There are some things I didn't mention about China. I didn't mention them because I don't know how good China's internet surveillance is – the firewall works for the BBC and “Tiananmen”, but China residents say it's easy enough to get round – and I want to be allowed to go back. It was probably cowardly of me, particularly in light of news items over the last few weeks about China cracking down on awkwardly outspoken lawyers and journalists. Yesterday a Chinese court passed sentence on a fixer in the New York Times office. Last week they put on trial Ching Cheong, a Chinese Hong Kong-based journalist for spying for Taiwan. Around the same time, Cheng Guangcheng, a blind activist who was protesting forced abortions (see “cack-handed one-child policy in earlier post) was detained. For good measure, the government also detained his defence lawyer “for the duration of the trial.”
There is a funny China syndrome at work in ex-pats. Sooner or later, any discussion of human rights leads to at least one of the following sentences:
Democracy isn't always the answer.
China has never been a democracy and doesn't know how to be.
China is fine as long as you live within the law.
I see fewer police on the streets here than in London/New York/insert western city.
(Could it be because they're plain-clothed?)
I don't live in China and don't know it, so I cannot argue these points with any thing but knee-jerk disagreement. But one evening, quite early on in the trip, we were having dinner with a C., young woman who is supremely well-connected, because one of her close relatives is a minister. The dinner was outside, on a patio surrounded by bushes. The conversation was about how old China was ruled by several powerful ruling families. Simon asked whether the same ruling families were now running the Politburo. The young woman, who is smart and well-travelled, with a Masters from an American university, and who is not apparently prone to exaggeration, said, “I would rather not talk about politics.” She looked at the bushes and said, “You never know who is listening.”
Later, Simon told this story to another well-travelled, sophisticated Chinese woman, who laughed. She said the young woman was being over-dramatic. But C had been unemotionally serious, and it was chilling. Not least to hear someone as well-protected as her say something like that.
Anyway. There's a petition for Ching Cheong here. Much good will it do. Most of the news stories I've read about the arrests and detentions assume that China is clearing up its problems before the 2008 Olympics. Oh, of course.