One Shanghai woman's fight for justice

How Ma Yalian, a Shanghai resident whose three-storey home came in the way of her country's relentless and unforgiving rush for development, fought the law.

It all began, as so many stories do, with a knock on the door. On the morning of August 4, 1998, Ma Yalian found three officials from a local real estate firm outside her Shanghai home. Demolition papers in hand, they uttered the words Chinese home-owners dread to hear: her three-story family home in downtown Shanghai was to be torn down to make way for an urban redevelopment project. Then came the second blow. She would be relocated to a cramped, dingy apartment in Shanghai's outskirts, and given little compensation. “Fight the order at your own risk,” the men warned.

In many ways, Ma Yalian's story is hardly unusual. Every year, tens of thousands of Chinese lose their homes to influential real estate companies. Evicted residents are routinely forced out of their houses with little or no compensation, and often have little recourse to justice. Every year, there are an estimated 90,000 “mass incidents” — officialspeak for protests — reported across China. The majority of them involve land rights issues. Most residents have to quietly accept their fate, intimidated by the influential real estate mafia and befuddled by opaque laws.

But Ma Yalian fought the law. A decade-long struggle took her across every level of China's judicial system, from a local district court in Shanghai to the Supreme People's Court in Beijing, the highest court in the land. She faced threats to her life, suffered beatings, and spent months in detention centres. But slowly, her voice began to be heard. Her struggle grew far beyond the immediacy of her case, beyond compensation amounts and questions of relocation. She took on a much larger battle: reforming her country's judicial system.

The People's Republic of China's judicial system has, since its founding in 1949, always functioned with inherent tensions. The Constitution guarantees human rights, the rule of law and an independent judiciary, as in any liberal democracy. But, given the nature of China's one-party political system, the courts have always functioned within limits firmly set by the ruling Communist Party.

Over the past three decades, after Deng Xiaoping launched his economic “reform and opening up”, China has had to open up its legal system too. Particularly after China's accession into the World Trade Organisation in 2001, Beijing has had to professionalise its courts to make them more transparent. The last decade has seen a slew of significant judicial reforms. Chinese enjoy more legal rights now than they have ever before in the country's history. However, there are limits to reform. Despite progressive changes in Central laws, their enforcement by local governments remains arbitrary at best.

Into a legal maze

Ma's story illustrates what happens when a Chinese citizen openly challenges this system's arbitrariness, and the often alarming gap between the theory and practice of law in China. Ma first took her case, in the face of threats to her life and after a brutal assault by thugs hired by the local mafia, to the Nanshi District People's Court, a lowest level court. Without a second glance, the court threw out her case.

China has a unique redressal system, a legacy from the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). Citizens can appeal the verdicts of provincial courts — notorious for their willingness to bend Central laws for local interests — by petitioning the Central government. The petition system has in recent years come under strong criticism from lawyers and rights activists, who say it has grown into yet another mechanism which facilitates the silencing of dissenting voices.

In March, 2000, Ma travelled to Beijing, petition in hand, to appeal the verdict. Her trip didn't last long. Before she reached the national petition office, she was intercepted by Shanghai police officials, who locked her up at a shourong qiansong prison — a detention system solely created to prevent petitioners from having their voices heard in Beijing. She was released after two days, with a stern warning and a promise: return to Shanghai, and the case would be heard.

It wasn't. Over the next two years, Ma would make at least half a dozen trips to Beijing. On each occasion, she was, along with other petitioners, detained by officials. On one Beijing visit, Ma managed to secure a meeting with a well-intentioned Supreme Court judge, who she said was alarmed by the facts of her case. He presented her with a court order calling on the Shanghai court to hear her case. But when she returned home, again, the court refused. In September, 2001, she was arrested in Shanghai on criminal charges for “illegal petitioning activities” — ironically, a right guaranteed to her under the law.

***

When I met Ma in Shanghai, almost a full decade after her battle first began, I was struck by two things: her willingness to tell her story, despite the many threats she continues to face, and her unyielding faith in the law, even after her many failed trips to Beijing and repeated detentions. She said she decided, early on, that the only way she could challenge the legal system was from within. So, at every opportunity she got, she began studying it. She wrote a series of widely-read articles in online journals, criticising the petitioning system and calling for judicial reforms. Slowly, her voice began to be heard in the legal community. Unfortunately for her, it was also heard by the authorities. Following the publishing of her articles, she was sentenced to 18 months of “Re-education through Labour” in February, 2004, on the more serious charge of stirring social unrest.

“I had no access to legal counsel, and even my family couldn't visit me,” Ma said. “I wanted books on law, but they were all confiscated. I was deprived of all basic rights even prisoners are supposed to have in jail. And I had committed no crime.” She said suffered regular beatings, and on occasions had to be taken to a prison hospital in Tilanqiao, Shanghai, for treatment. After her release, her family hired Guo Guoting, a well-known human rights lawyer, to represent her. Under pressure from the government, he eventually went into exile in Canada. Her case remains unresolved. She says she will continue to appeal.

The road to reform

Lawyers in Shanghai and Beijing who were familiar with Ma's case made the rather ironic point that in China, it has always taken extreme cases, like Ma's, to bring about changes to the system. A case often cited is the death of Sun Zhigang, a 27-year-old graduate student who died in custody in a Guangzhou detention centre, held for not carrying the right identification papers. Widespread public indignation led to a landmark reform of detention laws.

Ma's case, along with a few similar cases from the 1990s, has resulted in small but significant changes. In 2003, following protests from lawyers, Beijing abolished the controversial shourong system. In cities like Beijing and Shanghai, governments have vastly improved compensation payments. In January, 2008, China passed a new property law, aimed at reducing its seeming arbitrariness.

Detentions of petitioners are now no longer as widespread, though they still do take place. In a report released last month, Human Rights Watch documented cases of dozens of petitioners who have, since 2003, been locked up in extra-judicial centres which have replaced the shourongjails. China's Foreign Ministry has denied the existence of these “black jails”. But the testimonies in the HRW report closely echo Ma's own story, and underscore the limits of the law's reach in China. Ma spent several months in one of these prisons between 2004 and 2006, locked up in the basements of nondescript government-run hotels in Shanghai suburbs.

Public resentment over land rights, scholars say, remains the single biggest cause of social unrest in China. Every week, local newspapers are littered with stories of aggrieved residents protesting the loss of their homes. Just last month, in Chengdu, Sichuan province, a 47-year-old woman died setting herself ablaze atop her home, in a confrontation with local officials who were set to demolish her house. Her story received widespread national attention and public sympathy. Even the usually staid State-run China Dailynewspaper warned in an editorial that the incident pointed to the increasing sensitivity with which land rights were viewed in China, and the urgent need for ensuring basic property rights.

This month, five law professors from Beijing's prestigious Peking University called on the National People's Congress, China's highest legislative body, to reform property laws and demolition procedures. They said current practices violated property rights guaranteed under the Constitution, and pointed to the often close ties between real estate developers and government officials. “Such twisted relations between urban development and personal property have resulted in many social conflicts,” warned Shen Kui, one of the five scholars.

In the past three decades, China has sought to professionalise and modernise its legal institutions. Indeed, Chinese enjoy more rights now than ever before in the country's history. But the evolution of China's judicial system now stands at a crucial crossroads. Nicholas Bequelin, a China scholar at Human Rights Watch, argues that we may have now come close to reaching a point where any further reforms will begin to erode the ruling Communist Party's power. The Party, now more than ever, faces an increasingly tricky tightrope walk. It has to balance its persistent need to ensure its unchallenged political control with satisfying a growing demand from its citizens — a demand for the rule of law.

The Hindu Sunday Magazine

What Hu and Obama spoke about South Asia, and a round-up of reactions to that sentence.

Buried in the lengthy joint statement the U.S. and China issued on Tuesday was one sentence on India and Pakistan. Understandably, it was the focus of all the coverage in India on the Obama-Hu meeting (which I thought was a little unfortunate since it over-shadowed subtle but important progress on climate).

If you couldn't locate that sentence in the statement (yes, it was that important), here is the offending paragraph: "[The two sides] support the efforts of Afghanistan and Pakistan to fight terrorism, maintain domestic stability and achieve sustainable economic and social development, and support the improvement and growth of relations between India and Pakistan. The two sides are ready to strengthen communication, dialogue and cooperation on issues related to South Asia and work together to promote peace, stability and development in that region."

Read it as you like, but it prompted a range of responses. But first things first. So what exactly did Obama and Hu talk about on South Asia? The two leaders of course didn't take questions after their so-called press conference at the Great Hall on Tuesday. But He Yafei, the vice foreign minister, gave some clues about what went on. He said in context of the whole meeting, they spent hardly a few minutes on this area because they "had no time." The focus was on Afghanistan, Pakistan and terror. They decided to leave it at saying they would co-operate, but "did not discuss any specifics" whatsoever.

An official who was at the talks said the India-Pakistan line was more a general, vague re-articulation of what they both have - often - separately voiced on "supporting" progress in improving relations. He said they neither discussed this, nor specific roles they would play. (Fyi, China has used a similarly-worded statement in the past when asked at regular press briefings on Ind-Pak issues. Most recently on Chinese projects in PoK, the spokesman said the same thing, that China "supported" improving relations.) But of course, it becomes a much more loaded statement in the context of a China-US joint statment, and logically looks like the US opening a door for China to stick its nose in South Asia. It was also, no doubt, an error on the part of U.S. officials for ignoring well-founded Indian sensitivities, especially right before Manmohan Singh's DC visit.

Chidanand Rajghatta has an interesting round-up of reactions from DC. Ashley Tellis says its "counterproductive", while others seemed to concur with the official I spoke to in viewing it as more a general, "ritual" rearticulation of supporting stability in the region, and not a specific change in policy that we should read too much into.

The MEA strongly asserted there was no role for a third-party in a bilateral dispute.

The Pakistani media unsurprisingly welcomed the statement, reading it as U.S. acceptance that China had a "vital" role to play in Indo-Pak relations.

On a related note, take a look at Brzezinski's Op-ed in the FT yesterday, where he calls for an informal "G2" and US-China involvement on a range of issues - many where it would certainly be unwelcome and counterproductive - including "regarding India and Pakistan", where he says it could "perhaps lead to more effective even if informal mediation."

Also take a look at The Acorn's response to it, which I rather liked.

But most importantly, what did you think?

China's angry artist

Sheng Qi is most well-known as the artist who cut off a finger in a fit of rage after the events of 1989. Two decades on, he revels in taking on subjects his colleagues don’t touch.

They took away three paintings: a nude posing with an AK-47 in front a portrait of Mao Zedong, a Chinese policeman displaying a 100 Yuan bill (which features Mao’s face) and a young Mao showing the middle-finger. But they left on display a dozen other paintings, some invoking the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, still very much a taboo topic in China today.

China’s censors can be hard to read. On occasion, they find the most harmless paintings objectionable, and on others, leave on public display such strong criticisms of the Chinese government that stun foreign visitors who expect to see bland, safe art here. Behind the seeming arbitrariness of China’s censors is a growing confusion of where boundaries lie. And, behind this confusion are an increasing number of Chinese artists, filmmakers and journalists who are pushing the limits of expression in China, cleverly working in the grey areas between what is acceptable and what is not. For once, the censors are being asked the hard questions.

* * *

“Sheng Qi”, in Mandarin Chinese, means “getting angry.” Sheng Qi, the artist, has always been angry. On June 5, 1989, the day after the violence on Tiananmen Square, Sheng, in a fit of rage and frustration, grabbed a knife and severed the little finger off his left hand and buried it in a flower pot. The next day, still angry, Sheng left China for Europe, promising to never come back. He did. Ten years after working tables in Rome, and eventually, getting to London to study art, Sheng returned, an accomplished artist, determined to change the way his Chinese colleagues did art. But the anger hasn’t subsided.


Sheng, now regarded as one of China’s most daring contemporary artists, revels in taking on subjects his colleagues don’t touch, from the country’s growing HIV problem and the rising hyper-nationalism he sees in his countrymen to the sensitive legacy of 1989. These themes were evident in his latest project — perhaps his most daring coming a month before China marked its politically sensitive sixtieth anniversary on October 1 — which went on public display last month. “The Power of the People” explores an engaging but complex question: What does China mean to its people today?

* * *

I meet Sheng at a Starbucks a five-minute drive away from his studio, which is located in Beijing’s expansive 798 art district, where much of China’s most progressive art can be found. For an artist known for the anger of his work — all his paintings drip eerily with paint. Or is it blood? — he is surprisingly soft-spoken and calm. Dressed in a brown t-shirt and jeans, with his left hand firmly in his pocket, Sheng jumps into the seat of a silver Mercedes convertible. He drives only with his right hand. His studio, like others in 798, is an old military factory warehouse, with blue walls, a tin roof and a vast interior space filled with paintings and statues — he sculpts too.

Sheng’s work is driven by two simple objectives: to change the direction of where he sees Chinese contemporary art heading, and simply, to ask questions. “The way I look at art, and others disagree, I see no point if you don’t have a message,” Sheng says. “And when I look around me, so many artists here simply don’t have anything to say with their work. I look at Chinese contemporary art and no one asks questions, criticises social issues, looks at our environmental problems or human rights. It is too separate from the day to day lives of people.”

“The Power of the People”, his latest series, features provocative themes. They were partly inspired by the events of 1989, and also by what Sheng sees as a worrying spurt in what he calls “narrow-minded nationalism”, most evident during the Olympics of last year and again in recent weeks as the country celebrated its 60th anniversary. He sees a society, and its art, growing too intolerant of ideas, rejecting debate and discussion. “It bothers me a lot that China is becoming extremely nationalistic,” he says. “Every nation is proud of itself, yes, but when it becomes too much, it’s dangerous. You then have a society with no debate, no discussion.”

* * *

China is far more open today than it was a decade ago — artists can take on provocative issues, journalists can expose local officials for corruption. But many subjects still remain off-limits — usually, anything that directly questions Beijing’s authority. The challenge, for journalists and artists, is that there is seemingly no well-defined line between what is acceptable and what isn’t.

Artists and journalists seemingly face three choices: operating well within this line and playing it safe; moving abroad and becoming a critic from outside; or, operating in the always-changing grey area along the official line of acceptability. For those that choose the third option, the risk is obviously great, but so is the reward.

Successfully walking this line means they are in the forefront of shaping public opinion in China today, as unlike voices from outside, they are in touch with and have direct access to mainstream Chinese society. But doing so involves at least two aspects: having good ‘guanxi’, or relationships with the government that you can rely on to bail you out, and more importantly, having the intrinsic ability to read where this hazy dividing line runs. The few that have succeeded in doing so have emerged as China’s most influential voices. Like Hu Shuli, the brave editor of the excellent Caijing magazine, one of Chinese journalism’s most influential independent voices. Caijing breaks stories and raises issues other papers don’t go near. Or Fu Jianfeng, the editor of the Southern Weekend newspaper, another intrepid journalist who has, through his sensitive stories, incurred the wrath of Chinese authorities on a dozen occasions, yet managed to keep his paper going while dozens of others have been shut down. Sheng too has seemingly discovered the secret to walking this line.

* * *

Sheng describes his art as “ugly”. He says most artists in China focus on high technique, which appeals to refined Chinese tastes that value form over content. “Their’s is high cuisine,” he says. “I serve rice and water.” One painting shows a nude woman brandishing a gun, posing in front of Chairman Mao, China’s revered founding leader. Another shows a sea of troops massed in front of Beijing’s Olympic stadium, critiquing the Olympics hysteria. Another shows dozens of young people camped out on Tiananmen Square, subtly invoking the days of ’89.
Sheng says he wanted “to get people to think, to push their boundaries and get them to ask questions.” The dozen or so paintings attracted a lot of attention in Beijing, coming at a sensitive time for the country. The exhibition opened bang in the middle of two important anniversaries — the 20th anniversary of the June 4 Tiananmen Square incident, and the People’s Republic of China’s 60th anniversary celebrated on October 1. On the second day, censors removed three of the paintings. But they let the rest of the exhibition go on. The officials made their point; they were watching. But then, Sheng made his.
Pictures courtesy Sheng Qi and F2 Gallery, Beijing
The Hindu Sunday Magazine

Decades of turbulence

On October 1, China remembers six decades of turbulence, and prosperity.

The roads have been emptied. Massive security is in place. Around 8,00,000 security volunteers are trawling Beijing’s streets. Even the skies have been cleared — of airplanes, pigeons and rain clouds.

The People’s Republic of China is all set to mark its 60th anniversary. On Thursday, a military parade of thousands of soldiers will make its way through Beijing’s Changan Avenue, “the Avenue of Heavenly Peace”, and President Hu Jintao will address a carefully screened crowd of 30,000 in the city’s Tiananmen Square.

China’s National Day celebrations will, however, take place away from the gaze of the Beijing public. Citing security concerns, authorities have closed off the entire route of the parade, and Beijing vice-mayor Ji Lin said the city’s residents will have to settle for “watching it on television”. Among those watching will be Lu Dayei (86) who has been a firsthand witness to the PRC’s history.

For older Chinese, Thursday will mark six turbulent decades, from the tough 1950s when famines devastated the country and the violent Cultural Revolution (1966-76) to the unprecedented economic progress following the country’s “opening up” in 1978.

Mr. Lu stood on Tiananmen Square on October 1, 1949 when Mao Zedong addressed the nation, proclaiming the founding of the PRC. He suffered through the hard first decade, when food was scarce and the country still reeled from the devastations wrought by the civil war between the Kuomintang and the Communists. “Those were hard days, which are difficult to imagine now,” Mr. Lu recalls. “We would see bodies lying everywhere on the street, hunger everywhere. We couldn’t get vegetables in Beijing.”

The decade after, when Mao launched his Cultural Revolution, was possibly China’s most turbulent time. In the violence and chaos unleashed by Mao’s “Red Guards” ostensibly to “overthrow the elite”, tens of thousands lost their lives, lost their homes and saw their families torn apart. For a decade, the country came to a standstill as schools closed, homes burned and mobs ran riot, all in the name of a “political revolution”.

Zhou Youfei (88) remembers being taken away from his wife, who he did not see for most of that turbulent decade. “Because I spoke English, they thought I was an American spy and locked me up,” he says. He spent the decade in prison, suffering beatings and torture.

Li Tian (62) said Thursday would bring mixed emotions for her. Unlike her children or grandchildren, she did not have the opportunity to go to school. She spent her twenties working in the fields and villages of rural China, where millions of Chinese were sent by Mao during the Cultural Revolution “to learn from the farmers” and their colleges were closed down. In those strange times, education was considered an elite luxury and frowned upon. Her mother, who came from an elite, old Beijing family, lost her family estate and was “humiliated” by the purges of the revolution, she recalls. She would later take her own life.

But the troubles of the first three turbulent decades of the PRC have been wiped clear from the memories — and textbooks — of today’s young Chinese. On Thursday, it is in some sense the last three decades, and the unprecedented progress brought by Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms, that is being celebrated. The reforms turned around the lives of those like Mr. Zhou, who says he “went from being a tortured prisoner to heading an electronics factory”.

Ms. Li, now a practising Christian, heads a small family church in north Beijing, where a few dozen worshippers quietly gather every Sunday, in a country which still tightly restricts religious freedoms. “The biggest difference now,” she says, “is we don’t have to worry about basic things, like food, or my family’s safety. Now, my worries are different, my problems are spiritual. And, I guess, that is progress.”
The Hindu

Sixty years on, a growing divide

Addressing a widening gap between the cities and the countryside is China's most pressing challenge.

Much of Beijing has come to a standstill in the lead-up to China’s 60th anniversary celebrations on October 1.

But its construction sites have not, and the hammering and drilling has not stopped for a second. Chen Liu, a wheat farmer from remote Shandong province, takes a break from a morning spent lifting bricks, lights up a cigarette and stares at National Day shoppers with their glitzy shoes and designer bags. “It’s a different world here,” he says. “Even the cigarettes cost too much.”
Mr. Chen (23) is one of 225 million migrant workers who have left China’s interiors in search of work in cities. In the three decades since the country’s “opening up”, prosperity has come to urban China, but so has a widening income gap between urban and rural areas.

The per capita income of an urban resident is now 3.3 times that of a rural one, the biggest gap in the country’s history. Rural Chinese make up 55 per cent of the country’s 1.3 billion population. Addressing this widening gap is the People’s Republic of China’s most pressing challenge as it marks its 60th anniversary, scholars say.

In recent years, the Chinese government has passed a number of measures aimed at addressing the inequality between the rich coastal areas and the interiors, including investment in health, reducing agricultural taxes and massive investment in infrastructure through a “Go West” industrialisation drive.

But laws that continue restricting migration from rural areas to cities have worsened disparities, experts say. China’s “Hukou” (literally, family population) system, a legacy from the days when the country had a centralised, planned economy, regulates migration by determining access to social services. For instance, people with rural Hukou identities like Mr. Chen do not enjoy the access to the same social services that other Beijing residents do.

“There is a growing consensus that encouraging migration, and not restricting it, is the only way to effectively address interregional disparities,” says Lu Ming, a professor at Fudan University. Mr. Lu is part of a group of scholars who have proposed a joint reform of both land laws and Hukou rules to ease restrictions on migration. Signs are the government is listening. Last year, China passed a landmark land reform law to boost rural incomes. The law for the first time allow farmers to sell their land use rights. Land is leased to farmers from the government on 30-year contracts. The move will also significantly raise productivity in rural areas by increasing the size of land holdings.

Mr. Lu and his colleagues are calling for a “package reform” which will allow coastal cities to take up more farm land for non-agricultural use; provided they provide migrant workers with Hukou status. The buying of farmland is currently tightly regulated, given increasing incidents of unrest in rural areas tied to farmers losing their land. The new land reform law allowed Liu Tie Chuang (52), a peanut farmer from Henan, to sell his land rights and move to Beijing to find work.
He earns around 1,000 Yuan ($147) every month on a construction site, twice his income as a farmer. But others are more reluctant to move, as they lose their social security benefits, from education to healthcare, and often work in tough conditions.

Changing one’s Hukou identity is arduous. Usually, a migrant worker has to work for 15 years in a city before he gains access to services. Earlier this year, Shanghai passed a law aimed at making this process easier, reducing the time to seven years. But only 3,000 workers out of more than a million qualified as the regulations also required mid-level education qualifications.
“The rules are simply too restrictive,” Mr. Lu says, “and continue to deny millions access to basic social services.”

The Hindu

How real is China's revival?

The long-term impact of the pattern of China's post-stimulus growth is worrying economists.

Economists in China are growing worried about the country’s current pattern of growth and debating a very fundamental question: how real has China’s revival been? When China announced in July the country had recorded close to eight per cent growth for the second quarter of this year in the middle of the worst downturn the country has faced in decades, the news was widely read by the media as China conquering the recession. In a year when many of the world’s major economies will contract, China is on course to meet its target of 8 per cent growth, a fact that has led many to suggest the country’s revival may lead the rest of the world out of the economic gloom.

But here in China, contrastingly, the reaction to the country’s recent growth figures has been far less celebratory. Economists are pointing out with increasing anxiety that the 7.9 per cent growth was only made possible by record Government lending and massive investment in infrastructure which compressed three years’ worth of projects into nine months. Now, nine months after China’s $586-billion stimulus plan went into action, many economists here say this success may have come at worrying long-term costs. It is becoming increasingly evident that the massive pumping in of money, which fuelled the revival, is now creating ominous bubbles in China’s stock and property markets. The first half of this year saw lending on a scale never before seen in history: in six months, bank lending reached a huge 7.4 trillion Yuan (about $1.1 trillion).

“If you pump in that much money, and it has been pretty indiscriminate, two or three years down there is potential for massive hidden bad debt in the system,” says Mr Tom Miller, an economist with the Beijing-based Dragonomics research firm. “This is clearly not sustainable in the mid term and long term.” Fears of many of those loans going bad are growing, as evinced by the wild fluctuations seen in the Shanghai stock market in recent weeks. There is confusion among investors on a very fundamental question: how real has China’s revival been?

Analysts say as much as 20 per cent of the new lending sanctioned by the Government this year went straight to the stock market, fuelling a speculation bubble of the kind China has never seen before. The Shanghai stock market showed a remarkable 70 per cent rise in 2009, but growing concerns have seen it plummet this month by 20 per cent. The property market too has been soaring with new lending, and transactions are already back at pre-downturn 2007 levels. “There is just so much liquidity in the system,” Mr Miller says. “There are signs of a bubble, but we just don’t know if we’ve reached there yet.”

China’s policymakers faced a clear choice in crafting the country’s response to the downturn: addressing short-term employment concerns or tackling the long-term question of moving towards an alternative pattern of growth that is less export-reliant. The last year has seen the closing down of more than 100,000 factories whose life-blood was the export demand from the US and Europe. Exports are now down by more than 20 per cent from last year, and the collapse of export-driven industries has seen an estimated 20 million migrant workers lose their jobs and head home.

Beijing’s focus so far has been to address this employment crisis and prevent the spread of unrest, with the People’s Republic of China preparing to mark its 60th anniversary in October. The Government responded to the crisis by pumping in money into the economy to create jobs, but its response, some say, has made an already growing over-capacity problem worse. “The problem is that loose monetary policy is exacerbating the imbalance that China needs to work through, since most of the expansion is being directed at investment in expanding current and future capacity,” argues Beijing-based economist Mr Michael Pettis.

“But this comes at the cost… of constraining the future growth in domestic consumption. Without rapid future consumption growth … I just don’t see how China can support rapid GDP growth once the huge fiscal push becomes unsustainable and runs out of steam.” Economists say it is too early to say what the long-term impact of the country’s current growth focus will be, but the general consensus is the current revival more reflects a short-term papering-over-the-cracks rather than a sustainable solution to the fundamental problems facing China’s economy. The response so far, if anything, has taken the country in the opposite direction of solving its problems.

As a recent report by the McKinsey Global Institute on China’s growth patterns argues, the government’s response, while “highly successful in restoring short-term growth,” has risked “aggravating structural distortions” that made China’s export-reliant economy so vulnerable to external shocks in the first place. These concerns have led economists to call on the government to slow things down, but there are no signs that Beijing has any intention of doing so with the National Day celebrations looming. Premier Wen Jiabao has frequently declared in recent weeks China will “unswervingly” stick with its current loose monetary policy and emphasis on addressing the employment problem.

Government economists have defended the policy by saying they expect exports from the West to revive sometime next year – an expectation many economists doubt, saying a return to pre-downturn export levels would take at least three to four years. A drop in lending in July to 356 billion Yuan, down from 1.5 trillion in June, has led some economists to suggest Beijing was heeding their advice and beginning to become concerned over the pattern of growth. But others say the fall in lending was purely cyclical with most loans usually issued in the first half of the year and there will likely be no change in the government’s focus for the time being.
“For a moment, if the government were to choose between managing the asset bubble and consolidating the economic recovery, the government would definitely choose the latter one while making compromises with the bubbles,” Mr Jerry Lou, a Hong Kong-based strategist at Morgan Stanley said recently. Mr Lou said the government would likely carry on with its loose monetary policy, despite the fears of bubbles, at least until the middle of next year.

Echoing what most economists have argued, the McKinsey report says China, in the long-term, will have to drive the economy more from domestic consumption rather than its current export-led growth. Doing so, however, would require substantial structural changes that will require painful short-term costs. To begin with, China would require massive investment in healthcare reform, given that healthcare costs are the biggest drain on private spending. The report forecast that China could realistically hope to increase private consumption’s share of the GDP only “if policy makers depart from the current development paradigm and embrace new policies.”

But in the last 12 months, there have been no signs to suggest such a shift is imminent. Much of the money released by the stimulus plan has, in fact, found its way to state-owned industrial enterprises, which are, for the first time since China’s opening up, now growing at the expense of private companies. Employment in China’s famously inefficient state-owned companies has increased in the past year by 250,000. Between 1992 and 2007, employment in the public sector fell from 45 million to 17.5 million.

The motivation for Beijing’s short-term focus is clearly political. With the 60th anniversary celebration looming, Beijing “does not want to spoil the party,” as Mr Miller puts it. The last thing Beijing wants, on the eve of its grand celebration, is tens of thousands of angry laid-off migrant workers landing up at the city’s doorsteps. But what happens once the celebrations are over is anybody’s guess.

The Hindu Business Line

Pushing the boundaries

Deng Yujiao's case shows how online activism is pushing the boundaries in China.

As far as symbols of judicial reform go, Deng Yujiao is as unlikely as they come. A 21 year-old waitress at a seedy massage parlour in a remote corner of China, Ms Deng has in recent weeks become the subject of a high-profile national debate on China’s judicial system. Last month, Ms. Deng was sentenced to death for fatally stabbing a government official at a parlour in Hubei province. But shortly after her sentence was announced, the details of her case found their way to the Internet. It emerged that two local government officials had attempted to force themselves on Ms Deng, who, defending herself with a fruit-knife, had stabbed both of them, one fatally.

When the facts of Ms. Deng’s case emerged, her sentence caused huge public outrage, particularly among China’s 298 million “netizens” who strongly came out in her defence. For China’s increasingly active online community, battling corruption in officialdom has become a favourite pastime. This case, which strikingly framed their struggle –pitting a young girl fighting to protect her modesty against two officials abusing their positions of influence — strongly resonated with them. Ms Deng was dubbed their “Lie Nu” — the woman who dies to save her chastity — and became a symbol for their cause.

Tens of thousands of Internet users signed petitions pleading for clemency, and some bloggers set up a “Netizen Investigation Team” to publicise the facts of the case. Following the wave of public sympathy for Ms Deng, her charge was reduced from voluntary manslaughter to intentional assault. Her case went to trial last week, and Ms Deng was allowed to walk free on the grounds that a “mood disorder” had cleared her of any criminal responsibility.

It is widely believed that the wave of public support for Ms Deng decided the outcome of her case. Pu Zhiqiang, an influential civil rights lawyer, said “popular participation had improved both the investigation and the process” and public support had enabled her to fight for rights she would have otherwise been denied by the local court in Hubei’s Badong County. The outcome has however started a legal debate on the independence of China’s judicial system and to what extent — if at all — public opinion should sway such decisions.

Ms Deng’s is only one of several recent high-profile cases whose outcome has been significantly influenced by public anger, chiefly channelled and mobilised through the Internet. This trend began in 2003, when public outrage following the decision of a local court in Liaoning province to hand a reprieve to an influential gang leader caused the Chinese Supreme Court to step in and overturn the verdict in a rare move.

As the number of China’s Internet users has rapidly grown, these cases are becoming more frequent. In November, a security video of a government official in Shenzhen confronting a man whose 11 year-old daughter he had tried to assault found its way to YouTube, the video-sharing website. When the girl’s father approached the official, he flaunted his Communist Party credentials, boasting he was “the same level with the city’s mayor.” The official was reportedly first allowed to walk free by local authorities, but when the video went online — and received more than one million hits on YouTube — the local government moved quickly to fire him from his position with the government and issued a public statement.

Mr. Pu said Ms Deng’s case, and others like hers, highlight the real challenge facing China’s legal system: improving public confidence in the courts. China’s courts are widely regarded as being feeble when the cases involve ordinary citizens going up against government officials, which is why stories like Ms Deng’s resonate so strongly with the public.

He Weifang, an influential professor of law at Peking University who has campaigned for judicial reform in China, wrote in the aftermath of the Liaoning case that such public trials reflected serious flaws in China’s judicial system. He went as far as saying “traditional governance in China is not based on the separation of power [and] there has never been a judicial apparatus independent of the executive branch.” Mr. He has called for developing judicial independence and improving monitoring of judicial power to ensure judges rule strictly in accordance with law to prevent such “trials by mass media.”

The Internet has made such trials increasingly frequent. It is now harder for local courts — courts usually most susceptible to the influence of local government officials — to pass quick judgments or fix outcomes outside the glare of a highly suspicious public. In Ms Deng’s case, when public opinion strongly aligned with what was perceived to be the “right” verdict, the outcome suited all parties — the angry public, courts suffering from poor credibility and a government wary of public unrest. But on occasions where these interests clash, China’s judicial system will face a trickier test.