Global Times gives new narrative on Chen Guangcheng

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The past few weeks have been especially embarrassing for the “rule-of-law” touting Communist Party as a blind activist (not actually charged with any crime) escaped house arrest. Well now Global Times has released a new narrative on what’s happened in Chen Guangcheng’s village over the past few years that puts the situation in a very different light.

In an op-ed entitled “Chen trump for US in human rights game,” Sima Pingbang, a “blogger and grass-roots intellectual” claims that he actually visited Chen successfully last December. This is a pretty bold claim since we were previously under the impression that no journalist had successfully broken through Chen’s guards to see him. It’s also quite strange that we haven’t heard anything of this visit until now – at a time when finding some actual wrong-doing by Chen would be very convenient for the party – which brings us to the even bolder claims of the article:

According to other villagers, Chen’s imprisonment a few years ago had nothing to do with his work. It was actually a pretty common local conflict.  They told me that Chen built a deep well using funds he received from a British source. But that well sucked out water from other wells in the village, which meant Chen effectively controlled the village’s water.

They claimed that Chen charged high fees for the water and caused discontent from villagers, some of them then openly voiced their unhappiness and that angered Chen. So he asked his family members to attack the village committee and blocked public roads in order to vent his anger.

So rather than being a feeble human rights defender, the piece says Chen is a water-hoarding, price-gouging, vengeful rabble-rouser.  For some reason, a British source funded a blind man’s water monopoly on a random village in Shandong.

[Update 1: Another article today from The Daily Beast mentions that there was in fact a British-funded well. It says, “After his environmental fight against the paper mill (in the late 1990s), Chen contacted Western media, diplomats, and NGOs in an effort to help improve villagers’ access to clean water. When the British Embassy agreed to bankroll a new 180-meter-deep well, Chen was proud of what his little hamlet of Dongshigu had achieved.”] 

Sima Pingbang, the author of the GT piece, is a somewhat famous left-wing Maoist who last year penned an essay entitled “Support American People’s Great Wall Street Revolution,” which said events in the US will herald a global revolution that will bury capitalism. It inspired some short-lived protests in support of the movement in China.

On scouring over Sima Pingbang’s Weibo tweets from the month of December, I found nothing about a visit to Chen Guangcheng’s village. When contacted about how the claims were verified for print in Global Times, op-ed section reporter Gao Lei explained that Sima Pingbang did indeed visit Dongshigu in December with two others named Liu Yang 刘仰 and Yi Qing 一清 from a “blogger association.” Gao said that the group was approved by local authorities for the visit because they said they were “not there to cause any trouble, but looking for a peaceful solution.”  They then related this all to Gao Lei with some others from the association over dinner sometime after their return.

It seems that the “blogger association” (which Gao didn’t name) these men belong to is April Media 四月传媒 at m4.cn – formerly Anti-CNN.com – a nationalistic site that’s railed against Western media distortions of China since 2008.  It has an English sister site called the 4th Media. All three men have written op-eds on Chen Guangcheng in the past three days (here, here and here). Yi Qing backs up the trip to Dongshigu, but Liu Yang just talks about how Chen is a sympathetic figure who’s been exploited by the West. It’s not quite in line with the conniving water baron Sima Pingbang’s article portrays.

Gao Lei also said that these men have written about their trip before, but I wasn’t able to find anything about it dated before the past few days – which is odd if they did in fact go last December.

So it seems Sima Pingbang either A) Really found a story that the entire foreign press has somehow missed, B) went to Dongshigu, actually talked with villagers and Chen Guangcheng, but was lied to – perhaps by the thugs guarding Chen – and swallowed it all wholesale, or C) made things up.  Since Chen Guangcheng is gone now anyways and these new revelations, if true, would neutralize the government’s supposed wrongdoing, surely Dongshigu authorities will want these things independently verified by journalists – like those from CNN –  who might try to visit the town.

[Update 2: Yaxue Cao from Seeing Red in China, who first broke the news on Chen Kegui’s altercation with thugs, has informed me that Sima did go to Dongshigu with Liu and Yi, as well as Politburo member Li Yuanchao, to convince Chen to reach some kind of compromise – which he refused. This site shows that Li was in Linyi at the time, though it naturally doesn’t mention anything about Chen. The presence of a Politburo member would be nothing short of incredible and would explain the others not writing about the trip earlier.

Yaxue also adeptly pointed out that, while there was indeed a British-funded well, the idea of Chen siphoning the water away from the rest of the village is stupid because of (among other things) the principle of communicating vessels.]

[Update 3: He Peirong, Chen’s rescuer, has told me that Li Yuanchao never met Chen. So if Li did have any involvement with Chen, it wasn’t direct.]

State media lashes out at Chen and the US

A few days ago I looked at the two options the Party’s PR apparatus had in responding to the Chen Guangcheng situation:

1. Show restraint. Acknowledge, but downplay the story as best it can until it blows over. Perhaps even allow a few commentaries that aren’t hyper-critical of the event to show that the leadership isn’t so insecure.
2. Actively retaliate with the full extent of police and media power.

It’s now become pretty apparent that they learned nothing from The Liu Xiaobo Nobel PR debacle and have decided to go all in on option 2.

Many of Chen’s extended family and rescuers are still unaccounted for, have been interrogated, beaten, or been placed under soft detention. And several journalists have been blocked from reporting.

Foreign Ministry Spokesman Liu Weimin whipped out the one-size fits all response to international disputes saying, “The US move is an interference in China’s internal affairs.”

The Chinese media is now on the offensive as well, using pretty much every official cliche you can imagine for responding to dissent and foreign involvement in China.  Here’s a few rough translations from recent Chinese media commentaries:

Beijing Daily:

Chen Guangcheng has become a tool and a pawn of the U.S. politicians to discredit China.

Chen doesn’t represent the interests of the majority of people, just the interests of his boss: The Western Anti-China forces.

Chen has been made famous and labeled as a “hero” and a “freedom fighter” by the US and western media – An anti-society, anti-establishment figure.

Paraphrase [kind of an awkward translation]: Chen and the people supporting him are very naïve to think they can use this event to interfere with and blackmail China. It won’t get any response from the 1.3 billion Chinese people, who are mature enough to realize it’s a conspiracy.

Just think if other countries’ embassies became highly interested in the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, giving support to the people to revolt and reinvent the image of America. How would the US respond?

Ambassador Locke, since taking office, has used his duties to strain relations between China and the US instead of being devoted to the development of Sino-US relations. He rode economy class on his plane ride, he carried his bags himself, and used coupons to buy coffee – all as a show. Then he monitored Beijing air quality and published readings at the embassy, creating debate in Beijing city administration. Now he dares to bring Chen – a Chinese citizen – into the US embassy. These things are not in line with Locke’s role as an ambassador, but are meant to stir up contradictions in the whirlpool and it’s very obvious what motive is behind his behavior. [Loosely paraphrased from Chinese parable]: This farce directed by the US embassy gives a lesson to Chinese citizens: The US has ill intentions toward China.

Beijing News:

Diplomats from foreign governments stationed in other countries have the obligation to comply with the laws and respect the culture of the host country. The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations does not give ambassadors the right to intervene in domestic issues and doesn’t give them “extraterritoriality” to flagrantly interfere in the internal affairs of other countries.

Since World War II, marks of colonial rule like “extraterritoriality” and “consular jurisdiction” have been thrown in the trash bin of history.

When exploring the new power between China and the United States, one cannot simply use the Cold War mentality to look at how to deal with the differences between the two countries.

Beijing Youth Daily:

Chen Guangcheng left the US embassy in China on May 2^nd, Ambassador Locke sent him to the hospital in person, pushing the wheelchair under the foreign media’s spotlight. He went beyond his duties as an American ambassador. Under normal circumstances it’s understandable that American officials give help to ordinary Chinese citizens, but Locke used American values to judge Chinese society and forced China to accept American values. His actions were a “show” and “performance” to attract attention, which is typical Western politician behavior. It’s impulsive and hypocritical. It’s not only offensive to Chinese, but the American media also criticizes such behavior.

In recent years, human rights has been relegated to a very secondary position in Sino-US relations. The era in which the US finds fault with China’s human rights should belong to the past. We are willing to make concessions to the relationship with sincerity and goodwill to maintain the overall situation of Sino-US relations. Any behavior that damages the overall situation of Sino-US relations has no future.

Beijing Times

The US is already stretched too wide and too thin in other countries, but it still shows too much concern about Chinese domestic issues. Under the flag of humanitarianism it interferes with other countries’ issues showing its intention of being the master of the world. This kind of behavior totally betrays international law and the principle of non-interference. But if other countries interfere with American internal affairs then the US will retaliate. This kind of logic is pure hegemonic logic.

The countries who have such logic always deliberately look for some tools to flaunt their own rights and the mistakes of others. In this case Chen Guangcheng is their new tool. When he was at the US embassy, he couldn’t find justice but only found himself being used by the US, which left him only frustration and disappointment. Any country during the period of transition and reform will face a lot of conflicts and contradictions. But during the past 30 years after Reform & Opening Up, China has not passed on its problems or contradictions to other countries, but rather it solved a lot of problems on its own and achieved great accomplishments and progress. But some individuals and countries with ulterior motives intend to exaggerate Chinese domestic contradictions in an attempt to discredit China. But this one of the contradictions that Chinese can solve on its own as it did in previous years without the need of others to intervene.

How the party’s PR apparatus could respond to Chen Guangcheng

Yesterday it was reported Chen Guangcheng escaped from house arrest in Linyi. Now, the blind self-taught lawyer who defended villagers forced to undergo abortions and sterilizations is at “the 100% safe location” in Beijing – presumably the US embassy, but we still don’t really know. He’s also released a 15-minute video where he details the beatings and deplorable treatment he and his family have received while they were detained by upwards of 80 guards. His family remains in Linyi under their watch.

This comes at a terrible time for the Chinese government. The Communist Party has been trying desperately to parade Bo Xilai’s arrest as evidence that China is under the rule of law. People’s Daily recently mentioned “the law” 23 times in a single editorial. There’s perhaps nobody that makes a mockery of this more than Chen Guangcheng.

Chen spent four years in prison on trumped up charges of “damaging property and organizing a mob to disturb traffic.” In the 18 months since his release he’s been under house arrest despite never being charged with any additional crimes. His family – including his 6-year old daughter – has also been detained.

Over the past few years Chen has become a folk-hero among activists in China, perhaps only second to Ai Weiwei in fame. The Shawshank-like escape of the blind dissident through dozens of state thugs is a metaphor that won’t be lost on his supporters

What happens next will be very interesting. The most comparable event in recent memory is when Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in late 2010. Then and now there’s really no positive way the government can spin it. And the Party now basically has the same choices it did then:

1. Show restraint. Acknowledge, but downplay the story as best it can until it blows over. Perhaps even allow a few commentaries that aren’t hyper-critical of the event to show that the leadership isn’t so insecure.
2. Actively retaliate with the full extent of police and media power.

You’ll notice there isn’t a third option of officially ignoring the event and trying to block out any mention of it. We’ll probably see that for several days, but the internet has made it an impossible long-term strategy for a story as sensational as this.

In Liu Xiaobo’s case the second option was taken. Liu’s wife and several activists were detained, people were stopped from leaving the country, and we got a daily barrage of inflammatory editorials portraying the prize as a farce concocted by the West to keep China down.

The episode was a PR disaster. The official response only reinforced everything that the award was criticizing. Had the Chinese government taken the first option, it still would have been embarrassing, but some semblance of dignity and face would have been saved. Now we get to see if anything was learned from the Nobel affair.

If the same strategy is used now, it’ll face some big challenges. In this case, the government has no foreigners to blame. As belligerent as it seemed to outsiders, the official response to the Nobel Prize whipped up some nationalistic points for the government. It’s unlikely any such points can be won here. The US could be criticized for “interfering in China’s internal affairs” by sheltering Chen, but that invites some very risky juxtapositions between the two governments.

That leads to the most important difference with the Liu Xiaobo case: Liu was tried for a law he did actually break – a horribly unjust and poorly-defined law, yes, but still a law that’s on the books. What can the government say in Chen’s case? There’s no legal justification to point to. Chen served his time and is legally a free man.

For the past 18 months the central government has been largely able to keep its hands clean of Chen by leaving local Linyi officials to do the dirty work. But now he’s found his way to the central government’s backyard and has already begun to tell the world his story.

National leaders have some important decisions to make in how they respond to Chen, his rescuers, and his family. So far it seems they’re maintaining the status quo by tacitly approving of local authorities’ suppression. Chen’s family has already been retaliated against and his rescuer has reportedly been detained in Nanjing. The Communist Party can either live up to the rule of law it’s been trumpeting and ensure the  freedom of these people, or it can make a hypocritical spectacle of itself at a time when official credibility is already hanging by a thread.

 

Foreigners’ role in shaping China

A few days ago I talked with a Communist Party acquaintance who has a fairly high position in the propaganda organ  (by “fairly high” I’ll just say he’s on speaking terms with several Politburo members). We got to talking about the upcoming power turnover and I asked whether he thinks the government will shift to the left with the likes of Bo Xilai’s neo-socialists or to the right with the Wang Yang progressive crowd. “Neither,” he replied. “It will go in a third direction. Domestically it will go to the right and in foreign policy to the left.”

This basically means further reform in freedoms at home while taking a more hawkish approach abroad. This seems like a very plausible scenario. He also said he worries that some current players vying for greater power could be catastrophic for China, were they to be put  in charge.

While speaking with him I realized that when you hear about the Communist Party through only certain mediums, it’s easy to form the idea that they’re a unified monolith; when actually nothing could be further from the truth. He’s a very rational guy who pretty well represents an unsung wing of the Party – a wing that didn’t necessarily get into politics to abuse their power and line their own pockets. He has most of the same concerns I do about China’s future. He worries about nationalists hijacking the government and letting the current situation deteriorate further. Some would criticize him, saying that since he’s part of the system, he’s complicit in the bad that it does.  But he seems to sincerely believe the Party’s power can be channeled for good; that people like him can steer it in the right direction from the inside.  He and I don’t agree on a lot of the methods to get this done, but his heart is in the right place. However, sometimes forces from the outside make it harder for people like him.

This week there was a great piece in New York Times called “Why China won’t listen.” The piece cited a congressional ammendment to express support for Chen Guangcheng, who’s under house arrest in Linyi, saying:

“Beijing does not indiscriminately reject all such ‘interference’; China and the United States conduct a dialogue on human rights through diplomatic channels. But Chinese leaders believe such dialogue belongs behind closed doors. The Chinese are saying to Americans, if you grant me face, I can be reasonable; if solving the problem will help me, I’ll consider it. But don’t expect me to make concessions under pressure.”

This is a dead-on assessment. Much of the foreign criticism toward China’s human rights is counter-productive. It backs Chinese leaders into a corner and forces them to take a hawkish anti-foreign attitude and even double-down on the practices being criticized. It drowns out the voices of reason who are trying to lead the country’s development in a positive direction. This, perhaps, is partly why there may be opposite directions for domestic and foreign policy with the new leadership.

This isn’t to say foreigners should stop criticizing China. Far from it. However, things like congressional censures, which do more for US politicians’ campaigns than China’s human rights, are the opposite of constructive. A lot of the other criticisms over Chen Guangcheng were perfectly legitimate, but still counter-productive.

It’s important to realize that substantive change in China can never be inflicted from the outside. The government and people alike would reject it on principle. The foreign media plays an important role in covering issues that Chinese media are either too scared to report or are directly barred from reporting. Dissemination of information is good. Calmly arguing how current policy is bad for Chinese people is good. But making fruitless public admonishments of the government is pointless and usually harmful. Every time a protester in San Francisco holds up a “Free Tibet!” sign they’re pushing the rational people in China further into the arms of the hawks. Things like petitions to free Chen Guangcheng and human rights groups blasting the government – their hearts are in the right place but their actions often result in the opposite of what they’re fighting for.

Rational people within the Party need to have some room to maneuver and get their voices heard over the shouting of the hardliners. They’re the only ones that have any hope of reforming the Party constructively. And while it might be satisfying to see the corrupt bureaucrats and iron fists get their come-upins in a full-on rebellion, steady reform within the confines of the current system would be much safer and better for everyone.

The Party isn’t some Darth Vader-run empire of evil. As much as I, and many others focus on the absurd and horrible things some quarters of it carry out, there are a lot of good people in the Party trying to get good things done. Reporting, objective analysis and pressure from foreign governments behind closed doors are the only things foreigners can really do to help those people improve China’s situation.