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Culture Matters CRF-2008-04r-080-098.qxd:HRIC-Report 1/14/09 2:57 PM Page 82 CULTURE MATTERS A Parable of Talent Gone to Waste BY THOMAS E. KELLOGG Philip P. Pan’s Out of Mao’s Shadow is poor peasant from rural Shandong Out of Mao’s Shadow: a parable of talent gone to waste . Pan province. After winning a widely-pub - The Struggle for the Soul introduces us to Cheng Yizhong, who licized case securing free access to the of a New China created China’s first fully marketized Beijing subway for handicapped per - By Philip P. Pan newspaper, the Southern Metropolitan sons, Chen was besieged with requests Simon & Schuster Daily , in 1997 . The newspaper, which for help from local villagers on any November 2008 brought Chinese readers hard-hitting, number of egregious injustices . Ignor - 368 pages, $28.00 high-quality news reporting and ing advice from friends impressed by innovative feature sections on every - his courage but fearing for his safety, thing from cars to real estate, was an Chen took on several cases certain to instant hit. It turned its first profit in rankle the authorities. In the nearby 1999 and soon became a widely-emu - city of Linyi, Chen challenged local lated model for media entrepreneurs officials to end their abusive enforce - nationwide. ment of the one-child policy . It proved to be a costly decision. Yet Cheng’s success was not enough to insulate him from serious trouble. In For his efforts on behalf of the poor early 2003 , Cheng found himself run - and the dispossessed in his home ning afoul of local authorities over his county, Chen was arrested on the paper’s coverage of the government’s streets of Beijing in September 2005 . inept handling of the outbreak of He was dealt a much harsher penalty Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome than Cheng Yizhong: after a brief trial (SARS ). A few months later, Cheng’s in August 2006, Chen was sentenced decision to publish a harrowing to more than four years in prison for account of police brutality in “damaging property and organizing a Guangzhou—a story that led to the repeal of a notori - mob to disturb traffic.” 1 ous decades-old administrative detention system known as shourong qiansong (“ custody and repatria - Other examples abound: SARS doctor Jiang Yanyong tion ” 收容遣送 )— earned him a spot on the govern - was taken into custody for several weeks after he wrote ment’s enemies list. In March 2004, Cheng was detained a letter to senior officials urging the government to on allegations of corruption. His detention was seen by reconsider its verdict on the Tiananmen Square many as politically-motivated payback for his paper’s protests. Accidental labor activist Xiao Yunliang was hard-edged reporting. Although he was eventually sentenced to four years in jail for organizing protests released, Cheng’s marvelous creation was taken away against corruption and job losses at his former factory from him . He now spends his days ducking the spot - in northeastern Liaoning province. Their stories, beau - light and editing a local sports magazine. tifully rendered by Pan, illustrate a paradox that the Chinese government has yet to resolve: the problems Barefoot lawyer and disability rights activist Chen that China currently faces can’t be meaningfully Guangcheng is another case in point. Blind from an addressed without the help of committed individuals early age, Chen seems to have willed himself to over - and the ever growing number of civil society groups. come the formidable obstacles set before him, including Yet the government is often fearful of those who have not only his own disability but also his background as a the most to give. 82 | REGULAR FEATURES CRF-2008-04r-080-098.qxd:HRIC-Report 1/14/09 2:57 PM Page 83 CHINA RIGHTS FORUM | NO. 4, 2008 Any country would be lucky to have a journalist as cre - mentation of strategic approaches is what most wei - ative and innovative as Cheng Yizhong, or a grassroots quan lawyers are focused on. activist as brave and committed as Chen Guangcheng. The success of social movements rests in no small part Instead, the largest challenge confronting the weiquan on the willingness of individual citizens to put aside movement—still very much in the early stages of devel - what are often more lucrative and less risky career opment and very vulnerable—is external. Over the past options for the sake of the issues they care about . few years, China has seen the rise of tactics once consid - ered unthinkable in the Chinese context: the use of state Out of Mao’s Shadow is also about the choice between violence to curb the activities of activists, journalists, pragmatism and moral purity. Does it make more lawyers, and other troublemakers. 3 In the past, govern - sense to push for change while carefully avoiding arrest ments would limit themselves to the threat and promise and imprisonment, or must one make a moral state - of jail terms to control would-be activists. Yet the ment in the face of injustice, regardless of cost? When lawyers who made their way to Linyi to defend Chen do moral statements cause a backlash that might be Guangcheng in 2006 were beaten by thugs apparently counter-productive to the goals of the movement? And hired by the local government. In September 2007, if pragmatism delivers diminishing returns—as with rights lawyer Li Heping was kidnapped and beaten by a the defense of Chen Guangcheng—then why choose group of unidentified men. 4 Although Li’s assailants did that approach? not make clear the reasons for their attack, it is believed that the beating was tied to Li’s human rights work. During 2005 and 2006, many of the top human rights activists—most of whom are part of the loosely-affili - Ironically, some have traced this deeply troubling trend ated group of so-called weiquan , or rights defense, of violence against lawyers to the weiquan movement lawyers—were drawn into the debate. It is true that, for itself: as human rights lawyers have taken an interest in a time, the conversation generated more heat than light: cases far from Beijing, local governments, unused to I remember interviewing a prominent weiquan lawyer being challenged on their home turf, have been forced in a Beijing coffeehouse as that debate was going on, to respond. Many local officials cannot abide having and his anger over what he viewed as both mistaken their authority questioned. They react to these interlop - and harmful moves by those on the moralist side was ers just as they handle unruly behavior by local peas - evident. His voice shook as he named the names of ants: with force. For other officials, a more complex those who were, to his mind, doing much harm and lit - calculus may be in effect: given the prominence that tle good. many weiquan lawyers enjoy, any arrest will bring with it a chain of unwanted phone calls from nervous central Yet the passage of time has healed many of the small government officials. Using hired thugs to kidnap and wounds inflicted then. And here Pan makes a rare error beat a lawyer may not, perhaps, generate a similar in his analysis: he suggests toward the end of the book response, in part because the government’s hand is par - that the weiquan movement, driven by factional dis - tially hidden. 5 How can Beijing—or Washington or putes over long-term strategy and short-term tactics, Brussels—call to complain when no one knows which will have difficulty in maintaining any influence. “The government official was ultimately responsible? lawyers who rallied to defend (Chen Guangcheng) are a demoralized and divided bunch, and the greater wei - Many of the weiquan lawyers I spoke to—none of them quan movement is foundering and on the verge of col - strangers to oppressive government behavior—still had lapse, ” Pan concludes. 2 This may have been the case the capacity to express shock and surprise, and even when Pan was putting the finishing touches on his book disappointment, over the use of violence by govern - manuscript, but the factional divisions that cut deep ment actors. This reaction is indicative of the faith that divisions in the weiquan movement, though by no Chinese human rights activists have in their country, means completely vanished, have dissipated . Pragma - and the government’s ability to, over time, live up to the tism is the name of the game, for now, and the imple - promises that it has made. It is in the best interest of CULTURE MATTERS | 83 CRF-2008-04r-080-098.qxd:HRIC-Report 1/14/09 2:57 PM Page 84 senior government officials to take steps to preserve tionships with both officials in the municipal govern - that faith, that long-term optimism, among its most ment and inside Zhongnanhai—the Beijing residential rigorous critics. If the current willingness to engage complex that houses the highest-level Communist were replaced by a lingering cynicism or even Party leaders—were crucial to her stratospheric success . defeatism, it would have negative consequences that Entrepreneurs who, like Chen, made their fortunes in would spread far beyond Beijing. part through government connections, will almost cer - tainly not turn around and bite the hand that fed them. One would hope that, at some point, the central gov - According to Pan: ernment would realize that the activists and individual citizens profiled in Pan’s book are in fact serving soci - . those counting on the capitalists to lead the charge ety, and, in doing so, serving the government’s interest for democratization in China are likely to be disap - in preserving social harmony through social justice.
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