To: CFAC
I read and appreciated your article about China and the Internet which appeared recently in the International Herald Tribune. As a 20 year resident of China who has been on line here since 1996, I am intimately acquainted with the problems one encounters accessing information on line. As China becomes more sophisticated in its monitoring efforts (using equipment and technology developed in no small part by American companies), the situation is generally getting worse, not better.
Of the various greed driven rationales for making the compromises of principle necessary to participate in China’s Internet business, the one I find the most insidious posits that Chinese people are too busy shopping to care about freedom of speech, political rights or the rule of law. Certainly there are some Chinese whose lives seem to revolve around a mind numbing sort of consumerism. They are not that difficult to recognize; after all, more than a few Americans lead similar lives.
The “Chinese don’t care” rationalization, however, conveniently ignores the fact that many of those successful, middle class (as they are now labeled) Chinese filling shopping malls are thoughtful, articulate people. People who are discouraged and often angered by the arbitrary power of their government and its officials, the pervasive corruption they experience in everyday life, by the mixture of bland facts, half truths, distortions and occasional outright lies they hear or read in the government controlled media. These are people who realize they are getting a politically sanitized version of events or being mislead by official “news”. They realize that the state media often “lies by omission”, leaving out key facts which run counter to the “correct” point of view. At the same time the effort needed to find reliable, alternative sources of information in China is too much for them. Most of them know there are such alternatives out there, even in China, but are unwilling to take or do not have the time to wade through the rumors, fairy tales and wild stories which coexist with real information on Chinese blogs and bulletin boards.
The “Chinese don’t care” rationalization also conveniently ignores the enormous numbers of less articulate but no less thoughtful Chinese who are struggling to get by. The huge floating populations working for low wages in thousands of factories and construction sites in big cities all over the country. People with little money, little education and no upward mobility who have remained at home in small cities and villages. When it comes to these people we are told they are too busy trying to make ends meet to be concerned about “luxuries” like political rights or freedom of speech.
My experience suggests quite the opposite is often the case. Many low income Chinese know very well they are at the mercy of a system which is blatantly unfair and stacked against them. They know they lack the freedom to redress their grievances effectively. While they may not know any of the criteria scholars use to determine if a system is ruled by law; they know from personal experience that there is no such thing as the rule of law in China when it comes to the abuses they suffer. In short they know that they are powerless. And they know that going up against those with power – be it a supervisor cheating them of wages, the wealthy owner of an unsafe workplace or an official extorting extra-legal fees for “services” – is a risky business indeed, one in which they are more likely than not to be the loser.
In our efforts to find reasonable ways to be engaged with China, one of the first things we need to do is recognize that US and other Western companies directly benefit from the Chinese people’s lack of political freedoms. Overseas companies can make favorable deals with Chinese government and business leaders (sometimes the same people wearing different hats) who are not accountable to their workers or ordinary Chinese people. If those ordinary people do not like the deals which emerge or feel they have been wronged or injured by powerful companies, complaining can involve considerable risk, particularly if the complaints in any way challenge the government’s monopoly on power. We should not let the cheap rationalizations and weasel words of Western executives, consultants and public relations liars obscure the facts. When we press publicly for human rights in China, when we question the efficacy of the rule of law in China, when we ask companies at least to be straightforward about how they must do business in China, we may anger the Chinese government, but we support the large number of Chinese people who do care very much about political freedom in their country.
Steve Barru
Beijing
www.stevebarru.com