Reforming the Communist Party? Ending the Party Comes First

Last month the world got a revealing view of Chinese justice.
Reforming the Communist Party? Ending the Party Comes First
1/4/2010
Updated:
1/5/2010
Last month the world got a revealing view of Chinese justice. One of the leading voices for democracy, intellectual Liu Xiaobo, was found guilty of “inciting subversion to state power” in a Beijing court, a vacuous charge frequently used against dissidents. He was sentenced to 11 years in prison. The “trial” lasted less than three hours and Liu’s wife was denied access. American diplomats were singled out to be excluded from observing the trial—a slap in the face to this country after President’s Obama’s visit.

At the end of November, another long sentence of seven years was imposed on Wang Yonghang, a Beijing attorney. Wang lost his freedom because he wrote to regime leader Hu Jintao explaining how Article 300—which refers to obstructing justice and “undermining the implementation of the law,” and is commonly used against Falun Gong practitioners—makes no sense. How can a religious belief lead to obstructing justice? In a bitterly ironic twist, he himself was then charged with violating Article 300. These vague charges are commonplace in China to silence persons whom the authorities perceive as threatening to them.

Long sentences have become more common in recent years. The Falun Dafa Information Center compiled 63 cases where Falun Gong practitioners have in the last year and half been sentenced to 10 years or more.

British citizen Akmal Shaikh, 53 and father of three, was charged with smuggling drugs when he got off a plane in Urumqi in NW China with 8.7 lbs. of heroin. Family members and friends said he suffered from bipolar disorder and didn’t understand what the man from Kyrgyzstan meant when he promised Shaikh that he would make him a pop star and handed him a suitcase full of drugs.

It was quite evident that Shaikh was mentally ill. Friends of his in London provided the New York Times (Oct. 13) this exchange from Shaikh: “I am the chosen one here to deliver world peace. All I know is that Abraham has shown me my home in seventh heaven and I have met all the prophets.”

At an appeals hearing last May, the judges laughed out loud “at Akmal’s rambling speech as he pleaded for his life,” said the BBC News (Dec. 30). Under Chinese law, the psychological condition of the defendant is supposed to be considered. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown personally intervened and raised the matter in September with Hu Jintao at the economic summit meeting in Pittsburgh. Also, British consular officials in Beijing tried hard to get a reprieve from the death sentence. Yet the court never ordered any mental evaluation of Mr. Shaikh, and he was executed on Dec. 29.

The three cited cases indicate that China’s communist leaders are indifferent to international criticism and have no intention of moving in the direction of democracy and the rule of law. Leniency and justice are alien to the thinking of Party leaders.

Meanwhile, last year much talk was made of a reform movement in China for a nonviolent transition to a democracy, a political multiparty system, an independent judiciary, and respect for human rights. Commensurately, there has also emerged in recent years a small coterie of rights defense lawyers (weiquan lüshi), who act as if judges and the Party abide by the rule of law and China’s constitution, and hope that the rule of law will prevail. But those who have peacefully advocated democracy have been grievously disappointed. The rights defense lawyers have been targeted for abuse. At least 21 have lost their licenses to practice law this past year, and many have been arrested and beaten.

Why, then, are U.S. policies toward the People’s Republic of China based on the inevitability that China will embrace enlightened values?

In the last two decades the perspectives of most Americans and the leaders of both main political parties has been quite narrow. The belief has been that economic development and trade would bring democracy and more freedom to the Chinese people. The “engagement” view has been the basis of our foreign policy with China, in the hopes that by treating China as a friend and trading partner, it will become a “responsible stakeholder,” to use the language of former Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick. In the 1990s, U.S. politicians welcomed China into the family of nations, granting most favored nation trading privileges and sponsoring China’s entry into the WTO. The dominant view was to just be patient, capitalism will eventually bring liberty, and commerce will transform China’s one-party political system.

But the reality has not turned out as China experts and policy wonks had hoped. China has not moved in the direction of political reform or improvements in respect for human rights. The U.S. State Department, two congressional China commissions, and numerous human rights organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Human Rights in China—all agree on this. They have documented a worsening of human rights abuses over the past decade. Abuses of power and human dignity by the CCP are still happening today, and include citizens being abducted by the police, arbitrary arrests, beatings of petitioners, forced abortions, and forced sterilizations of millions of Chinese women—even forced terminations of nine-month pregnancies—an Internet blockade where 50,000 police monitor what Chinese citizens are allowed to see, the beating and jailing of House church members, and special treatment directed at Falun Gong practitioners, with a sinister collection of methods and instruments of torture, thousands tortured to death in police custody, and hundreds of thousands, probably millions, sent to labor camps.

The heroic efforts in China and overseas to convince the Chinese people and their leaders of the virtues of democracy and the rule of law have not borne fruit. What is the alternative to a China policy based on reform of the CCP?

The answer lies in bringing a rapid termination to CCP rule. Five years ago this newspaper published a set of editorials called the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party, which laid bare the moral depravity of the Communist Party, beginning with its origins and ending with the destruction it has done to the people and culture of China. Immediately after its publication it stirred much interest in China, as well as fear among Party officials. More than any other topic, the Nine Commentaries are blocked to Chinese Internet users. The Chinese people have always been aware of widespread corruption among local Party bosses, and they have known something of the failings of the system, but until the Nine Commentaries was published the Chinese people were not aware of the full extent of the terror, cruelty, and constant lying the regime has relied on since its inception.

Soon after the publication of the Nine Commentaries in November 2004, a movement began for renouncing the CCP. When someone becomes fully aware of the calamitous history and destructive nature of the Party, he will want to get out. The Chinese word for renouncing the CCP is tuidang. For several years the tuidang movement has been steadily growing. At the beginning of 2009, the number of people who had renounced the Party and its affiliated organizations, the Young Pioneers and Communist Youth League, stood at 51 million. By the close of 2009, the number was almost 65 million.

The disintegration and ridding of the CCP is a precursor to building the rule of law in China—this is now an inescapable conclusion. The Communist Party cannot reform itself, and placing one’s hopes in reform is bound to lead to disappointment. U.S. policy needs to reflect this truth: real change in China begins by preparing for an end to the Communist Party’s rule.