The Lack of Grassroots Pressures

I opened this blog two days ago on Monday, with a posting in Chinese, discussing the lawlessness practice of the Chinese law enforcement and of the court.

My focus was the trial of the blind peasant activist, Chen Guangcheng, who was sentenced to four years and three months for "blocking traffic" and "damaging public property," all when he was under house-arrested by local police in his home village in Linyi City, in east China's Shandong Province.

I argue that the verdict is excessively heavy, even if we ignor the lies the local authorities provided to stage the faked trial. As China's Public Security Minister said repeatedly in the past two or three years, the so-called "sudden incidents" have been on the rise steadily, up to almost 80,000 annually in 2005. Mind you, this term means mass protest taking place out of local official' knowledge, when officials are supposedly on the guard constantly.

So, will Beijing Government be able to reduce such incidents by jailing activists like Chen? I don't think so. It's all about the rapid growth of the economy and the authoritarian political control. To be more specific, it's all about how redistribution of wealth is done at each level of the society.

Without an accountable political system that put grassroots pressure on government officials, there is no way to stop most officials from grabbing away public assets, or whatever other forms of corruption. Consequently, the more the economy grows, the severer social conflicts become. Policy adjustments alone will not be able to reduce discontent against corrupt officials. And so, the number or the degree of "sudden incidents."

After posting my first blog entry and very much to my satisfaction, I found an editorial on the next day's (Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2006, p. 14) Financial Times, which argues on a ground just as mine. Here are some words taken from it:

"Lack of independent institutions robs China of the disciplines needed to uphold standrads in public life. Intolerance of popular scrutiny allows official misdeeds to go undetected and insulates those in power from grassroots pressures. That makes them often slow to recognise and respond to serious threats to national welfare, such as environmental degradation.

[good for them as a business newspaper, reminding Beijing it's not tolerable to ignor national or global-related welfare.]

"Furthermore, by making the pursuit of material enrichment the nation's priority above all else, Beijing has sanctioned the growth of a greed-is-good culture in which corruption flourishes."

This goes even better. I hope greedy investors will take notes of their top commentator's words. Or else, we'll have to be pessimistic about the future of human ethics, if greed becomes the standard, thanks to joined efforts of the Chinese authorities and wealthy capitalists world-round.

By the way, the editorial's title is this: "China's greed culture".