winning press freedom conference

Keynote Speech of the "Beijing Olympics 2008: Winning Press Freedom" Paris Conference
By Dr. Merle Goldman

China’s leaders had hoped that holding the August 2008 Olympics in Beijing would draw attention to China’s great achievements that have taken place since the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. The occasion would mark China’s arrival as a world power and show off China’s physical modernization and dynamic economy.

But in the lead-up to the Olympics, China actions have produced just the opposite impact. They have focused attention on China’s repressive policies in Tibet and the Tibetan areas in China’s provinces, and in the Moslem areas in the northwest province of Xinjiang. In the past few weeks, China’s policies in these areas have sparked protests and violent repression.

The protests of Buddhist monks in Burma a few months earlier focused attention on China’s support of the repressive, militarist regime in Burma.

In addition, Steven Spielberg’s resignation as the director of the opening ceremonies for the Beijing Olympics has drawn world attention to China’s activities in the Sudan, where in addition to developing energy supplies and infrastructure, China has also been supplying Sudanese agents, the Janjeeweed militias, with arms with which they attack the Darfur region, that has led to the killing of over 200,000 people.

Moreover, in the process of building the facilities for the Olympics in Beijing, it is estimated that over a million people have been evicted from their homes with little compensation to make way for stadiums, sports facilities and new roads. These events have diverted attention from the image China’s leaders seek to project to the outside world of its economic achievements and a society living in “harmony.”

While the above events have received the most attention, there are other important events going on in China on the issue of human rights that have not received much attention and that even more contradict the image China seeks to portray. In the negotiation for the Olympics, China’s Foreign Minister, Liu Jianchao, promised to improve China’s human rights record.

Yet, in the run up to the Olympics, China has cracked down on a number of critics of the party. This internal crackdown has received much less attention in the media as the events in Sudan and Tibet and the interrupted journey of the Olympic torch have overwhelmed the airways. But this phenomenon of internal dissent in the long run may be more important in determining what happens in Tibet and the Sudan than the anti-Chinese demonstrations going on all over the world.

In the past year, China cracked down on journalists. In fact, while foreign journalists may have gained more freedom to report in China, just the opposite is happening to Chinese journalists in China. There has been a tightening of media controls and increasing harassment of journalists, political activists and human rights advocates. As one of your sponsoring organizations, Reporters Without Borders, has pointed out, 29 Chinese journalists, others say 50 journalists, were arrested in 2007, more than anywhere else in the world.

Comparison with the Mao Zedong Era

Nevertheless, China today is not the China of Mao Zedong, (1949-1976), where people were persecuted for who they were, not just for what they said and did. Thus, Mao purged writers in 1955, intellectuals in 1957 and members of his own Communist Party in the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), whom he believed were conspiring against him. In the post-Mao period, there is more personal, economic, artistic and intellectual freedom, but there is no political freedom. Anyone who publicly criticizes the party’s political policies or tries to organize with others to make a political statement or take a political action is persecuted and jailed.

A new phenomenon, however, has developed in China’s post-Mao era that may have increasing influence on political events, including events in Tibet and Xinjiang. It is the emergence of a middle class. Most members of China’s rising middle class are not a bourgeoisie, a class that first appeared in Paris. They are not independent actors. Most of China’s middle class are rising entrepreneurs, who are quickly inducted into the party. This partnership works well for both the party and the entrepreneurs. Party membership gets the entrepreneurs’ compliance with party dictates, at the same time that it provides entrepreneurs with access to land, resources and markets. The entrepreneurs are unable to conduct their business without connections to the party. Nevertheless, this rising middle class made possible by China’s move to a market economy in the post-Mao period has spawned on its fringes other members -- public intellectuals, journalists and defense lawyers -- who act more independently. Despite the fact that unlike the rising entrepreneurs, they do not have the protection of the party, a small number of them have spoken out on sensitive political issues, have helped defend those who are accused of “political” crimes and have joined with ordinary people in their protests against the party’s corruption and confiscation of their land for modernization projects. For the first time in the People’s Republic, intellectuals are joining with ordinary people in protests against injustice, which I describe in last book “From Comrade to Citizen: The Struggle for Political Rights in China.”

Because of China’s move to the market has made it possible for journalists, lawyers and public intellectuals to earn incomes independent of party control, it allows these groups more freedom to speak out and act publicly on political issues than during the Mao era. For example, in the post-Mao era, most newspapers were no longer totally supported economically by the state. They had to find their own commercial support and to do that, their editors and journalists have made great efforts to enliven their newspapers in order to gain readership. One of the most successful in these efforts has been the Southern Weekend (Nanfang Zhoumo) in Guangdong. Its investigative and daring articles have upset the party and several of its editors and journalists have been purged and some imprisoned, but the paper continues it independent stance and maintains its popularity.

The appearance of defense lawyers is a new phenomenon in the People’s Republic. Before the post-Mao era, anyone accused of political crimes had no one to defend him and usually was forced to defend himself. As lawyers in the post-Mao era were able to make money in commercial transactions, they could afford to take on political cases. But they are still at great risk because they, too, are detained and sometimes arrested. Nevertheless, there are now a score of famous lawyers who will take on sensitive political cases. Public intellectuals are another new phenomenon in the post-Mao era. Because they can now earn money as freelance writers and by publishing in Hong Kong and elsewhere, they speak out publicly on political issues without losing their means of livelihood, which would have happened in the Mao era. Among the 29 intellectuals who signed the petition protesting China’s crackdown in Tibet were a few academics, but most of the signatories were public intellectuals who in the past have spoken out on a number of controversial issues.

A number of human rights activists have been recently arrested. Among them is Hu Jia, a computer specialist, who was sentenced to three and one-half years supposedly for “subverting the state.” He has been a major figure in the effort to make the nation aware of the spread of HIV/Aids, and called attention to its spread through the use of unsanitary needles in the process of drawing blood. He also publicized China’s civil rights abuses and had written an open letter in September 2007 pointing out that China had failed to live up to it Olympic promise to improve human rights. Instead of improving its human rights situation as promised, the party in anticipation of the Games has carried out a harsh and growing crackdown on domestic human rights defenders, who have been detained, intimidated, punished and jailed in the party’s effort to ensure that their actions will not tarnish the China’s image in the outside world. It is unlikely that the volatile situation in Tibet and Xinjiang can be resolved until China’own human rights defenders are able to achieve their rights and continue their work. There needs to be a change in the political system before areas, such as Tibet and Xinjiang can gain autonomy.

Foreign journalists can play a major role in helping to bring about these political changes in China. China’s leaders desire a positive international assessment of their country, especially during this moment of unprecedented scrutiny. Mao did not care what the rest of the world thought of him or of China; he was totally fixated on transforming China into a Communist state, based on his own ideological ideal. But China’s present leaders do care about their image in the outside world. They want to be an active participant in the world community and desire international respect. Although in the early years of the post-Mao era, China had initially refused to sign onto the UN Covenants on Human Right, by 1997 China acceded to international pressure and signed the UN Covenant on Economic and Social Rights and its National People’s Congress ratified it one year later. In 1998, China signed the UN Covenant on Political Rights, but that Covenant has not yet been ratified by its Congress. Nevertheless, because China wants to be seen as playing by the rules of the world community, journalists as well as the international community can play a major role in holding China’s leaders to their commitments. They are embarrassed by world-wide criticism; they are very much aware of foreign journalists’ writings about happenings in China and do not want to be depicted as a pariah nation.

Thus, my advice to you is to continue to do what you have been doing, but even more so. Focus not just on China’s repressive policies toward the Tibetans or the Uighurs, but toward their own people. Call on China’s leaders to live up not only to their international commitments, but also to the stipulations in China’s own constitution, in which Article 43 calls for freedom of speech and press. Continue to question Chinese officials about your journalist colleagues in prison. China’s leaders do not want to be shamed before the world community, let alone their own people. You as journalists can have a great impact on what happens in China, much more than professors, whose books are read by a few other professors and maybe our students. You, who are read by millions, can be a powerful force in the struggle for human rights in China. At the same time that you report on China’s growing economic, military and international stature, you should also describe the discontent, repression and environmental degradation that have accompanied China’s economic development and that have worsened in China in recent years.

Reporters at the Olympics in Beijing should not only point out China’s rise as a modern great power, should not only describe the athletic achievements, and not only report on China’s denial of freedom to the Tibetans and Uighurs, they should write about the denial of freedom to their own citizens. In this age of globalization, the international media has a major role to play in showing that no matter how powerful the country may become, its human rights violations against minorities and especially its own people cannot be hidden. The media’s exposure of China’s human rights violations can help exert international pressure on China to live up to its own international commitments.

China does respond to outside pressure as seen with its signing the two UN covenants. We should continue to engage with China, participate in the Olympics, and speak in a moderate voice, but we should also continue to criticize China’s human rights abuses. We should emphatically point out the failure of China’s government to fulfill its own voluntarily made promises to improve rights in order to win the bid to host the Olympics.

There is a danger that China’s tight controls and suppression of human rights advocates imposed to ensure stability and peace for the upcoming Olympics may once the games are over become the “new norm.” Even more worrisome is that the worldwide protests against China’s policies in Tibet and Xinjiang have sparked a virile form of nationalism among China’s youth, who have vociferously expressed public antagonism toward China’s foreign critics and efforts to boycott the Olympics. Of the public intellectuals who signed the petition against China’s policy in Tibet, not one was below age thirty.

Despite the explosion of antagonism expressed by Chinese youth against China’s Western critics, we have to accept the fact that China has once again become a major power and we should do all we can to incorporate China into the world community, not only economically, but politically and culturally. The West must stay engaged in dialogue with China’s leaders, not matter how tense the relationship may become, because instead of the 2008 Olympics marking China’s recognition as a modern power, it may mark China’ hostility to the modern world it so wants to join.