World-China Forum

The end of revolution

The most important lesson we have learned as a nation as a result of the 1989 Beijing Event is that China cannot afford another revolution. This does not mean that what happened in Beijing in 1989 was a revolution. Far from it. Although many forces out of China have used "democratic spring", "anti-corruption movement" or even "half revolution" to describe the events, no one has seriously called the events a "revolution."

China cannot afford another revolution partly because for almost 140 years between the First Opium War in the 1840s and 1978, when China started the reform and opening to the world, China had had too many revolutions, in addition to civil wars, foreign aggressions, and many other man-made disasters. Because history did not end with the 1989 Beijing Event, or with even the collapse of the Soviet Union, when we look back at the past 20 years, we can conclude that China cannot afford another revolution, like those which happened in the former Soviet Union and its socialist camp, because a revolution will deprive China of political stability and, in its turn, will ruin almost all of China's economic achievements during the past 30 years.

Whatever unhappiness, complaints, or grievances we may have, we need to resolve them on the basis of maintaining rather than undermining political stability. Whatever political pursuits, experiments and innovation we conduct, we cannot do so at the cost of political stability. United, our nation of 1.33 billion people will overcome difficulties and challenges and make great contribution to world peace and development. But divided, for whatever reasons, including seemingly harmless motivations, we as a nation will not only fail our own expectations, but may inflict great havoc to the rest of the world.

As China pursues economic development, it will build up its own democracy and human rights in peaceful ways, rather than through a revolution. Thus, the end of revolution in China. Both China and the rest of the world will be better off as a result. (Victor Gao, CNN)

China urges fair play in village elections

China's central authorities issued a circular here Saturday urging candidates to practice fair play in direct elections of village heads amid complaints of bribery and other dirty tricks to win votes.

    "The villagers' committee election work in some rural areas is not properly conducted as bribery situation is grave and seriously harms the impartiality of election," said the circular jointly issued by the General Office of the State Council and the General Office of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee.

    According to the circular, candidates' behaviors must be "strictly regulated". Punishment ranging from disqualification from election, removing current post to criminal penalty will be given to those who try to win votes from villagers with money, violence or intimidation and those who cheat in vote count.

    Villagers have the rights to report any improper behaviors of the candidates and such reports should be investigated and managed immediately, the circular said.

    "Currently, the country's rural areas are experiencing fresh reform and farmers' ideas are also undergoing deep changes," said the circular." Improving the work of election will help ensure villagers to practise their rights and develop grass-root democracy."

    In addition, government organizations at provincial, city, county and township levels should set up special departments to regulate and guarantee the smooth run of village elections.

    According to the circular, related organizations are also urged to "carefully" deal with post-election issues, such as auditing the work of former villagers' committees, ensuring former committee members' social welfare and even comforting candidates who lose.

    A villagers' committee in China's countryside is a mass organization of self-management comprising local villagers, usually five members that manage village affairs.

    China has introduced the practice of self-administration and direct elections at village levels since the Organic Law of Villagers' Committees was enacted in 1988.

    The law, which sets out basic principles to ensure democracy at a local level, states that any villager aged 18 years or over has the right to vote or stand as a candidate. (Xinhua)

Is there anything to fear from China?

Jiuquan, a small town in the gritty deserts of northwestern China, was a place once moderately celebrated around the world as the birthplace of that most singular vegetable, rhubarb. But, along with the profound changes that have engulfed modern China, this remote and half-forgotten town has lately taken a very different direction from its botanical beginnings. It has become instead -- and largely because of its splendid isolation -- the main launch center for China's ever-swelling armada of space rockets.

And at the entrance to its interplanetary complex there is currently a billboard, half in English, that bristles with pride at the community's makeover. In very large letters at its base there is written a slogan that Western visitors may find more than a little chilling. It proclaims, and without apparent fear of contradiction or challenge: "Without Haste. Without Fear. We Will Conquer the World."

For what did the signboard in Jiuquan mean? Precisely what ambition did the slogan "We Shall Conquer the World" truly signify? Local officials explained to me that it did not mean military conquest; China wasn't about to invade a neighbor, wasn't going to make threats or commence a program of assertion, expansion or hegemonistic swagger. The slogan merely suggested, and mildly, that China might offer the world another way -- an alternative to the cultural influence of McDonald's, Exxon Mobil and General Foods -- a reminder that Confucian ideals, for instance, matter too.

With an almost cast-iron guarantee of domestic tranquillity at home, how best can China, in a fickle and dangerous world, guarantee a lasting peace abroad? I suspect that China will work that out, without haste. AndI imagine China will accomplish it, without fear. Just as it has so adroitly managed to achieve what will most probably be a lasting peace at home. (Simon Winchester, Los Angeles Times)

Why isolate a global pariah even further?

On the question of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, better known as (a) North Korea, (b) notorious charter member of former U.S. President George W. Bush's "axis of evil" and (c) pain-in-the-neck threat to world peace and stability, here are a few humble observations in light of the fact that, basically, no one really knows what to do about North Korea, including China.

You would think that China, the originator of the six-party talks (aimed at North Korean nuclear disarmament and begun in 2003) would be embarrassed by the latest morose turn of events. But China, Pyongyang's longtime ally, is not totally hapless. All along, it has said the North Korea is such an enfant terrible that even China cannot really control it. And Beijing's greatest fear is not the missiles but the potentially massive migrant population if North Korea collapses. China prefers the company of secure, sealed, unthreatening buffer states. Given its common border with North Korea, it is much opposed to instability, whatever the nature of that regime.

Calls from the West to isolate it further are like asking to further isolate the planet Pluto from Uranus. What's the point? Besides, isolation as a policy doesn't work, if what you want is regime amelioration or even change. If it is outright regime change you prefer, consider trying something different. Consider aggressive, near-reckless engagement. What is there to lose? Better to execute an approach favored by the bold campaigner Barack Obama — not the waffling President Obama — and run circles around the North Koreans with an embarrassment of recognition and riches: Drop the embargo, establish a U.S. Embassy in Pyongyang (we have no official representation there now), fatten the regime up with aid, accumulate leverage, change the behavior, establish regional peace. Try to be subtle, indirect and smart for once. (Tom PLate, Japan Times)

Kim Jong-il is a headache, but not a nightmare

North Korea is a big problem. With nuclear weapons it would become an even bigger one. But, unlike Iran, it does not keep me awake at night. Iran wants to be the major power in the Gulf. Its neighbours, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, see it is a direct threat to their safety and security. Iran's threats to annihilate Israel, combined with its aspirations for nuclear weapons, could be a precursor to a major war with massive casualties throughout the Middle East.

North Korea is in a different league. It cannot be the new regional power in the Far East. The very thought is ludicrous. It is desperately poor; its economy is puny compared to South Korea's, and both China and Japan tower over it. A nuclear-armed North Korea would be dangerous but, because of its poverty and relative insignificance, it would be a different kind of danger.

North Korea and its dictator, Kim Jong-il, are like the disturbed individual with a gun and several hostages who has been cornered in a house by the police. The damage he could do is serious but is limited to those closest to him. He could be killed by the police, at any time, but that might endanger the hostages and there could be other repercussions. The challenge is to manage the incident and try to conclude it without casualties and without damaging side effects.

Economic sanctions and the threat of a total blockade could destroy what is left of the North Korean economy and threaten the survival of the regime without too much difficulty. The consequences, however, could be highly destabilising for the whole region. (Malcolm Rifkind, Telegraph)

India: To Be or Wannabe a Superpower?

Where can India find the resolve or the inspiration to take on the fiscal challenge? It needs look no farther than China and its experience in the global crisis. Even before this global crisis, China was building up its superpower credentials courtesy of its size, spectacular growth, and integration, not to mention its military might. The crisis has allowed these credentials to be consolidated further. China has moved beyond being the superpower-to-be. One important reason for this consolidation relates to China's public-sector balance sheet.

The one major country that has had the ability to take short-term action to offset the effects of crisis without remotely jeopardizing its long-run economic strength has been China. Its public debt will remain at close to 20 percent of GDP after the crisis while the corresponding number for the United States is estimated to be close to 75 percent of GDP. China seems to be the one fiscal safe haven even as all the other powers wobble under the weight of their fiscal burden. As the mighty fall, China is standing economically and fiscally tall. The lesson for superpower-aspiring India from superpower-arriving China is simple: A strong fiscal situation, undergirding the ability to respond to a crisis, is an essential ingredient for any global leadership role.

So when India goes through its next growth spurt, it should be mindful of avoiding the mistake of the previous one. Good boom-time fiscal management provides the firepower for times of bust. The reasons for doing so are and must be overwhelmingly domestic. But there may also be strategic, external benefits from doing so. Fixing the fiscal roof when the sun was shining was China's way out of this crisis and way to solidifying its superpower status. That is a lesson that strategically minded Indian policymakers should take away from China's experience in the crisis. And that should be the thrust of the budget that Mr. Pranab Mukherjee will present to Parliament in July. (Arvind Subramanian, Peterson Institute) 

Rule of Law: Back and Forth From Beijing

In China’s authoritarian system, political power at each level of the bureaucratic hierarchy is centralized in the hands of a small group of Communist Party officials. If they want to choke off information to Beijing and cover up their own corruption or incompetence they have the tools to do so.

Over the last three decades, China’s central leaders have experimented with tentative, bottom-up reforms to address these problems. Their aim was to create channels to allow a limited degree of citizen supervision over local officials and harness popular input to help Beijing better monitor local government agencies. For this reason, the central authorities supported the spread of village elections in the 1990s, allowing rural residents some ability to hold their local leaders accountable. Over the last two decades, Beijing has promoted legal reforms giving citizens limited rights to challenge local authorities in court.

But these efforts can progress only so far before they run into trouble. Beijing may want to keep a closer eye on local authorities, but it does not want to see these channels emerge as truly independent checks on its own power. As a result, China’s leaders end up undermining their own reforms. In the late 1990s, for example, the central leadership clamped down on electoral reforms following activists’ efforts to bring more open elections to higher levels of the bureaucracy.

This dynamic — one step forward, one step back — now appears to be playing itself out in the legal arena. (CARL MINZNER, New York Times)

China's boxed itself in

Which country -- the United States or China -- will make the 21st century its own?  When President Obama recently called for American young people "to be makers of things" and focus on subjects such as science and engineering, it was partly a nod to China's rapid growth. Had he lived, taught and consulted in China for the last 33 months, as I have, he might have urged American students first to follow his example and study the liberal arts. Only technical knowledge complemented by well-honed critical and creative thinking skills can help us regain our innovative edge. China's traditional lack of emphasis on teaching these skills could undermine its efforts to develop its own innovative economy.

Ironically, the government that has enforced such restrictions and focused its schools so intensely on math and science seems to realize its efforts may be too effective. Highways, dams, bridges and airports have been built, every conceivable product manufactured and sold, but so few sophisticated marketing and management minds have been cultivated that it will be a long time before most people in the world can name a Chinese brand.

With this problem in mind, local partnerships with institutions such as USC, Johns Hopkins, Yale, MIT and Insead of France have been established. If not quite ready to create cadres of disaffected litterateurs and cineastes, Beijing clearly recognizes it will take different kinds of thinkers to invent new products and sell them around the world.

Ultimately for China, becoming a major world innovator -- and by extension, a robust economic power -- is not just about setting up partnerships with top Western universities or roping off elites and telling them to think creatively. It's about establishing an intellectually rich learning environment for young minds. It's about harnessing the same inventive energy of the street markets and small-time entrepreneurs and putting it in the schools. (Randy Pollock, Los Angeles Times)

Caring county shows the way to "free medical treatment"

Local governments of all parts should emulate Shenmu county in Northwest China's Shaanxi province, in carrying out people-oriented policies that bring real benefits to the majority, says an article in Workers' Daily. Excerpts:

The authorities in Shenmu county, Shaanxi province, have promised to continue with the implementation of the policy to provide "free medical treatment" to all people in the county despite running up huge bills since its launch in March.

At a time when many local governments are anxious to shift the burden of public medical care to the market, with a certain amount paid as governmental allowance, it is admirable that Shenmu county has chosen to buck the trend; and, continue providing free medical services to its entire population.

Medical service is the most fundamental part of social welfare. Local governments should take the responsibility to provide sound and convenient public medical care as a social benefit instead of being weighed down by economic considerations alone.

Admittedly, efforts in this area can be improved. And, commending the benefits to the public as a result of such policies is one way of improving the system. The county's economic strength being No 1 in Shaanxi province underscores that there is no clash of interest between the interests of fiscal health and public health.

The policies of Shenmu county reflect a healthy fiscal philosophy wherein people are the central concern. It would be apt for local authorities in other parts of the country to follow the example of Shenmu county and placing such beneficial practices high on their agenda of development. (Workers' Daily/China Daily)

An agonizing dilemma for Tsai

While many leaders of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) are praising Chen Chu, the DPP mayor of Kaohsiung, for her “courageous” performance in confronting the Communists in Beijing, latest opinion polls indicate the following: 62 percent of the respondents approved of Chen's trip to China, 51 percent supported a visit to the mainland by Tsai Ing-wen, the chairwoman of the DPP, 55 percent believed the DPP should adjust its mainland policy, including 53 percent of the “pan-green” followers, and 63 percent opposed the DPP criticism that President Ma Ying-jeou's mainland position is tantamount to “selling out” Taiwan. It is unmistakably clear that the current general mood of the people of Taiwan favors a more liberal policy toward Beijing as practiced by Ma.

Here is the political dilemma for Tsai: If she chooses to follow the mainstream opinion in Taiwan, she will have to be more open on China and may be obliged to pay a visit to Beijing under a pretext just as Chen did. But, if she does so, she will definitely risk incurring the wrath of the deep “green” supporters who form the core of the DPP. Either way, the stakes are high for her and the party's future. (William Fang, China Post)