Teaching Comparative

Devolution that works

A great set of teaching materials in the morning papers.

The Washington Post and the New York Times reported on a law proposed by the Chinese government and sent to the Peoples Congress. (The law will probably be enacted by decree until the next Congress meets to approve it). After reading the two articles, I think the Times writer missed a significant point. (Maybe he should have studied more comparative government.) The proposed law would give local authorities the right to approve topics for reporting. And who better to protect their own reputations than the people charged with keeping the peace and quiet of the countryside?

Howard French's article in the New York Times about Dongzhou is an appropriate example to follow up on this topic. A village near Hong Kong where local officials, intent on economic development (and probably fat payoffs) use the power of the state to terrorize, prosecute, and persecute peasants who dared question official actions.


FIRST, excerpts from the Washington Post version of the story:
Chinese Media Law Would Require Consent to Report on Emergencies

BEIJING, June 26 -- The Chinese government has drafted legislation to fine newspapers up to $12,000 if they report on emergencies without first getting permission from local authorities, official media said Monday.
The new restrictions would apply to coverage of natural disasters, health crises and social unrest, such as the riots that have broken out across rural China in recent years. In effect, the draft law would make local governments the sole arbiters of information as they manage emergency situations...

The draft law, from Premier Wen Jiabao's cabinet, was designed to guide officials in handling ... emergencies. It would oblige local officials to immediately report to Beijing on accidents -- such as the oil spills and coal mine explosions that plague China regularly -- and swiftly organize an emergency response. The draft law goes on to stipulate that local governments should "release information in an accurate and timely way," but that they should "conduct management work over the media's related reports."

In practice, local governments routinely seek to conceal embarrassing information, such as protests, and order local publications not to report it...

Some journalists expressed hope that the National People's Congress, China's legislature, will reject the draft law's media provisions. In practice, however, the National People's Congress rarely, if ever, contests government decisions.

NOW an excerpt from the New York Times story:
China May Fine News Media to Limit Coverage

BEIJING, June 26 — Chinese media outlets will be fined if they report on "sudden events" without prior authorization from government officials, under a draft law being considered by the Communist Party-controlled legislature.

The law would give government officials a powerful new tool to restrict coverage of mass outbreaks of disease, riots, strikes, accidents and other events that the authorities prefer to keep secret. Officials in charge of propaganda already exercise considerable sway over the Chinese news media, but their power tends to be informal, not codified in law...

Journalists say local authorities are likely to interpret the law broadly, giving officials leeway to restrict coverage of any social and political disturbance they consider embarrassing, like demonstrations over land seizures, environmental pollution or corruption..."The way the draft law stands now it could give too much power to local officials to determine that someone has violated the law," said Yu Guoming, a professor of journalism at People's University in Beijing...

AND excerpts from Howard French's report on the cover up by local authorities in one province:
China Covers Up Violent Suppression of Village Protest

SHANWEI, China, June 20 — When the police raked a crowd of demonstrators with gunfire last December in the seaside village of Dongzhou, a few miles from this city, Chinese human rights advocates denounced the action as the bloodiest in the country since the killings at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, in 1989.


Villagers said at the time that as many as 30 people had been killed, and that many others were missing. The authorities have said little or nothing about the episode, concentrating instead on preventing any accounts of it from circulating widely in the country. In the limited coverage that was allowed, officials blamed the unrest on the villagers.

Six months later, there has been no public investigation of the shootings. Instead, the government has quietly moved to close the matter, prosecuting 19 villagers earlier this month in a little-publicized trial. Seven were given long sentences after being convicted of disturbing the public order and of using explosives to attack the police. Nowhere in the verdict is there any mention of the loss of life...

In the last few years, China has seen the emergence of public-spirited lawyers who seek out civil rights cases in the countryside and volunteer their services to peasants in disputes over land or other matters.

In a growing number of such cases, including Dongzhou, the government has threatened the lawyers with hardball tactics, including the threat of suspending their law licenses, arrests and the implicit threat of violence.

"Local governments are very determined to prevent the involvement of outside lawyers, especially those from Beijing, because if they can control the local lawyers, keep them under their will, the trial will remain completely under their control," said one civil rights lawyers from Beijing, who was turned away from Dongzhou in December.

"The authorities publicly told the villagers they could hear all of their conversations and warned if you talk to outsiders you will be arrested," the lawyers said. "It was an open threat. The villagers were really scared, and the authorities controlled the entrance from the expressways and beat people who tried to enter."...

"This village has been pacified as if nothing ever happened here," said one man... [They've] made it clear: if you oppose the government, they'll show their true colors."

posted by Ken Wedding @ 9:03 AM