Southeast Asia ponders what is going on in China

By Fareed Zakaria

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia -- Visiting Malaysia this week, I was expecting a volley of complaints. 

The country was one stop on President Obama’s planned trip to Asia this month that was canceled because of Washington’s manufactured budget crisis. 

“We were disappointed, but we understood the situation,” Prime Minister Najib Razak told me.
Others were less diplomatic, pointing to the cancellation as evidence of America’s dysfunctional political system and general decline. 

But many in Malaysia — and across Southeast Asia — told me that they were puzzling mostly about what’s happening not in Washington but rather in Beijing.
This is partly the product of power. 

As China has grown in importance, its neighbors have become increasingly attentive to the Middle Kingdom. In the past, the only politics they followed outside their country was in Washington. 

Today they feel they must also understand Beijing.
And there’s much to understand. 

China is in the midst of great political change. 

Last month, the country watched on national television as President Xi Jinping sat in on a meeting in Heibei at which senior Communist Party officials publicly engaged in “criticism and self-criticism.” 

It is part of the party’s “mass-line” campaign, designed to address concerns that the party is out of touch, elitist and corrupt.
The campaign also includes a strong anti-corruption drive, most visibly involving the humiliation of Bo Xilai, the former party boss of Chongqing. 

Many in China have worried that anti-corruption is a mechanism to eliminate political opponents. 

“There is so much corruption in China that whom you choose to prosecute is really a political decision,” a Beijing businessman said to me, asking to remain anonymous.
More surprisingly to many, the new leadership has begun a sweeping crackdown on dissent. 

Chinese media and human rights groups say that hundreds of journalists, bloggers and intellectuals have been detained since August, charged with the crime of “spreading rumors.” 

Recently this group has included prominent businessmen, including Wang Gongquan, one of China’s best-known billionaires, who has advocated political reform and was formally arrested on Sunday.
Last month, Chinese television aired a tape of Charles Xue, a businessmen and blogger, who confessed to his crimes and welcomed China’s new restrictions on Internet freedom. 

This month, Peking University fired Chinese economist Xia Yeliang, who had helped draft “Charter 08,” a pro-democracy petition that helped to win its principal author, Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel Peace Prize .
China scholars have noted in recent years that the Communist Party is deeply concerned about its legitimacy and grass-roots appeal. 

That led many to believe it would address these issues by opening up its political system, with political reforms that would accompany economic reforms. 

Instead, it appears that the party is choosing older, Mao-era methods of crackdowns, public confessions and purification campaigns.
Over the past 30 years, the Chinese Communist Party has extraordinary accomplishments to its credit.

In the past decade alone, the average person’s income has close to quintupled, and the country now has the world’s second-largest economy.

But perhaps because of this success, many of the challenges China faces are ones in which economics cannot be separated from politics. 

Addressing concerns about pollution, for example, means slowing industrial growth. 

Moving toward a more sustainable development model means taking money from state-owned — and politically connected — companies.
The people I talked to in Southeast Asia were not approaching these issues from the perspective of human rights activists. 

They were really just trying to understand what was going on in China. 

Above all, they wondered what the internal changes mean for Beijing’s foreign policy. 

“China is being very friendly with us these days, more so than it was a few years ago, but it still pushes its own interests very strongly,” one Asian leader told me. 

Diplomats have worried that China has been circulating new maps of the region in which a previously dotted line demarcating Beijing’s claims in the South China Sea now appears as a solid line. 

Last month, China’s foreign minister denied any such change in its claims when publicly asked about it at a Brookings Institution forum by former defense secretary William Cohen. 

Yet the concerns highlight the nervousness felt in the region.
The United States washes its dirty linen vigorously and in public. 

When Washington messes up, it does so in prime time, with politicians, journalists and commentators describing every gory detail with delight. 

China has an opaque political system, which makes it far more mysterious. 

But China, too, has its share of crises, controversies and change. 

And because of the country’s newfound clout, the world is watching and wondering what to make of the black box that is Beijing.

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China arrests billionaire activist

Wang Gongquan, a supporter of a nascent Chinese civil rights movement, is formally arrested in Beijing as crackdown on dissent continues

By Tom Phillips, Shanghai

Chinese entrepreneur Wang Gongquan

A group of leading intellectuals, authors and businesspeople has demanded the release of a jailed Chinese billionaire, accusing Beijing of waging a "hopeless" campaign of “political persecution” against its critics.
Wang Gongquan, a venture capitalist who supports a recently formed civil society group called the New Citizens’ Movement, was formally arrested by Beijing police on Sunday, having been initially detained on September 13.
Mr Wang, who is close to Xu Zhiyong, the movement’s jailed founder, has been accused of “gathering crowds to disturb public order”.
However, supporters say the charge has been trumped up and believe Mr Wang is the latest victim of a renewed crackdown on government critics that has gained pace this year under China’s new president Xi Jinping.
Several dozen supporters of the New Citizens’ Movement are currently being detained, activists say, with at least three of them likely to face trial in the coming weeks.
In an online petition, supporters of the jailed billionaire wrote: “Wang Gongquan is not guilty in any sense. Not only is he innocent, but his actions may well leave their mark on history.”
“Wang Gongquan is an honest and righteous person,” the statement added, arguing that his detention had served only to spread his ideas further.
On Monday, Zhang Ming, a political scientist and activist who was among the first signatories, told The Telegraph: “If we don't make our voices heard, nothing will change.”
The charges being levelled at Mr Wang were “nonsense,” he added.
Zhang Xuezhong, a Shanghai-based rights lawyer who represents another member of the New Citizens’ Movement, said he believed detaining such a well-known and respected figure would backfire on Beijing.
“I think it is a big mistake by the government,” he said, speaking before news of Mr Wang’s formal arrest emerged.
“Mr Wang is a big success. People will think: ‘If even a person like Wang Gongquan can afford to go to prison, what should we be afraid of?’”
Zhang said he believed the crackdown would inspire rather than silence critics. “The more people they detain, the less fear there will be. When going to prison becomes normal, people will not be afraid.”

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A Chill, Ill Wind Blows Across China

By Elizabeth C. Economy

I have to give Beijing credit.

When the Chinese leaders put Wang Qishan in charge of the anti-corruption effort, they knew what they were doing. 

Widely believed to be one of the most competent of the new leadership, he has ensured that no policy arena has as much energy behind it as his anti-corruption campaign. 

Other priorities such as building a social welfare net, protecting the environment, and reforming the economy are still in the familiar planning and blueprint stages. 

Wang, in contrast, has spearheaded campaigns against multinationals, Chinese companies, individual Chinese officials and businesspeople. 

Scarcely a week goes by when one corruption case or another does not make Chinese headlines.
Alongside the anti-corruption campaign, a crackdown against Chinese netizens is also in full-swing. Nominally designed to limit online rumor-mongering—people may be charged with defamation if their rumors are read by 5,000 users or forwarded more than 500 times—the crackdown has landed squarely on the shoulders of some of China’s most popular, politically outspoken businessmen bloggers: venture capitalist Wang Gongquan has been detained on charges of “gathering a crowd to disturb order in public places”; Chinese-American investor Charles Xue was arrested on prostitution charges; and billionaire real estate investor Pan Shiyi has not been arrested or detained but appeared on television to say that it was important for those with large followings to “tweet responsibly.” 

Each of these prominent business personalities has boasted well over a million Weibo followers at one time or another.
Beijing’s strategy—while widely heralded by the official Chinese media—seems like one destined for short-term gain but long-term pain. 

First, by accusing and arresting people before the judicial system has been reformed, the Chinese leadership runs the risk of undermining much of the purpose of the anti-corruption campaign—restoring the legitimacy of the Communist Party. 

People are already suspicious about why certain officials and businesspeople are being targeted while others are not. 

Moreover, as attacks are levied against leading bloggers, the anti-rumor campaign begins to look like an effort not to push forward on the rule of law but rather to reintroduce fear among intellectuals and other reformers à la the Anti-Rightist Campaign of the 1950s, which targeted those whose voiced independent opinions.
Limiting the voices of public intellectuals also will hamper the Party’s objective of spurring creativity and innovation within Chinese cultural, social, and economic life. 

If there is no questioning, there is no change and no progress. 

Had it not been for Pan Shiyi leading the netizen charge for greater transparency in Chinese air quality statistics, the Chinese public would likely still be waiting to understand why official blue sky days are not actually blue. 

And as my colleague Adam Segal remarked, the crackdown against outspoken liberal business leaders is reminiscent of Putin’s message to the oligarchs: get with the program or get out. 

The danger, of course, is that in fact, they will get out—leaving China without much needed intellectual, creative, and financial firepower.
And then there is the ever-present effort by Beijing to exert its soft power. 

No matter how often Chinese officials hear it, they seem unwilling to accept that soft power begins at home, with the values, culture and opportunities the Chinese people, themselves, experience. 

If these fail to attract the rest of the outside world—and who is going to be attracted to a regime that silences its best and brightest—no amount of Chinese media blather will compensate.

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A wave of repression in China

The Washington Post

A CHINESE blogger named Wu Dong became an Internet star last year by tracking and reporting on the luxury watches worn by the country’s senior officials. 

One of the Communist Party bosses he singled out was arrested and sentenced to prison this month. 

But Mr. Wu himself was reported to be under arrest Tuesday — the latest victim in a mounting crackdown by China’s new leaders on those who advocate political reform or speak out on social media.
Xi Jinping, who took over as party chief last November, has tried to bolster his popularity by waging a campaign against corruption and adopting some of the rhetoric of Maoist leftists. 

But as a slowdown in growth exposes deep-rooted problems with China’s economic model, the new leader increasingly is turning to repression to silence real and potential opponents. 

Human rights groups say more than 50 activists have been jailed since Mr. Xi assumed the presidency in March, including businessmen, academics and journalists.
Many are people whom Mr. Xi could and should have regarded as allies in an effort to open the political system. 

One is Wang Gongquan, a well-known businessman and member of the New Citizens Movement, a campaign to promote the rule of law and citizens’ rights. 

He was arrested Friday and charged with “organizing a mob to disturb public order” — which is the regime’s way of describing a small demonstration in Beijing that called for senior officials to disclose their assets. 

Mr. Wang was the third leader of the New Citizens Movement to be arrested since July, including founder Xu Zhiyong.
Authorities are, meanwhile, engaged in a campaign to stifle free speech on the Internet. 

A judicial ruling last week stipulated that bloggers could be sentenced to three years in prison for “spreading rumors” if their reports are reposted more than 500 times or viewed by more than 5,000 people. 

On Sunday, state television broadcast a chilling video of a Chinese American businessman renouncing postings on the Chinese version of Twitter that had gained him 12 million followers. 

The blogger, Charles Xue, was arrested on charges of soliciting a prostitute; his meek confession and self-criticism echoed the public humiliation of intellectuals during the Cultural Revolution.
The wave of repression is counterproductive in more ways than one. 

In addition to advocating incremental and peaceful reforms to the political system, the activists being targeted have been instrumental in calling attention to corruption and other abuses the Communist Party must address to avoid more serious unrest. 

It’s not just luxury watches: microbloggers have helped to force action on food safety and air pollution, among other issues.
Mr. Xi’s turn to repression has gone almost entirely unremarked upon by the Obama administration, which has concentrated on cultivating relations with the new leader. 

This, too, is shortsighted. 

It’s in the interest of the United States that China continue on a path of stable development, and intensified repression is more likely to crack open an increasingly restless society than to contain it. 

As Mr. Wang told The Post’s Simon Denyer recently, “If the government does not open society, it will cause more hurt and more violence, which is not in the government’s interest, either.” 

President Obama should be making that point to Mr. Xi — and letting the country’s reformers know the United States is on their side.

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