjiaban) curtailed. Will their wishes be granted? Changing the leadership of the NPC 16 Few were surprised at the choice of Li Peng’s successor as NPC Chairman: as has become usual since 1993, this function is exercised by the number two leader of the CCP. So it was Wu Bangguo, a former Shanghai boss (1991-1995) then deputy prime minister and associate of Jiang, who was promoted, rather than Li Ruihuan, chairman of the CPPCC and favoured candidate up until last October, when he was forced into premature retirement because of his open opposition to Jiang (see below). However, despite Wu’s political leanings, the deputies gave him massive support, no doubt because of the regime’s real popularity among the official elites and also in consideration of the powers, after all quite limited, that the NPC president can wield12. Even so, two deputies preferred Zhu Rongji and one other voted for Li Peng13. By contrast, Li Tieying, too closely associated with the now past era of Deng Xiaoping and criticised for his very conservative management of the Academy of Social Sciences, was almost as badly elected (93.21%) as Ding Shisun, president of the Democratic League, whose advanced age, 76, probably explains his low score (92.26%). Lu Yongxiang, on the other hand, President of the Academy of Sciences, recorded a wholly honourable 98.71%. We should note too that the NPC’s new number two, Wang Zhaoguo—an associate of Hu Yaobang and then of Zhao Ziyang during the 1980s and later responsible for the CCP United Front Department (relations with non-communists) and for relations with Taiwan—won the almost unanimous support of the deputies (99.18%); but that the choice of the Congress’s new Secretary General, Sheng Huaren, former minister of the economy and trade, seems to have been more controversial (95.86%), probably because it is a key position (see Table 2). Among the eight candidates who failed to win election to the Standing Committee, we should mention Chen Guangyi,
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former civil aviation chief, Liu Jiyuan, the head of China’s Space Society and Ruan Chongwu, former Party secretary in Hainan and once an associate of Hu Yaobang. While the air disasters that occurred in 2002 may explain Chen’s defeat, the rejection of the other two men probably has more to do with the deputies’ wish to bring into the Standing Committee—a more influential authority that meets every two months—more new blood and in particular the twenty or so “young professional technocrats” whom the Party leadership added to the list of candidates14. Table 2: The leadership of the 10th NPC
٭incumbent Vice-Chairmen NB: The 10th NPC’s Standing Committee and Chairmanship were elected on March 15th 2003. The Chairmanship includes the Chairman, 15 Vice-Chairmen and the Secretary General, who now is also Vice-Chairman. The numberof ballots was 2,951. The number of valid ballots was 2,950 for the Chairman’s election and 2,944 for the Vice-Chairmen’s election. Percentages were calculated by the Chinese authorities on the basis of the number of valid ballots. Source: Wenhuibao, March 16th 2003, pA1.
The Presidency of the Republic
17 But it was the election for President and Vice-President of the People’s Republic that provided one of the biggest surprises. In accordance with the state constitution, Jiang had to stand down, having served two terms in office. And following a practice laid down in 1993 by Jiang himself, only the CCP’s new Secretary General, Hu, could claim the supreme post15. The name of the candidate for the vice-presidency, Zeng Qinghong, 63, remained unknown for a long time despite predictions—accurate, as it turned out— made as early as spring 2002 in certain press publications16. The post of vice-president had been largely honorary before 1998: it was occupied between 1993 and 1998 by the “red capitalist” Rong Yiren. This time, in a show of openness towards society it might have gone once again to a non-communist. Yet, from the outcome of the 16th Party Congress, it seemed clear that, if the CCP adhered to the “institutional tradition” laid down by Hu in 1998, the job must go to the man holding the number five place in the Standing Committee of the Politburo, namely, to Zeng Qinghong. Indeed, at the time that Hu was elected vice-president in 1998, he occupied the same official rank, behind Jiang, Li Peng, the prime minister Zhu Rongji and the president of the CPPCC, Li Ruihuan. Does that mean that the Vice-President of the republic is henceforward,
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unfailingly, the presumed successor to the head of state and of the Party? Although one might think that behind this choice might be glimpsed Jiang’s secret hope of seeing Zeng one day in the seat of power, the matter is far from decided; and the voting results this March must have troubled old Jiang’s dreams just a little, if not dampened Zeng’s ardent ambitions.
18 For while Hu was elected by an overwhelming majority of deputies (two, however, voted for Jiang!), Zeng scored the worst result of any of the CCP leaders publicly elected this year to state posts: nearly four hundred voters withheld their support, which gave him an approval rating of 87.54%! This poor showing is on a par with that of Li Peng in March 1993 when he was re-elected prime minister: 2,537 votes in favour (88.6%), 210 votes against and 120 abstentions. It should be noted also that this percentage is even lower than that obtained by the conservative general, the late Wang Zhen, when he was elected Vice-President of the republic in 1988 (90% in favour)17. Moreover, a small number of ballots (27) were marked in support for other leaders, among them Li Changchun, the former secretary of Guangdong province (6), Zhu Rongji (3) and Li Ruihuan (1). The announcement of these unusual results was greeted with widespread laughter among the delegates, their hilarity probably not shared by the man elected— and not by Jiang either18. Indeed, while these percentages may seem high in a democratic context, in the Chinese political system they reflect a genuine revolt, and are perceived in this way both by those elected and by the electors and the general public, although the latter was largely kept in the dark since only Hong Kong and foreign media reported the percentages that we are discussing (see Table 3).
19 This result has without doubt had some consequences that are not yet fully apparent. For instance, we may wonder if the considerable time that Zeng devotes to questions of foreign policy and security (North Korea, Taiwan) is not indirectly the product of his unpopularity on the domestic stage. Similarly, this unpopularity and the fears aroused by his ambitiousness could explain his long silence during the SARS epidemic, a silence that he broke at the end of April in a statement to the CCP’s Central School, of which he is the new Director19. Be that as it may, despite the constraints of the present political system, the outcome of this election has helped, if not to weaken, then at least to discredit a little further the dominant position of Jiang and his allies and cronies within the country’s central authorities. The Central Military Commission 20 It was hardly likely that the State Central Military Commission (SCMC) would be different from the Party Central Military Commission (PCMC): consequently, dashing the hopes of some observers, the PCMC formed last November was automatically transformed into the SCMC once the deputies had approved Jiang’s election as its chairman on March 15th, and the following day, at his instigation, had elected the three vice-chairmen and the four members of this body (see Table 4).
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Table 3: State Presidency, Supreme court and Procurate
NB: The President and Vice-President of the Republic’s election took place on March 15th 2003. The Supreme Court President’and Procurator General’s election took place on March 16th 2003. The number of valid ballots was 2,944 for the State President’s election, 2,945 for the State Vice- President’s election, 2,895 for the Supreme Court President’s election and 2,938 for the Procurator General’s election. Percentages were calculated by the Chinese authorities on the basis of the number of valid ballots. Source: Wenhuibao, March 16th 2003, pA1, and March 17th 2003, p.A18.
21 As is known, according to the internal document Disidai (The Fourth Generation), Hu ought to have succeeded Jiang at the head of these two commissions in November and March respectively20. As is also known, nothing came of this, either because the author of the document, known under the pseudonym of Zong Hairen, was not informed of the highly sensitive and therefore top secret negotiations surrounding the succession to Jiang, or because Jiang himself later went back on a decision that was still at the draft stage, or again because this option had been proposed by Jiang with the sole purpose of testing out his peers and of estimating the support he would need to keep his position. And it is known, finally, that the plans made in 1998-1999 to set up a National Security Council (NSC) better placed to manage international crises, of which Jiang was to have been chairman, while probably staying on as chairman of the CMC, were provisionally dropped in 2002. They led only—probably after NATO planes had bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in May 1999—to the creation of a CCP leading group for national security (guojia anquan lingdao xiaozu), a flexible and provisional structure aimed mainly at handling international crises and at co-ordinating decision-making in the diplomatic, military and energy fields. Headed by Jiang, this leading group then brought together, according to some sources, several high-ranking civilian leaders, among them Zhu Rongji, Hu Jintao, Wei Jianxing, the head of the Party’s disciplinary apparatus, Qian Qichen, then vice-premier in charge of foreign affairs, Zeng Qinghong (Secretary General) and Liu Huaqiu, director of the government’s Foreign Affairs Bureau21. The difficulties encountered in defining the relative mandates of the NSC and the CMC, Jiang’s persistent refusal to hand over the presidency of the CMC to Hu, the problem of introducing a fundamental reform of decision-making authorities in matters of external security at such a politically delicate time: these difficulties combined to torpedo the whole project—at least for the present. At all events, in the course of summer 2002, Jiang forced the Party leadership to keep him on as chairman of the CMC. Then, a fortnight before the Party Congress, against all expectations, he forced his main detractor within the leadership, Li Ruihuan (chairman of the CPPCC and number four in the regime) to retire aged 68. Li, as we have seen, was to have succeeded Li Peng as chairman of the NPC. With this stroke, Jiang removed the last (modest) obstacle to his renewal as head of the CMC.
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22 Some Army delegates to the NPC declared that, on the eve of the Party Congress, Jiang proposed to the military chiefs—and probably to the CMC—that he would stand down. The chiefs are said to have refused on the grounds of his “good understanding of military and international affairs”. This information, not very believable, was released to the public in an attempt to justify Jiang’s poor election results (see Table and below). These deputies’ comments served above all to strengthen the notion that, as regards the CMC leadership, the legitimacy of the military hierarchy had been more important than that of the civilian representatives of the Party22. And one can easily see with hindsight that all this apparent uncertainty over Jiang’s departure from the CMC was no more than tactical posturing. Indeed, other and better sources support the hypothesis that Jiang fully intended to stay on. They say on the contrary that, towards the end of the 16th Congress, on November 13th, Jiang asked General Zhang Wannian, outgoing vice-chairman of the CMC, to submit to the Standing Committee of the Congress Presidium meeting in Zhongnanhai a motion proposing to extend his term as chairman of the CMC. This motion had already been signed by a score of leaders, all from the military. Zhang particularly asked Hu to give his opinion after several members of the former leadership, such as Li Lanqing, and retired servicemen such as General Liu Huaqing, had approved the proposal: with his back to the wall, Hu could only follow suit. The Standing Committee of the Congress Presidium, being mostly made up of Jiang’s associates, was obviously bound to back the decision, despite the opposition of several leaders in retirement, or close to it, who were also members (including Li Ruihuan, Wei Jianxing and Wan Li)23. Yet, the initiative—deliberately kept secret from all outside the narrow circle of those in power and probably disclosed only to the Politburo—caught many delegates at the 16th Congress off their guard; and they resented it; if they had been consulted—which they were not—perhaps the support for keeping Jiang in his post would not have been so decisive24.
Table 4: State Central Military Commission
NB: The SCMC Chairman’s election took place on March 16th 2003. The SCMP Vice-Chairmen’and member’s election took place on March 16th 2003. The number of valid ballots was 2,946 for the Chairman’s election and 2,937 for the Vice-Chairmen’and member’s election. Percentages were calculated by the Chinese authorities on the basis of the number of valid ballots. Source: Wenhuibao, March 16th 2003, pA1, and March 17th 2003, p.A18.
23 The results of the election of the SCMC are in some way the proof of this, after the event. Although the two congresses are distinct, they are largely interconnected: indeed, the delegates to the Party Congress and to the National People’s Congress are often the same national and local leaders—it would be helpful to know precisely the ratio, but one may estimate it at two to one.
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24 It so happened that, of the 2,946 deputies present for the vote, more than 200 refused to support Jiang’s election (92.53% voted yes). What is more, 36 deputies asked for Hu to take over, while two others wrote Zhu Rongji’s name on their ballot papers25. The following day, by contrast, Hu was re-elected as vice-chairman of the SCMC with an overwhelming majority of the votes cast (99.69%). The other members of the SCMC, all from the military, encountered no real opposition. The few “no” votes and additional abstentions were directed against sitting generals (and the oldest of them) and are not really significant.
25 Can this vote speed up Jiang’s departure from the Commission? Probably not. Only the true intentions of the man concerned, and his capacity to continue imposing them on the rest of the Party’s new leadership—he has at least five allies (out of nine members) in the Politburo’s new Standing Committee—could shorten a term that is fixed in principle at five years (2003-2008). Between 1989 and 1999, Jiang was the only civilian to sit on the CMC. Since then, his successor has been at his side. This arrangement may be seen as transitory26. But one is also entitled to think that it will serve as a precedent for another succession model, whereby Hu would become, at the moment accepted by Jiang and the majority of the leadership, chairman of the CMC and Zeng, the Vice- President of the republic, would succeed him as first vice-chairman of the Commission27. . .
26 In other words, the field is still open. The Supreme People’s Court and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate 27 The Supreme Court and the Supreme Procuratorate are formally required to report on their work to the NPC; and, as usual, they have been subjected to sharp criticism, not only by what one might call the “pro-security” group in the Congress but also by a large number of delegates concerned about the powerlessness and malfunctioning of these two institutions, the second in particular28.
28 As regards the election of their head, the situation in the Court looked different from that in the Procuratorate. Xiao Yang, president of the Supreme Court since 1998, was asking for his term to be extended for a further period of five years. By contrast, Han Zhubin, the incompetent General Procurator—before 1998 he was Railways Minister— was retiring after a single term, handing over to Jia Chunwang, the former Minister of State Security (1993-1998) and Public Security (1998-2002).
29 Xiao Yang, Minister of Justice before 1998 and a good lawyer, was re-elected with, broadly speaking, an honourable score (95.37%) considering the vigorous criticisms levelled at the poor functioning of the courts29. As for Jia (95.54%), he was the target of an opposition vote—admittedly a less angry opposition than his predecessor had faced (a 65% “yes” vote in 1998) but still a significant one within the Chinese context, based probably on his background as former boss of the secret services and then of the police and on the active role he had played in repressing Falungong: these were qualifications that had prepared him more for repression than for defending the rights of those faced with prosecution. The State Council 30 The re-election of the leaders of the central government was much less controversial. As he had agreed to do in 1998, Zhu Rongji (74 years old), the Premier, was retiring after a single term in office (according to the Constitution, he could, like his predecessor, Li Peng, have claimed a second term). Zhu’s chosen successor, Wen Jiabao,
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is not among Jiang’s associates. Having, until the Tiananmen massacre, worked closely with Zhao Ziyang in the Party’s Central Secretariat, Wen survived the political buffeting following that crisis, more because of his low factional colouration than because of the self-criticism he agreed to undertake or the low profile that he kept for several years30. He was promoted to vice-premier in 1998 by Zhu, who had previously entrusted him with agricultural affairs; then, from 2000 onwards, Zhu preferred him as his successor over two of Jiang’s favourites: Wu Bangguo, treacherously sacrificed by Zhu who gave him the “mission impossible” of reforming the state enterprises, and Li Changchun, criticised over his management of Guangdong. Wen is a consensus man with a calm and controlled voice, preferring to appear close to the people, particularly those left behind by growth; he is strengthened by his experience of China’s poor regions, particularly Gansu; and he is well-liked beyond official circles. But it is significant that he is popular too within these circles! And the vote he won at the NPC, at the time of his election as head of government on March 16th, tends to demonstrate this: in fact, he registered an even higher level of support than had his predecessor (99.35% as against 98%), whose trenchant and sometimes authoritarian character later attracted much ill-feeling.
Table 5: The State Council
٭ Incumbent minister. All other officials were promoted in March 2003 ٭٭ New or restructures commission or ministry Zhang was dismissed on April 20th 2003 and was replaced by Vice-Premier Wu Yi. (2) Zhou XiaoChuan was appointed in December 2002. NB: The Premier’s election took place on March 16th 2003. The number of valid ballots was 2,925. The other members of the State Council were elected on March 17th 2003. The number valid ballots was 2,935. Percentages were calculated by the Chinese authorities on the basis of the number of valid ballots. Sources: Wenhuibao, March 17th 2003, p.A18; Mingbao 18th 2003, p.A22.
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Table 6: The leadership of the CPPCC
٭ Incumbent members of the CPPCC leadership. NB: The CPPCC Chairmanship’s election took place on March 13th 2003. 2,152 delegates took part in it. The number of valid ballots was 2,145. Percentages were calculated by the Chinese authorities on the basis of the number of valid ballots. In March 2003, the number of Vice-Chairmen was cut from 31 to 24; 13 of them are non-CCP figures(against 16 in 1998) and 11 are CCP members (against 15 in 1998). Sources: Mingbao, March 14th 2003, p.A19; Wenhuibao, March 11th 2003, p.A4.
31 The next day, the elections were held for the other seats on the State Council (SC): the four vice-premiers, the five State Councillors including the Secretary General (these nine leaders, together with the Premier, making up the Executive Committee of the SC), as well as the 28 commission chairmen and ministers of a new central government that is slightly reduced in size (one commission fewer). Here again, while most of the new cabinet members were elected without any hitches, there were still a few surprises left for us (see Table 5). Having had his fingers burned by his own and Zeng’s poor results, Jiang is said to have asked Wu Bangguo to mobilise the delegates, who—as we have seen —mostly belong to the Party and are subject to its voting discipline31. Or so we might have thought. Once again, those leaders most clearly associated with Jiang were openly challenged. Thus it was with Huang Ju (97.75%), the former boss of Shanghai (1994-2002) and the conqueror in spring 2002 of the popular (at least among foreign businessmen) Xu Kuangdi; Huang replaced Li Lanqing as first vice-premier, his post being “formal”, that is to say, without specific duties beyond monitoring Wen on Jiang’s behalf32. This was also the treatment handed out by deputies to Chen Zhili (87.80%), another member of the “Shanghai gang”—she had directed the Party’s Propaganda Bureau there during the 1990s; Chen was promoted in 1998, despite her lack of competence, to the post of education minister and then state councillor responsible for education and culture. The new and powerful Secretary General of the State Council, Hua Jianmin, who they say is Jiang’s watcher there, also won a lower than average vote
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(94%): having been in charge of economic planning in Shanghai at the start of the 1990s, Hua was called to Peking by Jiang, who had him named as deputy Secretary General of the Party’s powerful leading group in charge of finance and the economy33. Tang Jiaxuan, who succeeded Qian Qichen as state councillor responsible for foreign policy, may also be included in this category.
32 Among the ministers, the election of two men close to Jiang and Zeng Qinghong—Zhang Wenkang and Wang Xudong—was disputed to some extent. Zhang, formerly Jiang’s personal (military) doctor and minister of health since 1998, scored among the worst results of any of the 28 ministers (96.15% and in 27th position). Despite the active and positive role that he played in lifting the veil of secrecy and ignorance surrounding the Aids epidemic in Henan arising from blood transfusions, Zhang was probably here paying the price for his privileged relationship with the former secretary general. He was to pay an even heavier price on April 20th when he was dismissed from his post following the spread of the SARS epidemic in Peking, for having too long faithfully pursued a mendacious and even criminal policy dictated by the highest bodies in the Party, a policy that only the pressure from the World Health Organisation and the constraints of globalisation were eventually able to challenge.
33 As for Wang Xudong (96.97% “yes” vote, in 26th position), his relatively weak result is probably due as much to his poor knowledge of the important and sensitive sector—the information industry—that he is now responsible for as to his close connections with Zeng Qinghong34.
34 On the other hand, those close to Zhu Rongji, such as Wu Yi, who became after April 20th the super co-ordinator of the struggle against this same SARS epidemic and (provisional) minister of health, or Ma Kai, the chairman of the big new State Development and Reform Commission, were not subjected to any noticeable opposition. The only Zhu supporter to have been somewhat challenged was Zhou Xiaochuan, the new governor of the People’s Bank of China, who scored the second worst result after Huang Ju. For this, two explanations may be offered. On the one hand, it is possible that a certain number of deputies bore a grudge against Zhou for his management— unprofitable for the shareholders—of the Securities Regulatory Commission which he directed from 2000 to 2002. On the other hand, despite his good relations with Zhu, Zhou is also close to Jiang: his father, Zhou Jiannan, was in fact the direct superior of the future Chinese number one, when Jiang was working in the Ministry of Mechanical Industry . . .
35 That said, while the State Council includes only about one-third of ministers close to Jiang, its Standing Committee, that is to say, its leading body, is still dominated by Jiang supporters. Wen has only Wu Yi for an ally there. Apart from Huang Ju, Hua Jianmin and Chen Zhili, Jiang can also count on Zeng Peiyan, Hui Liangyu, Zhou Yongkang, General Cao Gangchuan, the new defence minister, and Tang Jiaxuan to bend this body’s decision-making—mainly in the social and economic area—in his preferred direction. Indeed, Zeng Peiyan—who is a former president of the State Commission on Development and the Plan (1998-2003) and now the State Council’s overall co-ordinator of financial and economic affairs—worked closely with Jiang in the electronics industry. Hui was Party secretary in Jiangsu up until December 2002 and is now in charge of agricultural questions in the SC; his abilities are recognised and his fruitful collaboration with Zhu and Wen is confirmed. Nevertheless, Hui is also increasingly perceived as belonging to the Zeng Qinghong faction, which is said to have advanced
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his career, as is the case with a good third of the new Politburo members: Liu Yushan (Propaganda), He Guoqiang (Organisation), Wang Gang (General Affairs), Zhang Deqiang (Guangdong), Chen Liangyu (Shanghai) and Zhou Yongkang (Public Security)35. Admittedly, the new minister of public security and ex-boss of Sichuan, Zhou Yongkang, must also have given some assurances to the Li Peng faction to attain that post and above all, in December 2002, the position of secretary (head) of the Party’s powerful Political and Legal Commission, formerly occupied by Luo Gan, a supporter of Li36. But this promotion would not have been possible without the approval of Jiang, who appreciated his efficient crackdown on Falungong in Sichuan, and without the active support of Zeng Qinghong, whose relationship with Zhou dates from their time together in the oil industry, then controlled by Yu Qiuli. Moreover, according to some sources, Zhou is brother-in-law to Zeng, whose younger sister he married in 198137.
36 Lastly, Wu Yi and another third of the new ministers are closer to Zhu Rongji than to Wen or even to Hu Jintao. In a politico-institutional context such as this, Wen had scarcely any choice but to rely on Wu Yi to direct the battle against SARS. And, more generally, he will have to strengthen his alliance with those ministers still loyal to Zhu if he wishes the State Council to back the reforms that he, in collaboration with Hu, will be formulating38. The election results of March 16th and 17th will probably encourage Wen to consolidate the partnership he has formed with the new Secretary General- President. They will also have warned him against possible counter-attacks by Jiang and his supporters39.
Annex 1: The leadership of the CCP after the 16th Congress (November 2002)
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Annex 2: The central leadership of the CCP and the functions of its members
The CPPCC 37 Two-thirds of the CPPCC is made up of non-communists and individuals from what one could call “official civil society”: it is a sort of Chinese upper house whose consultative role is particularly limited; it symbolises the united front between the CCP and the eight “democratic parties” which are strongly represented on it; and it also acts once a year as a loudspeaker for the country’s problems. The CPPCC’s members are chosen by the Party’s United Front Department, whose director is always vice-chairman of this body (today Liu Yandong) and its real number two. The membership brings together personalities as diverse as the writer Ba Jin, the pro-communist Hong Kong millionaire Henry Fok and the actress Gong Li, who is much photographed at every annual meeting of this conference.
38 As demanded by the protocol of the Party-state, the number four of the Standing Committee of the Politburo and of the regime, Jia Qinglin, was therefore appointed as chairman, in succession to the unfortunate Li Ruihuan. Li, unlike other outgoing members of the Chinese leadership, was not authorised to propose his own successor40. Jia’s promotion to the Party’s supreme leadership and his nomination as head of the 10th CPPCC (2,238 members) did not pass without attracting considerable criticism both in China and abroad: indeed, considering that the CPPCC is China’s most open institution to the world beyond the Party and the country’s elites, what message did Jiang Zemin intend to convey by promoting as its chairman an ally who is among those most strongly suspected of corruption? Jia was CCP secretary in Fujian (1996-2000) where, moreover, his wife, Lin Youfang, was in charge of the province’s external trade, at the time of the great Yuanhua smuggling scandal—which cost the state six billion US dollars. Jiang promoted him to number one in Peking, wanting to build up his own support in the capital. Though he protected Jia when those responsible for the illegal
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trade were incriminated (among them Li Jizhou, the former deputy minister of public security, and Lai Changxin, the crooked businessman who fled to Canada), Jia’s reputation in China is nevertheless bad. For this reason, his election as president of the CPPCC, on March 13th, was awaited with some impatience.
39 The outcome of that election was not as negative as some had hoped and others feared. It is true that, with 92.77% of the votes cast (1,990 out of 2,152), Jia was the worst elected of all this body’s leaders—with the exception of Ba Jin whose great age (he is 98) and infirmity probably explains his poor showing (90.26%, see Table 6). But Jia was in the end better elected than Zeng and practically as well as Jiang. Being composed of more non-communists, was the CPPCC more indulgent towards Jia than the NPC would have been? It is difficult to say41. One is inclined to think that much less was at stake than in Zeng’s election. Jia, who is 62, is still a protégé of Jiang, but his transfer to the CPPCC is seen more as an honourable retirement accorded to a loyal follower than as a springboard to greater responsibilities.
40 Some members of the CPPCC leadership were, on the other hand, better elected: the unfortunate ex-Mayor of Shanghai, Xu Kuangdi, the former secretary general of Zhu Rongji’s government, Wang Zongyu, the new president of the Academy of Social Sciences, Chen Kuiyuan, and even Liu Yandong, the Party’s watchdog in the CPPCC. So what? 41 They say that these results threw Jiang into a fit of anger that lasted for three days. Despite the narrow margin between the voting results for his supporters, on the one hand, and for his detractors, on the other, the message appeared particularly clear. Jiang blamed “outside interference”, and the pernicious spreading of the idea of the “Shanghai gang”: he considered this untrue, despite the obvious favouritism that benefited those leaders who had worked with him in that city42. Next, he is said to have asked the Central Secretariat of the Party—in particular Liu Yunshang, He Guoqiang and Wang Gang, three of Zeng Qinghong’s people, to build up favourable publicity about the badly elected leaders, especially about Zeng Qinghong, Jia Qinglin, Huang Ju and Chen Zhili43. For what it is worth, this instruction has helped to widen the fault lines that these elections allowed to appear. It does not augur well for the Party’s capacity to remain united until the next NPC in 2008; and, in the long run, it might alter the new distribution of responsibilities that was proposed during the 16th Party Congress and then confirmed at the meetings of the NPC and the CPPCC. Yet, at the same time, these elections reflect some degree of institutionalisation in the present political system. A new distribution of responsibilities 42 The most important implication to be drawn from these meetings is that Jiang Zemin is still the Chinese number one and that his supporters dominate the main centres of power in the Party and the state. However, this obvious truth must immediately be qualified, not only because of the complaints and objections among the deputies but also, and most particularly, in light of the distribution of tasks among the country’s top leaders.
43 While Jiang’s prerogatives in the strategic and foreign policy fields remain significant, in domestic affairs it is the duo of Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao that is in the ascendancy. Of this the handling of the SARS epidemic is, as we shall see, a clear illustration.
44 Officially, it is Hu, in his capacity as President of the republic and above all as Secretary General of the CCP, who directs the formation and implementation of China’s foreign
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policy. In fact, since March 16th, it is he that picks up the phone when a foreign head of government seeks to communicate quickly and at the highest level with the Chinese leadership44. And it is recognised that Hu has also gradually won the chairmanship of the Party’s major leading groups dealing with foreign affairs, including the one on national security, the one on Taiwan and the one on foreign policy.
45 Be that as it may, the make-up of these leading groups betrays the strong presence, even the domination, of Jiang’s associates. Thus it is with the leading group national security. After the NPC, Zeng Qinhong was promoted to be vice-chairman of the leading group on national security, of which he had before been Secretary General. In the absence of the National Security Council (see above), this leading group is a body for debating and decision-making whose role deserves close attention45. This structure could enable Hu to establish more quickly and firmly his role in the field of external security. In the longer term, it might be transformed into a new National Security Council and supplant the Central Military Commission, especially when it comes to managing international crises—obviously after Jiang has agreed to retire, perhaps half way between the 16th and 17th Party Congresses. But Hu would have at the same time to keep in check Zeng’s influence in the foreign and security policy realm.
46 As for Zeng, with Jiang behind him and wielding his constitutional prerogatives as vice- president—assisting the President in his work (article 82)—he has globally tried to keep his powers in the fields of foreign affairs and security, in particular on Asian questions, such as the dispute between North Korea and the US46. Nevertheless, since late May 2003, Zeng’s influence in this area has decreased. For instance, since then, he does not belong any more to the leading group on Taiwan of which he was reported of being vice-chairman after the NPC meeting: now chaired by Hu and not by Jiang any more, this group’s vice-chairman is Jia Qinglin, the CPPCC chairman, a probably less competing deputy, while as before two military men sit in it, Guo Boxiong and deputy chief of staff Xiong Guangkai47. More importantly, since early June, it has been confirmed that Hu had succeeded Jiang as head of the CCP leading group on foreign affairs; and while Premier Wen Jiabao is now vice-head, and members include Vice- Premier Wu Yi, State Councillor Tang Jiaxuan and Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing, Zeng does not sit any more in it48.
47 Now that Jiang Zemin has left most of these leading groups (except perhaps the one on the policy towards the US), he will still be able to exert his leadership, in two ways. On the one hand, his position as president of the CMC enables him to maintain a direct hold over the Army and to “listen to the politics behind the guns” (chuiqiang tingzheng) to borrow the phrase used in a Xinbao article49. And, since the 16th Party Congress, he is officially kept informed of all the debates within the Politburo (and its Standing Committee) and is still consulted on important decisions—and we can imagine that they are not taken without his approval50. On the other hand, Jiang relies on a number of trusted leaders to exert his control over the new duo in power. Zeng is the most important of these in the field of international policy but Jia Qinglin is another one to watch.
48 For instance, it is worth indicating that Zeng has some contacts in the PLA that might help him to increase his influence in strategic and military affairs. Zeng is the son of Zeng Shan (1899-1972), a former official of the Jiangxi Soviet who became minister of transport during the 1960s, and of Deng Liujin (born in 1911), one of the few women to have taken part in the Long March: Zeng was born to power. He was educated at the
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Peking Institute of Technology, began his career in the weapons industry, then moved up under the protection of Yu Qiuli, who headed the Political Department of the PLA during the 1980s. They say it was Zeng who, during the 1990s, helped Jiang to establish good relations with top military leaders and to persuade Deng Xiaoping to get rid of the Yang brothers (Yang Shangkun et Yang Baibing). Moreover, Zeng’s family is still doing well in the Army: his sister, Major General Zeng Haisheng, and his two younger brothers are all career officers. Zeng arranged for his sister to be elected to the NPC; and today she is director of the department of general affairs of the general staff, a key post that Zeng himself may find useful in the future51.
49 Consequently, for the foreseeable future, Hu Jintao and his allies will find the assertion of their power in foreign and military affairs somewhat impeded in spite of the stronger profile Hu has developed after his trip to Russia and his participation in the G8 summit in Evian (France) in June 2003 and its gradual control of the CCP leading groups dealing with foreign and security questions. That does not mean, if Hu’s hands were freer in these areas, that he would introduce important changes. One may think that, on the main subjects—relations with the United States, Japan, Taiwan, North Korea, Iraq, G8—a wide convergence of views continues to exist, and results in a foreign policy that is ironically more accomodating towards Washington than France’s or Germany’s. And this consensus helps to lessen the power struggle that has become visible in this field. Yet, the struggle really does exist and in the long run may lead to open conflict.
50 In domestic affairs, the situation seems more clearly propitious for the Hu-Wen team; and it will probably be on this ground that the latter will try to strengthen its influence, as was shown by the way the SARS epidemic was handled.
51 Admittedly, as we have seen, Jiang’s supporters dominate the highest authorities and Zeng’s role is equally important there. Thus, most Politburo members (about 17 out of 25), and most members of its Standing Committee (at least five—Wu Bangguo, Jia Qinglin, Zeng Qinghong, Huang Ju and Li Changchun—out of nine), are close to Jiang. These leaders often also have direct links with Zeng. And these are the bodies that make the most important decisions. While their meetings are not always publicly announced, partially re-establishing a policy adopted in 1987 by Zhao Ziyang and abandoned after Tiananmen, they have been so more often since the 16th Party Congress, which tends to suggest a greater frequency. Since Hu and Wen do not seek to cut themselves off from the rest of Chinese leaders, their interest lies in getting these bodies to take on as many decisions as possible, in particular by systematising their voting procedures. But Jiang’s continuing influence helps to limit their margin for manoeuvre.
52 Yet, apart from Zeng and, to a lesser extent, Li Changchun, the new propaganda chief, Jiang’s other allies in the Standing Committee do not hold “strategic” responsibilities. And Zeng’s powers are concentrated inside the apparatus of the Party, which in China is not responsible for economic or social affairs. Unlike other Party-states of the Soviet type, the Central Committee of the CCP has no departments in these sectors and the CCP economic leading groups are dominated by government leaders (communists, of course). As number two on the Central Secretariat, Zeng dominates it by his activitism and by the number of his allies. On the one hand, he directly supervises the organisation sector, that is to say, the promotion and training of senior cadres. In this capacity, as we have seen, he has been since 2002 the director of the Party’s Central School. On the other hand, among the Central Committee’s six other secretaries, he has
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at least four allies: He Guoqiang, in charge of organisation, Liu Yunshan, of propaganda, Zhou Yongkang, of the police and justice, and Wang Gang of co-ordination. In other words, Zeng’s domain recalls that of Qiao Shi, a powerful CCP leader forced by Jiang to retire in 1997. Does that mean he is doomed to fail?
53 In the field of economic and social policy, the influence of Jiang, Zeng and their supporters is more limited; rather, it is counterbalanced by the promotion of numerous collaborators of Zhu Rongji, Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, mainly within the State Council. These are the fields where problems are the most urgent, where popular expectations are the greatest and where relations between the leadership and society need to be most delicately handled. One might extend this conclusion to the governing teams in the provinces. Last winter, during the great government reshuffle, no fewer than 13 secretaries of provinces (or big cities) and 19 governors (or mayors) were promoted. And most of these are associates of Hu and, to a lesser extent, of Wen52. Among them was Meng Xuenong, Peking’s brand new mayor—appointed last December—who was sacrificed, on April 20th, by a leadership anxious to rebuild some confidence among people hard hit by SARS and eager—above all—to convince Jiang Zemin into sacking the health minister.
54 This price was relatively worth paying, in that the spread of SARS in northern China has given Hu and Wen the chance to strengthen their hold over the Party and the state. In the front line against the epidemic, Hu, Wen and Wu Yi were able on April 17th to impose a change of policy on the Politburo, persuading it to stop falsifying data and deliberately misinforming the public and instead to adopt a more transparent attitude and to mobilise all available medical resources, whether civilian or military. When the Standing Committee of the Politburo voted on April 18th, only Zeng Qinhong, Huang Ju and Jia Qinglin (the worst elected candidates at the NPC and the CPPCC!) abstained, seeing that these decisions gave the advantage to Hu and Wen. The six other members approved Hu’s proposals: they included Wu Bangguo, Li Changchun, Luo Gan and Wu Guangzheng. And at the subsequent emergency meeting of the Politburo, 18 out of 24 members voted “yes”, while four abstained and only two voted against: Liu Qi, the Peking secretary, who would have had to bear the responsibility on Meng Xuenong’s behalf and had just had to make a public self-criticism, and Zeng Peiyan, another of Jiang’s supporters53.
55 It is probable that the pressure from the World Health Organisation, from foreign businessmen settled in China and from the international community would in any case have overcome the old, Soviet-style bureaucratic reflexes of the Party apparatus. However, the popularity that Hu and Wen had demonstrated during the NPC meeting was—at least provisionally—swelled by the extra legitimacy conferred by this sudden change of course. By contrast, the prolonged silence of Jiang and his supporters helped to deepen the mistrust with which they were viewed within Chinese society. This is why, shortly after April 17th, one after another—Jiang, Zeng, Huang Ju, Jia Qinglin—they spoke out, not so much to support the mobilisation against SARS but to remind the front line leaders of their presence and their powers.
56 In the end, the success of the authorities in this battle will not only be based on the degree of transparency or compassion that they have showed: it will largely arise from the state’s capacity to improve its governance and to co-ordinate action by its administrative systems, which too often, in the field of health as in others, resemble a set of ineradicable and fundamentally selfish feudal bureaucracies.
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Towards an uneasy cohabitation? 57 The distribution of tasks, referred to above, cannot mask the growing rivalries within the “fourth generation” of the Chinese communists. For the time being, these rivalries have less to do with the choice of policies or of which reforms to pursue than with seizing control of the main levers of power.
58 The way in which the battle against SARS was fought might give grounds for believing that the regime is changing, that it is using this mobilisation to accelerate political reforms that, in other circumstances, would have been put off until later. One is entitled to doubt this optimistic, Chernobyl-style, scenario.
59 The Chinese leadership that emerged from the 16th Party Congress and then from the 10th National Party Congress did not propose deep political reforms. Once again, its reforms are administrative and all tend towards improving governance, controlling corruption and strengthening channels for communicating with society and, in particular, with its elites54. The election of citizens’ committees (jumin weiyuanhui) has already been tried out here and there and is expected to be implemented more generally; but it is not likely to shake the foundations of the system55. Separating the administrative powers of decision-making, enforcement and control (quanli sanfen), under the direction of Party committees, has been tested out in Shenzhen, with the aim of curbing corruption; but it is not likely to produce any interplay of checks and balances or to make the civil servants less greedy56. Thanks to SARS, the media have enjoyed a greater margin for manoeuvre; but this must be seen in the context of newspaper closures and suspensions that were decided shortly before by the same leadership team. Greater transparency has been observed—and was illustrated in April by the unexpected reports on the accidental death of a submarine crew of the Chinese navy—but it was not spontaneous: it was directed and controlled. In other words, the media continue to be called upon to exercise a critical role when and where the leadership asks them to. Hu has showed a willingness to better promote the rights enshrined in the Constitution and open up the election of local state officials57. Moreover, some newspapers, apparently protected by Hu Jintao and his allies, have used SARS to ask for more extensive reforms of the political and administrative system58. But when, at the beginning of May, Hu restored to favour Jiang’s theory of the “three representations”, it reminded these critics that the Hu-Wen duo does not intend to widen the divisions that have come to light within the Party leadership. Since Hu and Wen took over their posts, we have witnessed what is above all a change of style in communication, and perhaps in governance. This evolution has indeed been speeded up by SARS. But it has not led to other, deeper changes. In short, although one may be entitled, for the reasons put forward earlier, to give the Hu-Wen duo the benefit of the doubt, it has not yet demonstrated its will to introduce any real or serious political reforms.
60 For all that, might the hidden power struggle that is being fought out today be transformed into a trial of strength? We may consider that, for the foreseeable future, the answer must remain no. Indeed, the relative weakness of the political disagreements separating the present leaders helps to minimise this risk. And both camps need stability too much to throw themselves into such an adventure. On the one hand, Jiang and his supporters know that it would be difficult for them to push the Party into any break with Hu or even with Wen. As we have seen, knowing that the cost of any change of successor would be too high, Jiang has preferred to surround them, at
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the head of the Party and of the government, with a considerable number of his supporters. And they, Zeng in particular, being aware of their unpopularity within the apparatus, have become very discreet about the internal democratisation of the Party, an issue more recently taken up by Hu himself. Conversely, Hu and Wen have not consolidated their powers enough to launch themselves into an attempt to weaken the Jiang faction or, in particular, Zeng’s collaborators, who have become a sub-group that will merit closer scrutiny.
61 Putting it another way, while Jiang cannot hope in the coming years to replace Hu with Zeng, Hu will again have to show patience and maintain a firm coalition with Wen, the associates of Zhu Rongji and the provincial leaders whom he has promoted59. That alone will help him to consolidate his power. The support of the NPC deputies and more widely of the “official elites” will not be enough, although he has worn down the domination of Jiang’s supporters and above all cooled their arrogance. Has the regime become institutionalised? 62 The smooth transfer of power from Jiang to Hu, before it was even accomplished, aroused an interesting discussion about whether the Chinese political regime was becoming institutionalised60. Did this spring’s developments, which we have just briefly examined, help to accelerate this process? Or, on the contrary, is an authoritarian political system still incompatible with institutionalisation?
63 Any system of whatever kind will produce its own standards; and the difficulty in China, as elsewhere, is to keep them respected despite the constraints and political interests in play. It is a fact that, in an authoritarian system, these standards are fewer, looser, easier to circumvent and above all non-democratic: co-optation remains the basic mechanism of leaders’ selection61. However, as observers have noticed, the Chinese Party-state does now submit more often to practices and procedures— especially votes and elections—which are regarded, by the regime’s leaders themselves, as being quite important. The economic and legal reforms, the openness to the outside world and the profound changes within Chinese society have also obliged the Party’s leaders to respect the rules they have set for themselves. And one would be tempted to add that the intensity of the quarrels that are racking them today helps to increase their dependence on these standards.
64 But can one conclude that handing over the levers of power, of supreme power in particular, is mainly in obedience to these standards? On the contrary, the way in which the 16th Party Congress unfolded, and the selection of leaders for the Party’s “state façade”, tend to show that these rules give structure to the balance of forces and to the political struggles being fought—but they do not determine the outcome. Some might be tempted to extend this observation to democracies. Yet, the Chinese people have no choice in the matter and very limited access to the fundamental freedoms written into the Constitution, particularly those who have no connections within the apparatus: their continuing predicament puts the rules into a diminished perspective. The Chinese Communist Party has adapted to the economic and social environment that it has created and in so doing they have been able to postpone any transition towards democracy: that underlines, as Andrew Nathan puts it, authoritarian resilience. It does consult the “elites” more, including the “new elites” that it has promoted into its ranks or the people’s congresses; and it allows them more frequently to express their preferences. But, at the same time, the Party has itself become more elitist than formerly; it holds on to the monopoly of selecting—and co-opting—the
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country’s leaders and “official elites”; and, for the time being, it refuses to open up the political process—and even less the transfer of supreme power—to Chinese citizens as a whole. In winning over large segments of the elites in the aftermath of Tiananmen and especially after 1992, the CCP has achieved a big victory and contributed to substantially prolonging its life expectancy. However, this situation tends to create and feed new tensions between state and society, the elites who are consulted and the rest of the society which is not, the ones who have benefited from the reforms and the others who have not. These tensions may be managed by the new leadership for some time, in particular if Hu and his colleagues eventually decide to address them, and in particular in launching a true political reform package. Nevertheless, at the same time, more and more members of the middle class and even the elites are constantly pushing the limits of authoritarianism, asking for more freedom, transparency, rule of law, accountability and genuine elections, at least at the grassroots level. And one day, these demands will inevitably lead them to raise the question of the one-Party system as a whole. Yes, the CCP has institutionalised some of its rules, but this partial institutionalisation is no passport to eternal stability.
NOTES
1. This year there are more non-communists filling government posts. 30 of them have posts as deputy governor or vice-minister (as against 18 in 1993). Wenhuibao, March 5th 2003, p. A5. 2. Jean-Pierre Cabestan, “The Relationship Between the National People’s Congress and the State Council in the People’s Republic of China: A Few Checks but No Balances”, American Asian Review, Vol. XIX, No. 3, Autumn 2001, p. 43; cf. also, Jean-Pierre Cabestan, Le système politique de la Chine populaire, Paris, PUF, coll. “Thémis”, 1994, p. 328. 3. International Herald Tribune, March 3rd 2003, p. 4; Asian Wall Street Journal, March 5th 2003, p. A4. For a more positive and recent case, cf. the election of academic Wang Liang to the Shenzhen People’s Congress in May 2003, South China Morning Post (SCMP), May 22nd 2003, p. A4. 4. Data for April 2003, Wenhuibao, April 6th 2003, p. A11. 5. Mingbao, February 25th 2003, p. A21. According to other sources, the number of private entrepreneurs is no more than 55, Far Eastern Economic Review, March 13th 2003, p. 33. 6. Cf. for example, the incidences of vote-buying in Taizhou, Zhejiang, Mingbao, April 24th 2003, p. A23. 7. Ershiyi shiji shijie daobao (21st Century World Herald), cited by the SCMP, April 21st 2003, p. A5. 8. For an example of a model worker, a miner who is also a delegate in the Provincial Congress of Jiangsu, cf. SCMP, April 21st 2003, p. A5. 9. This year the number of vice-chairmen was reduced from 19 to 15. The Secretary General is now also vice-chairman. The Council of the Presidency of the NPC now has 16 members, as against 21 before.
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10. SCMP, March 11th 2003, p. A7. 11. SCMP, March 16th 2003, p. A5. 12. On Wu’s popularity, cf. Zong Hairen, Disidai (The Fourth Generation), New York, Mirror Press, 2002, p. 178; cf. also, Andrew Nathan & Bruce Gilley eds., China’s New Rulers, London, Granta Books, 2002, p. 53. Yet, contrary to what Zong foresaw, Wu did not accede as a “consolation prize” to the Chairmanship of the CPPCC but to that of the NPC. As Wen’s rival for the post of Premier, Wu saw his chances dwindling after Zhu had given him the impossible job of reforming the state enterprises. 13. Mingbao, March 16th 2003, p. A20. 14. SCMP, March 11th 2003, p. A7. 15. Before 1993, the President of the republic was either a member of the Standing Committee of the Politburo (Li Xiannian, 1983-1988) or merely a member of the Politburo (Yang Shangkun, 1988-1993). 16. In particular the Yomiuri shimbun and Zhengming (Contending), May 2002, pp. 6-8. 17. The worst result ever obtained since the procedure for electing leaders by secret ballot was re-established was in 1998: Han Zhubin, former Railways Minister, was elected Procurator General with a 65% “yes” vote; cf. below. 18. Mingbao, March 16th 2003, p. A20. SCMP, March 16th 2003, p. A5. Zhengming, April 2003, pp. 10-12. 19. SCMP, May 1st 2003, p. A5. 20. Zong Hairen, Disidai, op. cit., p. 16; cf. also Nathan & Gilley, China’s New Rulers, op. cit., pp. 11-12. 21. Xinbao, October 23rd 2002, p. 27. Some analysts consider that this committee is in charge of China’s internal security. But the participation within it of several foreign policy specialists, the role it played in handling the incident of the American EP-3 spy plane in April 2001 as well as information gathered on this committee since the 16th Party Congress (cf. below) tend to prove that this committee’s field is really that of international affairs. 22. Wenhuibao, March 16th 2003, p. A4; Willy Lam, “China National People’s Congress: Popularity and Power”, China Brief, Vol III, No. 6, March 25th 2003. 23. Zhengming, December 2002, pp. 9-11; Kaifang (Openness), December, pp. 11-14. 24. According to some opinion polls carried out just after the Congress, 70% of those questioned were opposed to keeping Jiang on as president of the CMC, Zhengming, op.cit. 25. SCMP, March 16th 2003, p. A5. 26. China’s New Rulers, op. cit., p.11-12. 27. Xinbao, May 19th 2003, p. 11 and May 20th 2003, p. 15. 28. The work report of the Supreme Court was approved by 79.4% of the delegates whereas the work report of the Supreme Procuratorate was approved by 74.6%. 29. It is thought that some delegates (40) placed in the ballot box voting papers that were either blank or inscribed with a different name: indeed, of the 2,935 papers counted, only 2,895 were valid (2,799 “yes”, 80 “no” and 16 abstentions). Mingbao, March 27th 2003, p. A18. 30. Cheng Li, China’s Leaders. The New Generation, Lanham, bulder?, Rowman & Littlefield, 2001, pp. 157-159. 31. Zhengming, April 2003, p. 11. 32. In early June, it was learnt that Wen Jiabao decided to directly manage financial work. Huang Ju only assists (xiezhu) him; Wenhuibao, June 3rd 2003, p. A8.
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33. For a period in Shanghai, Hua was Jiang’s personal secretary responsible for confidential questions, Xinbao, February 27th 2003, p. 25; SCMP, March 18th 2003, p. A6. The opposition to the appointment of Hua Jianmin to the post of Secretary General of the State Council was slightly less (83 against with 59 abstentions, which gives 95.16% in support, cf. Table 5). Ibid. 34. They say that it was Zeng who promoted him during the 1990s to be deputy director of the Party’s Central Department for Organisation, before having him appointed in 2000 as Party secretary in Hebei, Xinbao, March 8th 2003, p. 7. 35. Willy Lam, China Brief, Vol. III, No. 5; Xinbao, February 19th 2003, p. 9. 36. Xinbao, February 26th 2003, p. 11. 37. Strait Times, December 18th 2002. Willy Lam, China Brief, Vol. III, No. 5. 38. Willy Lam, “China National People’s Congress”, op.cit. 39. Zhengming, May 2003, pp. 13-15. 40. In the context of preparing for the 16th Congress, each sitting member of the Standing Committee of the Politburo had an important say in the appointment of his successor, by proposing a name (timing) to Jiang and to the collective Party leadership, Xinbao, November 27th 2002, p. 15. 41. Some delegates admitted that they preferred Li Ruihuan and were “not sufficiently acquainted” with Jia; for all that, however, they did not all vote against Jia, SCMP, March 14th 2003, p. A7. 42. Zhengming, April 2003, p. 12. 43. Zhengming, May 2003, pp. 13-15. 44. The first call that Hu received was from George W Bush on March 19th. Bush congratulated him on being elected, and told him that he was going to liberate Iraq from Saddam Hussein by force…. SCMP, April 20th 2003 p. A7. 45. Willy Lam, ”China Readies for Future U.S. Fight”, CNN.com, March 25th 2003. 46. Xinbao, May 19th 2003, p. 11 and May 20th 2003, p. 15. 47. The other members of this 9 person leading group are Tang Jiaxuan, Wang Daohan, ARATS chairman, Liu Yandong, Xu Yongyao, Minister of State Security, and Chen Yunlin, Director of the Taiwan Affairs Office; Lianhebao (United Daily News, May 29th 2003 in Mingbao, May 30th 2003, p. A24 and Wenhuibao, May 30th 2003, p. A7. After the 10th NPC it was learnt that Zeng Qinghong had been promoted from general secretary to vice-chairman of the Taiwan leading group; Willy Lam, op. cit. Moreover, in April 2003, Wang Gang, member of the Central Secretariat and a close aid of Zeng, played a key role in the organisation of a national meeting on Taiwan, chaired by Jia Qinglin, aimed a commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Wang-Ku talks. The latest report tends to indicate Hu’s ability to keep in check Zeng’s influence in foreign and security affairs. 48. Willy Lam, CNN.com, June 11th 2003. 49. Xinbao, November 19th 2002, p. 15. 50. Far Eastern Economic Review, November 28th 2002, pp. 28-32. 51. Su Ha, Zhonggong danei zongguang. Zeng Qinghong de quanli zhi lu (The grand quartermaster of the CCP. The rise to power of Zeng Qinghong), Hong Kong, Xiafei’er chubanshe, 2002, ch. 10, in particular, pp. 223-239. 52. Li Cheng, “The Emergence of the Fifth Generation in the Provincial Leadership”, China Leadership Monitor, No. 6, Spring 2003, www.chinaleadershipmonitor.org/20032/ lc.pdf
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53. The name of the fourth leader to abstain has not been given. Dongxiang, (Trend), May 2003, p. 6. 54. Hu’s will to enhance the role of the “democratic parties” and to better welcome Chinese who studied or worked abroad underscores this point; cf. Zhengming, June 2003, pp. 11-13. 55. In fact, the election of home-owners’ committees may have more interesting political implications, cf. Benjamin L. Read, “Democratizing the Neighbourhood? New Private Housing and Home-Owner Self-Organisation in Urban China”, The China Journal, No. 49, January 2003, pp. 31-59. 56. Xinbao, January 20th 2003, p. 22 and February 12th 2003, p. 24, Mingbao, March 5th 2003, p. A22. 57. Hu would anounce on July 1st 2003 a limited political reform that would permit for the first time more than one candidate to run for the post of city mayor or provinvial governor and delegates in the People’s Congress, not just the local party committee, to nominate candidates as well; Washington Post, June 13th 2003 ; The Standard, June 14th 2003, p. A1. 58. In particular the 21 shijie huanqiu baodao (21st Century World Herald) the publication of which was suspended for a while at the beginning of March, and the Nanfang dushibao (Southern Metropolitan News), SCMP, May 2nd 2003, p. A5. 59. On Hu’s patience, cf. You Ji, “The Heir Apparent”, The China Journal, No. 48, July 2002, pp. 125-134. 60. Cf. in particular Andrew Nathan’s articles, “Authoritarian Resilience” and Bruce Gilley’s, “The Limits of Authoritarian Resilience”, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 14, No. 1, January 2003, pp. 6-17 and 18-26. 61. Cf. for example Zeng Qinghong’s manoeuvres during the 16th Party Congress to demand that the Standing Committee of the Congress Presidium should allow voting by show of hands for keeping Jiang in the CMC, Zhengming, December 2002, op cit.
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The snares of modernity Internet, information and the SARS crisis in China
Éric Sautedé
NOTE DE L’ÉDITEUR
Translated from the French original by Michael Black
1 The SARS1 crisis has already had a significant impact on China’s economy, politics and society, and will have an even greater impact in the near future. Without getting into a debate between poles, whether it was a “Chinese Chernobyl”2 or a “benign crisis”3, the authorities’ handling of this emergency and the damage this crisis implies now appear to have a potential for destabilisation which is likely to send in a more political direction the great reform project begun 25 years ago. The reason is simple: this crisis highlights all the contradictions of the Chinese development model, the inequality it has generated, and the obsolescence of a certain mode of government which is ferociously monopolistic within a context of extraordinary diversification; all this in an endogenous manner, first in the cities, then in the country, while making China, although a member of the UN Security Council, if not a “rogue state” at least a state whose international responsibility is doubtful and apparently impervious to the notion of “global concern”. At the origin of this lack of responsibility one finds the question of freedom of information in China, since the pretence of transparency displayed by the Chinese government since April 20th 2003 only began after six months of mendacity and dissimulation, while official rhetoric continued to insist unswervingly that: “the situation is under control”. Without outside pressure, first from Hong Kong’s Chinese language press and the international press, then from the World Health Organisation (WHO)—and only because the crisis has taken a dramatic turn which was highly damaging to Hong Kong and then to Peking—, and without the courage of a few Chinese doctors also, in whose eyes the imperative of public health made this denial of reality increasingly dangerous, it seems evident that the Chinese Communist Party would not have been brought around to “communicating”, not to mention giving out information, as it is doing now. The cardinal role played by the former British colony needs to be
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underlined here: Hong Kong’s misfortune has been the good fortune of the population of China and of the rest of the world, precisely because freedom of expression there is— so far—protected.
2 It therefore seems vital to ask ourselves about the inconsistencies of information in China, and particularly about the role of modern means of communication and information during this crisis, which, while these have not been totally absent, especially the mobile phone, did not fulfil the “alternative” role that they are too often attributed.
3 While overall this may come as no surprise, it seems useful at this point to remind ourselves of the politically restrained context in which over 60 million Chinese internauts “surf”, to think about the contradictions which arise between “communication” and “information”, and to show how highly pragmatic the skill of the Chinese government has been in making concessions towards liberalisation only in those areas where its legitimacy could not be threatened and in misrepresenting its propaganda by subtle—and modern—artifices. In the final analysis, this updating of propaganda is as much a response to the demand for modernity in deception as the result of the deception of modernity. Panoptical temptation and interstitial expressions of freedom 4 Information on Chinese Information Superhighway is still tightly controlled4, upstream by the restrictions imposed on providers and by regulations, and downstream by penalties. This systematic bleeding of the Internet, which at best is “on parole”, largely explains the medium’s lack of responsiveness to the SARS crisis.
5 Firstly, on the international connectivity side, the restrictions imposed are both technical and political. With some 59.1 million internauts and a bandwidth of 9.4 gigabytes per second (gbps) in 20025, China seems to come out well, and growth figures since 1995 have been considerable. A comparison makes it possible to relativise this triumphalism about volume. Thus if we take the single example of Taiwan, where there were “only” 8.6 million internauts in 20026, the bandwidth reached 14.8 gbps7, which means that there are almost seven times as many internauts in China who have, however, only two-thirds the international bandwidth that the Taiwanese enjoy. From a more qualitative standpoint, we know, on the basis of scattered information, that some foreign sites are inaccessible from China. The sites of the big English language press organs (Washington Post, Herald Tribune, CNN, BBC, etc.) as well as the sites of foreign organisations interested in subjects deemed to be politically sensitive—Tibet, Taiwan, Falungong, Human Rights in China, etc.—are the favoured targets of this denial of access. The recent study produced by a Harvard Law School research team directed by Jonathan Zittrain and Benjamin Edelman8 provides incontrovertible confirmation of the existence of this practice, since of the 200,000 websites to which they simulated access from China between May and November of 2002, 50,000 were “somehow” inaccessible at least in one instance and one locality, and 19,000 were inaccessible several times over while being simultaneously accessible from the United States. Besides the sites mentioned above, several content providers linked to education, and more precisely to the field of health were regularly blocked. This is in particular the case of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Internet Mental Health and the research project Health in China9.
6 The filtering of the data available on the Chinese Internet, both on the web and in news groups, is also standard practice in China. All the commercial Chinese sites which
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provide news or “spaces for public expression” practice it. Internet cafés themselves are supposed to install programs which memorise the activity of users, who must first give proof of identity to the manager of the establishment. The major campaigns to bring order back to the cyber cafés in the spring of 2001, and in the spring and summer of 2002 seem to have borne fruit in this area. The filtering methods are well known, since the technology used was “sold” by big foreign companies such as America’s Cisco Systems and Global One (a joint venture between Sprint, France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom), who knowingly dismissed its ultimate application10. The existence of “data packet sniffers” which make it possible to identify “subversive” foreign sites, of email filters and of Big Mamas on newsgroups is now largely recognised, and was even directly admitted by the Chinese authorities when, in October 2002, Beijing yule xinbao (Beijing Entertainment News) discussed “leaks” in certain filtering systems11. A recent investigation by Reporters sans frontières, carried out with the help of a Chinese BBC journalist, also showed clearly that the news groups hosted by the big Chinese content providers—sina.com.cn, sohu.com, yahoo.com.cn and tom.com—were subjected to the continuous attention of the censors12.
7 Several forms of regulatory restriction make up the control mechanism. These are aimed at users as well as at service and content providers. It would take too long to recapitulate the history of these regulations here, the first of which date back to February 1996. The most important among them are: the Measures for Managing Internet Information Services issued by the State Council in September 2000, which make it illegal for content providers—thus making them responsible—to disseminate information which the government deems to be damaging and “unhealthy”; and the Regulations for Managing News Services on the Internet, promulgated in November 2000, which define the content which is forbidden on Chinese news groups and news sites, and restrains the dissemination of information from foreign media (in short, all information which might come into the wide and ill-defined category of “state secrets”). Moreover, since December 2000, all deviant uses of the Internet have been “criminalised”, since they have been made to conform with the articles of the Criminal Law which deal with “crimes endangering national security”. Other measures with more ambiguous legal status are also in force, such as the Good Conduct Charter imposed, in March 2002, by the Chinese Internet Association on the major news portals and search engines, which has 130 signatories, including Yahoo! China; or the more straightforward regulations introduced in November 2002 by the Ministry of Culture to restrict the operations of Internet cafes13.
8 Lastly, those who breach these regulations face severe penalties. According to the American organisation Digital Freedom Network, some 34 people have been sent to prison for “crimes” connected to dissident use of the Internet since January 200014. While this may not seem to be a large number—the cases are, however, far from having all been registered and, when freedom is in question, the existence of even a single case of restriction deserves to be exposed—, the “crimes” of which the offenders were accused reveal the broad-mindedness of the Chinese government when it comes to the definition of the dissemination of State Secrets and of subversion: detention before trial and heavy sentences are applicable not only to those who circulate Chinese email addresses to dissident sites, to the webmaster of a site deemed to be subversive, to those who sign online petitions calling for the relaxation of certain restrictions, but
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also to anyone who makes public their disapproval when they discover that an internaut has been jailed for having signed the petition!
9 The case of Huang Qi, who was arrested on June 3rd 2000, is particularly interesting, and has just reached its final stage since this webmaster from Chengdu was sentenced in May 2003, to five years’ imprisonment for subversion. His site, www.6-4tianwang.com (in reference to the repression on June 4th 1989), was made up of forums searching for missing persons and, more “serious”, had dared to reproduce articles in Chinese calling for the revision of the official judgement on the events of May and June 1989. Huang Qi was charged under articles 103 and 105 of the Criminal Law15, the former aimed at “ whoever organises, plots, or acts […] and instigates to split the country or undermine national unification”, the latter at “whoever organises, plots, or acts […] and instigates to subvert the political power of the state and overthrow the socialist system”. While “organisation, plotting or any other act” are subject to the heaviest sentences (from three years to life imprisonment depending on the degree of responsibility), mere “instigation” is punishable by a sentence of “a maximum of five years of fixed-term imprisonment, criminal detention, control, or deprivation of political rights”, except for “the ringleaders or those whose crimes are serious”, who are liable to a “minimum” of five years without remission. It seems that Huang Qi was not charged with “acts” of subversion, but the incitement “by the spreading of rumours and calumny” for which he was found guilty earned him the maximum sentence for his “virtual crime” in its least harmful form, or the minimum sentence for it in its most serious form16. There is little doubt that it is the same article 105 which may be cited when the 107 people already arrested in 17 provinces for having circulated false rumours about SARS in telephone messages or on the Internet, are charged17.
10 As we can see, the control architecture of the Internet in China only allows at best interstitial and temporary freedom of expression. Only the most experienced manage to circumvent censorship, at the risk of serious consequences. The efficiency of the control, by regulation and its application, is not merely the expression of real power, but makes it also possible, in Foucault’s formulation, to take into account the singular existence of individuals, imposing a “continuous and minutely detailed prescriptive constraint”, punishing individual practice, so that the censorship exercised by the public authorities brings in its wake the other major element in this panoptical perspective : the preventive self-censorship practised by Chinese commercial operators…and users. SMS versus the Internet 11 Overall, the Internet has been subject to the same restrictions as the printed press as far as SARS is concerned, and compelled to conform to the demands of the propaganda organs of the Chinese Communist Party. Except for the small window of relative virtual freedom which appeared between April 4th and 17th, a time of hesitation during which the new leadership team led by President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao was preparing to launch its national campaign against lies and the epidemic, only the circulation of subversive messages by mobile phone, the famous short messages (SMS) —in Chinese xiaolingtong—really surprised the Chinese government and foreign observers by their volume and independence of tone. Quite naturally, in a context of total disinformation and because the SARS epidemic had as its main centre first Guangdong, and then Peking, the volume of text message exchange was particularly high, since that is where the highest number of mobile phone users is to be found, with
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penetration rates (the number of subscribers as a proportion of the population) exceeding 60%, which is to say close to that of most developed countries.
12 However, both the messages sent and the nature of the medium should make us exceedingly cautious about the position of this means of communication when it is called on to play a substitute role for which it is not a priori designed. Communication does not mean information, and while SMS admittedly mould new forms of sociability, they remain an interpersonal, private means of communication which has unrivalled advantages of immediacy, of dispersal capacity and of portability. Outside this enlarged private sphere there is absolutely no hierarchy or intrinsic value in the information. Evidence of this is that while massive exchanges of SMS in Guangdong18 in February led to crowds pouncing on Chinese pharmacopoeia and on vinegar to combat the unknown and non-admittable? illness, they nevertheless did not in themselves lead to national awareness. As far as content goes, and this proved to be the case once more in Peking in April, false rumours were much more numerous than true ones, notwithstanding a few cutting messages aimed at the authorities, most merely reported cases of SARS, whether proven or not. The flight of native or adoptive Pekingers to the countryside was certainly accelerated by the exchange of SMS, particularly when these announced that the Chinese army was going to “bombard the capital with insecticide” or that the government was about to impose martial law, but they did not in any way, for such is not their purpose, lead to the mobilisation of demonstrators challenging the hierarchs of Zhongnanhai in the empty streets. As for the degree of tolerance shown by the government in the face of these rumours which cause “social disorder”, we can affirm unquestionably that it is all a question of degree, and once the surprise was over, the repression was bound to be severe.
13 The other major explanation for the initial relative tolerance of the public authorities towards the frantic exchange of texts is economic. All the telephone companies—which are all state companies—, even the fixed-line operators, provide such services. This needs to be underlined, since the two fixed-line telephone companies, China Telecom and China Netcom, are supposed to concentrate exclusively on fixed-line communication and therefore operate in this field in complete illegality since there is no regulation of text message licences. Nevertheless these two companies, thanks to SMS, now account for around 6% of the mobile market in China19. SMS and their income, while they are modest and tend to reduce prices, are now conceived as a strategic weapon in a context of fierce competition and price-cutting. While they are not the ideal antidote to the erosion of revenue per user, they are an indispensable weapon in the battle for market share: with 95 million SMS exchanged in 2002, income has increased fourfold compared to 2001, reaching 6 billion yuan20, while in the same period the number of users grew by 42% (61.4 million new subscribers), overall income from mobile telephony rose by only 19%, to a total of 192.4 billion yuan, and revenue per user fell by 19%. The situation is made worse by the fact that users of prepaid cards now amount to 23% of all subscribers, and they are notorious for their shorter call time21. These SMS resources seem bound to go on growing, since, according to telecom specialists, the major part of the approximately 200 billion yuan in capital investment announced by the Chinese operators in 2003 is likely to go into mobile message systems22.
14 Once the surprise was over, the measure taken of the danger of the true and false rumours, and the perspective of a drop in income admitted, the Chinese government
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quickly took the measures necessary to reduce its threshold of tolerance, for although they were not information, the numerous “rumours” carried by the SMS went against the new dispensation of a national mobilisation in the fight against SARS. As noted above, there have already been more than a hundred arrests directly linked to the circulation of rumours, and a technician who had worked on setting up a new method of screening confided that China Mobile and China Unicom singled out subscribers who sent more than a hundred messages an hour, and that these messages, as well as all their addressees, could be read by the authorities in less than fifteen minutes23. The distortions of propaganda 15 With the decision to at last recognise reality, after the special meeting of the Politburo Standing Committee on April 17th24, during which President Hu Jintao agreed to acknowledge that the government had lied and went into reverse to mobilise the Party in a united front to struggle against the epidemic threatening the capital and the entire nation, the initial measures taken by the government were energetic. On the communication front, this meant firstly a big press conference organised by the State Council’s Information Office, during which the deputy Minister for Health Gao Qiang, in the Minister’s absence, suddenly revised upwards the total of SARS cases (over three hundred cases in Peking), called the situation “serious and worrying”—to the point of cancelling the traditional and “golden” week-long May Day holiday—and agreed to give clear answers to the somewhat embarrassing questions put by the Chinese and foreign journalists present in the room. Only a few hours later, it was learned that the Minister for Health, Zhang Wenkang, although close to Jiang Zemin, and the mayor of Peking, Meng Xuenong, had been sacked from their posts because of their failures in managing the epidemic.
16 Much more than the meeting on April 17th, inevitably held in camera, it was the press conference on April 20th which sounded the death knell of the cult of secrecy and of preventive dissimulation. Can we, for all that, conclude that this is the inauguration of a new era of transparency? Or on the contrary, are we not merely witnessing a new dressing-up of propaganda when denial is no longer an option? The April 20th press conference has been reproduced in its entirety on a number of Chinese websites and all the major portals, whether state (xinhua.net, people.com.cn) or commercial (sina.com.cn, sohu.com, netease.com), have overflowed, since that day, with extremely precise information on the illness and on the government’s action to fight against it. All in all, we have gone from total ignorance in which the ordinary urbanite had heard rumours on his telephone about the virtues of vinegar in the fight against SARS and for whom the only alternative was to follow the adage of Galen, the famous first century Greek anatomist and “leave as soon as possible, go as far away as possible, and come back as late as possible”, to a situation of absolute “information overkill” in which anyone with an Internet connection can keep abreast of the latest developments in the genetic decoding of the virus, and simultaneously download the latest song commissioned by the government which proclaims over a rousing tune that victory over the illness is at hand.
17 What is surely the most convincing example of this modernised propaganda can be seen on the SARS pages of the Chinese Medical and Biological Information site hosted by the Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences of Peking University25. This is an extremely informative site containing the latest figures for SARS infections and deaths, their distribution by province, the preventive measures to be taken, the latest statements
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from Chinese specialists and political leaders, highly illustrated diagrams on the means of transmission, sectional drawings of the virus, a number of articles from the Chinese language press, and even some articles from the foreign press (Washington Post, Reuters, etc). Once the effect of surprise has passed—the reproduction of foreign articles is forbidden in China, unless sanctioned by the organs of public security, and the Washington Post site, for example, is blocked—and one looks more carefully at these articles, one realises that in reality they are all about technical or scientific aspects of the epidemic and that the links to be clicked on in order to read the articles are in reality hosted on the same site, but that, in order to be authentic, the presentation and the logos have been faithfully reproduced to give the impression that a door to the outside has been opened…
18 Both the efficiency of the methods of control described above and the know-how deployed by the Chinese authorities on the Information Superhighway seem to contradict any idea of a “revolution of and by information”. They also make obsolete the somewhat ossified vision of China’s “current generation of Soviet-trained leaders” being impervious to these new means of communication because they supposedly cannot escape “notions of modernity where planning, heavy industry and electricity represented progress”26. Modern snares and the delusion of modernity 19 The new and biased excesses of over-communication cannot be allowed to conceal the sad reality: were it not for the courage of some members of the health profession in the context of very strong international pressure, the situation of mendacity cultivated by the Chinese authorities might have continued until the epidemic played itself out—the optimistic scenario—or until a burgeoning health crisis appeared in the Chinese countryside in return—the pessimistic scenario. The question which then arises is whether their accounts were motivated more by generalised popular discontent maintained by modern communication tools—which seems unlikely given the inertia of disinformation in the weeks which followed the peaking of the infection in Guangdong in February 2003—or, on the contrary, by their “humanist” duty as health professionals at a time when the eyes of the rest of the world were riveted on Hong Kong and China, and when the WHO team present in China was showing great determination in its efforts to unearth the truth—the first recommendation by the WHO to travellers not to visit Peking was issued on March 27th.
20 Much more than the rumours which circulated among Pekingers or Cantonese, it was in fact the “free rider” attitude of certain members of the medical profession which forced the government to open up and reconsider the denial which had been in force for several months. At the forefront was the retired military doctor Jiang Yanyong, already known in China and abroad for the positions he had taken in support of the students who demonstrated in Tiananmen Square in 1989. After the press conference given on April 3rd by the Minister for Health Zhang Wenkang, according to whom the situation in China was “safe” and the SARS epidemic “effectively under control”, Jiang Yanyong sent an email the next day to China’s central television and to the Hong Kong station Phœnix, in which he accused Zhang of lying and revealed that in the hospitals he knew in Peking alone, there were at least one hundred cases of SARS and that no fewer than six people had died of it (as against the 12 cases officially recognised)27. His email was not initially acted on, but it was transmitted to various foreign press organs and, on April 8th, his statements were taken up by the German weekly Der Spiegel, and
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on April 9th appeared on the website of the major American weekly Time. Jiang Yanyong’s statements then became very popular in China itself, and were widely distributed by email and posted on the BBS28 of the universities, among them the very popular BBS Shuimou at Tsinghua University 29. This sudden turn of events illustrates clearly both the potential and the limitations of the use of modern communications where information is concerned: the information which Jiang Yanyong possessed, and which he could just as well have passed on by telephone or by fax, was valid only because it was provided by a respected speaker and, once it had been widely taken up in the foreign press, was transformed into news. There is little doubt that the government’s main worry was that this “free rider” attitude might become widespread, rather than the contradiction of the official version expressed on news groups, the latter being necessarily limited in scope and only too easily wiped clean.
21 An analysis of the health system in China, particularly in rural areas30, which a number of studies now deem to be decrepit and highly discriminatory since it charges for its services, would go beyond the bounds of this article. However it may be useful to look again at certain data here and place them in a comparative perspective. Thus, if official figures are to be believed, in 2001 there were 2.1 million doctors in China, or, still according to official figures, six doctors per 100,000 inhabitants31. These overall figures include practitioners of traditional medicine and ignore the considerable differences between town and country, as well as between regions. In France, on January 1st 2002, there were 237,470 doctors, or 330 doctors per 100,000 inhabitants.32 If we look at mobile telephony, there were, in 2001, 206 million subscribers to mobile lines in China and 38.6 million in France. The respective penetration rates were 16% and 64.7%33. While hasty conclusions are to be avoided, the fact remains, whether those who take an ordinary view of Chinese modernisation like it or not, that in terms of a highly modern and profitable “commercial service”, China is in a ratio of 1 to 4 in comparison with a developed nation such as France. Meanwhile, when it comes to a “basic public service” the ratio is 1 to 55! There is a remarkable paradox here, when China’s population can easily communicate and exchange information on the shortcomings of the public authorities without ever having the power to follow up the contradiction—there is no freedom of speech—much less to attempt to change things—there is no freedom of association.
22 THE WATCHWORD of the new leadership team, which emerged from the XVIth Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in November 2002, seems to be to establish a “moderately prosperous society” (xiaokang shehui), thus showing that they want to correct disparities of wealth which have become too obvious and find ways to share growth more fairly. The consequences of the SARS crisis, to which must be added the unprecedented public admission, on May 1st, that a submarine had sunk with the loss of 70 crew members34, would seem to show that the regime will also have to take on board the demand for “moderately free information”. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the Chinese leaders will be keen to maintain a reduced conception of this “moderation”, and recent developments on the Chinese Internet indicate very clearly that Pandora’s Box, contrary to generally accepted ideas, simply remains only “half open”.
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NOTES
1. SARS : Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome of viral origin which has affected China in particular since November 2002, and the rest of the world since last March. In Chinese the name for SARS corresponds exactly to “atypical pneumonia” : feidianxing feiyan, or feidian for short. 2. Headline on the front of the British weekly The Economist, April 26th 2003. 3. In the words of the mediagenic Chinese economist, Hu Angang, of Tsinghua University, as they appeared in Wenhuibao, May 11th 2003. 4. For an early analysis which remains valid today, see Emmanuel Parody and Eric Sautedé, “Internet in China—Roadblocks on the information highway”, China Perspectives, No. 1, September-October 1995, pp. 36-42. For more recent publications which give a good overview of methods of control see: Michael S. Chase and James C. Mulvenon, You’ve Got Dissent! Chinese Dissident Use of the Internet and Beijing’s Counter-Strategies, Santa Monica, Ca., Rand Corporation, June 2002; Edward Yung, “Beyond the Great Firewall”, China Economic Quarterly, October-December 2002, pp. 50-53; Shanti Kalathil and Taylor C. Boas, Open Networks, Closed Regimes—The Impact of the Internet on Authoritarian Rule, Washington D.C., Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2003. 5. http://www.cnnic.net.cn/develst/2003-1e/444.shtml. 6. http://www.dgt.gov.tw/Chinese/Datastatistics/11.3/annual-report-91/ internet-growth.shtml. 7. http://www.find.org.tw/0105/howmany/howmany_disp.asp?id=51. 8. http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/filtering/china/. 9. http://www.aidshealth.org/, http://www.mentalhealth.com/ and http:// www.healthinchina.com/. 10. Ethan Gutman, “Who Lost China’s Internet ?”, The Standard, February 25th 2002. 11. South China Morning Post, October 24th 2002. 12. Reporters sans frontières, “Vivre dangereusement sur le Net”, May 12th 2003, http://www.rsf.fr/imprimer.php3?id-article=6792. 13. Xinhua, October 15th 2002. 14. For a profile of the jailed internauts see http://www.dfn.org/focus/ china/netattack.htm. 15. See http://www.6-4tianwang.com/nh/2000/200303012044.shtml. 16. Criminal Law of the People’s Republic of China, revised on March 14th 1997, Part II, Chapter 1 (Crimes endangering national security). 17. South China Morning Post, May 10th 2003. 18. Libération, April 3rd 2003. 19. Tara Tranguch, “Takes a Look at the Little Smart Mentality”, Global Mobile, March 26th 2003, p. 16. 20. South China Morning Post, February 19th 2003. 21. MFC Insight Update, March 26th 2003.
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22. MFC Insight Update, April 18th 2003. 23. Reuters, May 12th 2003. 24. Washington Post, May 13th 2003. 25. http://cmbi.bjmu.edu.cn/cmbidata/sars/index.htm. 26. This conclusion, with which we disagree, comes from Tony Saich, and illustrates quite well the immoderate hopes which some writers, although experts on contemporary Chinese society and on the Chinese Communist government’s adaptability in a context of rapid change, pin on the emergence of new transnational means of communication. See Tony Saich, Governance and Politics of China, New York, Palgrave, 2001, p. 310. 27. Washington Post, May 13th 2003. 28. Bulletin Board Services are news groups used on closed circuits such as those of a university, a company, etc. 29. Communication with students at Tsinghua. 30. Charlotte Cailliez, “The Collapse of the Rural Health System”, China Perspectives, No. 18, July-August 1998, pp. 36-43. 31. National Statistical Bureau of China, Zhongguo tongji nianjian 2002 (China Statistical Yearbook 2002), September 2002, p. 776. 32. Figures from the French Medical Association, Conseil national de l’Ordre des médecins, available on the Internet at http://www.conseil- national.medecin.fr/. 33. See http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/statistics/at_glance/cellular02.pdf. 34. On this point see Willy Wo-Lap Lam, “China Learns Cover-up Lessons”, www.cnn.com, May 6th 2003.
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Law
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Professional Ethics of Chinese Judges A rising issue in the landscape of judicial practice
Yuwen Li
1 On October 18th 2001, the Chinese Supreme People’s Court issued the Code of Conduct for Judges in the PRC (the Code) 1, which makes China one of the few countries in the world with a specific code of conduct for the judiciary. Following the amendment of the Law on Judges in June 2001, the introduction of the Code was an important event, and one that illustrated the continued efforts of the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) to improve professionalism among judges.
2 The promulgation of the Code can be looked at from two angles. Inwardly, it is a natural development in court reforms that began more than a decade ago. In the 1980s court reform started with a change in the trial mechanism of local courts to overcome the inability of the courts to handle the increased number of civil and economic cases resulting from the economic reforms2. Since then the SPC has taken the leading role in furthering and widening the reforms, to cover trial proceedings, the enforcement of judgments, the reorganisation of the internal bodies of the court, the management of judges, etc. These changes relate to the trial system, institutional reorganisation, and the granting of more autonomy to judges. It is becoming obvious that reform measures cannot be efficiently implemented without an improvement in the professional quality of judges. Judicial professionalism demands both the competence of judges to adjudicate cases according to law and to a high standard of morality and conduct to ensure that judges are (and are seen to be) fair and impartial.
3 Outwardly, the emphasis on judicial ethics is a positive response to public opinion. In recent years, although the Chinese courts are handling more and more cases and their role in society is now more prominent, dissatisfaction with and complaints about the work of the courts has also increased considerably. The delay in the handling of cases, the lack of transparency of judicial proceedings, widespread judicial misconduct, judicial corruption, and the slow, disorganised and inefficient reform measures have all generated mounting discontent. Some Chinese commentators have concluded that there is widespread distrust of the judiciary by the public as a whole.3 Their critique has
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pointed out that judicial power (as a public power) in China is now being privatised, personalised and localised.
4 The term “ethics” usually refers to a collection of rules or standards of conduct expected of a particular professional group, such as doctors, solicitors or judges. It requires that any member of such a group who departs from those ethical standards to a striking degree will be excluded from his profession. It has been argued, “the ethical standards required from judges call for perhaps the highest and most rigorous standards, sacrifices and disciplines of any profession in the community”4.
5 There are different ways of dealing with the issue of judicial ethics. Some countries address the issue in general law. For instance, Germany has a judiciary act which contains certain articles dealing with judges’ conduct, but no detailed standards5. On the other hand, some countries have a special code of conduct for judges, such as the USA, Canada and Italy6.
6 In China, the Law on Judges, the Organic Law of the Courts, and the Criminal Law contain provisions relevant to judicial ethics. The promulgation of the Code could be evaluated as a further step in the standardising of judges’ conduct. The Code contains 50 articles, divided under the headings of six essential principles, namely: judicial impartiality, judicial efficiency, integrity of judges, judicial decorum, the self- improvement of judges and the restriction of extra-judicial activities. These general principles are similar to those provided in the US Code7; however, the detailed rules under each principle reflect Chinese characteristics. This article will first analyse the principles and standards of the Code by providing some general information on the current problems facing the Chinese judiciary. It will then discuss various aspects and obstacles to the implementation of the Code. Most information given in this article is based on an overview of Chinese and English legal literature, and, to certain extent, on the author’s interviews with Chinese judges, scholars and lawyers. Principle 1: ensuring judicial impartiality 7 Seventeen of the 50 articles of the Code are devoted to judicial impartiality, which covers four aspects: substantive justice and procedural justice; independence; neutrality; and non-discrimination. Substantive justice and procedural justice 8 Article 1 of the Code requires that, when exercising adjudicative power, judges should aim for both substantive and procedural justice and such justice should be shown by a judge’s conduct in and outside the courtroom to avoid any reasonable public doubts about judicial impartiality.
9 Chinese legal tradition emphasised substantive justice while it neglected procedural justice. Even though, since the 1980s, laws on criminal, civil and administrative procedure have established and strengthened the procedural system, they “still exhibit features of Maoist-socialist law—flexibility, inexactness, and preoccupation with substantive justice”8. In practice some procedural rules are not strictly followed and some are even seriously violated by some courts9. Violations of procedural rules are mainly reflected in four aspects as described by a Chinese scholar10. First, obvious abuse of procedural laws in handling cases, such as fighting for jurisdiction of a case while ignoring provisions of jurisdiction; refusing to file a case under the court’s jurisdiction or unduly delaying making the decision as to whether a case can be filed; breach of rules on collection of evidence by meeting one party and his lawyer, or even travelling, dining, and staying at the same hotel with the party (san tong, in which the costs are
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paid by the party); breach of the principle that the courts, the prosecution office and the public security organs should divide responsibility and inspect each other, by exercising a system of “jointly handled cases” (lianhe ban’an); violation of the supervision provision between higher and lower courts by “communication in advance”; violation of mediation rules by forcing parties to accept mediation; breach of the open trial system; and willingly delaying the handling of cases, causing a violation of the time limit for conclusion of the trial of a case. Secondly, not strictly following legal procedure. For instance, having made a decision on a case before the case comes to trial, making the trial a mere formality; people’s assessors merely accompanying the judge, but not being involving substantively in handling a case, rendering the collegiate system a ceremony; not giving sufficient time for the parties and their lawyers to prepare their defence; and not providing legal reasoning in judgments. Thirdly, improperly modified legal procedure, for example, the chief of the department and the president of a court approving judgment unilaterally thus undermining the competence of the collegiate bench provided by law; and, for difficult cases the lower court applying instructions from a higher court violating the jurisdiction system provided by law. Fourthly, various procedural rights enjoyed by parties to a case are sometimes not respected or parties are deprived of these rights. Such rights include having a lawyer and agent; a request for an open trial and a published judgment; a request for reasonable time to prepare a defence; requiring judges who have a personal interest in a case to withdraw; a request for mediation and a voluntarily reached mediation agreement; and requiring judges to pay cautious attention to one’s opinions during a trial.
10 It is small wonder then, that a saying in goes China that procedural rules are hard law for the parties but soft law for the courts and judges11.
11 It should be noted that the most serious violations of procedural rules occur in the pre- trial phase during detention. It is not exceptional that suspects have no timely access to a defence lawyer and that lawyers meet obstacles in the gathering and investigation of evidence12. Police intimidation and brutality are also not unusual. A distinguished Chinese legal expert, He Weifang, points out that from Chinese media reports we know that occasionally suspects are tortured, and we also know that often the cases exposed by the media are particularly serious, where death has resulted, such as the case reported by the Southern Weekend on April 24th 1998 under the title ‘A Death Case from the Public Security Office’13. It is in fact not difficult to find information in Chinese newspapers and legal journals on the torture or illegal treatment of suspects and even non-suspects by the police. For instance, in December 2001 the journal “Fazhi yu xinwen” (Law and News) reported a case where policemen tortured two murder suspects and forced them to write affidavits causing a six-year long and unjust case against the suspects, following which one suspect received three death penalties. Fortunately, he escaped execution following retrial14. In another case, a policeman spent hours alone with a 17-year old country girl in a police station to persuade her to confess to having had sexual relationships, which led the girl to commit suicide15. According to an official statistic, there were 19,504 cases of human rights violations by police from 1991 to 1993, approximately 7,000 annually16. Instances of judges beating up defendants are also reported. For instance, two judges in a county court in Hubei province, in carrying out a summons for detention, had a quarrel with the defendant; the judges beat the defendant leaving him with serious injuries17.
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12 In recent years, Chinese lawyers have been active supporters of procedural justice, advocating that, when serious procedural errors are found to have occurred, the release of a suspect is less harmful to society than an open violation of procedural law. This is because the recognition of a violation of a person’s procedural rights amounts to the recognition of an illegal act by the judicial organs. If the judicial organs do not take procedural law seriously, they may infringe citizens’ rights at will, which causes extensive damage to society. Moreover, violation of procedure is in essence a violation of human rights: “Someone who is involved in the violation of human rights and in illegal acts has an ulterior motive and thus is guilty of using state power for private interests”18. Such views need to acquire sufficient attention and support from the Chinese judiciary. In addition, one has to regret that the lack of effective provisions in Chinese law on the legal consequences of the violation of procedural rules, which results in violations not being able to be dealt with promptly19. Jing Hanchao, Deputy President of the Higher Court in Hebei province, once pointed out that despite the prohibition by law, torture cannot be prevented in practice mainly because evidence obtained under torture is still being used by judicial organs. If any evidence obtained by torture were absolutely excluded by the courts, then the torture problem would be resolved20. Independence 13 Judicial independence, as the precondition for judicial impartiality, is a fundamental principle codified by law in most countries and is recognised by international conventions. According to international standards, judicial independence includes both the independence of courts and the independence of judges21. Under the current Chinese legal framework, only the independence of courts is recognised, though one could argue strongly that, in practice, such independence is hampered by various borders. The independence of judges as a body as well as individuals remains unclear in law.
14 There are a number of articles in English dealing with the troublesome issue of judicial independence in China22. One could argue that many judicial problems and crises derive from the lack of such independence. It is a fundamental fault in the Chinese system and can only be resolved with determined political will. Indeed, in recent years the Chinese government has gradually loosened its control on the economic sector so as to allow the transition to a market economy. The success of the Chinese economy over the last twenty years has proved the corrective effect of this policy. Similarly, promotion of an independent judiciary could in the long run well facilitate China’s economic prosperity, social stability and progress, as well as political democracy. All these factors will in the end strengthen the authority and public trust of the government.
15 Currently, interference with judicial work mainly comes from two sources. Firstly, Party and government intervention, such as Party and government officials giving instructions to judges in an individual case; political and legal committees (organs of the Party at all levels) discussing significant cases; and the police, the prosecutor’s office and the court sometimes deciding cases jointly. Even though there is no legal basis for such practices, they exist as the government’s habitual way of treating the courts. The second source of intervention in judicial processes is individual intervention, which may come from those who possess administrative power or those who have money. Since Chinese courts, especially local courts, depend on local government for financial support and the appointment and promotion of judges, they
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are particularly weak in facing up to government interference. This has resulted in a dramatic increase in local judicial protectionism. The Supreme People’s Court recognised that “the emergence and extension of local judicial protectionism has seriously threatened the integrity and authority of our country’s socialist legal system” 23. One Chinese commentator has summarised local judicial protectionism into six facets24:
16 1) Some courts compete for jurisdiction by handling cases they should not handle in order to get the advantage in cases involving property or profit;
17 2) some courts refuse to file cases or postpone the hearing of cases so as to assist local parties;
18 3) some courts wilfully treat economic crimes as economic disputes so as to protect a local party’s illegal gains;
19 4) some courts inappropriately apply coercive measures so as to be the first to control assets;
20 5) some courts misinterpret the law, distort the facts, and make unfair judgments in favour of the local party;
21 6) some courts make it difficult for non-local judgments to be enforced.
22 Despite the serious difficulties and obstacles to judicial independence, the Code of Conduct for Chinese Judges cannot avoid the issue because of its crucial nature for the judiciary. The Code intends to remind judges to uphold the principle of independence in adjudication by stressing that: they are not subject to interference by administrative organs, social organs or individuals (Art. 2); they should refuse parties, or anybody using “networking” in an attempt to influence them (Art. 4); and they should think independently, judging autonomously and have the courage to reach the decision which they believe to be correct (Art. 7). However, in view of these types of interference, which are deeply rooted in the legal and political systems, one can imagine how it must be for judges to follow the Code’s provisions closely. Recently, the Chinese newspaper “Southern Weekend” reported that a judge, Jia Tingrun, who was the President of Lulong County Court in Hebei Province, suffered unfair treatment because he refused to try a case according to the local government’s instruction. In March 1994, he had to deal with a “tough case” concerning a manager of a private business who was accused of “embezzlement and misappropriation of co-operative funds” by the local government. Judge Jia discovered that the manager was merely a farmer and therefore, under the law, could not be charged with such a crime. His view was rejected by the local government. The Qinhuangdao Municipal Intermediate Court (which is a level higher than the county court) instructed Judge Jia just to follow the local government’s instruction. The local Communist Party officials also pressured Judge Jia to resolve the case soon. However, Judge Jia did not submit to these pressures. In August 1994, the local government announced the decision by the Qinhuangdao Party Committee to remove Judge Jia from the office of President of the County Court. A few days later he was dismissed from the Court and was transferred to the county judicial bureau as an ordinary cadre. His salary was cut from 620 yuan to 350 yuan and his administrative ranking was moved down two levels. Moreover, the Qinhuangdao Party Committee and the Lulong County Party Committee organised several investigation groups to look for financial problems concerning Judge Jia, but they revealed nothing. After the removal of Judge Jia, the manager was sentenced to seven
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years imprisonment as the local government had wanted. This wrongful judgment was only corrected in 2001 after years of effort on the part of a few lawyers. Consequently, Judge Jia’s bitter experience became known25. This case shows the vulnerability of the judge and president of a local court in facing the powerful governmental and Party influence.
23 Aside from external interference with the courts’ and judges’ independence, the independence of individual judges within Chinese courts is also jeopardised by colleagues trying to influence one another. To correct this practice, Article 13 of the Code requires a judge to respect the exercise of independence in adjudication by other judges. More precisely, a judge may not comment on cases being handled by other judges and may not give suggestions or opinions on cases in which his interests are involved; he may not ask about or interfere in cases that are being handled by lower courts; and he may not offer personal opinions to the higher court for cases at second instance. Article 14 requires further that a judge, except in exercising his adjudication or management duty, may not ask for information about cases handled by other judges. A judge may not reveal or provide information to the parties or their representatives concerning the hearing of the case and ways to contact the judges in charge, nor may he introduce the judges to the parties concerned. These standards on judges’ relationships within a court seem attainable if courts and judges take them seriously.
24 In addition, the Code specifically requires that judges should not be improperly influenced by the media and public opinion and should not give comments in public or to the media, which might undermine the seriousness and authority of a valid judgment (Art. 16). In recent years a positive development in China has been more media coverage of court work, in particular discussions of effective judgments. Both national and local TV stations broadcast regular programmes revealing how the law is working in the courts. The media try to invite more judges to comment on controversial cases and public ratings for such programmes are high. This development enhances people’s legal education and is conducive to the promotion of the public’s right to information. But, inconsistent opinions of individual judges may also cause people to doubt the integrity and fairness of the judiciary as a whole, and a judge may also be under pressure to make a certain judgment. The Code intends to find a balance between the independence of the judge and the authority of the judiciary as a whole. It is internationally recognised that: “Sustaining support for judicial independence in this age of political and media scrutiny is a weighty challenge… central to meeting that challenge is a judiciary that recognises the importance of communicating with the public in ways that will enhance their legitimacy and justify their independence”26.
25 As far as the relationship between judges and the media is concerned, Chinese judges face the same dilemma as judges in other countries; moreover, they suffer from an extreme lack of experience in dealing with the media. It seems advisable that some concrete measures need to be introduced to reduce the risk involved where individual judges deal with the media. For instance, each court could have one or two press judges who are responsible for all of the court’s contact with the media, including newspapers, radio, TV, etc. Neutrality 26 Article 11 of the Code obliges judges to remain neutral in their handling of cases. It requires that before a judgment is announced, a judge should not reveal his opinion or
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attitude by language, expression or conduct and a judge should mediate cases in accordance with law and be cautious with language and conduct so as to avoid generating any reasonable doubt as to his impartiality. Article 5 stresses that judges should not take improper measures to force parties to withdraw a case or accept mediation against their will. Article 8 states that during the process of a lawsuit judges should not meet a party or his representative privately. There are at least two main problems relating to the neutrality of judges. One concerns mediation, and the other relates to ex parte contact.
27 As to mediation, it has played a significant role in the history of the communist judicial system, which resulted in the realisation of mediation as the core model of handling civil and economic cases while adjudication was neglected. Since the end of the 1970s mediation has undergone some changes27. The 1982 Civil Procedure Law (CPL) amended the policy of “mediation as core” into the principle of “emphasising mediation”. The 1991 revised CPL further weakened it to “carrying out lawful mediation based on voluntarism and law”. However, under the current civil, criminal and administrative procedure laws mediation is still regarded as a significant step before adjudication28. According to critics29 Chinese judges habitually prefer recourse to mediation, and this was not only because of the law and policy influence in the past but also due to their own interests. Compared to adjudication, mediation could bring judges some advantages: it enables judges to handle more cases at the same time; generally speaking, mediation is a speedy way of ending a case; and it is rather flexible in process. As to writing a legal document, some cases do not require a formal mediation agreement. Furthermore, for those cases where a mediation agreement is needed, such an agreement need only contain the litigation claims, facts and mediation results, unlike a judgment which has to provide detailed arguments on the recognition of facts and the application of laws. Since many courts exercise a system of evaluating a judge’s work according to the number of cases the judge has handled, and linking this directly with the economic value of a judge, this inevitably encourages judges to choose mediation as a fast-result model to deal with cases. In addition, mediation enables judges to avoid making difficult decisions. In practice under certain circumstances, such as insufficient evidence to reach a certain decision, lack of clear legal provision, or the law being too vague and general, it may be very difficult for judges to make judgments. This contrasts with mediation agreements where, so long as the parties concerned reach a compromise, there is no need to state which legal provisions form the basis of the agreement. Furthermore, there is little risk to judges in mediation since no appeal or retrial procedure is possible. If a judgment is changed by the higher court on appeal, the original judgment is deemed wrong and subsequently the judge who made the judgment is considered to have made a wrong decision.
28 Taking into account all these benefits, one can understand why judges prefer mediation. However, such a preference also results in serious problems of coercion and non-voluntary mediation, and mediation without principles30. Moreover, some increasingly grave judicial problems, such as judicial corruption, abuse of judicial power and local judicial protectionism, are to various degrees linked with the mediation system31. It is observed that: “A variety of sources suggest that in practice judicial mediation raises serious issues of legality”32.
29 To minimise these problems, Chinese judges need to change their attitude and habitual approach to mediation. Moreover, further improvement of the law and reform of the
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trial system are also essential. If mediation fails, a judge involved in the mediation should not be the judge to try the case.
30 With regard to ex parte contact, according to an authoritative source, ex parte contact is rather common in China’s judicial practice33. In 1998, the Judicial Committee of the Supreme People’s Court issued the Several Provisions Relating to the Reform of Civil and Economic Trials. Article 6 of the Provisions provides that, “members of the collegiate bench and single judges should not, before trial, meet one party or his representatives privately.” This was the first time that ex parte contact had been officially prohibited34. Article 32 of the 2001 amended Law on Judges prohibits judges meeting parties or their representatives privately, attending dinners or accepting gifts given by parties or their representatives.
31 Ex parte contact is a principal channel for judicial corruption, often taking place in a judge’s office or home, restaurant, hotel, bar or other place of entertainment35. A party or his lawyer uses such opportunities not only to try to influence the judge’s opinion on a case but also to give the judge gifts or bribe him. The problem of ex parte contact is two-sided. On the one hand it is closely linked with the general environment in China that too often if one wants something to be done one has to use “personal relationships”. People feel more secure if they have access to a judge outside the court. This phenomenon itself is a repercussion of the lack of the rule of law. On the other hand some judges, for various reasons, accept the invitations of parties to lawsuits. Over the years this “give and take” practice has developed into a vicious circle that once a lawsuit has emerged, all parties try to establish contact with the judges. Winning a case becomes a matter of who has strong relations with the judges or courts (da guansi shi da guanxi).
32 To resolve or diminish the problem of ex parte contact, judges should strictly obey laws and professional rules. In 2000, the Supreme People’s Court issued the Several Provisions Concerning the Strict Application of the Withdrawal System by Judges36. It provides that parties and their representatives, based on relevant evidence, have the right to ask judges to withdraw if the judges commit ex parte contact. With the introduction of the new rule, some judges are finding more hidden ways to engage in ex parte contact, which may make it difficult for a party to prove the existence of such contact. Non-discrimination 33 Article 10 of the Code requires that judges treat parties and other participants in the litigation equally, should not show any discrimination in language and in deed. Furthermore, a judge has the duty to stop and correct participants in litigation should they use any discriminatory language or act in a discriminatory fashion. In addition, the Code explains that a judge should be fully aware of the possible differences between the parties due to their race, ethical beliefs, sex, profession, religious beliefs, education, health and place of residence. Judges must ensure that all parties can exercise equally and fully their procedural as well as substantive rights.
34 In practice, discrimination is mainly reflected in local judicial protectionism (LJP) as discussed earlier. It is a weak point of the Code that it does not refer to LJP directly, which perhaps is due to the complicated nature of LJP, being entangled as it is with political as well as economic issues. Principle 2: enhancement of judicial efficiency
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35 Impartiality and efficiency have been targeted as the two pillars of the courts’ work in the new millennium. With respect to judicial inefficiency, the most apparent manifestation is the delay in the delivery of judgments. Some commercial cases continue for years without court decisions and, when the decisions are made, the parties involved in the cases may have gone bankrupt, or illegally transferred their property, which makes enforcement impossible. Some Chinese people have stated that they do have the money to bring a lawsuit to a court, but do not have the time to wait for delayed proceedings (dadeqi guansi, dan dengbuqi). Thus, it is a trend for companies to settle disputes outside court for reasons of efficiency. For individual citizens, the tragedy that can be caused by a court’s inefficiency can also be alarming. In a case of no great complexity concerning state compensation, a female farmer was pushed from one court to another. The case ran for four years and during this period she received seven different court rulings37. In another small debt dispute case, proceedings lasted seven years and the various courts involved rendered eight judgments38.
36 In responding to the most common problems in China, the Code addresses the efficiency issue from four perspectives. It first requires that judges should not delay in handling cases because of their schedules for private matters (Art. 18). Secondly, judges should follow strictly the time limit provided by law to promptly register, hear a case, and deliver judgment (Art. 19). Thirdly, judges should pay reasonable and sufficient time to all cases assigned to them. They should pay enough attention to save time for the parties, attorney and defendants and should work efficiently with other judges and judicial officers (Art. 20). Finally, judges should supervise parties to a case to ensure that they follow litigation procedure and time requirements (Art. 21).
37 The main reasons for the lack of efficiency are twofold39. Firstly, many of the delays and difficulties are due to weak conceptions of time, and the incompetent and bureaucratic way of handling cases still used by Chinese judges. It is no exaggeration to state that efficiency is a somewhat new concept for most Chinese judges. Secondly, some systems provided in Chinese law result in inefficiency. The retrial system provides a good example. According to Art. 177 of the Civil Procedure Law, if the president of a court finds some definite error in a legally effective judgment or order of his court and deems it necessary to have the case retried, he should refer it to the judicial committee for decision. On the same ground, the Supreme People’s Court has the power to bring a case for trial by itself or direct a lower court to hear a retrial. Since the law does not provide time limits for the retrial of a case, in practice, a case can be retried a number of times. Principle 3: keep clean and honest in performing duty 38 This principle tackles the ethical issue from an economic angle. The Code sets up the Five No’s:
39 1) judges should neither directly nor indirectly use their position to obtain improper benefits for themselves, their relatives or others (Art. 23);
40 2) judges should not accept entertainment, goods, etc., offered by the parties to a case, their representatives and defenders (Art. 24);
41 3) judges should not become involved in commercial activities or other economic activities that may cause public doubt as to the integrity of judges (Art. 25);
42 4) judges should make appropriate arrangements for their personal affairs and should not deliberately disclose their position as judge in order to obtain special attention, and
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should not use the reputation and influence associated with the position for private interests either for themselves, their relatives or others (Art. 26);
43 5) judges should not be part-time lawyers, legal advisors for companies, governmental institutions or individuals and should not provide legal advice or legal opinions on a pending case to parties (Art. 28).
44 It is true that most Chinese condemnation of judicial corruption is related to the above- mentioned Five No’s. Over the years, it has become a serious problem that judges accept money, gifts and invitations for meals from both the plaintiff and defendant. Some Chinese say “the judge’s big hat has two brims, after eating with the plaintiff, eat with the defendant; after he has finished eating with them both, he says that the legal system is not perfect”40. Even though Chinese laws, such as the Civil Procedure Law and the Law on Judges, and several orders of the SPP41, prohibit judges from misusing power for private gain, in reality this serious misconduct has only intensified and resulted in many “human feelings cases” (renqing an), “relationship cases” (guanxi an), and “money cases” (jinqian an)42. The President of the Supreme People’s Court once indicated that the ethical level of Chinese judges as a whole “is not matched with the requirement of professionalism, and it is difficult to resist money worship, hedonism, a privileged mentality and other corrupt thoughts”43; some judges “forge legal documents, use cases for private gain, use power for private gain, distort laws for private gain, which have made a very bad impression in society”44.
45 The Code also lays down standards for the judge's family. The lifestyle of judges and their family should be compatible with their position and income (Art. 27). A result of China’s economic reforms is the new wealth and potential for a life of luxury. A judge’s normal income is almost the same as that of a civil servant, which offers a good life, but does not make them as rich as top commercial lawyers or successful entrepreneurs. It is true that some Chinese judges are disturbed to see that some lawyers have become rich so quickly, while they are far behind. Thus, they look for ways to gain economic benefits. Some Chinese estimate that the grey (illegally gained) income, has made the average income of Chinese judges higher than that of lawyers45. In Chinese culture, people are fond of comparing status, rank, income, lifestyle, etc., which generates much unnecessary dissatisfaction with one’s own life. As a matter of economic progress, material life has improved for most Chinese in recent years: this makes it possible for people to choose a profession more in accordance with their own personal wishes than from the pressure to survive. As part of legal education, one should be taught that if one chooses the judiciary as a profession, one bears high social responsibility and one’s lifestyle must fit this profession. Judges should realise that even a few judges’ corrupted behaviour could cause public distrust of the judiciary as a whole. On the other hand, it is also the responsibility of the government to ensure that judges receive sufficient income to maintain a good lifestyle. It is reported that some courts, especially at basic level, could not even guarantee that judges receive their salary on time. Under such circumstances how could one expect judges to be clean and honest in performing their duty? Principle 4: observance of judicial decorum 46 In general terms, the Code calls for judges to respect all judicial etiquette, keep up a good appearance and civilised behaviour and to guard the authority of the courts and the good image of judges (Art. 31). In more concrete terms, the Code requires judges to respect the human dignity of the parties. They should earnestly and patiently listen to
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the parties to a case in expressing their views and should not interrupt or stop them at will unless for the reason of maintaining court order. In addition, judges should use standard and civilised language and should not admonish or apply improper words to the parties (Art. 32). In the courtroom, judges should follow courtroom rules and supervise all persons there to do the same. Judges must wear robes or a judge’s uniform and badge, be in the courtroom on time and not leave early, nor go in and out during court session; and must concentrate on the trial and do nothing irrelevant to the trial (Art. 33).
47 Judicial decorum is fundamental for the judicial profession. Some Chinese judges are extremely short of training in this respect. For instance, it has happened that a judges say to a rich party to a case, “you have so much money, paying one million in compensation is no problem for you”. Sometimes before judgment is delivered, a judge tells a party: “you will definitely lose this case”; or a judge says arbitrarily to a party: “what you said is not correct”. In settling divorce cases involving third parties, some judges are too flippant, for example saying to the man that “it is not a big problem if you have a lover, but make sure that your wife does not know and make problems”. Some judges have been seen smoking, drinking tea and using mobile phones, as well as actually leaving the courtroom, while the trial is in progress46. Some judges abuse their privileged position and power, criticising and rebuking parties, etc. Such conduct provides a people’s court equivalent to government offices in feudal China (yamen)47.
48 The improper use of words is not just a language puzzle; it reflects the depleted standards of the profession. The Code’s provisions on judicial decorum remain too general: detailed, concrete and complete standards need to be developed. Moreover, training of judges in this aspect needs to be strengthened. A good image and authority of the judiciary cannot be established without the civilised and professional behaviour of judges. Principle 5: to strengthen self-improvement 49 Compared to the other principles, this one sets up higher moral and behavioural standards for judges. It outlines an ideal judge: holding rich social experiences and profound understanding of social reality; having belief in their devotion to their duty, judging cases according to law, upright and never stooping to flattery and not seeking private gains; having the intuitive knowledge of punishing evil and encouraging good, enhancing justice; having the character of fair-mindedness, kindness, modesty and prudence; and enjoying a good personal reputation (Art. 35). In their daily lives judges should exercise strict self-discipline, be cautious in their words and deeds, have high moral values and be good models of social morality and family virtue (Art. 37).
50 Article 36 states that it is a judge’s right as well as duty to have educational training, to foster a good learning atmosphere, to study legal theory in depth, and to advance their judicial skills in presiding over trials, judging evidence and writing judicial documents.
51 One may think that at present Principle 5 is more a far-reaching ideal than a reality for many Chinese judges. However, setting up high standards in the Code is definitely needed for enhancing and improving the professionalism of judges and is essential for the deepening of judicial reform. Unlike other principles, such as independence and neutrality, the realisation of which depends on many elements, some of which are beyond the control of courts and judges, self-improvement standards can be reached by serious commitment to the judicial profession. Consequently, education in this should be intensified.
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Principle 6: limitation of extra-judicial activities 52 This principle lays down rules on what judges should not do, what they could do but must be cautious in doing and what they can do within the prescribed limitations.
53 First, let us consider what judges should not do. Judges must stop harmful hobbies and conduct, which are incompatible with the public interest, public order, social public morality and good customs and which may affect the good image of judges and their ability to fulfil judicial functions fairly (Art. 39). Judges should not be members of cult organisations, commercial organisations or organisations that may make profits by using a judge’s influence (Arts. 41 and 43).
54 Secondly, there are activities which judges could do but must be cautious in pursuing. Article 40 states that judges should be cautious in going to places of entertainment, in making friends and in treating and contacting parties to cases, lawyers and other people in order to prevent generating public doubt about the fairness and integrity of judges and to prevent possible worries and embarrassment in exercising their duties. Moreover, when publishing articles or being interviewed by the media, judges should exercise caution, should not make inappropriate comments on specific cases or parties to the cases and should try to avoid causing public doubt about judicial impartiality due to such inappropriate words or deeds (Art. 45).
55 Thirdly, there are things which judges can do, but subject to certain restrictions. As a general rule, judges who are involved in extra-judicial activities should not allow these activities to interfere with their performance of their judicial duties. They should also avoid creating reasonable suspicion in the public domain about the judge’s impartiality and integrity, and avoid damaging public confidence in the courts (Art. 38). In conducting extra-judicial activities, judges should not disclose or use unpublished judicial information, commercial secrets, personal secrets or other unpublished information that they have obtained during trial cases (Art. 42). Judges may participate in academic research or other social activities that are conducive to legal development and judicial reform. However, such activities should be based on the conditions that they must be legal, not hinder judicial impartiality and authority and not affect judicial work (Art. 44).
56 It seems necessary to discuss the scope of extra-judicial activities. The Code’s provisions specifically mention entering places of entertainment, making friends, contact with parties to a case and their lawyers, participating in academic activities, joining cult organisations and profit-making social organisations, publishing articles and accepting interviews with the media. The Code also mentions in general terms “various extra-judicial activities” and “harmful hobbies and conduct”. Obviously, the Code does not provide an exhaustive list of what may be “extra-judicial activities”. In reality, the most common problems concerning a judge’s extra-judicial activities may not be separated from a judge’s judicial activities, such as going out for dinners with people who are parties to cases, actively making friends with business people and giving interviews to newspapers and TV on pending cases. By implementing the Code, judges should rethink their behaviour as a judge rather than an ordinary citizen.
57 In addition, there are also some practices which are not mentioned by the Code but are conducted by judges and may cause public suspicions of judicial propriety. For instance, based on investigation of people’s tribunals in rural China, a researcher has reached the conclusion that judges working at the tribunals displayed two faces. On the one hand, they functioned as judges by settling various disputes and, on the other, they
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participated in law enforcement of local governments, such as directly taking part in the collection of bank loans48. Local judges are also sometimes called to join popular legal education activities (pufa), develop and promote family planning policy, etc. Direct involvement in activities that belong to governmental institutions by judges reflects the influence of legal instrumentalism, and undermines judicial independence. Thus, such activities should also be considered extra-judicial activities and should be limited or prohibited.
58 Since the imposition of limits upon extra-judicial activities is a rather new phenomenon for the Chinese judiciary, and since opportunities for such activities are increasing, judges must take the issue seriously, and courts should also protect judges from engagement in activities that belong to executive branches. Implementation of the Code of Conduct 59 The Code provides some general implementation rules. Article 17 states that if a judge, based on the information he has obtained, is sure that other judges have possibly or actually violated judicial ethics, the result of which has been to affect judicial impartiality, the judge should report the matter to the relevant organs. Article 29 requests judges to report their property honestly according to law. However, these reporting systems need to be concretised.
60 Most of the principles in the Code are formulated in a general manner. It is indispensable that interpretation and commentaries are made by the SPC constantly in order to give judges direct guidance. For instance, as to extra-judicial activities, Article 45 provides that “judges should be cautious when publishing articles or being interviewed by the media… to prevent reasonable public doubt as to judicial impartiality due to a judge’s improper words and actions.” Could this Article prevent a judge from publishing romantic or detective novels that are closely related to judicial work? The Internet is becoming a widely used platform for all industries. On a web site49, one can find Mr. Xxx, a senior judge at the Higher Court in Shanghai, an author, Deputy Chief Editor of the Internet journal Fayuan (The Court) and a member of the Authors’ Association in Shanghai. This judge, besides working in court, has long been involved in writing novels. This website published his four novels: “Judges’ Thought”, “Judges’ Anxiety”, “Judges’ Adventure” and “Judges in Danger”. It is debatable whether a judge who is active in publishing judiciary-related literature, which is a type of extra- judicial activity, is behaving properly under the Code. Authoritative commentary on this can only be given by the SPC.
61 In addition, the education and training of judges under the Code need to be intensified. Many types of behaviour which are prohibited in the Code were, and remain, common practice. Since these types of behaviour have become habitual in much judicial practice, it is not easy to correct them. For instance, it seems part of a cultural phenomenon for judges to accept money, goods or invitations to have dinner with the parties or people connected with parties. In some cases, judges may not like it but are compelled to do so by their working environment. It is said that judges sometimes invite each other to dinners intending to use such an opportunity to arrange for a judge to meet one of the parties to a case. If a judge does not accept an invitation first time round, he may be considered to have disrespected the inviter; if he rejects it a second time, he will be treated as unreasonable; and if he rejects it a third time, he is deemed to be an outsider and will be isolated from his colleagues50. Chinese society is often described as full of human feeling and connections. It is therefore a tremendous
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challenge for judges to keep their distance from such cultural and social phenomena while trying to uphold their professional ethics.
62 The Code should be viewed as a professional guideline for fostering responsible judges. Consequently, judges should be encouraged to follow the Code conscientiously. In essence, ethical issues are regulated by moral standards. To improve judicial ethics in China largely depends upon the attitudes of the judges. However, it is always the case that some judges break rules to a remarkable degree, for which disciplinary punishment or even their exclusion from the judiciary seems inevitable. In dealing with such cases, strict procedures need to be applied.
63 Lastly, the implementation of the Code needs not only the co-operation of the judges but also institutional changes that enable judges to behave as intended in the Code. Such institutional changes cover a wide range of aspects. For instance, the system of selection and promotion of judges needs to be redesigned. Candidates should meet not only the formal requirements, such as holding a law degree and passing the national judicial examination, but also other conditions, including fine personal traits, such as being thoughtful, humane and loyal to the highest aims of the profession. It is advisable that psychological tests should be applied to make selections from among potential candidates. Such selection mechanisms could help to ensure that the door of the judiciary would open only to the most highly qualified candidates. It would also be worthwhile weighing up the pros and cons of the present judicial committee system, which allows members of the committee to decide difficult and significant cases without hearing the case. This system restricts the independence of trial judges. The Code is absolutely right to highlight the significance of independence, neutrality and other basic principles of the judicial profession. However, true judicial independence cannot be guaranteed without institutional support. Some Chinese scholars have been calling for legislative efforts to entitle courts and judges to exercise judicial power independently subject to international standards51, but for the time being the political “go ahead” for such proposals remains unlikely.
64 IMPROVEMENT of the ethics of Chinese judges is among ongoing efforts at judicial reform. Without substantial upgrading on this matter the Chinese judiciary would not be able to strengthen its authority, which is needed for the balance of powers. A weak, and to a certain extent distrusted, judiciary would not be able to bear the function of an independent administration of justice. Xiao Yang, the President of the Supreme People’s Court, has stated that “the overall professional quality of Chinese judges has not been high”.52 Recognition of this shortcoming should lead to consistent and effective endeavours on the part of the Supreme People’s Court and all judges.
65 Some have tried to roughly categorise Chinese judges into four groups53. The first group includes the excellent model judges. They possess both a high professional capacity and a strong commitment to social justice. The second group consists of popular judges. Under all kinds of pressures, they do their best to maintain the good image of the courts; they handle most cases fairly and are cautious in judicial practice. However, they are sometimes influenced by their social environment and have acted in a manner incompatible with judicial ethics. This group could be considered as judges shaped by their environment. Under a reasonable rule of law and a more conducive social environment, they could be good judges. The third group is slack judges. For them, being a judge is a means of supporting their family. Their competence in handling cases is adequate, but they lack any real consciousness of ethical issues. Prompted by private
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interests and personal relationships, they could behave in ways contrary to a judge’s intuitive knowledge and may even fail to behave scrupulously and honestly in the performance of their duty. The fourth group is corrupt judges. They lack professional responsibility, are selfish, take no notice of judicial ethics and violate professional disciplines and the law. Consequently, they are the main cause of the bad image of the judiciary.
66 We could assume that only a small percentage of judges belong to the last group, though the damage they cause to public trust in the judiciary is immense. The first group of judges is, sadly, also small in number. Occasionally, stories about such model judges are reported in the newspapers; indeed, these stories can be very moving ones in the Chinese context. The majority of judges fit into the second and third groups. They function in a typical Chinese environment and their movement in good or bad directions depends very much upon the “broader environment”. To guide this large group of judges, education and training in ethics is crucial.
67 It has been observed that in the Western world “the responsibilities of the judge were originally framed in terms of a divine paradigm. The pattern for the judge was the judgement exercised by the gods or God. Only at this very high level did it seem possible to attain the incorruptibility, the unchangeability, and the impartiality that human beings believed that judges should have”54. China does not have such a tradition. In modern times, it also seems unrealistic to impose such a belief on Chinese judges and the Chinese public. The communist ideology concerning the ideal judge has also become less and less convincing. It seems wise and realistic to stress the professional responsibility of judges from an ethical point of view. Thus, one can be certain of the significance of the promulgation of the Chinese Code for Judges. However, as indicated earlier, the enforcement of the Code is the final goal and this is a more troublesome matter. As the levels and frequency of public condemnation of the misconduct of judges show an escalating trend, an improvement in judicial ethics has to be and is an inevitable and vital component of any judicial reform.
NOTES
1. The full text of the Code was published in Renmin fayuan bao (People’s Courts Daily), October 19th 2001. 2. Jing Hanchao and Lu Zijuan, Shenpan fangshi gaige shilun (Practical Analysis of the Reform of the Trial Method), Renmin fayuan chubanshe, 1997, p. 3. 3. Cai Dingjian, “Development of the Chinese Legal System since 1979 and its Current Crisis and Transformation”, Cultural Dynamics, Vol. 11, No. 2, 1999, p. 154. 4. The Hon. Mr Justice Thomas, Judicial Ethics in Australia, The Law Book Company Limited, Sydney, 1988, p.8.
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5. The Germany Judiciary Act, Documents on Politics and Society in the Federal Republic of Germany, INTER NATIONES, e.V., Bonn, 1993. 6. For the Code of Conduct for United States Judges, see www.fjc.gov. Ethical Principles for Judges, Canadian Judicial Council, Catalogue Number JU 11-4/1998 E, ISBN 0-662-27376-1, available from www.cjc.gc.ca. The Code of Judicial Ethics adopted by the Italian Association of Judges and Public Prosecutors. 7. For instance, the Code of Conduct for United States Judges contains 7 Canons, namely, integrity and independence of the judiciary; avoid impropriety and appearance of impropriety in all activities; perform the duties of office impartially and diligently; extra-judicial activities should be limited to improve the law, the legal system, and the administration of justice; extra-judicial activities should minimise the risk of conflict with judicial duties; regularly file reports of compensation received for law-related and extra-judicial activities; refrain from political activity. 8. Margaret Y. K. Woo, “Law and Discretion in Contemporary Chinese Courts”, in Karen G. Turner et al. eds., The Limits of the Law in China, University of Washington Press, 2000, p. 173. 9. Wang Liming, “Sifa Gaige Yanjiu” (Research on Judicial Reform), Peking, Falü chubanshe, 1999, p. 61. 10. Ibid, pp. 61-62. 11. Li Xiaolin, “Guanyu sifa tizhi gaige de shexiang” (Some Thoughts on Judicial Reform), Zhongguo lüshi (Chinese Lawyer), 1999/4, p. 7. 12. Cai Dingjian, op. cit., p. 162. 13. He Weifang, “Xingxun bigong weinaban” (Why Torture), in his book Sifa de linian yu zhidu (Judicial Conception and System), China University of Politics and Law Press, 1998, p. 291. 14. Fortunately, this case was corrected under the persistent efforts of a lawyer, and the fair judgment of the Heilongjiang Provincial Higher Court. For six years the two suspects had no freedom and the caused tremendous grief to their family. When the two suspects requested compensation from the intermediate court and the prosecution office which wrongly handled the case, a relevant person in the court even said: “why do you not go to the public police office? If they did not catch the wrong persons, we wouldn’t have wrongly handled the case”; see Li Weijun and Wang Hongying, “Yige yu sishen sanci cajian de ‘siqiu’” (A Convict Who Was Sentenced to Death Three Times), Fazhi yu xinwen (Law and News), December 2001, pp. 37-38. 15. According to this article, the police office (at county level) gave the police “the task to amerce”? and individual police could deduct 30% of the fine. See You Xia, “Nongnu beibi zisha, gonganiu gaipeiduoshao” (A Farmer’s Girl Was Compelled to Commit Suicide, How Much Should the Police Office Pay), in Minzhu yu fazhi (Democracy and Legal System), No. 5, 2000, pp. 21-23. Cases were reported that even members of the People’s Congress were beaten up, searched, or illegally detained by police. See a few articles in Minzhu yu fazhi, No. 6, 2000, pp. 4-7. 16. Li Lin, “Organization and Power of Police in China”, in Liu Hainian, et al. eds., Human Rights and Administration of Justice, Collected
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Papers from the Chinese-Danish Symposium on the Protection of Human Rights in Judicial Work (Chinese and English), China Legal System Publishing House, 1999, p. 19 and p. 152. 17. See Chutian dushibao (Chutian City Newspaper), April 27th 1999, quoted in Fan Zhongxin, “Sifa fubai de leixing yu zhidu zhuyin fenxi” (The Types of Judicial Corruption and Analysis of System Element), in Xin Chunying et al. eds., Yifa zhiguo yu sifa gaige (Rule of Law and Judicial Reform), Peking, Zhongguo fazhi chubanshe, 1999, p. 113. 18. Li Xiaolin, op. cit., No. 4, 1999, p. 7. 19. Wang Liming, op. cit., p. 49. 20. Jing Hanchao, “Zhongguo wenhai chuangji sifa gaige” (Chinese Culture “Clash” with Judicial Reform), Zhongguo lüshi, No. 6, 2001, p. 21. 21. See the United Nations Basic Principles on the Independence of the Judiciary, A/RES/40/32, November 29th 1985. 22. See Margaret Y.K. Woo, “Adjudication Supervision and Judicial Independence in the P.R.C.”, The American Journal of Comparative Law, Vol. 39, 1991, pp. 95-119; Hikota Koguchi, “Some Observations About ‘Judicial Independence’ in Post-Mao China”, in R.H.Folsom and J.H.Minan eds., Law in the People’s Republic of China, 1989, pp. 189-197; Marie Seong-Hak Kim, “A Distant Premise: Judicial Independence in the People’s Republic of China”, in Korean Journal of Comparative Law, Vol. 24, 1996, pp. 17- 42; Liao Kuangsheng, “Independent Administration of Justice” and the PRC Legal System, in Chinese Law and Government, Vol. XVI, Nos. 2-3, 1983, pp. 123-152; and Xin Ren, Tradition of the Law and Law of the Tradition, Law, State, and Social Control in China, Greenwood Press, 1997, pp. 47-63. 23. See “Renmin Fayuan wunian gaige gangyao” (Five-year Program to Reform the System of People’s Courts), edited by the research department of the Supreme People’s Court, Renmin fayuan chubanshe, 2000. 24. Cai Dinjian, op. cit., pp. 149-151. 25. Nanfang zhoumo (Southern Weekend), December 5th 2002. 26. Frances Kahn Zemans, “The Accountable Judge: Guardian of Judicial Independence”, in Southern California Law Review, Vol. 72, Nos. 2-3, 1999, p. 654. 27. Li Hao, Minshi shenpan zhongde tiaoshen fengli (Separation of Mediation and Trial in Civil Trial), in Jiang Ping and Chen Guiming eds., Minshi shenpan fangshi gaige yu fazhan (Reform and Development of the Civil Trial Method), Zhongguo fazhi chubanshe, 1998, p. 203. 28. For details, see Margaret Y. K. Woo, “Law and Discretion …”, op. cit., p. 174. 29. See Li Hao, op. cit., pp. 208-210. 30. Ibid., p. 203. 31. Ibid., p. 210. 32. Stanley B. Lubman, Bird in a Cage Legal Reform in China After Mao, Stanford University Press, 1999, p. 274. See also Margaret Y. K. Woo, “Law and Discretion …” op. cit., p. 174. She observed that “While the procedural codes also require that the contents of a
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mediated agreement shall not violate the law, the process of mediation has no formalities and is to be conducted according to the judge’s innate sense of right and wrong. Indeed, the procedure for mediation allows the courts to reach compromised and individualized, but perhaps not always consistent, decisions.” 33. Jian Hanchao and Lu Zijuan, “lun jinzhi danfang jiechu yuanzi” (Discussion of the Principle of Prohibition of Ex Parte Contact), Renmin sifa (People’s Judiciary), 1998/10, p. 4. 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid., p. 5. 36. The full text is contained in the “Five-year Program …” op. cit., pp. 118-120. 37. Li Jian and Xie Wenchao, “Yiwei nongfu yu xian gonganju de malasong guansi” (A marathon lawsuit between a female farmer and a county public security bureau), Minzhu yu fazhi (Democracy and Legal System), No. 3, 2000, pp. 20-22. 38. Li Xianhong, “Qinianbashen nanduanyian” (Seven years and eight judgments, it remains difficult to decide a case), Minzhu yu fazhi (Democracy and Legal System), No. 9, 2000, p. 17. 39. Jiang Huiling summarised eight main problems on judicial efficiency. See “Tigao Sifa Xiaolu de yiwu” (Obligation to enhance judicial efficiency), Falü shiyong (National Judges College Law Journal), 2001/6, p. 4. 40. Cai Dingjian, op. cit., p. 149. Cases where judges misuse their power in return for personal benefits have been occasionally reported in press. For example, a judge at Zhenhai Basic Court accepted a few thousand yuan from a lawyer for the defence and dined with the lawyer on a few occasions and then decided to release the court’s decision to seal up the accused’s property. This resulted in enabling the accused to sell his property immediately. Even though the plaintiff won the case, the judgment could not then be enforced, since the accused had no property with which to pay the plaintiff. Chen Hong, ‘Revealing the inside story of a case’, Minzhu yu fazhi (Democracy and Legal System), No. 14, 2000, pp. 8-11. 41. See Article 44 of the 1991 Civil Procedure Law; Article 32 of the Law on Judges (amended in 2001); Article 2 of the Several Provisions concerning Strictly Following the Withdrawal System by Judges, issued by the Supreme People’s Court in January 2000; The Several Opinions of the Supreme People’s Court on Carrying out the Central Communist Party Document “Decisions concerning Further Strengthening of Judicial Cadres Force” and “Building up High Professional Judges”. The two documents are contained in the book, “Five-year Program …”, op. cit., pp. 146-157. 42. Guo Daohui, “Shixing sifa duli yu yizhi sifa fubai” (Implementation of Judicial Independence and Control of Judicial Corruption), in Xin Chunying et al. eds., p. 92. 43. Xiao Yang, “Five-year Program to Reform the System of People’s Courts”, in the “Five-year Program …”, op. cit., p. 59.
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44. Xia Yang, Zuigao renmin Fayuan Gongzuo Baogao (Working Report of the Supreme People’s Court), March 2003. The Report is contained in “Five-year Program …”, op. cit., p. 215. 45. This is based on my interviews with judges, lawyers and scholars in 1999 and 2001. 46. These phenomena are mentioned in an article written by a Chinese judge. The article is contained in an unpublished collection of papers written by Chinese judges on judicial conduct and ethics. On file with the author. 47. Yan Junxing, “Sifa Gongzheng de Jiazhi Neihan yu zhidu baozhang” (The connotation of Judicial Fairness and Institutional Guarantee), in Xin Chunying et al. eds., op. cit., pp. 229-230. 48. Xiaoli Zhao, The Two Faces of the People’s Tribunals in Rural China, Perspectives, Vol. 3, No. 4, 2003, http://www.oycf.org/Perspectives/16-033102/ two-faces.htm. 49. http://www.law999.net/story/wenyuan1.jsp 50. A similar saying to this was told to the author by local judges in Wuhan and Beijing in 1999 and 2001 respectively when the author participated in judges’ training programmes. 51. See several articles published in the book, Xin Chunying et al., op. cit. 52. Xiao Yang, “Program Designed to Promote the Reform of the System of People’s Courts”, Zhongguo falü (China Law), No. 1, 2000, p. 55. 53. One article in the book, supra note 47, discussed this in detail. Similar expression was also given to the author by a few judges in 2001. 54. John T. Noonan et al. eds., The Responsible Judge, Readings in Judicial Ethics, Praeger, 1993, p. xiv.
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Foreign Policy
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Japan’s Changing ODA Policy Towards China
Masayuki Masuda
NOTE DE L’ÉDITEUR
This article benefited from the constructive criticisms of Dr. Peter Van Ness, the Contemporary China Center at the Australian National University, Dr. Isabelle Thireau, Centre d’Etudes sur la Chine Moderne et Contemporaine and Mr. Kinichi Komano, Japan’s Ambassador to Afghanistan. The author thanks Representative Yasuhisa Shiozaki for his co-operation with the interview.
1 Japan’s Official Development Assistance (ODA) towards China has come to a crossroads at the start of the new millennium. It was more than twenty years ago, at the end of 1978, that the then prime minister Ohira said the government of Japan would offer ODA to China.1 By the tax year of 1999 Japan had provided China with loans of 2,453.5 billion Japanese yen (US$21.52 billion) and grant aid of 118.5 billion yen (US$1.04 billion), together with technical co-operation of 116.3 billion yen (US$1.02 billion). Japan’s ODA to China as a whole, mainly though yen loans, contributed to the alleviation of an infrastructure bottleneck in China’s coastal regions and a stabilisation of China’s micro economy. According to Japan’s Economic Co-operation Programme for China published in October 2001, Japan’s ODA policy to China has been based on the following idea: “In order to maintain and strengthen the security and prosperity of Japan, the maintenance of a peaceful environment is essential as, indeed above all, are the stability and prosperity of the East Asia region in which Japan is located. In order to achieve this, it is necessary to create an environment of co-operation in which no country in the region is isolated. It is desirable from Japan’s perspective to have a more open and more stable society in China that is willing and able to fulfil its responsibilities as a member of the international community ”2.
2 That is, Japanese diplomacy has a concrete tool, which other western countries do not have, of its policy of engagement with China. In other words, ODA has been a vital
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element of Japan’s China policy. On the one hand Japan has tried to establish a solid foundation of economic interdependence between Japan and China through ODA, mainly invested in China’s construction of its economic infrastructure, which would be expected to contribute towards China becoming a “responsible power” in the international community. On the other hand, especially after the end of the Cold War, Japan has come to understand ODA as a form of sanctions3. Japan has twice suspended ODA to China: in 1989 following the Tiananmen incident; and in 1995, in response to China’s decision to continue nuclear testing. However in both cases, the suspensions were only symbolic as they had little material impact on the Chinese economy. From both of these perspectives, it seems sensible that Japan preserve ODA to China as a diplomatic tool of its policy of engagement policy.
3 Yet, under the severe economic and fiscal circumstances that Japan has been experiencing for more than ten years now, together with changes such as China’s increasing economic and military power and emerging presence as a competitor, there is an increasing scepticism among the Japanese public of ODA to China from a number of points of view. One such factor leading to an accelerating trend among the public to reconsider the ODA policy to China is Japanese frustration towards Chinese intelligence-gathering ships and naval vessels, which became very active around Japanese territorial waters at the end of 1990s. A Chinese naval vessel appeared there for the first time in May 1999, when a Haibing-723 passed through the Tsushima and Tsugaru Straits, and advanced into the Pacific Ocean. Yomiuri Shimbun, one of Japanese leading newspapers, criticised Japan’s ODA policy towards China in its editorial on October 14th 2000: “If China becomes a major military power and a serious threat to Japan due to Japanese economic co-operation that eventually enables China to increase its military spending every year, the meaning of Japan’s ODA to China will surely come into question. … Behind China’s maritime activities lies Peking’s maritime strategy, which sees sea waters as a stage for China’s political, economic and military struggle to secure its interests and resources. Unless China changes that strategy, its maritime activities in waters surrounding Japan may continue. We want China to clearly explain this point to dispel concern”4.
4 Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has more recently understood that there is “a need to listen to public opinion” and decided on May 11th 2000, that the ministry would set up the Advisory Group on Japan’s Economic Co-operation to China in the Twenty-First Century (Advisory Group) as a private advisory body to the director-general of the Economic Co- operation Bureau of Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a process of development of the Country Assistance Programme to China supposedly to be concluded by the end of March 2001 based on “a great concern and critical opinion among Japanese people”5. Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) also started to review Japan’s policy on ODA to China in September 2000 at the Small Committee on Evaluation of Economic Co- operation (Small Committee) and wrote the Generalisation and Guidelines of Economic Aid to and Co-operation with China (Guidelines) at the end of 2000.
5 The purpose of this paper is to clarify the policy-making process for Japan’s policy on ODA to China. Relations between Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Liberal Democratic Party are central to understanding Japan’s present stance, and to posit a number of the issues which Japan will be faced with in the near future. Fragile support for Japan’s ODA to China
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6 The country assistance programmes are regarded as one of the government’s efforts to enhance the efficiency and transparency of ODA based on Japan's Medium-Term Policy on Official Development Assistance. Taking account of the political, economic and social situations in recipient countries, they outline Japan’s assistance plans for an approximate five-year period, incorporating both the plans and the issues that must be tackled in the development process. The Country Assistance Programme to China was supposedly to be written by the end of March 2001. Although the Programme was not drafted and announced by the end of March, the course of the programme had become obvious before then6.
7 The Second Study Group on Country Assistance to China set up at Japan International Co- operation Agency (JICA) in August 1997 produced a final report in February 1999. The report pointed out that the ODA to China should prioritise the elimination of poverty, of differentials among regions and environmental protection. It concluded also that the ODA should be extended mainly to inland China7. Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs made it clear in the Annual Report of the fiscal year of 1999, which reported to the Cabinet that the government would attach greater importance to projects of environment, agriculture and inland China8. The ministry did not have to set up the advisory body because the course of the Country Assistance Programme to China had already been made public before it decided to set up the Advisory Group. In response to mounting domestic criticism of the ODA to China recently, the ministry felt it necessary to take measures to develop a new assistance programme to China. “Harsh views” and criticisms of ODA to China 8 Japan’s white paper on its ODA policy, published at the end of March 2001, admitted for the first time that there were “harsh views about (overseas) assistance to China” among the Japanese public, pointing out the need to “reconsider how the assistance should be given”9. The “harsh views” were caused mainly by a cooling of public feelings towards China. A poll reported in 1996 and 1997 by Japan's prime minister's office showed that the percentage of the Japanese who did not have feelings of friendship towards China exceeded the percentage of those who did10, while another poll in 2000 showed that a record 31% of the public thought Japan could be drawn into a war, up 10% from a 1997 poll, because of the delicate situation in the Korean Peninsula and the Taiwan Strait11. Although his visit to Japan in 1998 expected to ease Japanese pessimistic views of China, China’s President Jiang Zemin repeated condemnations of Japan over the wartime apology issue, along with ritualistic warnings of revived Japanese militarism, which did nothing to improve these views.
9 Partly in response to these adverse trends, “harsh views” about Japan’s ODA to China have been on the rise since the end of the 1990s. China ranked second following Indonesia in terms of total ODA received, and first in recent years. Harsh criticism against Japan’s economic co-operation with China rose among the Japanese public, especially in 200012.
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Graph 1: Japanese Intimacy with China
Source: Naikakuhu Ddijinkanbou kouhoushitsu (Japanese prime minister’s office), Gaiko ni kansuru yoronchos (A poll on diplomacy), October 2002. Available from the homepage of the Japanese prime minister’s office (http://www8.cao.go.jp/survey/h14/h14-gaikou/images/zu05.gif).
10 The first “harsh view” insists that the ODA has enabled China to reinforce its military power and this may violate the principles of the ODA Charter decided by the cabinet on June 30th 1992 13. Taro Kohno, a LDP congressman in the House of Representatives, pointed out in the House Committee on Foreign Affairs: “If China is in the process of increasing its strategic nuclear missiles, Japan must make a different diplomatic policy in which its ODA policy towards China must be reconsidered”14.
11 The second “harsh view” stems from public discontent in Japan that China has shown little gratitude for the ODA. Japanese Ambassador to China Tanino Sakutaro pointed out that a “harsh view among the Diet and newspapers” to the Chinese side in Peking arose when both governments signed the Loan Aid Exchange of Notes in the fiscal year of 1999 on March 27th 2000. He also requested that, “China should tell the Japanese that Japan’s assistance in the past twenty years has been useful to China’s economic development”15. Yan Wenchang, vice-minister of foreign affairs of the PRC, responded to Tanino’s request, saying, “We highly value the role of Japan’s Yen Loan to China in contributing to the building of our economy”. In spite of Yan’s remarks, at the Special Committee on Overseas Economic Co-operation of the LDP held on March 29th 2000, some members of the committee showed dissatisfaction with his use of the phrase “highly value”. Shinzo Abe, a member of the committee and the House of Representatives, said, “China recognises Japan’s ODA as a sort of a compensation”. Strong dissatisfaction of a lack of expressed appreciation was voiced in the committee16.
12 The third “harsh view” is based on the fact that China is now expanding its aid to third countries. Sankei Shimbun on May 14th 2000 reported this issue with the headline, “China’s Strategic Aid is growing steadily”. Sankei Shimbun on July 17th 2000 reported this again on the front page, insisting that they could not help being sceptical about Japan’s offering ODA to China based on the fact that China’s ‘strategic aid’ has reached six billion Japanese yen a year to fifteen developing countries17. Review of Japan’s ODA to China has been insisted upon in the Diet and the LDP based also on China’s strategic aid. At a plenary session of the House of Councillors on September 26th 2000, Yoshitada Konoike, a member of the LDP and the House of Councillors, said, “China gives six billion yen in aid to fifteen developing countries. We should reconsider what our ODA to this country should be”18.
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Japanese frustration with China’s military modernisation and rapid growth in spending 13 The Japanese public is critical of their country’s ODA to China for a number of reasons. In the first half of 2000, they especially regarded it as contravening a principle of the ODA Charter that full attention be paid to trends in recipient countries’ military expenditures, their development and production of weapons of mass destruction and missiles, arms exports, and to extending ODA such that it might strengthen the recipient country’s military power.
14 A special committee on overseas economic co-operation of the LDP was held on the morning of March 29th 2000. Japanese foreign affairs reported Ambassador Tanino’s proposal that China itself should inform Japan that its assistance in the past twenty years had been useful to China’s economic development, at the special committee. Some LDP members valued the proposal to China, but a number pointed out that Ambassador Tanino should have noted a number of alarming developments in China: military modernisation and rapid growth in military spending. The ministry met the party’s requirement quickly. On the evening of May 29th, Ambassador Tanino conveyed the LDP requirements to China at a signatory ceremony of Grant Assistance on the Project for Improvement of an Environmental Information Network: “At a committee of the LDP held this morning, it was pointed out that China’s growth in military expenditure which was made public at the National People Congress, exceeds greatly the economic growth rate. They discussed this seriously with regard to Japan’s ODA Charter ”19.
15 Japanese foreign minister Yohei Kono also expressed concern over China’s increasing defence budget, saying that Japan would review its ODA to China following criticism in Japan about aid offered to this country with a booming economy in his meeting with Chinese foreign minister Tang Jiaxuan on May 10th 2000 in Tokyo20.
16 The LDP’s foreign and related panels required the foreign ministry to convey this intention to review its ODA to China to the Chinese side immediately before the foreign ministerial talks. At the sectional meeting, some members criticised China’s active saving of money to buy more military expenditure owing to Japan’s ODA21.
17 In spite of this criticism, the Japanese foreign ministry dealt mainly with China’s military issues; one reason being the possibility of a violation of a principle of Japan’s ODA Charter, and the other that the ministry could not yet substantiate the other criticisms. On China’s aid to other developing countries, for instance, Yutaka Iimura, Director-General of the Economic Co-operation Bureau of the foreign ministry, had no clear position when the Japanese government started its review of ODA to China in August 2000: “We are not certain of the detail of China’s overseas aid.” “We are wondering if Japan is in a position to criticise since we also extended assistance to developing countries with a loan from the World Bank. Malaysia and Singapore have also recently started to extend assistance [after receiving ODA from Japan]”22.
18 Mounting domestic criticism of the ODA given to China arose not only among the public but also in the Japanese political arenas, and reflected Japanese frustration with China’s rapid military modernisation. But the Japanese foreign ministry was unable to deal with public frustration. Reviewing ODA or China policy?Tokyo only expressed fears
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19 A factor that accelerated Japan’s review of its ODA policy towards China was, as already mentioned, the increased activity of Chinese intelligence-gathering ships and naval vessels around Japan at the end of the 1990s. It is assumed that the Haibing-723 that passed through the Tsushima and Tsugaru Straits investigated Japanese military information in its circuit of Japan. Dongdiao-232, another naval intelligence-gathering vessel, was in operation off the Irako Promontory and the Kii Peninsula to the south in July 200023.
20 Tokyo expressed its concerns on this issue through diplomatic channels. In June 2000, at a one-day session of the seventh regular bilateral consultations on security issues held in Peking, Japan raised the issue that Chinese research vessels had been spotted with increasing frequency in Japanese territorial waters and economic zones, saying they were not clear what China's intentions were.24 Japan also pointed out that Chinese intelligence-gathering ships were operating there without Japanese permission, and made this clear, “(no Chinese activities by its research vessels) may take place without Japanese consent”25 Furthermore, in his meeting with China’s foreign minister Tang in Bangkok in the end of July 2000, Japanese foreign minister Youhei Kono said the activities by Chinese intelligence-gathering ships had not gone unnoticed.26
21 However, Japan's complaint about the ships was rejected by China, which said, "There is no problem." Neither has China complied with a request to gain prior approval to carry out marine research. “Special yen loans” to China 22 Two weeks after the first meeting of the Advisory Group, the Japanese government decided to offer “special low-interest yen loans” totalling 17.2 billion yen (US$159 million) to China for two projects. The Japanese foreign ministry explained that to extend “special yen loans” to China did not contradict the review of ODA to China because the “special yen loans” to Asian countries affected by the Asian financial crisis in late 1997 came under a separate heading, and the projects under such a loan would be subject to environmental protection and inland development27. In addition it is important to note that it is compulsory for recipient countries of the special loan to supply a half of the amount of the loan extended by Japan. Keidanren (Japan Federation of Economic Organisations) telephoned Yasuhisa Shiozaki, chairman of a sectional meeting of the LDP on foreign affairs saying, “it is necessary to offer the special yen loan to China for the sake of Japan’s national interest”28. Not a few LPD members also supported this view.
23 The Japanese foreign ministry explained the plan to extend a “special yen loan” to China at a special committee on overseas economic co-operation of the LDP on August 2nd 200029. A number of the members, however, criticised the government’s plan to offer the loan to China considering the Chinese activity around Japan’s territorial waters30. Yutaka Iimura, Director-General of the Economic Co-operation Bureau of the foreign ministry, stressed the significance of ODA, calling it a “linchpin of Japan-China co- operation” at an executive meeting on foreign affairs of the LDP held on August 3rd 2000. Despite this, the LDP did not give its permission for a special yen loan to be offered to China. Keizo Takemi, a member of the House of Councillors, pointed out at the meeting that a series of documents about the activities by Chinese intelligence-
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gathering ships and navel vessels was pressure on Japan to stop its economic co- operation with China.
24 The foreign affairs and related panels of the LDP held on August 8th 2000, came to a consensus on the activities of these ships and naval vessels, concluding that they “threatened Japanese sovereignty”. The LDP required the foreign ministry to reconsider how the ODA to China should be set in motion, and the offering of a special yen loan. The panel also decided on the setting up of another sectional meeting to study Japan’s economic co-operation with China31. The foreign and related panels of the LDP held on August 9th 2000 heard a number of criticisms and anger about the government’s plan to extend the loan. Some members however insisted that the government’s course should continue. The LDP could not agree about the loan. Chairman Shiozaki, at a sectional meeting on foreign affairs, proposed that foreign minister Kono would convey the critical atmosphere among LDP members in his visit to China at the end of August and the LDP would have another consultation after the foreign minister’s visit32. The LDP considered the issues on the special yen loan to China at August 24th foreign affairs panels. The panel concluded that the activities of the Chinese ships were an “issue relating to national security” and decided to postpone the approval for a special yen loan33. Furthermore, a LDP sectional meeting on foreign affairs handed over a letter to minister Kono, which required that he convey the Japanese anxiety about Chinese naval activities around Japanese territorial waters.
25 The Japanese foreign ministry responded to the LDP’s criticism saying, “We have never begun any procedure for a special yen loan during the foreign minister’s visit.” According to Hidenao Nakagawa, chief cabinet secretary in the Japanese government, however, the government would never change the course of extending the loan to China34. Japanese foreign minister Kono was also unwilling to change it, “I will not overlook today’s problems, but we should not overreact. We should sit down and talk” 35. In view of the unsettled atmosphere in the party, foreign minister Kono conveyed this concern and anxiety to China’s foreign minister during his visit to Peking at the end of August. During the talks, Kono also demanded that China enhance the transparency of its assistance to third countries and Chinese security policy. As for the issues of Chinese intelligence-gathering ships, both ministers agreed that the two sides would build a framework of giving prior notice.
26 Some members in the LDP tried to cool criticism of ODA to China. After the foreign minister’s visit to Peking, foreign and related panels of the LDP were held on September 7th. Muneo Suzuki, a representative, supported offering the loans to China, “an appropriate person in China agreed to build a ‘framework of prior notice’. Japan already promised to offer special yen loans to China”36. Further refutation of the criticism of ODA to China, based on China’s wish to sponsor the Commemoration of Twenty Years of Economic Co-operation Between Japan and China sponsored by the Chinese government in October 2000 was also expressed at the meeting37.
27 The LDP as a result approved only the two special yen loans projects and decided that other special loans would not be permitted. Furthermore, the September 7th meeting of the LDP came to a consensus to study a long-term China policy including economic co- operation38. The party expanded the object of reviewing ODA to include Japan’s China policy. The LDP held the first meeting of a small committee on evaluation of overseas
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co-operation to discuss the review. Keizo Takemi, a chairman of the committee, stressed a need to review Japan’s overseas co-operation: “To develop an item-by-item discussion on what our economic co-operation with China should be, contributes to deepening our general understanding of the nature of the Japan-China relationship”39. “Two reports” on the ODAAttempts to cool the criticism
28 Japan’s foreign ministry began to actively cool criticism of ODA to China from October 2000. This was necessary in view of China’s wish to sponsor the Commemoration of Twenty Years of Economic Co-operation Between Japan and China, and also for China’s premier Zhu Rongji’s visit to Japan in the same month. The commemoration ceremony sponsored by Chinese government was held in Peking on October 8th 2000. Chinese Councillor Wu Yi addressed the Commemoration stating at the ceremony “on behalf of the Government of China, I would like to express my gratitude to the Government of Japan for the support extended for the construction of the Chinese economy”. Zhu made reference to Japan’s role in furthering China’s economic modernisation to Mr Nonaka, the secretary-general of the LDP who had also joined the ceremony. Zhu also stated that China would strengthen publicity about Japan’s ODA to China and its gratitude to Japanese prime minister Mori when he visited Japan.
29 Muneo Suzuki, a deputy chairman of a special committee on overseas co-operation, reported the visit by the secretary-generals of the LDP to China at the panels on foreign affairs on October 11th 2000. He stressed the significance of the ODA to China by referring to Zhu’s remarks40. The Japanese foreign ministry also explained the scheduled visit to Japan by Zhu at the joint meeting. The ministry explained that the aim of Chinese Premier’s visit was to cement the Japan-China partnership of friendship and co-operation and to settle a series of troublesome issues such as the Chinese intelligence-gathering ships. After Zhu’s visit, the LDP convened foreign affairs and related panels on October 15th 2000. The Japanese foreign ministry explained the significance of Zhu’s visit to Japan as Japan-China friendship on the basis of the framework of prior notice41. The “Kamei remarks” and the amount of the ODA to China 30 With criticism of ODA to China cooling to some degree, the foreign ministry and the LDP began concrete discussions on conduct the reports. The fourth meeting of the Advisory Group was held at the end of September. Yutaka Iimura, Director-General of the Economic Co-operation Bureau of the foreign ministry, showed a proposal for the recommendations at the meeting. After this meeting, members of the group discussed mainly priority issues and focus areas of Japan’s ODA policy towards China as well as the current status of Japan-China relations and the outlook for the future.
31 A public concern about the recommendations of the advisory group was whether the amount of ODA to China would be reduced. Iimura at the fifth meeting of the advisory group remained deliberately vague, “the LDP is discussing Japan’s economic co- operation”, and “I feel it is difficult to conclude the recommendations without referring to the amount”42. Again, at the sixth meeting, he said that a focus of the recommendations was the amount of ODA to China. Tokyo Shimbun on October 18th 2000 reported in its morning paper that the government had made a decision to reduce by 10% to 20% the ODA to China. In response Iimura emphasised that any decision to reduce the ODA to China would be made by the Japanese government. “The government is now aiming to develop the Country Assistance Programme to China. We will
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settle a way of considering the amount during the development process”43. Although the Japanese foreign ministry felt it difficult to conclude a recommendation without referring to the amount, Iimura preferred not to make public the recommendations about cutting ODA to China because the ministry regarded the ODA as a “linchpin of Japan-China co-operation”.
32 Japan feared Chinese anger if it made public the reduction on the grounds of Chinese military and diplomatic issues44.
33 Yet, on November 9th 2000, Sizuka Kamei, the Chairman of the Policy Affairs Research Council of the LDP, suddenly proposed reducing the ODA budget across the board by approximately 30%. The foreign affairs and related panels of the LDP held on November 14th tabled the “Kamei Remarks” as a main agenda for discussion. At this meeting, the deputy-chairman Tanitsu explained that the remarks intended that ODA should consider public opinion, the economic and fiscal situation, and the national interest45. While a number of participants criticised the remarks for being unexpected and proposed without prior consultation, the majority supported review and reduction. Katsuto Asano, a parliamentary vice-minister of foreign affairs, stressed the importance of ODA as a “diplomatic tool” by stating, “Japan is a trading country. For our country, promoting world peace and the free trade system contributes to our national interest. The aim of expending ODA is right”.
34 At the end of November 2000, the advisory group concluded an original plan of the recommendations and reported it at a joint meeting on foreign affairs of the LDP on November 29th. The group and the foreign ministry considered how to determine the amount of ODA to be offered to China, as well as six focus areas in economic co- operation with China, making the deciding factor for the level of ODA comprising of yen loans, grant aid and technical co-operation the so-called “projects accumulation formula”, but without previous levels being a prerequisite in this decision. In other words, according to the final recommendations by the advisory group, “while responding to new requirements to aid in China, it is appropriate to examine and implement each individual project requested, with a focus on the priority areas and issues as outlined in the following section, taking into consideration the severe economic and fiscal situation Japan currently faces”46.
35 Paying attention to this original plan of the recommendations and the so-called “projects accumulation formula”, the evening edition of Nikkei Shimbun on November 29th and the morning edition of Asahi Shimbun and Sankei Shimbun on November 30 th reported that the government would reduce the amount of ODA to China47. Yutaka Iimura stressed that the foreign ministry was considering the “projects accumulation formula” in a round-table discussion with the press on November 30th 2000. He explained that the amount of ODA to China could increase and decrease on the basis of the “projects accumulation formula”48.
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Graph 2: Good sino-Japanese relations ?
Source: Naikakuhu Ddijinkanbou kouhoushitsu (Japanese prime minister’s office), Gaiko ni kansuru yoronchos (A poll on diplomacy), October 2002. Available from the homepage of the Japanese prime minister’s office (http://www8.cao.go.jp/survey/h14/h14-gaikou/images/zu05.gif).
“Recommendations” and “generalisation and guidelines”
36 Responding to the Kamei remarks, a joint meeting on foreign affairs of the LDP held on December 7th 2000 discussed the ODA budget for the fiscal year of 2001 and came to a consensus to conclude a report on Japan’s economic co-operation to China. The December 7th meeting was led by the representative Muneo Suzuki who had become a deputy-chairman of the special committee on overseas economic co-operation owing to the fact that Chairman Seishiro Eto had been transferred to a parliamentary vice- minister of foreign affairs and drastic criticism was dormant49. The importance of the economic co-operation to China was agreed on the whole, with “some problems” referring to a series of criticisms50. The leaders of the ruling parties agreed on a position built by the ruling parties’ project team to scale reductions in the ODA budget51. Japan’s ruling LDP demanded in a top-level meeting of the government and the ruling parties that the loan be cut by more than 3%, to meet this scale52. The Small Committee concluded an original plan for the Guidelines in the first week of December 2000, and Chairman Keizo Takemi reported the original plan at the LDP’s foreign affairs and related panels on December 15th. The joint meeting basically agreed on the original plan though two passages noting Japan’s co-operation with Chinese agriculture and forestry were amended53.
37 The Guidelines says in their introduction, “ODA is an aid which comprises a part of Japan’s co-operation (with China)”. The PLD had reviewed not only Japan’s ODA to China but also a series of “co-operation” policies: an untied loan by the former Export- Import Bank of Japan (JEXIM); the use of Japanese public funds supplemented by NEDO to subsidise environmental protection in China. The report also insists that “aid and co- operation” to China provided by these funds have achieved the basic goal, which was stated to be to “develop the (Japan-China) economic relationship focusing on the private sectors”. The report highlighted the necessity for “an ongoing evaluation” of
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ODA to China based on public opposition to its continuation revealed by the review process. According to the report such an evaluation would cover security issues. The LDP thus clearly positioned ODA to China not merely as “aid” but as an integral part of Japan’s foreign and security policy54.
38 On the other hand, the Advisory Group had its final (9th) meeting on December 15th 2000, when the chairman Isamu Miyazaki, special advisor to Daiwa Institute of Research (former minister of state for the Economic Planning Agency), handed in the recommendations for the coming five-year term to foreign minister Kono55. Although the Group “conducted a comprehensive review of Japan’s ODA to China, begun in 1979 on a cumulative basis, the subject of the review was actually only “ODA to China in the Twenty-First century”. The recommendations clearly state that, “even as Japan continues to extend ODA to China, efforts should be made to ensure co-ordination with other types of public funds and also with private-sector capital in order to ensure even greater efficiency and effectiveness in achieving the goals of Japan’s co-operation with China”, but the subject of the review is limited to ODA to China in general. The recommendations consider the aim of extending ODA to China in the late 1970s as being “from the view that supporting China’s opening and reform policy would promote the stability and prosperity not only of Japan, but also of the Asian region and the world as a whole”, and stressed the need to “encourage China’s enhanced participation in the international community and to assist it in progressing towards open society through such assistance” (ODA). They make no reference to the degree of achievement of the aims set in the starting point to extend the ODA to China.
39 The recommendations do highlight putting ODA to practical use. On China’s assistance to third countries, about which the Japanese foreign ministry did not forward any views of its own, the recommendations clearly position its aim to be to promote multilateral co-operation in East Asia: “Japan and China have agreed to the establishment of a new partnership through which they will move beyond the stage of bilateral “good-neighbourliness and friendship” and they will co-operate to resolve various issues facing the East Asian region and the entire international community. In fostering this partnership, it is extremely important to also achieve concrete results through ODA. For example, Japan promotes a so-called South-South co-operation, through which it works together with nations such as Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand to assist other developing countries. Similarly, together with China, Japan should co-operate in assistance to third party countries in Africa and elsewhere. For example, by making use of the achievements that Japan has made in focused support for human resources development centres such as the Japan-China Friendship Hospital”.
40 THE CHINESE gave no negative reaction to the series of Japanese discussions on the review of ODA to China. Regardless of China’s positive attitude to ODA, Japan’s move towards reviewing its ODA to China was inevitable. This may imply a discrepancy in the evaluation of Chinese status by the LDP and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
41 Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs is doing all it can to preserve ODA to China as a diplomatic tool of its engagement policy, explaining that China is still a developing country where the priorities are poverty alleviation, environmental protection, and so on. The Japanese foreign ministry does not deny that China is an “emerging power”, yet in the foreseeable future China will remain a developing country needing economic assistance from Japan. The Japanese foreign ministry has not expressed the standard
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neither to the LDP nor to the Japanese public, by which China would graduate to become a developing country.
42 According to Japan’s 2001 Economic Co-operation Programme for China, “China achieved an average real GDP growth rate of 9.6% a year in the twenty-one-year period from 1979 to 1999, and emerged as the seventh largest country in the world in terms of GDP”. It may be understood from this that Japan’s ODA contributed greatly to the growth of the Chinese economy. In response to this situation of an “emergent China”, Japan-China relations are no longer able to be labelled as being between “donor-recipient countries”. The LDP has as a result required the foreign ministry to change the title of the new ODA plan from Country “Assistance” Programme to Economic “Co-operation” Programme, because the party does not evaluate China as a developing country that needs economic assistance from Japan. That is, the Japanese foreign ministry reviewed conditions in order to extend ODA to China as a developing country and the LDP began a review of the whole of Japan’s policy to China as an emerging power.
43 It is hard to deny the importance of developing a stable and co-operative relationship with China. The LDP asked, what sort of future scenarios with China would be desirable for Japanese national interests. Based on this, the party tried to develop a new national policy towards China as an “emerging power” focusing on economic co-operation. The foreign ministry must therefore reconsider not only ODA but also its policy towards China in the near future. Since Japanese prime minister Keizo Obuchi and Chinese president Jiang Zemin now share a common view, the basic framework of Japan-China relations have already shifted from one of mutual “good neighbour and friendship” to a new “partnership of friendship and co-operation” for peace and development in Asia56. Asian countries as well, hope both countries will contribute to Asian peace and development in an age of globalisation. In both Japan and China, however, public support for a new partnership seems fragile. What response officials in Tokyo and Peking will give after the review of Japan’s ODA to China must be a test case for whether Japan-China relations can move beyond the stage of “good neighbour and friendship” to a new partnership and whether the Japanese government can rebuild public support for it.
NOTES
1. “Ohira souridaijin no chugokuhomon ni kansuru kyodo shimbun happyo”(Joint press communiqué on Prime Minister Ohira’s visit to China), December 7th 1978, in Gaimusho (Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs) ed., Waga gaikou no kinkyo (Blue paper on Japan’s Foreign Policy), Vol. 24, 1980, pp. 422-424. 2. Japanese foreign ministry, Economic Co-operation Programme for China (October 2001). Available from the homepage of Japanese foreign ministry (http://www.mofa.go.jp/ policy/oda/region/e_asia/China-2.html). 3. See for example, Peter Van Ness, “Understanding Japan’s ODA as International Sanctions: The Case of Sino-Japanese Relations”, in Tatsuro Matsumae and Lincoln C.
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Chen eds., In Pursuit of Common Values in Asia: Japan’s ODA Charter Re-evaluated, Tokyo, Tokai University Press, 1997, pp. 195-213. 4. Yomiuri Shimbun (editorial), October 14th 2000. 5. “Kessaisho: nijuisseiki nimuketa taichu keizai kyoryoku no arikata ni kansuru kondankai no secchi ni tsuite”(A sanction paper: the setting up of the Advisory Group on Japan’s Economic Co-operation to China in the 21st Century), (Sanction day: May 11th 2000). The author claimed the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs made public the sanction paper on April 2nd 2001. The ministry decided to make public it on May 2nd 2001 (Claim number: 2001-00170). The Country Assistance Programme to China was settled and released at the end of October 2001, but the title was changed to the Plan of Economic Co-operation to China based on the request by the LDP 6. The Country Assistance Programme to China was drafted and announced on October 22nd 2001 by the Japanese foreign ministry. Yet the title of the programme changed to the “economic co-operation plan to China” based on LDP’s request. 7. Chugoku kunibetsu enjo kenkyukai hokokusho(Dai ni ji) (Final report by the second study group on country assistance to China), (Tokyo: Okurasho Insatsukyoku, February 1999), pp. 31-62. 8. Gaimusho (Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Waga kuni no seifu kaihatsu enjo no jisshijokyo: senkyuhyakukyujukyu nendo ni kansuru hokoku (annual report of official development assistance: the fiscal year of 1999), Tokyo, Okurasho Insatsukyoku, October 2000, p. 36. 9. Gaimusho keizai kyoryo kukyoku (the Economic Co-operation Bureau of Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs) ed., Wagakuni no seifukaihastuenjo (Japan’s official development assistance), first volume, Tokyo, Kokusai suishin kyoukai, 2001, p. 70. 10. Sourifu Naikakusoridaijin kanbo kohoshitsu (Japanese prime minister's office), Gaiko ni kansuru seronchosa (A poll on the diplomacy), October 1997, pp. 49-50. 11. Yomiuri Shimbun (editorial), May 22nd 2000. 12. Sourifu Naikakusouridaijin kanbo kohoshitsu ed., ibid., pp. 69-70. See, Yoshihisa Komori, “Machigaidarake no taichu enjo” (Japan’s aid toward China with a number of mistakes), Chuho Kouron, Vol. 115, No. 4, May 2000, pp. 94-109. 13. The following four points are stated as principles in implementing ODA: 1) Environmental conservation and development should be pursued in tandem; 2) Any use of ODA for military purposes for aggravation of international conflicts should be avoided; 3) Full attention should be paid to trends in recipient countries’ military expenditures, their development and production of weapons of mass destruction and missiles, and their exports of arms; and 4) Full attention should be paid to efforts to promote democratisation and the introduction of a market-oriented economy, as well as the situation regarding the securing of basic human rights and freedoms in the recipient countries (Cabinet Decision on June 30th 1992). 14. Kanpou (gougai): dai hyakuyonjunana kai kokkai shugiin gaimu iinkai kiroku (Gazette (extra volume): the minutes of the House committee on foreign affairs, 147th Diet), No. 2, March 22nd 2000, pp. 3-4. 15. “Denshin dai senyonhyakurokujuichi: taichu enshakkan” (“official telegram, No. 1461: Yen Loan to China”), (March 27th 2000), and “FAX koshin F dai sanzenroppyakuhachijuroku gou: taichu ensyakkan” (FAX (F- No. 3686): Yen Loan to China), May 14th 2001. The author claimed the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs made public the telegram and fax on May 8th 2001. The ministry decided to make public them on June 1st 2001(Claim number: 2001-01029).
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16. Sankei Shimbun, March 30th 2000. 17. Sankei Shimbun, May 14th 2000; Sankei Shimbun, July 17th 2000. 18. Kanpou (gougai): dai hyakugoju kai kokkai sangiin honkaigi kaigiroku (Gazette (extra volume): the minutes of the plenary session of the House of Councillors, 150th Diet), No. 2, September 26th 2000, p. 10. 19. “Denshin dai sengohyakuju go: taichu musho shikin kyoryoku” (A telegraph, No. 1510: grant assistance to China), March 29th 2000. The author claimed the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs made the telegram public on May 8th 2001. The ministry decided to make it public on June 1st 2001 (Claim number: 2001-01028). See also Sankei Shimbun, March 30th 2000. 20. Yomiuri Shimbun, May 11th 2000. 21. Asahi Shimbun, May 12th 2000; Mainichi Shimbun, May 13th 2000. 22. “Nijuich seiki ni muketa taichu keizai kyoryoku no arikata ni kansuru kondankai: dai ni kai kaigo, kiroku” (The advisory group on Japan’s economic co-operation to China in the 21st century: the minutes of the second meeting). The author claimed the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs made public the minutes on April 2nd 2001. The ministry decided to make them public on May 2nd 2001 (Claim number: 2001-01001). 23. Boei kenkyusyo (The national institute for defence studies) ed., Higashi aziya senryaku gaikan, 2001 (East Asian security review 2001), Tokyo, Boeicho Boei Kenkyusho, 2001, pp. 153-155. 24. Yomiuri Shimbun, June 20th 2000. 25. Sankei Shimbun, June 20th 2000. 26. Yomiuri Shimbun (evening edition), July 29th 2000. 27. Nikkei Shimbun, August 3rd 2000. 28. Author’s interview with Yasuhisa Shiozaki, a member of LDP and the House of Representatives, Tokyo, May 10th 2000. 29. Tokyo Shimbun(evening edition), August 9th 2000. 30. Nikkei Shimbun, August 3rd 2001. 31. Sankei Shimbun, August 9th 2000; Asahi Shimbun, August 9th 2000. 32. Nikkei Shimbun (evening edition), August 9th 2000; Tokyo Shimbun (evening edition), August 9th 2000. 33. Jiyu Minshu (A bulletin of the LDP), No. 1970, September 5th 2000. 34. Asahi Shimbun (evening edition), August 24th 2000. 35. Tokyo Shimbun(evening edition), August 9th 2000. 36. Asahi Shimbun, September 8th 2000. 37. Author’s interview with Yasuhisa Shiozaki, a member of the LDP and the House of Representatives, Tokyo, May 10th 2000. 38. Jiyu Minshu, No. 1972, September 19th 2000. 39. Jiyu Minshu, No. 1973, September 26th 2000. 40. Jiyu Minshu, No. 1977, October 24th 2000. 41. Jiyu Minshu, No. 1978, October 31st 2000. 42. “Nijuich seiki ni muketa taichu keizai kyoryoku no arikata ni kansuru kondankai: dai go kai kaigo, kiroku ” (The advisory group on Japan’s economic co-operation to China in the 21st century: the minutes of the fifth meeting). The author claimed the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs made public the minutes on April 2nd 2001 (claim number: 2001-01001). 43. “Nijuichi seiki ni muketa taichu keizai kyoryoku no arikata ni kansuru kondankai: dai roku kai kaigo, kiroku ” (“the advisory group on Japan’s economic co-operation to
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China in the 21st century: the minutes of the sixth meeting”) The author claimed the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs made public the minutes on April 2nd 2001, (claim number: 2001-01001). 44. Ibid. 45. Jiyu Minshu, No. 1982, November 28th 2000. 46. “Nijuichi seiki ni muketa taichu keizai kyoryoku no arikata ni kansuru kondankai teigen” (The recommendation by the advisory group on Japan’s economic co-operation to China in the 21st century), December 2000. Available from the homepage of Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, http://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/gaiko/oda/seisaku/ seisaku_1/sei_1_13_4.html. 47. Nikkei Shimbun (evening edition), November 29th 2000; Asahi Shimbun, November 30th 2000; Sankei Shimbun, November 30th 2000. Yomiuri Shimbun on November 30th reported, “The recommendation will not refer to the reduction according to the ‘projects accumulation formula’”. 48. Author’s interview with a reporter for Nikkei Shimbun, Tokyo, May 8th 2001. 49. Mainichi Shimbun, December 8th 2000. 50. Jiyu Minshu, No. 1985, December 19th 2000. 51. Mainichi Shimbun, December 9th 2000; Sankei Shimbun, December 9th 2000. 52. Yomiuri Shimbun, December 13th 2000. 53. “Juni gatsu jugo nich: Chugoku ni taisuru keizai enjo oyobi kyoryoku no sokatsu to shishin torimatome to happyo” (The concluding and announcement of the generalisation and guidelines on economic aid and co-operation with China). Available from Councillor Keizo Takemi’s homepage at: http://www.takemi.net/cont/news/ cont_main.html; Asahi Shimbun, December 16th 2000. 54. Taigai keizai kyoryoku tokubetsu iinkai keizai kyoryoku hyoka shoiinkai (the small committee on the evaluation of economic co-operation in the special committee on overseas economic co-operation), “Chugoku ni taisuru keizai enjo oyobi kyoryoku no sokatsu to shishin”(The Guidelines), December 15th 2000. Available from the homepage of the Liberal Democratic Party at http://www.jimin.or.jp/jimin/saishin00/pdf/ seisaku-033.pdf. 55. “Nijuichi seiki ni muketa taichu keizai kyoryoku no arikata ni kansuru kondankai teigen no happyo ni tsuite” (On publication of the recommendation by the advisory group on Japan’s economic co-operation to China in the 21st century), December 2000. Available from the homepage of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs at: http:// www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/gaiko/oda/seisaku/seisaku_1/sei_1_13_1.html. 56. “Japan-China Joint Declaration On Building a Partnership of Friendship and Cooperation for Peace and Development”, November 26th 1998. Available from the homepage of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs at: http://www.mofa.go.jp/ region/asia-paci/china/visit98/joint.html.
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Economy
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The Economic and Social Impact of GMOs in China
Zhang Tao et Zhou Shudong
1 The use of modern biotechnology to create genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is allowing our main food agricultural crops to be altered in ways that were not believed possible even by specialists who took part in the green revolution only decades ago. Agriculture and food production are going through another revolution, the current technology of moving individual genes through biotechnology—genetic engineering. Plants and animals have been modified to resist pests and diseases. Even though agricultural biotechnology has rapidly improved, its deployment and impact are a matter of some controversy. In China, genetic engineering is seen as a possible way of boosting China’s food security, and lessen the impact of industrialization, which diminishes the availability of agricultural land.
2 However, GMOs have also attracted criticism and concern with regard to the safety of consuming them, the environmental impact of growing genetically modified plants, and the social ethics of using this technology. The champions of biotechnology such as Monsanto and the Biotechnology Industry Organisation see agricultural biotechnology as a tool to help solve problems of hunger and excessive pesticide use. The critics of biotechnology say that plant biotechnology is not needed, is a risk to consumers’ health, only fattens the profits of companies such as Monsanto, and will reduce biodiversity. The controversy is of particularly importance to China as a developing country that has not yet decided whether or not to allow the wide use of GMOs. China has in fact just allowed the wide planting of Bt cotton (Bacillus thuringiensis) which is not an edible plant.
3 The aim of this paper is to measure the ramifications of the use of GM products for society and for the economy in China. Production and research of GM plants in China 4 China has greatly increased its crop production after the 1970s through an increased use of agricultural chemicals.
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5 The greater use of pesticides certainly has helped China raise production. It has also had a number of adverse consequences. Pesticides pose a serious danger to soil and water quality and thus to the agro-ecosystem. The negative effects and social costs in some cases may exceed the cost of purchasing the pesticides. Acknowledging the negative effects of excessive pesticide use, China’s government has made efforts to regulate pesticide production, marketing and application since the 1970s. Real reductions in the use of pesticides may have to depend on alternative approaches, such as the adoption of the host-plant resistant varieties. As a result, China has followed the example of the United States and started developing crops genetically engineered to be resistant to major pests.
6 Since the early 1980s, China has led about 130 projects focusing on GMOs, covering more than one hundred kinds of genes, including 47 kinds of plants, four kinds of animals and 31 kinds of microbes. China was the first country in the world to begin growing GM crops commercially, starting with virus-resistant tobacco plants in 1988. In recent years, the Chinese Government has given continuous and increasing support to the biotechnology research programme and actively enhancing research in agricultural biotechnology. Currently, more than one hundred laboratories across the country are researching the gene sequences of crops, animals and humans. This means 90% of China’s field trials targeting pest and disease resistance. From 1991 to 2002 six or so GMOs have been approved for commercial use related to tomato, sweet pepper, cotton, tobacco and petunia growing1. The Ministry of Agriculture has also granted more than six licences for their commercial production including two for bollworm-resistant cotton, two for slow-ripening and virus-resistant tomatoes, and one each for sweet pepper and petunias. In China’s new Five-Year Plan for 2001-2005, the government will focus further on the commercialisation of scientific innovations, especially genetic engineering.
7 Currently, China accounts for more than half of the developing world’s investment in plant biotechnology. However compared with the developed world whose spending is about US$2 to $3 billion, China’s spending has been relatively small. While in other parts of the world most plant biotechnology research projects are privately financed, those in China are financed largely by the government. In 1999, China’s total expenditure on plant biotechnology was estimated to be US$112 million2. China’s biotechnology research budget in 2001 was triple the budget of US$120 million in 2000. Furthermore, Chinese officials have announced that the budget for such research will be increased by as much as 400% before 2005.
8 Meanwhile, increases in China’s agricultural biotechnology research staff have been among the greatest in developing countries. There are about one hundred and fifty laboratories at the national and local level located in more than fifty research institutes and universities across the country working on agricultural biotechnology. The number of scientists and professional staff rose from 740 in 1986 to 1,988 in 19993. There has also been a marked improvement in the formal education and training of those engaged in biotechnology research.
9 Rice being the most important crop in China, in 1997 China’s researchers began using AC/DS transposons and T-DNA insertion methods to create rice mutagenesis pools. And in 2001, the China Academy of Sciences initiated a major research programme to develop rice varieties that include Bt and CpTI genes, which are resistant to the stem borer (Chilo suprasselis), and Xa21 genes which are resistant to plant-hopper
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(Nilaparvata lugens) and bacterial leaf blight. At present, the herbicide-resistant rice (barsta—transgenic bacterial-blight-resistant rice) developed by China has passed the environment safety evaluation release stage and is ready for production testing, and is at the stage of field experimentation. The China Academy of Science’s 2003 programme will develop and analyse new genes to find those that can produce rice varieties with a high yield and of high quality. At the same time, scientists will develop the study of the Single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) of China rice resources and set up the rice gene databank. In 2004, the project will develop and patent 1,000 rice genes. Other projects include the study of genes of long-grained rice. Recently, some varieties of genetically modified rice have been tested in experimental fields regulated by the Ministry of Agriculture—Waxy rice, Bar rice and Xa21 rice, inserted with the new Waxy, Bar and Xa21 genes—and which have undergone at least three years of environmental release trials. The China National Rice Research Institute in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, is spearheading the research, opting to engineer rice plants that produce higher yields and high quality rice and which are more drought- and pest-resistant. In 2001, a herbicide-resistant GM rice was approved for release and began selling on a trial basis in several counties (xian) in eastern Zhejiang province.
10 In corn research, pest-resistant transgenic corn and corn with a high lysine content have undergone small-scaled experiments. As for soybean research, the transgenic aphis-resistant soybean and soybean-moth-resistant transgenic Bt soybean have been approved for environmental release. In addition, China has implemented in recent years some important programmes to develop industries centred around high technologies, such as the development of genetically engineered vaccine production. With respect to applying GMO research achievements in agriculture as soon as possible, from 1997 to 2001, the Ministry of Agriculture approved ten genetically modified plants for field environment release, among them, rice, corn, cotton, soybean, rape, potato and a poplar tree. Jiangsu, an important province for field trials and environment release, undertook the testing and evaluation of 27 kinds of GMOs including plants, animals and microbes.
11 With regard to the research on cotton, the only GMO crop largely cultivated in China, 45 improved varieties have been approved for environment release. Of these, 13 varieties, including GK19 and Zhongmian 38, have been examined by the national government and confirmed as pest-resistant, high-yielding and quality cotton varieties. These have been put into production in 12 provinces, their growing area being over 600,000 ha. in 2001.
12 Among them, Bt cotton is the most extensively grown transgenic crop in China today: Bt cotton accounts for one fourth of China’s total cotton production. As early as 1991, the biotechnology research centre of the China Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) initiated a research programme to develop cotton varieties resistant to cotton bollworms. By 1993 the first successful genetically modified cotton variety was produced in China. Four years later, the Ministry of Agriculture approved the commercial use in nine provinces of cotton varieties that were genetically modified with a Bt gene to produce the toxin that kills bollworms. Monsanto introduced an American variety that had been genetically engineered. At the same time, the Institute of Biotech Research of CAAS introduced and extended four local cotton varieties that were engineered to include the Bt gene. An estimated one million hectares of Bt cotton were planted in China in 1999. Bt cotton plants have provided a 60%~80% decrease in
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the use of foliar insecticides. Bt cotton growers in Shandong province earned US$930 per ha in 1998, more than for non-Bt varieties.
13 To examine the impact of biotechnology on the production of cotton, we collected our own set of data in 2001 in Jiangsu province4 and compared them with data collected in 1999 and 2000 in Shandong and Hebei. In the short term, the economic result of Bt cotton is more effective than ordinary cotton. The major differences between Bt cotton and non-Bt cotton production is in the use of pesticides and the high yield of Bt cotton. From data collected by CAAS, Bt cotton farmers apply pesticide only 6.6 times per season compared to nearly 20 times per season by non-Bt cotton farmers, and on a per- hectare basis the pesticide use of non-Bt cotton production was more than five times higher than Bt cotton in terms of both quantity and expenditure in 1999. The data in tables showed that the use of Bt cotton substantially reduced farmers’ use of pesticides and increased their income. Farmers continued to spray for early season incidence of pests but could substantially reduce or eliminate their use of pesticides to control bollworm mid and late season. Some farmers reduced the number of times they sprayed from 30 to three times. However, from our own collected data in 2001, the difference between Bt cotton and non-Bt cotton production is not as large as the difference indicated by the data collected by CAAS.
14 One possible answer5 to this drop may be the different varieties of Bt cotton. In our survey we found that the yields of Bt cotton produced by the Monsanto corporation are higher those of Bt cotton produced by Chinese corporations and research institutes. There have been cases in Jiangsu province where some varieties of Bt cotton have shown a loss of their pest-resistant characteristics which has led to farmers threatening to indict the producers of these seeds. The difference in varieties and quality across Bt cotton seed could account for the as yet unexplained drop in net income for Bt cotton between 2000 and 2001 (see tables 1,2 & 3). Food safety and trade 15 Although many articles state that there is no evidence that genetically modified foods are not safe to eat, this also implies that there is no evidence that GM foods are safe to eat. The main concerns are the potential toxicity, allergenicity, lack of nutritional content and the safety of the newly introduced proteins. To provide a reasonable certainty that no harm will result, several types of data and long-term studies are required. Some simple experiments and tests have attempted to demonstrate that the protein in GM foods breaks down into small peptides or amino acids in in vitro- digestion. However, the tests provide no information on toxicity and the result from the aggregate exposure to these proteins.
16 An experiment reinforced recent concerns about the possible adverse health effects after exposure to transgenic foods. In this case, Losey, Raynor and Carter reported that Bt corn, a kind of GM plant, may be a hazard for monarch butterfly larvae6. They deposited some unspecified Bt corn pollen onto milkweed leaves and made the larvae feed on these leaves. After a four-day period, the researchers found a lower survival rate of larvae feeding on leaves deposited with Bt pollen than larvae feeding on control leaves without pollen. Although this report only used monarch butterfly larvae as its target organism, it indicated that GM foods might be pose a potential health risk to humans. Even specialists who support the spread of GM foods have noted that it is impossible to provide assurance of absolute-zero risk because of the inadequacy of methods to screen for toxicity and allergenicity. Hence, the importance and need to
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understand the various effects of deployment of GM foods on human health. A traditional risk assessment for GM foods involves four steps, hazard identification, dose-response evaluation, exposure assessment and risk characterisation. Although scientists may assert that risk assessments are needed for decisions, they are not easily explained to the general public. The elemental debate about the use of genetic engineering includes food safety and human health which is an essential issue in this debate.
17 In recent years Europeans in particular have become increasingly worried about food safety. Since the outbreak of mad-cow disease in 1996, the occurrence of dioxin- contaminated Belgian chickens and the later recall of contaminated cans of Coca-Cola in France and the Benelux nations, health officials have grown fussier about what their citizens consume. Even though the EU has approved the sale of around eighteen GM products since 1990, it has as yet banned the importation of non-approved GM corn. The resistance to GM production also led to a de facto moratorium on authorisation of new releases of GMOs in western Europe. Before the imposition of the moratorium, releases of GMOs were reviewed on a case-by-case basis and had to be confirmed at every step. The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, ratified? in Montreal on 29 January 2000, have added to a future trade dispute about GMO products. The Biosafety Protocol not only confirms the rights of signatory countries to set their own domestic regulations, but also allows each country to decide whether and under what conditions it will accept imports of GMO products. These import restrictions could apply to GMO products intended as food or for processing. Not only did the EU as a rich region, and Japan as a developed country seek import restrictions, some developing countries supported them. However, an essential aspect of the Biosafety Protocol, which is open to interpretation, is its relationship with the WTO agreements. Ostensibly, the Protocol’s objective of protecting human health from the potential risk of GMO products is consistent with the WTO agreements, which acknowledges the necessity of enforcing trade-restricting measures to protect human health and public safety. But the key goal of the WTO is to achieve reasonable and effective use of the world’s resources by reducing barriers to international trade. Members of the WTO are also bound under other WTO agreements that restrict trade measures that can be applied to restrict imports which can include GMOs. Now, with the decreasing use of such methods as tariffs and quantitative restrictions against imports, the technical barriers to trade are increasing. Although the WTO agreements aim at ensuring that technical measures are no more restrictive than necessary to meet objectives, they are used unduly in some cases. Moreover, currently, there are no strict international standards for GMO products, a situation that may lead to trading disputes. Most countries consider the need for developing standards for their own reasons and interests in consultation with other relevant international bodies such as the FAO and OECD. The US government views GM corn portents in foods as mere additives and thus does not require the Food and Drug Administration to approve them. Instead, it subjects them to a less formal review, a relatively low high bar that is easy to clear. However, the EU views GM products as a potential hazard to human health. These different attitudes and approaches to regulating GMO products and the absence of international standards mean trade disputes and barriers with regard to GMO products are a distinct possibility. Essentially, some countries in the Biosafety Protocol acknowledge that the lack of scientific evidence concerning potential adverse effects of GMOs cannot prevent
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them from stipulating stricter measures to restrict the import of GMOs for their possible risks. This could in so many words be saying “better safe than sorry”.
Table 1: Data for Shandong in 1999 (yuan/ha)
Source: CAAS
Table 2 : Data for Hebei in 2000 (yuan/ha)
Source: CAAS
Table 3 : Data for Jiangsu in 2001 (yuan/ha)
Source : author’s survey.
18 China tends to restrict imports of GMO products, even though it has itself been planting GM cotton for the past five years. Given that Bt cotton plants produce plant fibres which are not for consumption, they do not pose a direct potential hazard to human health. With the risk of trade disputes, China, as a member of the WTO needs to assess the economic stakes where GMO products are concerned. Japan and South Korea now import Chinese ordinary soybeans instead of GM soybeans from the US. The economic stakes are how large the potential gains from widespread adoption of GMO in China could be, and how much China might lose if it accepted the widespread adoption of GMOs. Scientific evidence is not sufficient to constitute a basis upon which policy decisions can be made. In such cases, China as a member of the WTO can restrict imports of GMO products on the basis of available information. The principle of precautionary measures is a pertinent approach to uncertainties about genetically modified products, but it can be used by domestic groups competing to import who
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want to protect themselves from international competition. Therefore, it is very difficult to assess whether a measure is reasonable or just a form of hidden protectionism. There are other factors that can influence the decision-makers. One is potential out-crossing from GM plants to other organisms. Some scientists state that there is a possibility of a GM plant’s traits being passed to related species. Importantly, the greater amount of pollen in commercial crops indicates a greater likelihood of cross-pollination by a GM plant. In the US, GM strains are mixed with ordinary strains very easily, so all US corn exports to Europe were effectively outlawed because of European restrictions on GM corn. The same also occurred in China when the ordinary corn exported to South Korea was found mixed with GM corn. In this trade case, South Korea discovered corn with GM corn traits perhaps contaminated by GM corn pollen. This case led to a stricter examination of China’s corn exports to South Korea. The Chinese government must now take this into account in order to keep its export regions open. Even though China has postponed implementing its stricter regulations on the import of GM products, it is balancing all these factors more carefully now. The Chinese government is currently applying further restrictions to the import of GMO food products including GM soybeans and GM corn(maize).
19 On May 23rd 2001, China issued the Regulations on the Safe Management of Agro-GMOs. The regulations now also govern research and experimentation, production, processing and operation as well as imports and exports. They stipulate that systems to ensure safety evaluation, labelling management production and operation licencing, as well as examination and approval for the safe importation of GMOs should be put in place. To ensure the implementation of the regulations the Ministry of Agriculture has adopted three supporting administrative measures. On January 5th 2002, the Ministry of Agriculture issued the Administration Measures on the Safety Evaluation of the Safety of Agro-GMOs, the Administration Measures on Safe Importation of Agro-GMOs, and the Administration Measures on the Labelling of Agro-GMOs, which came into force on March 20th 2002. The Ministry of Agriculture is responsible for the research in important issues relating to the administration of the safety of Agro-GMOs. The Ministry has also set up the Office for the Administration of the Safety of Agro-GMOs, to be responsible for this area of work. In order to meet the requirements for entering into the WTO and set a transparent and fair process of evaluation of the safety on Agro- GMOs and process for the application and approval of importation and labelling, the Ministry of Agriculture has formulated four normative documents, namely the Administration Procedures for the Evaluation of the Safety of Agro-GMOs, the Administration Procedures for Importation of Safe Agro-GMOs, the Certification and Approval Procedures for the Labelling of Agro-GMOs, and the Administration Procedures for the Temporary Certification of Agro-GMOs—these procedures were drafted to mollify the averse attitude of the US government and traders, and allow “temporary certification of imported GM products” by the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture in 30 days instead of 270 days. These four documents stipulate requirements and time limits for applications and official written replies. The new rules require all imported genetically modified soybeans, corn, rapeseed, cotton seed and tomatoes to be clearly labelled as genetically modified products. Furthermore, overseas firms that export genetically modified products to China must obtain certificates from China’s Ministry of Agriculture as verification that their goods are safe. However, the Administration Measures on the Labelling of Agro-GMOs have not been effective. Labels have not been found on such products throughout the market.
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20 Besides being seen as an undertaking on the part of the Chinese government of its responsibility to maintain biological diversity, and protect the ecological environment and people’s health, the above new rules regulating GMO agricultural imports are widely perceived to be non-tariff barriers to protect its farm sector from the impact of increased foreign imports and a result of the government’s fear that China’s inefficient soybean processing industry is expected to be hurt by membership of the WTO.
Table 4 : Consumer reactions to GM products (en %)
Source: author’s survey
21 China is one of the largest importers of US soybeans. However, the new regulations may mean a big drop in this import. China’s restrictions on GM soybeans have already had an impact on the importation of soybeans from the United States because 74%t of US soybeans are genetically modified. From March to August 2002, the import of US soybeans dropped sharply. At the same time, the domestic price of soybeans increased rapidly. The requirements have even halted imports of US soybeans to China in some months of 2002. Shipments of US soybeans to China were suspended since early February 2002, although they continued after July. Although an interim agreement negotiated by the US in March 2002 allowed a nine-month grace period for imports to continue, the US traders criticised the rules. Despite attempts at clarification, US traders still complain that the rules are not explicit or practical and demand more specific stipulations and clarifying explanations from the Chinese authorities. Furthermore, among the GMOs that must be labelled according to the Administration Measures on the Labelling of Agro-GMOs, China produces only Bt cotton seed and tomatoes. All other relevant products are imported. Thus, the regulations and the supporting measures may not greatly affect China’s domestic producers, but they will hurt US traders.
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22 Yet, even though the rules themselves might not lead to heavy demand for US soybeans, weak domestic prices in China for soybeans had squeezed crushing margins to almost nothing. China imported 10,420,000 tons of soybeans in 2002 (35.9% of China’s domestic consumption), and more than 40% of these were genetically modified. The very same year, with the halt of soybean imports, the price of soybeans in China rose to 2,200 yuan and even 2,500 yuan a ton, much higher than the price of imported US soybeans. Domestic demand may thus force China’s government to import even more soybeans. Society and ethics 23 Some individuals and institutes see GM products as an approach to help solve environmental problems and problems of hunger. China is a developing country with 1.3 billion people, and genetic engineering may be a way of increasing its food security. If China wants to avoid dependence on imported crops to satisfy future domestic food needs, it should invest heavily in biotechnology research including genetic engineering.
24 For a considerable period of time, the planned economy kept production efficiency low. Food was in constant short supply due to limited investment, and backward science and technology. The ability to utilise the international market was also limited due to the policy of self-sufficiency. Thus basic policy has been to instigate all possible forces to increase grain output and solve the food security problem in the long term. After more than two decades of reform and development, grain production conditions and capabilities have improved greatly. Furthermore, tremendous changes have taken place in the international environment. Economic globalisation is incorporating China into the international economic cycle. China has rapidly become industrialised, commercialised and integrated into the world economy. After becoming a member of the WTO, the Chinese government is attaching a great deal of importance to food safety. Economic reform has transformed China's economy, raising incomes and reducing incidence of poverty. That the rise in family incomes has improved the nutritional status of the Chinese is no better illustrated than by the increase in the average heights of school-age children, as measured in large-scale surveys since the late 1970s. The profound changes in the background of China’s food security demand changes in the understanding of food security and thus corresponding changes in strategy options and policies. At the same time, economic transformation has given rise to new patterns of social moral principles and values. These new social moral principles and values about biotechnology may be different from traditional Chinese ethics, in that a new form biotechnology that can lead to high crop productivity is not necessarily an acceptable one. The Chinese public now pays more attention to food quality than to quantity.
25 An area of study that influences the acceptability of biotechnology to the public can be called ethics consisting of a set of moral principles and values. Even though there are more disputes regarding biotechnology in the field of medicine than in agriculture and food sectors, GMOs trigger widespread controversy in world agriculture and food security. The Nuffield council in London conducted an examination of the ethical issues raised by newly developed biotechnology used in agriculture. It managed its discussion by three main ethical principles: The principle of general human welfare, the principle of people’s rights and the principle of justice. Conference delegates did not think there was enough evidence of actual or potential harm occasioned by GMOs to human health
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or to the environment. However they urged a public policy to guide and regulate the way genetic engineering technology can be applied to address public concerns. In China, the government has developed a safety committee for agricultural biological genetic engineering to handle the evaluation of the safety of laboratory experiments, environmental release and commercial production of agricultural biotechnology products. Regulations on the administration of the safety of agricultural GMOs signed by premier Zhu Rongji went into effect on June 7th 2001. The regulations require that GMO products are labelled. However, a survey on Chinese consumer attitudes to GMOs discovered that a large proportion of China’s public are uncomfortable with GMOs despite the presence of such strict regulations. The survey employed a scale which measured individual reactions to GMOs in China, and used responses from 200 men and women in Nanjing and rural areas around the city: 81.7% of people surveyed wanted to see labels on GMO products, 46.6% tended not to purchase GM corn due to the potential health risk it posed, and only 17.6% accepted GM corn for “low chemical residue”. The results of the survey also indicate that a large number of persons did not know that transgenetic food is potentially harmful to human health.
26 The results of this survey showed tendencies in public attitudes to GMOs in China. Apart from showing China’s consumers need more information about GMOs, it also indicated that GM foods probably will not become favourable products in China. If the government does decide to go further down the GM path, it must provide evidence that GM products pose no risk to human health.
27 THIS ARTICLE has explored the economic and social impact of GMO products in China. It looked at the economic effects of GMO plants, international trade in GMO products and public feeling about GMO products in China. The article also considered the impact of Bt cotton varieties on pesticide use, the effectiveness of pesticides on yields, and independent effect of the GM cotton on yields. It highlighted the great importance of market access if GMO producers are to exploit export opportunities, and looked at ethical issues and their impact on Chinese society. The article did not however provide any direct evidence of the impact of biotechnology on the Chinese food supply. Cotton and tobacco—the two crops in which China reportedly produces large volumes of genetically engineered crops—are not food crops. We could therefore provide no evidence that biotechnology has had a direct impact on food production in China so far, even though it has significantly influenced GM food importation policy.
NOTES
1. These data were provided by the the regulation project of the Environmental Protection Bureau of the Jiangsu provincial government. 2. Hang Jikun, Scott Rozelle, Carl Pray and Wang Qinfang, “Plant Biotechnology in China”, Science, Vol. 295, January 25th 2002, p. 675. 3. Ibid.
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4. The authors acknowledge the support of the Environmental Protection Bureau of the Jiangsu provincial government. 5. Another possible explanation for this discrepancy may be different survey methods. The data of the first and second tables were collected in a field survey by CAAS, while the data in the third table were collected by the author. Also the data on ordinary cotton do not correspond with those provided by the annual survey of the Price Bureau or other statistical yearbooks because the official data may include both genetic and non-genetic cotton. Most cotton in Shandong and Hebei provinces is Bt cotton and about 85.6% of cotton in Shandong province is Bt cotton in 1999. According to this data, the big gap between the data on the cost of pesticides in Table 2 and the data in the annual survey of the Price Bureau is explained by the average cost of pesticides which are similar to that for non Bt cotton. All the data in the tables was collected from the Bt cotton plant in China; see Carl E. Pray, Ma Danmeng, Huang Jikun and Qiao Fangbin, “The Impact of Bt Cotton in China”, World Development, Vol. 29, No. 5, May 2001, pp. 813-825. 6. John E. Losey, Linda S. Rayor and Maureen E. Carter, “Transgenic Pollen Harms Monarque Larvae”, Nature, No. 399, May 20th 1999, p. 214.
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Politics: Taiwan
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Selling Democracy: Diplomacy, Propaganda and Democratisation in Taiwan
Gary D. Rawnsley
We will strengthen our efforts in publicising Taiwan’s outstanding achievements in economic development and political democratisation to make the international community understand better the significant role we can play. Foreign Minister Dr Tien Hung-mao, June 5th 20011
1 The consolidation phase of democratic transition confronts Taiwan with a paradox: Taiwan is a vibrant democracy, but it is a democracy that is not considered a legitimate actor in the international system. How can Taiwan resolve this dilemma and project an image of itself to the international community that certifies it as a democracy deserving recognition? Finding a solution will not be easy, as the absence of diplomatic relations of any weight prevents Taiwan from meaningful political foreign engagements (Taiwan enjoys formal diplomatic relations with 27 governments, mainly in Central and South America and Africa). Taiwan is thus relegated to the fringe of international politics and is outside a framework of relations and decision-making that often has a direct impact on it. In theory, Taiwan can no longer be neglected, for political scientists have long argued that it is impossible to ignore democracies that base their sovereignty on a mandate conferred by the people through regular free and fair elections. However, political reality can be a cruel intrusion on such idealism, and drawing on these themes to appeal to international opinion or sense of justice risks falling on deaf ears. Taiwan has a population of around 23.5 million; it holds more elections than any other country except the United States and Switzerland, with voter turnout rates regularly surpassing 70%; and the ruling party accepted the legitimacy of its defeat in the 2000 election after fifty years in government. Yet Taiwan remains outside the United Nations. Moreover, Taiwan’s most important democratic diplomatic partners of the early 1990s severed relations with Taipei despite democratisation (South Korea in 1992; South Africa in 1997). Democracy, it seems, is not universally recognised as a mark of distinction, even by other democracies; the China-Taiwan competition for diplomatic allies suggests that international relations are still defined by strategic and
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geopolitical interests of states. This is the reality of Taiwan’s diplomacy, and it is within this framework that propaganda must compensate for Taiwan’s precarious international status. In short, Taiwan must, to paraphrase Leonard2, prove its relevance, and has decided to do so by profiting from the potential value of projecting its commitment to the democratic ideal.
2 This article is intended as an update of a discussion I started elsewhere3 before the 2000 election. The original research aimed to understand why and how Taiwan has engaged in propaganda—a component of what Joseph Nye has termed “soft” power—to reinforce what I described as “informal diplomacy”: Soft power works by convincing others to follow, or getting them to agree to, norms and institutions that produce the desired behaviour. Soft power can rest on the appeal of one’s ideas or the ability to set the agenda in ways that shape the preferences of others4.
3 So far, Chen Shui-bian’s election victory in 2000 has not had any significant impact on the construction or implementation of Taiwan’s foreign policy. As discussed below, his administration has identified a new set of policies and priorities, most of which extend rather than contest the pragmatic approach adopted by his predecessor. Democratic propaganda did not begin with Chen Shui-bian’s election in 2000. Indeed, the previous KMT administration demonstrated that it recognised the importance of soft power in its final years of presidential power. Foreign Minister Jason Hu spoke in 1999 of Taiwan’s “achievements in political democratisation, economic liberalisation and social pluralism” as being “in tune with international trends”. “This fine image should be recognised by the international community,” he said5.
4 A series of external events has presented new possibilities and challenges in equal measure for reactive (event-driven) propaganda, for example, the election of George W. Bush as President of the United States, and of course the terrorist attacks on Washington and New York in September 2001. The biggest opportunity is undoubtedly Taiwan’s membership of the World Trade Organisation, opening up the prospect of closer political ties across the Taiwan Strait as a by-product of greater economic interaction. Aims 5 The present discussion is interested in discovering how the completion of Taiwan’s transition to democracy has affected the propaganda that is designed to reinforce diplomacy activity, and suggests that democracy provides a new ideological context for understanding Taiwan’s propaganda behaviour. It has little to say about the consequences of any particular propaganda strategy, as measurement of effect is almost impossible. For example, the August 2002 issue of the Taipei Review (p. 37) reported that “the American view of Taiwan has tended to become more favourable as Taiwan has conducted democratic elections and fashioned a free-market economy. A recent Gallup poll showed that 62% of Americans had a favourable image of Taiwan, while 22% had an unfavourable view and 16% had no opinion. Two years ago, only 47% had a favourable view of Taiwan”. Leaving aside important questions of method—how many Americans were sampled? From where do they obtain their information about Taiwan? How are favourable and unfavourable defined?—the poll does not provide any explanation for these figures: is American opinion more favourable now because of Taiwan’s propaganda (which is highly unlikely) or because of the very act of democratisation that has been discussed in the media and among American political
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elites? Similarly, how can the competition between Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) for allies in the Third World be understood through propaganda? Certainly aid can be considered an act of propaganda—of the deed, often the most important kind6 that furthers Taiwan’s endeavours to raise its international profile—but most developing countries recognise the economic benefit of “renting” their allies and playing one China against the other. As Ian Taylor has observed, “it is probably true that most Africans do not care much who is the ‘real’ China or with whom official diplomatic ties should be established. ... However, astute state elites… have become conscious of the fact that the diplomatic competition between the two countries is a diplomatic spat that elites in economically depressed countries […] are able to profit from […]”7.
6 My professional analyses of international propaganda—from the BBC and the Voice of America in the Cold War, through Radio Moscow in the early 1990s, and on to Taiwan— have concentrated on understanding why actors experience the need to disseminate their policies, intentions, reactions, and in some cases ideologies, to a global audience. This level of analysis allows us to appreciate how political actors imagine themselves, and how they would like the rest of the world to reflect that image back to them. In many senses, there is a sensible argument that in Taiwan’s case the consequences of propaganda are insignificant, and that Taiwan’s international position relies less on any kind of power it may (or may not) have—soft or otherwise—and more on external factors that are beyond its control, for example American support. Presidents Nixon and Carter are judged responsible for Taiwan’s present isolation, while Clinton came extremely close to conceding the PRC’s sovereignty over Taiwan. George Bush Jr., on the other hand, has declared—much to the consternation of his advisers—he will do “whatever it takes” to help Taiwan defend itself8. These are not the result of propaganda, so why should we be concerned with how Taiwan projects itself to the international community?
7 My earlier work on Taiwan approached the relationship between propaganda and diplomacy through the lens of the unequal diplomatic contest between Taiwan and the PRC9, and this remains a valuable method: Even after Taiwan’s successful democratisation, this competition is still characterised by inequity in propaganda that matches the unequal competition in the political spheres; moreover, the competition is played out in the PRC’s favour because it receives the benefits of international recognition. I have proposed that this competition can be measured by: the level of public and political interest each side is able to generate according to their perceived international status; the ease of access that each can secure to the government machinery of third nation-states and multilateral forums, and the level at which this occurs; and similarly the volume of interest the players can generate within, and their access to, the media. My research has identified a positive correlation between the level of media interest and diplomatic profile: Japan’s ties with Taiwan improved through 1997 and 1998, and among the factors which contributed to the upgrading of relations is the increase in Japanese media coverage of Taiwan10. While I do not intend to revisit these debates in this paper11, it is worth reiterating that the unequal competition between the PRC and Taiwan makes propaganda an important diplomatic instrument that both governments ignore at their peril.
8 Moreover, democracy adds another problematic; democratic governments must appeal to public opinion and the electorate for support and consent for sometimes onerous
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political decisions and behaviour. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that domestic and international propaganda sometimes lack the consistency required for success—that they are addressing different constituencies with diverging and often competing interests, and this means the organisation, content and delivery of propaganda are in danger of falling out of synchronicity. Thus, while Taiwan’s democratisation offers more opportunities than pitfalls—the theme of this article—the risks associated with having to satisfy two different audiences remain. So, for example, the Chen administration has adopted a very bold stance towards the PRC and has tested to the limit what is and is not acceptable to Peking. Chen Shui-bian’s recent policy pronouncements that Taiwan and China are “one country on each side” of the Taiwan Strait (discussed below) demonstrate this; Chen is obviously appealing to his domestic constituency because he is having to carve out a political identity that is very distinct from his competitors as the race for the 2004 presidential election begins. Hence, Chen’s administration is transforming into a more pro-independence creature than it was at the time of his inauguration in May 2000. This stance, however, sits uneasily with the image that Taiwan is trying to project overseas and in the United States in particular—that Taiwan is a responsible member of the international community that will not provoke a war with the PRC. This is the price of democracy; authoritarian governments do not have to face these kind of problems, for they face no serious political challenge from within their borders. Hence, their domestic and international propaganda tend to appear far more consistent.
9 To proceed, we should be mindful of Gregg Wolper’s judgement that propaganda “remains the most useful term as long as readers understand that it does not imply the use of dishonest methods of false information, although it does not necessarily exclude them either” [emphasis added]12. Of course, we should not be at all surprised that the pejorative meaning of propaganda still resonates. After all, the twentieth century saw the most skilful application of propaganda in the service of totalitarianism. The association of propaganda with sinister pursuits guards the unwary against admitting that we are all indeed engaged in propaganda as much as we are its victims. Propaganda stands (erroneously) accused of manipulation, and we are naturally suspicious of any form of manipulation since it implies the secret exercise of power that is beyond scrutiny or control. In Philip Taylor’s colourful prose, propaganda is considered a “disease which somehow afflicts our individual and collective capacity to make up our own minds about what is happening in the world around us”.13
10 This attitude is infectious for it conditions how we view our involvement in propaganda: Diplomats representing Taiwan throughout the world continue to insist that “we” (Taiwan) do not engage in propaganda; rather, “we” tell the truth and simply provide factual information about our country. “They”—meaning the Chinese communists—engage in propaganda. It is, after all, the kind of insidious behaviour we expect from Communists. Popular opinion assumes that only others whose cause we repudiate do propaganda. However, academic research on the meaning and history of propaganda is more detached and reminds us that propaganda is merely an act of salesmanship, whether of an ideology, a particular political system, or a particular government/state14. Evidence accumulated from Nationalist China in the 1940s suggests that its diplomats accepted this definition and valued the contribution that propaganda can make to their work. Most enlightening are the papers of a former Nationalist Ambassador to the United States, Wellington Koo, currently archived at Columbia University in New York. These reveal that in 1949 he was advised to hire a
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prominent American public relations specialist whose clients had included an airline and Coca-Cola to promote and “sell” Nationalist China in the United States15. The significance of this cannot be overstated, for it reinforces our understanding of propaganda as an act of salesmanship: governments, policies and ideologies can packaged and sold in the same way that soap, dog food or any other commodity is branded and marketed.
11 The problem with accepting a pejorative definition of propaganda that is embedded in a disapproving or moralising discourse is that it positions Taiwan forever on the defensive. Unless actors accept that they engage in propaganda, they will never be in a position to understand fully how to do it properly and what it can achieve. It is unfortunate that the political competition with China has determined the propaganda strategies pursued in Taipei. As recently as 1999, the battle for international hearts and minds was structured around the disagreements between Taiwan and the PRC, and rhetoric in Taipei still resonated with Cold War symbolism. For example: The PRC has made great efforts to help its friends in Africa. Last year, its donations and loans to this region amounted to approximately US$500 million. During the first half of this year, high-ranking government officials of the PRC paid 20 visits to Africa. These developments demonstrate clearly its intention to contain our development in this region and sabotage our friendship with African allies16.
12 Moreover, the Chairman of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission, Chang Fu-mei, launched in 2002 an initiative designed to strengthen Taiwan’s propaganda among overseas Chinese communities. “In an apparent attempt to win the hearts of overseas Chinese, China has been going all out in promoting its propaganda overseas,” he said. “Thus it is the commission’s priority to comprehensively counter such efforts by Communist China”17. So in many respects, Taiwan’s propaganda is still organised around the out-dated Cold War rhetoric that was associated with Free China’s ideological and geo-strategic struggle with the Communist regime in Peking; and this is unfortunate because such reactive posturing is self-limiting and ultimately self- defeating. Not only does rebuttal—counter-propaganda—publicise the original message, but it also throws Taiwan onto the defensive, drowning out the positive themes that are more valuable. By resorting to the redundant Cold War reasoning that propaganda is something that only the communists in Peking do, Taiwan’s attitude is simply nourishing the popular attitude towards propaganda as something evil, thus inviting audiences to switch off from ALL forms of persuasion, including their own. Moreover, an unfavourable understanding of propaganda as a value-neutral activity overlooks how credibility, balance, objectivity, accuracy and a proclivity for providing only information and “the facts” are all used to sell a political message in much the same way that one might use more overt and familiar propaganda techniques. Nicholas Pronay branded this “propaganda with facts”18.
13 How does this relate to our understanding of diplomacy? Hans J. Morgenthau, the patriarch of realist international relations, defined diplomacy as the “promotion of the national interest by peaceful means”, and he reserves a special place in his Politics Among Nations for showing how communications and propaganda do play an integral role in the conduct of diplomacy and international relations: Regardless of the instrument employed, the ultimate aim of foreign policy is always the same: to promote one’s interests by changing the mind of the opponents. To that end, diplomacy uses the persuasiveness of promises and threats in terms of the satisfaction of the denial of interests; military force … [and] propaganda, the use
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and creation of intellectual convictions, moral valuations, and emotional preferences in support of one’s own interests. All foreign policy, then, is the struggle for the minds of men; but propaganda is so in the specific sense that it endeavours to mould the minds of men directly rather than through the intermediary of the manipulation of interests or physical violence19.
14 Diplomacy is about communication, persuasion and negotiation, and less about “war by other means”. This close association between the two activities implies that diplomats cannot, and should not, ignore the contribution that propaganda can make to their work. After all, as Peter Marshall has observed, diplomacy is about persuasion, not imposition20. Taiwan’s pursuit of soft-power 15 Diplomacy involves a specific type of propaganda that is conditioned by, but at the same time reinforces, the formal or informal nature of the diplomacy. Moreover, it works across a variety of time frames, as propaganda proceeds at a pace that is relative to both the objectives of the diplomacy and the diplomatic environment. Hence, the formation of foreign policy and the design of propaganda should not be considered discrete activities. Consistency is essential, with the propaganda reinforcing and serving specific diplomatic aims.
16 The foreign policy objectives of Chen Shui-bian’s government are21: National security and defending de facto Taiwan’s sovereignty; Strengthening bilateral relations with other democracies, especially in the Asia-Pacific region (the United States and Japan in particular), and integration in regional forums; Persuading the international community that Taiwan should be allowed to enter intergovernmental organisations, including the United Nations and all its agencies; Promoting friendly relations across the Taiwan Strait; Fostering democratisation in China; Linking Non-Governmental Organisations in Taiwan and elsewhere22; and Strengthening and promoting Taiwan’s democracy. This entails the repeated recitation of the so-called Taiwan “economic miracle”. It also means affirming that Taiwan has experienced an irreversible process of political and social transformation into the modern constitutional democracy that was envisaged by its founders in 1947.
17 The final aim informs all the others: fulfilling these diplomatic objectives will be impossible unless Taiwan can persuade the international community that it deserves serious attention because of its democratic credentials. While the story of Taiwan’s economic miracle is well known throughout the world23, its political transformation is less familiar. Hence, the Chen administration has made the projection of Taiwan’s democracy the cornerstone of its foreign policy: We are a vibrant democracy with full sovereignty. Unfortunately, we still find ourselves rejected by the international community ... We do not export arms, steal nuclear know-how, lob missiles over other countries, invade our neighbours, persecute scholars and religious worshippers, or violate human rights. We are isolated simply because of the fact of our proximity to our formidable neighbour across the Taiwan Strait. Moreover, unlike other pariah states, we have managed to develop and modernise our economy, and even to democratise our polity24.
18 In short, the Chen Shui-bian government is committed to a pro-active propaganda strategy organised around a single message that integrates Taiwan’s foreign policy interests and is value-driven: communicating the idea of democracy—that democracy is essentially “good”, facilitating peace and co-operation. This is a stark juxtaposition to the way Taiwan portrays the PRC—as a political system that should change; and that, as
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a democracy, Taiwan’s mission is to engineer that change. Hence, the aim of fostering democracy in the mainland is more than a flourish of political rhetoric for domestic consumption; it is designed to remind international audiences that the China they recognise as a legitimate member of the international system and accept as a member of the UN is not a democracy, and that the very idea of democracy can be a powerful tool for political change.
19 So, Taiwan is turning more to soft power to pursue its foreign policy interests and is assembling a long-term information strategy that avoids the sloganeering of the Cold War. This is illustrated in the conclusions of a meeting of President Chen and officials from the Presidential office, members of the Executive Yuan and the DPP held on September 8th 2002. The relevant propositions suggest the marriage by the democratic ideal of propaganda and diplomacy: set up a “Taiwan Democracy Foundation” to liase with democratic organisations in developed countries; push for the establishment of an Asia-Pacific democratic alliance to advance democracy in the region; use state-owned media outlets as a “voice of Taiwan” to promote democracy in the region; invite Chinese leaders to observe the upcoming elections in Taiwan and offer to help train election staff in China; push for the establishment of an “overseas Chinese democracy alliance” to win support from overseas Chinese and international friends; and reiterate the government’s position that only the 23 million people of Taiwan have the right to decide the future of the country and that they are entitled to democratic measures including a referendum to this end25.
20 The Chen administration has developed several innovative methods of pursuing its foreign policy objectives: “Democracy-based diplomacy”; “Human Rights-based diplomacy”; “Civilian-based diplomacy”; “Public Opinion-based diplomacy”; and “Inter- parliamentary diplomacy”. Officially launched in April 2002, the latter refers to the creation of relations between parliamentarians in Taiwan and other democracies. One member of Taiwan’s parliament, the Legislative Yuan, noted how “lawmakers— representing the opinions of the 23 million people in Taiwan—are the ideal choices to demonstrate the fruits of democracy and liberty by linking Taiwan to the international community”26. While Taiwan’s legislators have always been involved in this kind of diplomacy—Taiwan has been a member of the Asian-Pacific Parliamentarians’ Union since 1965—democratisation has given their participation in these activities more credibility, for directly elected parliamentarians representing the entirety of Taiwan’s political spectrum are now fully involved in their engagement with the international community. In other words, who better to promote Taiwan’s democracy than the democrats themselves?
21 In addition to being the product of the kind of creative mind that Taiwan’s diplomacy requires, these different methods share a foundation in the island’s democratic political system. They represent the attempt to demonstrate that in a democracy, “Diplomacy is too important to be left to diplomats”27. They are consistent with the administration’s belief that everyone in Taiwan is responsible for, and can make a positive contribution to, Taiwan’s diplomacy. The specified objectives aspire to the decline of diplomatic elitism and the promotion of a more inclusive foreign policy. In this context, Dr Tien has spoken of the need for “total mobilisation” in realising Taiwan’s foreign policy ambitions28.
22 The list of diplomatic objectives reveals that Taiwan’s foreign policy is still essentially driven by its relations with the People’s Republic. This is understandable: Peking
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continues to cast such a long shadow over Taiwan that political and public discourse still tends to be structured around the issue of cross-Strait affairs, especially during election campaigns. Dr Tien Hung-mao’s most urgent responsibility when he was appointed Foreign Minister was to calm fears, within Taiwan, among its allies (formally recognised or otherwise) and in Peking, that a Chen Shui-bian administration need not necessarily lead to the outbreak of war across the Taiwan Strait. The fears were logical: Chen represented a party that had campaigned in previous elections on the platform that Taiwan should declare “independence”, and thus give up any pretence that it can reunify with China on Taiwan’s terms. Although Chen had avoided this platform in the 2000 election campaign, Peking still claimed that, if elected, he would promote or declare Taiwan’s independence, thus giving a pretext for China to attack the island. Sensitive to Peking’s concerns, and grateful that Taiwan’s voters had elected him President despite China’s rhetoric (albeit without a majority; Chen won only 39.3% of the vote), Chen moved quickly to ease fears that a new crisis was on the horizon. His inaugural speech launched what has been termed a “peace offensive” that included the now (in)famous “five no’s”29, namely: 1) no declaration of Taiwan’s independence; 2) no change in the name “Republic of China”; 3) no revising the constitution to suggest that Peking and Taipei should negotiate on the basis of “special state-to-state” relations; 4) no referendum to decide Taiwan’s status; and 5) no abolition of the National Unification Council30 as long as China does not attack Taiwan. In addition, Chen proposed to set up direct sea and air links across the Taiwan Strait provided China could guarantee Taiwan’s security. These concessions seemed to send Peking a positive message: after Chen’s inauguration, China’s belligerence subsided, and “a modest resumption of negotiations in due course is conceivable…”31.
23 Yet democracy has also tempted Taiwan to be bolder and more assertive in its relations with China. It has endeavoured to push the boundaries even further, to test its newly- discovered confidence in the belief that public opinion and the United States will come to Taiwan’s aid if and when military conflict breaks out across the Taiwan strait. Taipei’s decision to change the wording of passports to read “issued in Taiwan” instead of “The Republic of China” is the latest provocation to Peking’s sensitivities. Meanwhile, George W. Bush has gone further than any American president since Nixon in affirming security ties between Washington and Taipei—a sentiment shared by both Richard Halloran, formerly of the New York Times, and Robert Sutter in a recent Issues and Studies32—thus ending the strategic ambiguity that allowed the US to support Taiwan while preserving its commitment to the “One China” policy.
24 The boldest move so far was in August 2002 when President Chen referred to what has become known as the “one country on each side” theory. In a telecast Chen announced that “Taiwan’s future and destiny can only be decided by the 23 million people living on the island […] with Taiwan and China on each side of the Taiwan Strait, each side is a country.” He went on to affirm that “Our Taiwan is not something that belongs to someone else. Our Taiwan is not someone else’s local government. Our Taiwan is not someone else’s province”33. It is hardly surprising that the Chinese government in Peking viewed these statements as provocative, the latest in a developing political agenda that seems to suggest Chen Shui-bian is becoming ever more willing to push Taiwan’s independence. As a propaganda device, the statement had little effect, other than spark the usual debates among pro- and anti-independence activists within political circles and the media (especially in Taiwan and the United States). In fact, there is every reason to suspect that making this statement was inappropriate at a time
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when the United States, a key player in maintaining cross-Strait peace, had more pressing concerns—continuing the war against terrorism, and building an international coalition (that Washington hoped would include Peking) in the United Nations in support of military action against Iraq. The United States does not welcome any distraction from these objectives, especially one that serves to heighten tension with the PRC and risks dragging Washington into any cross-Strait conflict, hot or cold.
25 On the issue of direct links across the Taiwan Strait, Taipei’s propaganda has experienced difficulties in presenting a justifiable argument for rejecting Peking’s overtures. In May 2002 Qian Qichen, the Chinese Vice Premier, announced that that negotiations on three links—transport, trade and postal services—could proceed as long as both sides accepted that this was a domestic economic matter: “Since the issue of the three direct links is a purely economic affair, related talks can leave out the political meaning of one China”, he said. This was intended to placate Taiwan’s business community who have longed advocated direct links between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait. Taipei’s response was welcoming, but cautious: direct links, said President Chen, are “not a cure-all” for the problems that separate Taiwan and the PRC34.
26 While explanations for Taiwan’s hesitation are embedded within the complicated historical, political and strategic relationship between the two sides, it is clear that this is evidence of Peking seeking the moral high ground: how can anyone object to such offers of negotiation that do not require discussion of seemingly intractable political problems? The Chen administration could not, therefore, reject the proposals outright because it would then be viewed as unreasonable; neither could it simply accept Peking’s advances because then it might be seen as appeasing the PRC. In the circumstances, therefore, caution and hesitation were the best that the Chen administration could offer.
27 What is most interesting from the perspective of propaganda has been the response by Taiwan’s media to Qian Qichen’s statement. For example, an editorial by Taiwan’s The Liberty Times newspaper applied the classic propaganda device of scare-mongering to raise fears of direct links among its domestic readers: “Once direct links open, tourists from China may come, because it is compatible with Peking’s policy of engulfing Taiwan”35. Another editorial was equally fearful: “Direct links will shake the national identity, the beliefs of the people and Taiwan’s democratic system. Direct links will cause a further outflow of businesses and capital and a hollowing out of local industries. The day direct links are established will be beginning of Taiwan’s absorption into China”36. While it is impossible to establish without focus group research and the commissioning of wide-scale opinions whether or not voters in Taiwan are persuaded by such propaganda, these editorials nevertheless draw our attention to the language that the anti-China constituency uses, and indicates how it remains prepared to resort to the Cold War imagery of hordes of Chinese ready to “engulf” Taiwan. Divisive issues such as cross-Strait relations continue to prompt the most emotive kind of propaganda on both sides. Does such polemic facilitate reasoned judgement, clear decision-making, and valuable diplomatic communication?
28 The horrifying terrorist attacks against the United States in September 2001 offered Taiwan an opportunity to reaffirm its tacit alliance with Washington and present itself as democratic member of the international community that also felt threatened by international terrorism. Taiwan has offered assistance to the United States in fighting
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the war against terrorism, and to the United Nations in helping with its humanitarian work in war-ravaged Afghanistan: “As a member of the international community and a democratic ally,” said President Chen Shui-bian, “the Republic of China will support the United States in its actions against terrorist organisations and endorse various anti- terrorist conventions and resolutions proposed by the United Nations”37. The propaganda is clear; Taiwan is willing to make a positive contribution to an international system that shuns it, and to support United Nations resolutions even though it is denied membership of that organisation. Such statements help the government to demonstrate the absurdity of Taiwan’s present status and generate international sympathy based on its democratic credentials.
29 However, the reality is that democratisation has not really increased Taiwan’s visibility at all, even though the lifting of martial law in 1986 was a positive and long-overdue development that allowed Taiwan to finally ensure that reality lived up to the rhetoric of “Free China”. Describing the momentous changes that have taken place in Taiwan, Jason C. Hu, a former Director-General of the Government Information Office (GIO) and KMT foreign minister, has expressed sadness that “perhaps because these reforms were not achieved at the cost of bloodshed or social turmoil they have ... not gotten sufficient press or attention”38. Taiwan is considered sufficiently “news-worthy” only when further, more dramatic ingredients are added: the military threat from the PRC, aeroplane crashes, earthquakes, train crashes in the United Kingdom that kill Taiwanese citizens. In other words, Western public opinion is most familiar with Taiwan through negative news stories and images. If the government wishes to make sure that Taiwan’s democratisation is promoted, its diplomats and GIO officers abroad must find new ways of managing the news that circumvent such a gloomy representation. Manufacturing interest in Taiwan will raise its profile in the media, and encourage awareness of the issues it faces. As Jacques Ellul noted in his seminal study of propaganda, timeliness is important. “Propaganda”, he observed, “can have solid reality and power over man only because of its rapport with fundamental currents, but it has seductive excitement and a capacity to move him only by its ties to the most volatile immediacy”39.
30 In 1949, the Nationalist embassy in the United States hired Norman Paige, a former ABC correspondent with vast experience of the Far East and responsible for the “best” radio station in the Philippines. Paige recognised that media attention to the China situation had waned: “We will have to get your story back on page 1,” he told Joseph Ku, “and that is difficult to do without the benefit of spectacular news stories”40. Thus, President Lee Teng-hui’s visit to Cornell University in 1995 certainly captured the attention of the world’s media, and the press in the United States, Japan and Hong Kong all came out in support of closer relations with Taiwan41. Such coverage helped raise awareness of Taiwan: “If you now ask Canadians on the streets who President Lee is, they know,” reported the Free China Journal on January 19th 1996 following his controversial visit to Cornell. “Before that, their knowledge about Taiwan was limited”. As the head of the Taipei Representative Office in the United Kingdom, Dr Tien Hung-mao is striving to develop stronger lines of communication with the British media than any of his predecessors, agreeing to regular interviews with the BBC, the Daily Telegraph and The Economist. Journalists are thus a crucial link in Taiwan’s horizontal network of communication and propaganda in the UK. Moreover, Dr Tien is committed to practising the more personal style of diplomacy that he promoted as Foreign Minister, regularly attending functions organised by the British-Taiwan Parliamentary Group,
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the Foreign Office, universities, and Britain’s major political parties42. This gives Dr Tien a direct opportunity to discuss with influential individuals in British politics and civil society the Taiwan political miracle he is dedicated to advertising.
31 One of the most surprising discoveries of my original research was that neither diplomats nor GIO officers received any formal instruction in how to use, or interact with, the media of the countries where they are stationed. This was a serious indictment of their approach to modern diplomacy given that Taiwan depends on propaganda for evading the problems of non-recognition. Now, however, it looks as though the situation is set to change: As Foreign Minister, Dr Tien Hung-mao was responsible for creating an Institute of Diplomacy in Taipei that will offer instruction to both diplomats and representatives of Taiwan’s growing number of non-governmental organisations. The curriculum will include training in the art of public diplomacy, a development that should facilitate the future realisation of Taiwan’s commitment to publicising its democratic qualifications.
32 THE REPRESENTATIVES of those governments and states that do not enjoy diplomatic recognition find it incredibly difficult to perform even the most cursory of symbolic functions, given that they are outside the diplomatic circle43. To overcome these problems, Taiwan is exploring and developing creative methods of diplomacy, all of which involve propaganda. Selling Taiwan involves the same techniques used in selling any commercial product or service: identifying themes, messages and styles of delivery that will appeal to the audience that the source wishes to persuade.
33 The Cold War offered Taiwan the opportunity to exploit the international ideological divisions and describe itself as “Free China”, though the credibility of that label was undermined by the reality of martial law. It is ironic that, with the end of the Cold War and the creation of a democratic Taiwan, that label―perhaps more relevant today than at any time in the past―has disappeared. This is in recognition that “Free China” is today a rhetorical device with less symbolic resonance than “democratic Taiwan”. This is not to deny that the Cold War casts a long shadow over Taiwan’s propaganda organisation as it does relations with the PRC. As I write, the Asia-Pacific is gripped by concern over the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) that allegedly originated in Guangdong province in China. Taiwan is engaged in a fierce verbal attack against the PRC, blaming the Chinese government for keeping quiet about the disease for too long, and for keeping Taiwan outside the World Health Organisation when membership may have helped control, if not prevent, an outbreak on the island.
34 With democracy come new challenges: propaganda addresses several constituencies, often with diverging and often competing interests. Under the Chen Shui-bian administration, the dangers lie in the policy-making community rather than the propaganda designed to communicate its decisions. After all, the damage caused by an assertive, yet careless China policy may be so extensive that it is beyond rescue by even the most sophisticated spin. The backlash (within Taiwan and the PRC) against Chen’s “one country on each side” model demonstrates that policy and propaganda must proceed with caution to maintain the idea Taiwan is a responsible member of the international community, while avoiding antagonising Peking further and communicating what might be termed the arrogance of democracy.
35 While public relations alone will not solve Taiwan’s diplomatic difficulties, a well- constructed propaganda machinery and message that is consistent with the government’s foreign policy objectives offers long-term possibilities. In contrast to the
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kind of Cold War rhetoric that trapped Taiwan’s propaganda in a limiting mindset, democracy provides Taiwan’s propaganda with an enduring and appealing theme, and Chen Shui-bian’s government appears enthusiastic in exploring every conceivable avenue to convey its message. Whether anyone is listening is another matter altogether. After all, as Taiwan is fast learning, democracy does not come with any guarantees, and of course no propaganda organisation can control the pace and extent of diplomatic change. However, Taiwan can take comfort from evidence that suggests its democratic propaganda does seem to be reaching the right people: In June 2002, US Secretary of State Colin Powell told the Asia Society, “People tend to refer to Taiwan as ‘The Taiwan Problem’. I call Taiwan not a problem, but a success story. Taiwan has become a resilient economy, a vibrant democracy and a generous contributor to the international community”.44
NOTES DE FIN
1. Report on The Current State of ROC Diplomacy, delivered to the Legislative Yuan, June 5th 2001, available at www.mofa.gov.tw. 2. M. Leonard, Public Diplomacy, London, Foreign Policy Centre, 2002, p.52. 3. G.D. Rawnsley, “Selling Taiwan: Diplomacy and Propaganda”, Issues and Studies Vol. 36, No.3, 2000. G.D. Rawnsley, Taiwan’s Informal Diplomacy and Propaganda, Basingstoke, Macmillan & New York, St. Martin’s Press, 2000. 4. Joseph Nye, “Soft Power”, Foreign Policy, No.80, Fall 1990. 5. Jason Hu, “The current state of ROC diplomacy’, speech delivered November 4th 1999, http://mofa.gov.tw/emofa/eframe6b.htm. 6. Rawnsley, Taiwan’s Informal Diplomacy, pp. 31-33. 7. Ian Taylor, “Taiwan’s Foreign Policy and Africa”, Journal of Contemporary China, Vol. 11, No.3, 2002, p.129 8. R. Halloran, “An End to Ambiguity?”, Taipei Review, August 2002; P. Tyler, A Great Wall: Six Presidents and China, New York, Century Foundation, 1999; R. Sutter, “The Bush Administration and U.S. China Policy Debate – Reasons for Optimism”, Issues and Studies, Vol. 38, No.2, 2002. 9. In my previous work on this subject I adopted the terms “authority” and “challenger” powers used by Gadi Wolfsfeld (Media and Political Conflict: News from the Middle East, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997) in examining media coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict. 10. “Japanese find new links with partners in Taiwan”, Free China Journal, May 1st 1998. 11. Interested readers can explore these debates in Rawnsley, ‘Selling Taiwan’, and Rawnsley, Taiwan’s Informal Diplomacy. 12. G. Wolper, G. “Wilsonian Public Diplomacy: The Committee on Public Information in Spain”, Diplomatic History, Vol.17, No.1, 1993, p.17. 13. P.M. Taylor, Munitions of the Mind, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1996, p.1. 14. Ibid., p.7.
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15. Memorandum from Joseph Ku to Wellington Koo, February 3rd 1949, Wellington Koo Papers, Columbia University (New York), Box 180. 16. Jason Hu, “The current state of ROC diplomacy”, speech delivered November 4th 1999, http://mofa.gov.tw/emofa/eframe6b.htm. 17. “OCAC aims to boost Taiwan’s image”, Taipei Times, October 8th 2002 18. P.M. Taylor, P.M., War and the Media: Propaganda and Persuasion in the Gulf War, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1992, p.19. 19. H.J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 5th edn., New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1972, p.333. 20. P. Marshall, Positive Diplomacy, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1997, p.132. 21. GIO press release, September 6th 2001, www.gio.gov.tw. 22. See Dr Tien Hung-mao’s report on The Current State of ROC Diplomacy, delivered to the Legislative Yuan, June 5th 2001, available at www.mofa.gov.tw. Information supplemented by interview with Dr Tien in London, June 25th 2002. 23. Taiwan’s “foreign trade is larger than that of 171 countries and it has accumulated a massive foreign exchange reserve, which at the end of 1998 stood at US$90.3 billion – the third highest in the world.” Taylor, “Taiwan’s Foreign Policy and Africa”, p.127. 24. GIO press release, September 6th 2001, www.gio.gov.tw. 25. “Chen compares China’s tactics to terrorism”, Taipei Journal, September 13th 2002. 26. Taipei Journal, June 21st 2002. 27. Ibid. 28. Interview with Dr Tien Hung-mao, London, June 25th 2002. 29. www.president.gov.tw/php-bin/prez/showspeak.php4. 30. The National Unification Council was founded in October 1990 to oversee relations the eventual unification of Taiwan and China. In March 1991, it announced a three- phase programme called the National Unification Guidelines: 1) unofficial contacts via people-to-people exchanges and activities; 2) opening “three links” (postal, air and sea, and trade); 3) negotiations on unification based on democracy and economic development. 31. J.P. Cabestan, “Chen Shui-bian’s Victory Rules out Détente in the Taiwan Strait”, China Perspectives, No. 29, May-June 2000, p.37. 32. Halloran, “An End to Ambiguity?”; Sutter, “The Bush Administration and U.S. China Policy Debate”. 33. See “President Chen: ‘One country on each side’”, Taiwan Communiqué, No.102, September 2002. 34. “Chen says ‘three links’ no panacea for economic ills”, Taiwan Headlines (Internet edition), October 24th 2002. 35. “Say ‘no’ to direct links with China”, Taipei Times, July 17th 2002. 36. “Fools are rushing in”, Taipei Times, June 27th 2002. 37. GIO press release, October 8th 2001, www.gio.gov.tw. 38. Jason C. Hu, Quiet Revolutions on Taiwan, Republic of China, Taipei, Kwang Hwa Publishing, 1995, p.iv. 39. J. Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes, New York, Vintage, 1965, p. 43. I do, however, take issue with Ellul’s apparent idea that propaganda should jettison the themes and myths of previous campaigns and concentrate on fixing the propaganda around the need for timeliness. Ellul underestimates audiences who, he assumes, is unable to concentrate on any time other than the here and now. News is therefore fleeting and not remembered. In contrast, I would suggest that news can provide the
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opportunity to ensure the continuity of propaganda that will now have a greater audiences share and interest. Context is as important as immediacy. 40. Memorandum from Joseph Ku to Wellington Koo, February 3rd 1949, Wellington Koo Papers, Columbia University (New York), Box 180. 41. For details of the some 2,000 news reports and commentaries, see Free China Journal, June 9th 1995, p.1, and June 16th 1995, p.2. 42. Interview, London, June 25th 2002. 43. See M.J. Peterson, Recognition of Governments: Legal Doctrine and State Practice, 1815-1995, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1997, p.104 for details of how informal relations without symbolic attachments proceeded in the Nineteenth Century. 44. “Colin Powell: Taiwan a success story”, Taiwan Communiqué, No. 102, September 2002.
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Book Reviews
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Marie-Françoise Renart ed., China and its Regions: Economic Growth and Reform in the Chinese Provinces, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham (UK), 2002, 338 pp.
Françoise Lemoine
EDITOR'S NOTE
Translated from the French original by Jonathan Hall
1 The articles collected in this volume analyse the relationship between the growth of global economic power and the dynamics operating in the various regions of China since the beginning of the reforms. The thirteen chapters were originally papers at a conference held in October 1998, and the diversity and richness of analysis which they offer makes this work an indispensable reference tool. In the space of this review there can be no question of summarising them all, but rather of reporting on those providing the most original and convincing contributions to the topic.
2 The first chapter, “On Measurement of the Openness of the Chinese Economy”, belongs to this category. The authors, Jean-Louis L. Combes, Patrick Guillaumont and Sandra Poncet, introduce a stimulating discussion on the different methods for measuring the Chinese economy’s openness to foreign trade and capital investment, and for comparing it with other developing economies. The analysis then moves on to the provincial situation, giving us a new insight into the degree of openness in the provinces, taking account of their commercial links from 1985 to 1992 both with the rest of China and with foreign countries. It draws the extremely interesting conclusion that the openness to foreign trade in the three major regions (Coastal, Central and Interior) has greatly increased, whereas their dependence on transactions with other
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parts of China has decreased. So the increasing tempo in foreign trade has been achieved at the expense of trading links between the provinces. This divergence is particularly acute in the coastal provinces which in 1992 conducted twice as much overseas trade as with the other provinces.
3 The second chapter, “Social Consequences of Economic Reform in China: An Analysis of Regional Disparity in the Transition Period”, by Justin Yifu Lin, Fang Cai, and Zhou Li, provides a study of the development of regional inequalities from 1978 to 1995. It shows that these have increased since the 1980s, and that the main causes are to be found in the disparities between the major regions (Eastern, Central and Western) on the one hand, and in the difference between urban and rural incomes on the other. The inequalities between the provinces are most pronounced in the Eastern region but even there they are tending to even out. As a measure for enabling these areas to catch up with the Central and Western provinces, the authors recommend the development of their transport links, along with services and rural industries.
4 In chapter three, “Provincial Economic Growth in China: Causes and Consequences of Regional Differentiation”, Barry Naughton’s analysis throws a good deal of light on the reasons why we witnessed a convergence between the provinces until 1990, when it was replaced by the current divergence. He explains this change as a result of the gradual erosion of the redistribution system and the slow reaffirmation of tendencies that had been held in check in the pre-reform period. The apparent convergence of the first phase was due to a trend with two different aspects: initially the less well-off provinces, which are predominantly rural, enjoyed a relative rise in the price of agricultural produce while the provinces whose income was artificially maintained by public investments suffered from the collapse in this source of funding. The second phase saw a return to the norm, under which the provincial growth rates were determined by the funds allocated to each province and by their industrial competitiveness. The author concludes that any return to regional convergence is ruled out because there can be no reliance on a rise in agricultural prices or on an increase in the state’s ability to redistribute income. However, he notes that there are signs of the economic growth in the coastal regions spreading to the neighbouring provinces, and he recommends an increase in infrastructural investments to encourage this trend.
5 Chapter six deals with the impact which China’s accession to the WTO had on her internal disparities. Fan Zhai and Shantong Li use a model of overall calculable equilibrium to simulate the effects of the growth in the global economy on the distribution of revenue from trade liberalisation. The article opens with a very fine description of the Chinese economy in the mid-1990s, in terms of openness and income distribution. The modelling exercise then goes on to show, unsurprisingly, that trade liberalisation leads to increased growth rates, thanks to a more efficient use of domestic resources (more in accordance with the country’s comparative strengths). The main gains arise from the lowering of protective barriers for the agricultural sector, which results in falling domestic agricultural prices. This fall leads to a corresponding decrease in production, employment and income within the agricultural sector. The gains in terms of family incomes are therefore very unevenly shared, with a widening gap between rural and city dwellers. Family incomes in the cities improve, while those in the countryside worsen, when measured against a scenario based on China’s not joining the WTO. At the same time the pay gap between skilled and unskilled workers widens in favour of the former. So trade liberalisation is beneficial to
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growth but detrimental to equality. This leads the authors to recommend the adoption of a fiscal policy to attenuate these effects. The interest in this kind of modelling exercise lies not so much in the production of precise development data as in underlining the expected direction of structural changes, and in showing the need for corrective economic policies. It is worth pointing out that subsequent work by these two authors has extended their analysis of the impact of China’s entry into the WTO, proving that it will result in a growth in domestic regional inequalities1.
6 In chapter 11, Wing Thye Woo, gives an in-depth analysis of the ups and downs in the rural industries during the reform period, seeking to explain why, after being the driving force for growth, they have been losing their dynamism since the end of the 1980s. For him the main explanation is to be found in the operations of the financial system, which deprived the small towns and village enterprises of access to bank credits and diverted financial resources towards the state sector. In this way rural savings were diverted into financing urban industry. Contrary to what might have been expected, the dynamic growth of rural industries which spread throughout the coastal provinces from the early 1980s, had not yet taken off in the central provinces by the mid-1990s. However, several indicators suggest that the rural industries in the interior regions are now beginning to enjoy better access to financial sources, in a development which the author attributes to progress in economic deregulation and a clearer definition of property rights in these provinces. In order to liberalise the financial system and allow for a more efficient allocation of resources, the author recommends the freeing of interest rates, which would ease the granting of loans to the private sector, the ending of preferential credit allocations to the state enterprises, and the opening of the banking sector to private and foreign investors. It should be noted that in 2003 these recommendations are still pending and their implementation has made little progress.
7 The criticisms that can be made of a book of this type are those which are applicable to any collective work bringing together contributions from different authors. The diversity of approach is the source of a great deal of rich information and analytical insights, but it sadly lacks an overview of the dynamic directions taken by Chinese regional development over the last twenty years. Another issue is the inevitable time gap between the date when the contributions were written and the date of their publication. In general, the papers delivered to the conference in 1998 deal with the situation up to the mid-1990s, that is up to the high point of a cycle that has suffered a considerable downturn since then. Since the late 1990s, the policies for new budgetary controls and public investment, which favour development in the Western provinces, have tended to rein in the growth in regional divergence. But on the other hand, the progressive opening up, connected with China’s accession to the WTO, has certainly aggravated the main problems addressed in this work. These are the inexorable advance of the coastal provinces, their increasing integration into the global economy, and the tendency towards a loosening of the economic ties between the coastal regions and the interior.
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NOTES
1. Li Shantong and Zhai Fan, “China’s WTO accession and implications for its regional economies”, Economie Internationale, No. 92, Vol. IV, 2003.
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Donald D. Tong, The Heart of Economic Reform: China’s Banking Reform and State Enterprise Restructuring, Ashgate, 2002.
Françoise Lemoine
NOTE DE L’ÉDITEUR
Translated from the French original by Jonathan Hall
1 This book’s argument is well summed up in its title, namely that the restructuring of the banking system is inseparably linked with that of the state enterprises, and that both are necessary to carry out the reforms in China. This is because the enormous sums representing Chinese family savings are mostly deposited in the state-owned banks, but the latter fulfil their intermediary function very inefficiently, by allocating the major part of their credits to the low yield state enterprises rather than to the other more dynamic and profitable ones. There is an imperative to give large-scale support to the state enterprises, since these function as a social security net for much of the population. So the priority should be to set up a social security system outside the enterprises, in order to carry out reforms to both the banking system and the state enterprises simultaneously.
2 This argument is not original, but it is correct and well argued. The book has undeniably positive qualities, being extremely clear and instructive. Its different chapters (Development of the financial system, Financial institutions and investment, Sources of finance and investment, Channels for transforming savings into investment, Investment efficiency and growth, etc.) cover each question and provide the relevant figures. Chapter 10, in particular, gives us a complete and precise summation of the social functions of the state enterprises and their costs.
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3 In most of the chapters the analysis ends a bit early. The final year referred to is usually 1996, both for the analysis and for the numerical data. So more recent developments are not taken into account, and some of the chapters provide information which seems outdated. Major recent developments are only taken up in a concluding chapter.
4 Moreover some of the assertions are debatable. While it may be true that employees are better treated than creditors when the state enterprises fail, this does not justify the view that it is the size of the redundancy payments that prevents the restructuring of the state enterprises (p. 160). Other analyses are a little summary and superficial. He interprets the shortfall between the number of direct overseas investment contracts drawn up and the number actually carried through to completion, as being due to a lack of investor confidence and/or obstacles to capital inflow (p. 46); but this is not very convincing, given the large overall volume of such investments and the impenetrability of Chinese statistics in this area. The description of the stock markets omits to mention that most of the market capitalisation is in the hands of institutional investors, and that these shares are not available on the open market. The idea that the development of the stock markets is a means of improving the allocation of resources because “the capital markets provide an efficient means of enabling shareholder control over enterprise managements by avoiding cosy relationships between the banks and the enterprises” (p. 179) seems at best a bit premature in the case of China. At another point, his analysis of the slowdown in growth rates in the latter part of the 1990s links it to a fall in demand, which is itself a consequence of growing unemployment and job insecurity (p. 181). This is an explanation that is often put forward. But in the context of this work devoted to the dysfunctional financial system, it would have been useful to mention another possibility advanced by some economists, namely that the original cause of the slow growth rate is not to be found on the demand side but rather on the credit supply side, owing to the reluctance of the banks to lend to private enterprises. According to this argument there is an unmet demand for credit in the private sector, due to the dysfunctional nature of the banking system and the cap on interest rates.
5 To sum up, then: the very qualities of this work tend to bring their defects with them. It is clear and simple, but sometimes errs a little too much in that direction.
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Gordon G. Chang, The Coming Collapse of China, New York, Random House, 2001, 344 pp.
Jean-François Huchet
EDITOR'S NOTE
Translated from the French original by Jonathan Hall
1 This work by Gordon Chang devotes its twelve chapters to dealing with a question that has obsessed observers of political developments in China for more than twenty years: are the economic reforms not responsible for a rise in social tensions which will lead on to the implosion of the communist regime? We need to recognise that many people disillusioned by Chinese politics, especially after the 1989 massacre, have come to think that one day economics would catch up with those politics, in a sort of delayed revenge against the leadership’s refusal to democratise the regime. Even if he does not spell it out clearly, Gordon Chang subscribes to this line of thought. It is a trend shared by a number of observers who have lived and worked over a long period in China, and who rightly wish to see the country develop towards democracy.
2 However, there are certain criticisms to be levelled against the central thesis of the unavoidability of a political crisis in the face sharpening economic contradictions. The question of the relationship between the economic and the political spheres is indeed relevant, but the author deals with it in a simplistic and too linear manner. Contemporary economic history offers a whole series of examples of nations where much more serious economic situations than China’s have not resulted in political revolutions. When the Berlin wall fell, most of the former European socialist economies had been undergoing a deep crisis for more than fifteen years, without there being any threat to the communist regime’s hold on power1. As long as there is no conflict at the top of the Party hierarchy, the repressive apparatus is able to prevent the spread of labour conflicts and the possibility of organised political challenge at the national level,
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and these are the only ways in which social discontent can be used to provoke a political crisis. The post-1989 Chinese leadership does not seem to be facing such a situation of internal division, because it has drawn the lessons of 1989 when its inner divisions were on the brink of leading to a serious political crisis. It also seems that in the face of repression, urban employees have for the moment accepted the domination of the state and the market in ordering their lives, and this increases the obstacles to developing a movement of protest and challenge at the national level2. Another regrettable shortcoming is that the author reaches his conclusions on the fall of the regime before carrying out his analysis of the economic problems, because this locks him into an excessively Manichaean view of the current reforms. His treatment of China’s accession to the WTO is typical in this respect. It is true, as he asserts, that the lowering of the customs barriers will come as a shock to Chinese farmers and manufacturers. But he does not pay attention to the numerous mechanisms which will help to absorb this shock. These include China’s negotiated insertion of provisions against too speedy liberalisation (such as the power to increase agricultural subsidies, and the imposition of quotas on grain imports fixed at 10% of domestic consumption), or the adoption of protectionist strategies other than customs measures, in which China is actually at one with the major trading powers (for example, in the use of health and safety provisions, delaying tactics in the settlement of disputes, and regional protectionism). Similarly, despite the importance of the problems confronting the banking sector, which the author emphasises, China still retains the means for preventing a collapse like the one in Argentina. This ability comes down to the fact that the risk to which the banks are exposed in China is assumed by the sovereign state, since with the sole exception of the Mingsheng Bank, the banking sector is under state control, with a very low level of foreign debt and very limited control over capital by foreign investors. If depositors start to panic, the state can always resort to force and block withdrawals from savings accounts. To sum up, a more careful analysis of the three interlocking sides of the triangle (economic problems, social consequences, and repercussions for the political structure) would have allowed the author to reach quite opposite conclusions, namely that there is at present in China no conjunction of factors which could see the economic contradictions leading to a serious political crisis.
3 However, I do not believe that this book should be dismissed, or relegated to the heaps of those worthless writings on China which start from a preconceived view and rely on fashionable ideas, whether positive or negative, about the country’s future. Even if this work’s conclusions are mistaken in the light of the current political situation, it still conveys a valuable reminder of the weaknesses in the so-called “Chinese economic miracle” and of its areas of potential breakdown if the political situation should change. These include environmental issues, the endemic corruption, the regime’s difficulties in controlling information, the barely contained bankruptcy, the increasing social inequality, the rising unemployment, and the hazards involved in reforming the public enterprises. The social situation is potentially more explosive than it was in 1989; hence the current powerholders’ extreme wariness whenever there are signs of incipient organised social movements. The author is also very persuasive in showing that these problems have become largely interconnected. The Chinese government can no longer rely, as it could in the 1980s and early 1990s, on what could be called damage control measures, meaning that particular social issues could be settled one at a time, while the reforms could be continued in another area of the economy without causing worries over the interconnections. Gordon Chang is right to insist that nowadays the
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Chinese government has to mount a concerted global attack on a range of problems that can no longer be so easily separated. What is at stake now may well be the ability of the government to carry on reforming on a step-by-step basis, as opposed to adopting a “shock therapy” strategy. One possible scenario might well be the regime’s inability to reform itself in order to respond to challenges which could lead to its collapse. Nonetheless, the author could have explored the other ways open to the Party for dealing with the need for gradual institutional and political changes, thus allowing it to remain in power and continue with its more or less successful containment of the enormous contradictions confronting it.
4 In conclusion, then, despite its too simple central thesis, this book is to be recommended, if only to alert the reader to the economic challenges which will confront China over the next decade.
NOTES
1. Jeffrey Kopstein, The Politics of Decline in East Germany, 1945-1989, Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1997, 246 pp. 2. Marc J. Blecher, “Hegemony and Workers’ Politics in China”, in The China Quarterly, No. 170, June 2002, pp. 283-303.
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Randall Peerenboom, China's Long March Toward the? Rule of Law, Cambridge University Press, 2002, 673 pp.
Leïla Choukroune
EDITOR'S NOTE
Translated from the French original by Peter Brown
1 If one is to believe the proponents of relativism, any moral philosophy with a universalist claim would be both unrealistic and intolerant. They alone would be able to recognise the irreducible diversity of social moralities and to preserve excellence from Western imperium.
2 This is somehow the impression that we are left with by parts, if not by the whole, of China's Long March Toward the? Rule of Law. In this ambitious 700 page work, Randall Peerenboom, a recognised expert in and practitioner of Chinese law who today teaches Chinese Law at UCLA School of Law, attempts to demonstrate the existence of a "thin rule of law" that is procedural in nature. This concept with "Chinese characteristics" could nevertheless be called that of the rule of law in so far as China may have been able to "develop an alternative version to the Western model of the rule of law". While a "thick theory" or "substantive theory" of the rule of law would incorporate aspects of political morality like forms of government, economic models or the various conceptions of human rights, a "thin theory" would promote the formal or instrumentalist aspects of the rule of law that would rest upon a system of laws that were " general, public, prospective, clear, consistent, capable of being followed, stable and enforced"1.
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3 Thus "there must be law to rely on ; where there are laws, they must be followed; laws must be strictly enforced; and violations of law must be corrected" (youfa keyi, youfa bi yi, zhifa bi yan, weifa bi jiu). This legal credo adopted by the Chinese Communist Party back in 1978 would attest to the willingness of the government to work progressively towards an original form of the rule of law based on a fundamental reworking of a legal system inherited from Maoism and ill-adapted to the economic developments to come. The legal revolution on the move 4 The hyper activity of legislation characteristic of reformist China is deemed to have led therefore to the development of the famous yifa zhiguo, a government in tune with the law, that can only be understood by reference to the second variable of the equation, jianshe shehuizhuyi fazhiguo, that is the establishment of a Socialist rule of law, a formula that was itself consecrated by the constitutional amendments of 1999. Indeed, the writer gives a very good description and in-depth analysis of the main transformations undergone by the Chinese legal system over the past twenty-five years. To begin with, in the first two chapters of his work, he does this according to a historical approach, before adopting the tack of dividing his subject up into several main areas: the legislative system, the judiciary, the legal profession and administrative law regime. The final chapters of China's Long March Toward Rule of Law are devoted to more philosophical developments dealing with the relation between the rule of law, economic growth and democracy. The book closes with a certain number of recommendations intended for states which, in the likeness of the United States—or the Europeans for that matter—, might be tempted to promote the rule of law in China.
5 Randall Peerenboom's work clearly tends towards a certain exhaustiveness2, based as it is on many theoretical references, being very well documented and hence having a rich critical apparatus. One can only regret, however, that the latter is not more easily accessible and that it often remains a little confused in its presentation. It is true that all the arguments and counter-arguments of the defenders of the rule of law and its Western and Chinese opponents are carefully sifted through as if to give a more solid foundation to this attempt at defining a new theoretical framework. However, the writer could well have eliminated a number of pages without any loss, as the general thesis seems to us to be often diluted in descriptions that do not allow any real account to be taken of the positions of the doctrine on the relation between right and economic development and even more glaringly between democracy and the rule of law3. Rule of law versus democracy 6 At the risk of being accused of "liberal ethnocentrism with universalising tendencies", we must strenuously affirm here that the rule of law and democracy are to our way of thinking two principles that are consubstantial. Indeed, there exists an ontological link between these two ideas that cannot be ignored. Beyond the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 1966 Pact relating to Civil and Political Rights or the European Convention on Human Rights, it is worth quoting the Copenhagen Declaration of June 29th 1990, article 3 of which states that "democracy is integral to the rule of law" or, more recently, the Preamble to the Charter on the Fundamental Rights of the European Union which emphasises that "the Union is based on the twin principles of democracy and the rule of law".
7 It is therefore absolutely unacceptable to read, for example, that "Democracy therefore implies rule of law, but not vice-versa" or again that the rule of law may coexist with non democratic and non liberal forms of government4. Moreover, the writer purports
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to demonstrate that the construction of a state where the rule of law obtained could be conceived as a necessary stage on the way to democratisation. This need not mean, however, that China would end up as a liberal democracy, but rather as a "non liberal", "soft authoritarian" or even "communitarian" form of democracy. Thus "a one-party socialist regime in which the Party plays a major role" would " a single party socialism in which the Party plays a leading role is in theory compatible with the rule of law, albeit not a Liberal democratic version of rule of law”5.
8 In this sense, why not suppose that the amendments to the statutes of the Chinese Communist Party at its 16th Congress are part of this same reforming logic, in so far as they aim to put in place a "socialist democracy" governed in perfect complementarity by the "law" (yifa zhiguo) and "virtue" (yide zhiguo). The codification of comrade Jiang Zemin's "innovative thought for the 21st century", whose main thrust was formulated in 2000 in the "theory of the three representatives" (sange daibiao) is therefore supposedly to lead us gradually towards the rule of law Chinese-style, the first stage in the process of setting up a democracy, also Chinese-style.
9 If there is no reason to be surprised by the fact that China may create a political model that is unique to itself and is not therefore the transposition of pre-existing Western models, it is nonetheless impossible to empty of their meaning legal and philosophical concepts like those of the rule of law and democracy in the name of a benevolent denunciation of a certain ethnocentrism6. Through an excessive desire to take account of Chinese specificities, Randall Peerenboom indirectly comes to trample on the very foundations of principles with a universal vocation. Rule of law and related concepts 10 Having founded legality and its jurisdictional control, the rule of law aims as it were to circumscribe the power of the state through law and to guarantee the protection of the rights of the person. It forms a whole and cannot therefore be carved up without seeing its impact reduced and its meaning tainted. The rule of law is also characterised by the separation of powers, the independence of the judiciary, the existence of a control over constitutionality and over the legality of administrative acts.
11 The polysemy and the ambiguity of the term "rule of law" is no longer to be proved, however. The English term "rule of law", and the French and German terms, Etat de droit and Rechtsstaat, respectively, are in fact concepts with quite different acceptations, and everything suggests that it is impossible to translate the "rule of law" which Randall Peerenboom writes about by the French term "Etat de droit"7. While the "rule of law" refers only to a formal system of law that guarantees a certain legal security, there certainly does exist in China, and especially in the economic sphere, a tendency towards the rationalisation of legal practices and even towards a certain "juridicisation" of society that attests to a popular consciousness of the existence of rights and a greater aspiration to justice. But the whole ambiguity of the writer's thesis is that he does not seem to be content with a mere formal definition of the rule of law in any procedural sense. He seeks rather to define it with regard to democracy in order to prove its ability to exist within an authoritarian regime. This involves a sort of perversion or at least a confusion of genres that is prejudicial to the overall demonstration and finally makes the idea according to which China supposedly broke with an instrumentalist conception of the law somewhat less than convincing.
12 This work by an astute expert of the Chinese legal field, which to its credit takes a certain number of risks in terms of formulating new ideas, is not, however, for
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everyone. Indeed, a reader with insufficient legal and political background knowledge could easily let himself or herself be led astray by the dangerous sirens of a revisited culturalism.
NOTES
1. See page 3 of the Introduction and Chapter 3 (especially p. 65) in which Randall Peerenboom refers inter alia to the views developed by Lon Fuller in The Morality of Law, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1976. 2. Randall Peerenboom frequently positions himself, in fact, in relation to the thinking of L.A. Hart, John Rawls, Joseph Raz, Jürgen Habermas or indeed Joseph Stiglitz, something that is quite unusual in works dealing with Chinese law, and hence worthy of note. 3. See Chapters 10 and 11 and, especially, the exposition of liberal democracy, p. 533 and ff. 4. See p. 515 and ff. 5. See p. 10 and Chapter 5 "Retreat of the Party and the State". In this perspective, Randall Peerenboom sets himself apart from many other experts of Chinese law who, in the model of Stanley Lubman, see in the current ideological straitjacket an insurmountable hurdle to the emergence of any real state governed by the rule of law. See in this connection footnote 30, p. 24. 6. This tendency, one that we had already detected in The Limits of the Rule of Law in China, edited by Karen G. Turner, James V. Feinerman and R. Kent Guy, actually underlies the whole exposition. 7. See the excellent thesis by Luc Heuschling, Etat de droit, Rechtsstaat, Rule of Law, Paris, Dalloz, 2002, 739 pp.
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Vincent Gossaert ed., “L’anticléricalisme en Chine” (Anti clericalism in China), Extrême-Orient Extrême-Occident, No. 24, Saint- Denis, Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, 2002, 184 pp.
Benoît Vermander
NOTE DE L’ÉDITEUR
Translated from the French original by Michael Black
1 The journal Extrême-Orient Extrême-Occident has brought out a stimulating issue on the theme of anticlericalism in China. In the introduction, Vincent Gossaert and Valentine Zuber defend the comparative approach of the work. Anticlericalism, defined as criticism of religious institutions and of their professionals, is not a reality which is confined to the Latin context. The various Chinese specialists in religion (the clerics) have been the continuous target of severe criticism. Examining these critical discourses both renews the study of the area of religion in China and enriches comparative research. At the same time, China’s religious pluralism changes the equation. Chinese anticlericalism can be aimed at a particular category of beliefs, or extend to religion as such. It can be popular or learned, literary, journalistic or philosophical in style. Thus the editors of this issue attempt a “typology of intolerance”. The first part sketches various kinds of anticlericalism. The second part centres on the figure of the bonze. The conclusion by Jean Baubérot is a successful attempt to specify the concerns in this issue in terms of other places and cultures.
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2 Sylvie Hureau’s article outlines the appearance of anticlerical themes in medieval anti- Buddhist controversy. The very growth of Buddhism could not but revive fears linked to the purity of morals as well as to the social, political and economic consequences of the new institutions. A completely different context from that studied by Fang Ling: the progressive and surreptitious “secularisation” of medicine during the Ming Dynasty, with the disappearance of the practice of exorcism from the imperial cursus. The contribution by Lars Laamann focuses on the agitation stirred up against the Christian clergy between 1720 and 1810, unrest of which the mythical wellsprings are shown by the contrast between the exuberance of the discourse and the very small number of Christian clerics, whether foreign or Chinese, then present in China. Elisabeth Allès’ study concerns the provocations aimed at the Islamic community, from the nineteenth century to the present. Here the difficulties sprang less from the attitude of the state (up to 1958), than from the difficulties which the Han population had in accepting the “foreignness” of the Hui minority, a difficulty expressed in attempts to ridicule their clergy and ritual customs. The antireligious campaign of 1922, analysed by Marianne Bastid-Bruguière, followed a different path. Her contribution describes the political strategies at the origins of the movement. The debate quickly changed into a far- reaching critique of Chinese social and ideological structures, the intellectuals involved being motivated by the conviction that China “did not need” religion, which was harmful to the propagation of science and to national reconstruction.
3 In the second part, Vincent Durand-Dastès recounts the stories of bonzes who went astray that can be found in the novels of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries: the monk who is suddenly turned aside and seduced on his path towards perfection, the licentious and womanising monk, the terrifying barbarian monk, the monk who is an eccentric righter of wrongs… An evolution appears over the course of time: the development of “Confucian” monks, whose practices empty out and surpass the original Buddhism. Vincent Gossaert’s analysis of the discourse of the newspaper Shenbao (1872-1878) continues the analysis of the insecurity aroused by the mere presence of a celibate Buddhist clergy: thus a section of the urban population expresses its rejection of the culture of a clergy which is not subject to social control. Isabelle Charleux’s article paints a picture of the Chinese imaginary of the “barbarian monk”, with his power to fascinate and horrify, and his alleged propensity to appropriate the power of the state. Lastly David Palmer’s article shows alternating forms of anticlericalism: that of the qigong masters against religion as a whole, systematised by the founder of the Falungong, Li Hongzhi, who was to extend this critique to the qigong masters themselves; the anti-Falungong discourse of the clergies, and the discourse articulated against the movement by the Communist Party.
4 Jean Bauberot’s postscript relativises the classical question about the “annexing” or “specialised” nature of religion in China, highlighting the importance of historical changes, in contrast to an overly essentialist approach to the question. He also rightly remarks that “theoretical approaches to the relations between Confucianism and anticlericalism would be particularly welcome” (p.171). He also points out how much the durability of the representation of the Emperor determines a form of anticlericalism which is different from that produced in Europe by the gradual emancipation of the state from the grip of religion. Lastly, he relativises the distinction made between “anti-religion” and anticlericalism, at least in recent times. All these approaches lead the author to give more importance to the study of the relationship
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between anticlerical ideology and questions of power, even in China at its most contemporary.
5 This issue has the great merit of shaking up the traditional perspectives on the study of religion in China. Using some of his openings, I venture to suggest what the reconstruction thus begun might point towards.
6 It seems to me that the question of the relationship to religion in reality determines the image of both clerics and institutions. The relative newness of the term “religion” (zongjiao)—a fact which is often remarked on—should not be allowed to mislead: a range of terms have long been applied to relations with the hereafter inasmuch as these relations are mediated by “specialists”. The legitimacy and/or effectiveness of this mediation can be disputed for various reasons: denial of the existence of suprasensitive reality; the unknowable character of such reality; a questioning of the mediations carried out by religious agents, a contention put forward either by the state, or by competing agents (scholars, intellectuals who are agents of a different form of religion); contention arising inside a religion because of believers seeking a reformation or because of the doctrinal dynamic of the religion itself, which gives more importance to the immediacy of spiritual experience rather than reaffirming the monopoly its clerics are deemed to exercise over relations between the world of men and suprasensible reality. At least four “doctrinal sites” have developed a specific critique of the institutional mediations of religion: there are the traces left by the Confucian schools on the definition of the “religious”; there is the contesting of Chinese religious forms brought about less by the Buddhist institution than by its doctrine; there is also the religious critique carried on by the Christian churches—to what extent, in China also, is Christianity, as Marcel Gauchet put it “ the religion of the abandonment of religion” ? Lastly it remains to be seen whether, in today’s China, scientistic and Marxist discourse is an obstruction to the “return of the religious”, or if its decline, on the contrary, fuels this hypothetical return.
7 To summarise, anticlericalism revolves around a critique of the forms of mediation which structure relations between the individual and the hereafter, which explains why religions themselves are able, within limits, to develop an “anticlerical” discourse, an internal critique of their own ritual apparatus or of its use by their clerics. As I see it, it is against this background that the image of the cleric in a Chinese context remains a pertinent location for defining the mental representations and the power stakes which are inherent in religion.
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Judith Farquar, Appetites: Food and Sex in Postsocialist China (Body, Commodity, Text, Studies of Objectifying Practice), series directed by Arjun Appadurai, Jean Comaroff and Judith Farquar, Durham & London, Duke University Press, 2002, xii + 341 pp.
André Lévy
EDITOR'S NOTE
Translated from the French original by Michael Black
1 A Professor of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina, Judith Farquar has up to now focused mainly on research into medical thinking and practice in contemporary China. Her first publication, in 1987, was entitled Problems of Knowledge in Contemporary Chinese Medical Discourse1, and one of the most recent, Market Magic: Getting Rich and Getting Personal in Medecine after Mao2.
2 Appetites follows on in the same area of interest. It is a study, not of Chinese diet or cuisine, nor of the sexual behaviour of the Chinese today, but rather of the ideas some of them have of those things. While the author does not explain the reach of the notion of “objectivising practice”, we may understand it to mean the representation one makes of these needs as it appears in advertising, the cinema, the novel and through
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various personal experiences. The introduction argues for a globalising, non dualistic anthropology which harks back to Marx3 and Mencius4. She emphasises the mark left by history: the research seeks to uncover “a body totally imprinted by history”, in other words to reveal the changes of habitus in the China, described as “postsocialist”, of “reform”, in the author’s own words, “the shift from Maoist asceticism to capitalist boom in the everyday lives and embodied experiences of contemporary Chinese urbanites” (p. 3). A secondary objective is to propose thereby a model of methodological creativity: “an increase in and a blurring of the boundaries between the genres of the source material that can serve as an ethnographic text.”
3 The author has known China only since 1982 (cf. note 21, p. 295), a period, she emphasises, when “Maoism” was still much in evidence (cf. pp. 3-14). Nonetheless, the gap between lived experience and idealised history goes some way to explaining the conclusions in the last page of the research: “The jolt that must have accompanied the first glimpse of the new [Lei Feng] posters for those city dwellers was a reminder not only that big capital is taking the place of the state, but that there was a time when the state offered youth, sincerity, and optimism within an altruistic project. With all of its disappointments, this vision promised and for a time delivered healthier bodies, bodies more connected to a coherent collective, bodies that could take pleasure in the ordinary things of a shared life” (p. 291).
4 The author does add: “I do not think that Lei Feng's image as offered by the Sanju Corporation would have produced quite such an extreme response in Beijingers in the summer of 2000. But it, too, hailed a remembered, embodied, and therefore far from lost self. There are contemporary Chinese thinkers—Lu Wenfu, Mo Yan, Zhang Jie, and Zhou Xiaowen have been heard from in these pages—who wonder whether the reform era can offer any substitute for the simple but undeniable pleasures of socialism…”.
5 While the author, like any self-respecting anthropologist, feels bound by the necessity to become aware of her prejudices as a North American and to seek to sympathise with the object of her study, can these pleasures be reconciled with the picture of two decades of “revolution” (and I for one still find the word appropriate…) on pages 11 and 12, even in a slightly softened version (“After several bad droughts and little alteration in the intensification policy, much of the country experienced a disastrous famine. Many died of starvation or associated illnesses, and only a small proportion of the population, mostly highly placed urbanites, escaped periods of great deprivation”) ?
6 In short, the author does not seem to have always been aware of the direction of the irony of the authors she analyses. Is it aimed at the near-contemporary period of reform or at the recent past of Maoist fundamentalism? One is left wondering about possible misunderstandings on this point. The research remains, in its detail, full of interesting touches and provocative thoughts. It is divided into three parts, the first of which is devoted to eating. Its three chapters have ben trovato titles which are self- explanatory: Medicinal Meals, A Feast for the Mind and Excess and Deficiency. In the first, which invokes Claude Lévi-Strauss’s The Raw and The Cooked, the author shares both her knowledge of Chinese dietetic discourse and her lived experiences in that area, such as the restaurant which is patronised on the first floor by men only and is always full, for reasons one can guess, or the case of the housewife convinced that asparagus was good for what ailed her, sending for tins of them at great expense and making her whole family eat them every day. The next chapter takes its title from an ironic expression used in Gu Hua’s (1942- ) novel Hibiscus (1981). The analysis follows
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that of The Whitehaired Girl by He Jizhi and others in various versions from the 1940s onwards. That of The Gourmet (1983) by Lu Wenfu leads to the subject of the third chapter, headed by a quotation from Jacques Derrida which calls into question the art of “eating well”. Then Mo Yan (1956- ), with The Sorgho Clan and especially with The Alcohol Country (1993), is most often put in the hot seat on the question of the contrast between depletion and repletion, between famine and plenty. The medical aspect of the antinomy is presented in an enlightening graphic (p. 139). The discussion leads up to the passion for banqueting which incurs costs to communities which were estimated at US$12 billion in 1995 (cf. p. 146). The author, quoting Zhang Yimou’s film Life (p. 127), has not failed to notice that in these more recent works the irony has turned to sarcasm.
7 The second part, devoted to sexual desire (Desiring: An Ethic of Embodiment) opens with a preamble devoted to the analysis of a short story by Ding Ling (1904-1986), written in about 1966, but published in 1978, Du Wanxiang, a model girl, the counterpart of Lei Feng, and possessed by an ardour which the author describes thus: “This is a world that imagines love and sexuality together in a general and diffuse eroticism oriented first toward the collective” (p. 170). For the three chapters which divide up this material, it is enough to recall half of the titles: Writing the Self, Sexual Science and Ars Erotica. The first chapter, subtitled The Romance of the Personal, rests primarily on the short story by Zhang Jie Don’t Forget Love (1937) which created a stir when it was published in 1980, rather than on his better-known novel from 1981 Wings of Lead, which, it was said, flew to the assistance of Deng Xiaoping. The following chapter focuses on the appearance and development of a Scientia Sexualis which claims to have its roots in modernity and relative sexual freedom. The chapter sheds a critical light on the the still little-known field of nascent Chinese sexology. There is a subtle analysis of the discourse of the growing numbers of these publications, and a pertinent exposure of the limitations of surveys of sexual behaviours. Too many “fuzzy spots” make it impossible to try to establish any Chinese specificity. The last chapter refers almost entirely to the old sexual hygiene manuals, rediscovered in Japan in the first half of the last century. To this are added the discoveries of Mawangdui, which take the tradition back half a millennium, and are a pretext for national pride and also, thanks to this confirmation of Chinese leadership, for the rehabilitation of a domain that was once taboo. Is it the obsession with impotence which is linked with capitalism or is it rather its advertising in a liberalised economy (cf. p. 269)? There is no doubt that it has recently become a widespread subject. On that question the author analyses Zhou Xiaowen’s film Ermo, a comedy from 1994. A certain kind of feminism may feel overcome with nostalgia for an asexual world, and be repelled by these old manuals which have been accused of being imbued with a kind of male vampirism. “I myself do not wish to mine these materials for particular techniques that would add variety to my own or my readers' sexual habits. This is partly because the most obvious form of sexual embodiment encouraged by these texts is quite markedly male…” (p. 249) the author confides. “Needham insisted that they were not [exploitative of women] because of the ample evidence of sensitivity to women's sexual needs” (p. 281), she adds further on, with diverse warnings, and concludes: “The woman of this natural, common sense sexual ethic has not enough distinct presence to put her own preferences on the twenty-first-century agenda”.
8 These quotations show that, far from keeping a distance of observation deemed to be scientific, the ethnologist becomes involved with the material she is examining. One is
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left with a feeling of a sometimes unmethodical impressionism, whose richness, however, cannot be fully expressed without falling into tedious long windedness. The bibliography is revealing (pp. 323-336): no publication prior to 1950. These are questions whose historical roots go much deeper than the establishment of the new regime. The policy of the clean sweep at certain periods need to be re-evaluated, at the very least. Has the measure been taken of what went to ground without allowing itself to be buried? The index deals with the major questions rather than the realia, which is a pity: for example there is nothing on dogmeat, which appears as a subject in several places (in particular the parody made of it by Mo Yan on p. 132), or on the heart (p. 142, the classic Chinese medical maxim: “Too much joy harms the heart”).
9 In short, a book to reread in order to find the pearls hidden in an overabundance of material.
NOTES
1. Social Science and Medicine, Vol. 24, No. 12, pp. 1013-1021. 2. American Ethnologist, Vol. 23, No. 2, pp. 239-57. 3. Cf. p. 7: “Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men in their actual life-process", cf The German Ideology. 4. Cf. p. 1: Appetite for food and sex is nature.
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Gilles Guiheux, Les grands entrepreneurs privés à Taiwan - La main visible de la prospérité, Paris, CNRS, Asie orientale, 2002, 253 pp.
Philippe Chevalérias
1 In the course of the past fifty years, Taiwan has undergone exceptional economic development. Still largely dependent on agriculture in the 1950s—sugar, rice and tea then made up three-quarters of its exports—it has today become one of the best performing economies in the world in the information industry—on the world market in 1996, 10% of desktop computers, 32% of laptop computers, 54% of computer screens and 74% of motherboards were manufactured by Taiwanese firms either in Taiwan itself or abroad1.
2 The object of this book is less to explain the economic mechanisms of this development than to highlight the role played in it by one particular class of the population—the major private entrepreneurs. Stressing the factors that have led to the emergence of this social group, at the same time as to the shaping of its image, this socio-economic study shows how the leading body of Taiwanese employers, defined as "the set of governments of the major private businesses, the management teams that draw up the groups' policies and constitute an important part of the country's ruling class" (p. 13), has been both the result of economic growth and the driving force behind it.
3 Basing his work not only on interviews with leading industrialists, but also on magazines dealing with the economy (Tianxia, Zhuoye), business directories and (auto)biographies of businessmen, the writer describes, by way of numerous examples, how relations have been developed between "public" and "private" decision-makers on the one hand, and within the class of industry chiefs on the other. In addition, through a critical analysis of documentary sources he reveals what lies hidden beneath the language of these businessmen and the public image they wish to project.
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4 The study is in two parts. First, it seeks to answer the following question: how are the economic activities of the leading Taiwanese industrialists organised and what is their structure? The answer to this has itself three components: the state, which has facilitated the establishment of major groups (Chapters 2 and 3); the family, which has contributed to the maintenance of their cohesion (Chapter 4); and the networks of local, professional and/or associative solidarities (Chapter 5). The work then tries to bring out the "values" that the leading Taiwanese industry chiefs claim for themselves (Chapter 6).
5 The state has played a key role in the creation of a class of entrepreneurs in Taiwan, not only by giving them the opportunity to grow and prosper, but also by providing them with a moral stamp of approval in the eyes of society. In the 1950s, the Nationalist Party in power, which was implementing a new policy of economic development, suggested to a certain number of businessmen that they invest in strategic sectors with the help of the authorities. In the 1970s, the Taiwanese government, increasingly isolated internationally, then made an appeal to the island's leading businessmen to represent it abroad, notably on those committees designed to manage economic relations between Taipei and its commercial partners who had broken off their diplomatic relations with the Republic of China in Taiwan. So it was that a relation of clientalism was established between the authorities and the businessmen. On the one side, the state enabled a few of the latter to get rich quick in protected markets, at the same time as it turned their image of "profiteers and traitors to the homeland" into one of "benefactors of society" (p. 83). On the other, the entrepreneurs undertook to remain loyal to the Kuomintang and to support the government’s action thanks to their capital and networks of relations abroad. It was in this context the Taiwanese industry groups were developed.
6 Now, these groups which grew up under the protection of an all-powerful Nationalist Party were able to benefit from the climate of democratisation in Taiwan in the 1980s so as to free themselves from this tutelage. Their leaders even sought to have greater influence over government action on account of their financial power, their reputation, and their personal relations with those in power, for example through the creation of private foundations (one such being the Institute for National Policy Research, set up in 1989 by Chang Rongfa, the CEO of Evergreen), the financing of political parties, and direct participation in local elections. Taiwanese investments in South-East Asia and Mainland China were thus clear signs of the autonomy acquired by the island's leading firms. Putting their personal interest first, they responded reticently to the calls by government to invest more in South-East Asia, whereas they had no qualms about bypassing the law when it came to investing across the Strait.
7 The family has also contributed to the structuring of the leading Taiwanese industrialists by promoting the cohesion of groups of companies, as well as by helping to turn the milieu of business chiefs into a class. The family nature of these groups appears at three levels. The first is the fact that the founder and his family have a majority voice on the company boards. The second is the appointment of children, and sometimes even children-in-law, to management positions. The third is the alliances through marriage between leading industrialist families. We should observe, however, that the adaptation of the traditional family form of the company to the demands of the modern economy has necessitated "strategies of legitimisation". For example, it is incumbent upon the sons of the founders of the major firms to obtain "university
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degrees that are like skill certificates" and "to climb progressively, as it were, up the ladder of the businesses they are destined to manage" (p. 131).
8 Finally, solidarities, both local and professional in nature, sometimes complement the family networks to set in train a dynamic process of business creation (p. 163), through a system whereby people sharing a common background and/or a relation of boss- employee find themselves together as members of company boards. Thus the Hous and the Wus, two families from the Tainan region, became associated, after establishing Tainan Textile (1954) with the Chen family—connected twice over by marriage to the Hous—to found Universal Cement (1961). The group then diversified into the food and agriculture industry with the setting up of Tongyi (1967) on the initiative of Gao Qingyuan. He was also born near Tainan, and was a former apprentice in the textile business that the Wu brothers had before the war, before later becoming an employee of Tainan Textile. Employers' associations and social clubs (old boys' associations, charity organisations, etc.) are for their part places where the leading industrialists set up their social networks capable of being "activated" in case of need and of resulting in a partnership for business ventures.
9 The writer's analysis of the "moral values" claimed by the Taiwanese bosses explicitly fits into the perspective of Max Weber's works, according to which "there is no capitalist development without an entrepreneurial class and no entrepreneurial class without moral values" (p. 183). Taiwan's leading industrialists are no exception to the rule, placing at the forefront of their lives values such as work, frugality, the family, honesty and disinterest, and extolling the virtues of peace and harmony both within the firm and in society. They present themselves as good heads of household who cherish their employees as they do their own children, and as wise men guided "not by the desire for prosperity and personal recognition, but by the concern […] to contribute to the general well-being, by working for more harmony in society", profit being sought "not for personal ends, but for the good of society as a whole" (pp. 216-218). What is important to point out here is that this discourse, Confucianist in inspiration, adopted by "the elite of the business world" is no doubt less the reflection of a personal ethic than of an appropriation of a Chinese tradition in the interest of the firm. In this perspective, the "work" ethic could be said to favour the use of overtime, whereas the idea of peace and harmony would be a means of avoiding social conflicts, or even of justifying a "vigorous authoritarianism" (p. 191). As to investment in the training of employees, for example via the creation of schools within the firm itself, it is presented as the natural concern of a father for the education of his children. Yet, it is also a good means of integrating employees and making up for the deficiencies of the public education system.
10 We should now like to make one observation about form and a couple on content. First, with regard to form, a recapitulatory, well-ordered list of the major Taiwanese industrialists, with their date and place of birth, the name of the companies that they control and the spheres of activity concerned, would have been very useful to help the reader to find his or her way among the many people referred to in the book. As to content, two questions could have been more fully explored. What place do the major firms occupy with respect to the multitude of small to medium-sized businesses—in 1996, the latter represented no less than 98% of the total number of firms in Taiwan, and accounted for 79% of the workforce, 50% of exports and 34% of production2—and what are the specific features of the former with respect to the latter? Indeed, if both
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big and small firms have a family-type capital arrangement in common (p. 124), then what distinguishes the "big" bosses from "small" ones as far as, for example, influence on political power or moral values is concerned? Secondly, how far has the geographic background of the entrepreneurs influenced the development of their firms and their investment strategy abroad, particularly in Japan and Mainland China? Admittedly, the book gives some elements of a response to this question, but it would have been worthwhile to try to draw out any internal logic at work here—for example by comparing the firm of Tatung (electrical appliances), whose CEO is from an old Taiwanese family that made its fortune under the Japanese occupation (cf. Chapter 1), with the firm of Yulon (textiles, motor cars), whose founding family is from Shanghai— and to see from when and in what way connections operated between the companies set up by Mainlanders (who had arrived in Taiwan in 1949) and those established by native Taiwanese.
11 Beyond these remarks, one can say that this book, which makes use of a great number of Chinese-language sources, offers the originality of tackling the economic development of Taiwan from the perspective of the history of families whose fate has become inseparable from that of the island as a whole. One must give it credit not only for bringing a new light to bear on the process of industrialisation in Taiwan, but also for emphasising the specific case within the Asian world of Taiwanese industrialists who were able to take advantage of a dual cultural and economic influence, both Chinese and Japanese, to develop their networks and internationalise the island's economy.
NOTES
1.Wu Rong-I and Tseng Ming-Sheng, "The Development of the Information Industry in Taiwan", IDRI Occasional Paper, No. 7, November 1997, pp. 7-8 (29 pp.) 2.Jingjibu zhongxiao qiye (Office for Small Business, MOEA), Zhongxiao qiye baipishu (White Book on Small Businesses), Taipei, Jingjibu, 1997, p. 8 (426 pp.)
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Patricia Sieber, ed., Red Is Not The Only Color: Contemporary Chinese Fiction on Love and Sex between Women, Collected Stories. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001, 200 pp.
Mirana M. Szeto
1 This book is a touching co-operative product among the editor and women writers and translators. The stories are well chosen, with a cultural complexity and diversity that is quite remarkable. It is not the typical identity politics-driven coming out stories you expect. The stories move by their intellectual depth and emotional maturity, without hiding the historical complexity, cultural blind spots and social limitations and freedom that they come out of. The originals are chosen from widely acclaimed or seasoned writers from Hong Kong, Taiwan and China.
2 Patricia Sieber’s translation of PRC writer Zhang Mei brings out very well the tone of the writer. Zhang’s “A Record” is an ethnographical search for the disappearing culture of the “self-wedded women” in Shunde, Southern China. Among these self-wedded women were lovers who their contemporaries called “couples of intimates” (liangxiangzhi). The female narrator is a self-critical intellectual woman who sees the impossibility of recovering the lost culture of female-female love and sex among working and independent women of the past. She is sceptical and ironic about men and their culture industry’s prying fascination with these rebellious women of the past. The story shows love and sex between women as an integral part of an entire place and time. It resists the desire to tokenise the marginal. The observations about capitalism’s effects in Southern China, and about the ways of life of women past and present are remarkably avid and condensed, although the nasty side of capitalism seems too easily displaced onto the guy from Hong Kong, China’s capitalist alter ego.
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3 Paola Zamperini’s translation of PRC writer Chen Ran is also superb. Chen Ran’s “Breaking Open” has a didactic tone bordering towards a feminist manifesto. It is delivered as highly intellectual and soul-searching discussions between two women who are proud of their cultural elitism. It took a lot of philosophising, the threat of death, and the endorsement of the dead mother’s spirit for these women to break open their sexually tabooed language and body towards a shy declaration of love and of the desire for sexual intimacy. I find Chen Ran’s language and imagination trite. The declaration of love prompted by a dream about an impending air crash is too off-the- shelf. Also, the intellectual elitism seems a bit snobbish. However, she is not alone on this point.
4 The long intense conversations and epistolary form reappear in the PRC writer Wang Anyi’s “Brothers”, translated by Zhang Jingyuan. It is a similar story of three PRC women who are artists and intellectuals. This novella is about three inseparable women artists whose sisterhood gloriously hijacks the language, camaraderie, bodily and intellectual freedom of men. The “brotherhood” of these women turns gradually rough as they one by one struggle with the imperatives of heterosexual love, sex, marriage and children under Communist rule. The endearing emotional intensity and brazen language and thoughts of the women shine through in the translation. Both men and women struggle with and within the blind spots of gender essentialism in the culture. Mother love sabotages women-women love. Jealous husbands are contrasted with the struggles of a liberal husband. It is a story about how far feminist liberation can go within the limitations of this society. It is about how far an intense love between women can go until the family and marriage structure can no longer tolerate it. Rather than awareness of lesbianism and sexual exploration, the story is about intense and exclusive women friendships breaking apart under the pressure of society.
5 Unlike the PRC women’s intellectually elitist and snobbish position against the inevitable commercialisation of Chinese culture, fabulous and versatile Hong Kong writer Wong Bikwan’s “She’s a Young Woman and So am I” however, attacks both. She tries a double-edged take on the age-old struggle between intellectual and material aspirations through the story of a closeted lesbian relationship between two college friends living together. Their erotic relationship breaks apart when the butch partner cynically buys into the life of the academic, and is abandoned by the femme who dives into decadent glamour and wealth. The Hong Kong writer, rather than being unselfconsciously elitist like the PRC writers, is more self-aware and ironic about the body-mind split and the pathos of intellectual and artistic talents crushed in a popular culture of mediocre commercialism. However, this does not mean that the story fits into the cliché about Hong Kong as a commercial cultural desert. Its language at once displays and cynically jibes at the representational logic that turns Hong Kong subjects into self-fulfilling prophecies. However, Naifei Ding’s translation, perhaps because of her unfamiliarity with Cantonese inflections and turns of phrases, loses some of the subtle irony, cruel humour and uncanny choice of words that Wong is famous for. Where Wong’s signature tone is missing, the story may exhume the pretentiousness that the author actually tries to wreck.
6 The sexual and social taboos against love and sex between women in the PRC and Hong Kong stories are also found in the Taiwanese stories. He An’s “Andante” is translated by Sieber and especially written for this volume. I did not have a chance to compare the original with the translation. It is again a love story about artistic and intellectual
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women, a category abundant in this volume. A lesbian musician is betrayed and abandoned by her high-school lover in Taiwan and gradually learns to trust in another lesbian relationship with another lesbian musician in the United States. The difficult sexual coming out in Taiwan, the pressure of having boyfriends, and the homophobia that even the closeted lesbian lovers themselves sometimes display, is echoed also in the story “Lips” by another Taiwanese writer Liang Hanyi, translated by Kimberly Besio. This story brings out most explicitly the pressures of homophobia and mainstream taboo on women’s sexuality. A kiss by a close high-school friend becomes a sexually inhibiting trauma. The outed and stigmatised lesbian dying of tuberculosis is a bit too melodramatic, notwithstanding that death is a common theme in lesbian culture in Taiwan.
7 The other Taiwanese stories however, go to the other extreme. Taiwanese writer Chen Xue’s impossible combination of a sexually explicit language and an emotional sincerity bordering on innocence comes out very well in Sieber’s translation. Chen Xue’s story “In Search of the Lost Wings of the Angels” is the most sexually explicit in the collection. It is a discovery of lesbian sexual desire through its entanglement with parent loss, trauma and recovery. The fine struggle between bisexuality and lesbian sexuality stays powerful in the translation. Chen Xue is often credited for inventing the language of women’s eroticism and sex for contemporary Chinese language. Paola Zamperini’s translation of Taiwanese writer Hong Ling’s young vampire femme fatal in “Fever” is also an erotic and melancholic little gem. It is a futuristic mourning of a lost lesbian lover. Hong’s vampires and other uncannies have together, become a genre of her own.
8 All in all, I am delighted that the book fulfils its role as a long-awaited forerunner. Its well footnoted introduction shows familiarity with all the important relevant scholarship existing in English as well as certain feminist constituencies in Taiwan. Its cultural and historical contextualisation is fair, except that there is an obvious lack of knowledge of Hong Kong culture and history that borders on the stereotypical. I find the “critical” biographies of the authors very useful. Thus, to celebrate and compliment this book, I would like to announce a collection of first love stories between woman that came out in Hong Kong at the same time in 2001: Commotion: Her’s and Her’s First Love Stories (Saodong: tata de chulian gushi), is edited by Jin Hualu, designed by Jin Peiwei, and published by Hong Kong’s Cultural Act Up. In fact, a lot of stories and even films about women’s sexualities coming out of Hong Kong, Taiwan and the PRC are circulating on the web. I strongly encourage the reader to venture into these works. A lot are surprising and refreshing.
China Perspectives, 47 | May-june 2003