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Re: [A-List] Repression (was Misapplied Idealism)

Not all protests are legitimate.  Counterrevolutionary protests and
Separatist protests need to be suppressed.  Protest against corruption,
injustice and bureaucractic abuse should be  taken seriously by the
Party and government as bases for further reform. Notice Bonds attempt
to confuse by using words such as "running scare, if 'dangerous' popular
revolts against your homeland's corrupt bureaucratic-capitalist elites -
on the vast scale reported below - have to be denied, repressed or
delegitimised." Bond wrote: "I suspect we're not getting all of the
reports from the Chinese sites of especially class struggle in the
factories."  No, all the report are there on the internet, its is Bond
that is not getting all of it.  Notice how Bond uses inuandos and
selective reports in Cold War style to demonize China because its still
communnist. That type of since-disproven and outdated tactics are beyond
even the US mainstream press.

Below are teo reports to show Bond wrong.

Henry C.K. Liu

washingtonpost.com <http://www.washingtonpost.com/?nav=pf>

In Face of Rural Unrest, China Rolls Out Reforms

By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, January 28, 2006; A01

BEIJING, Jan. 27 -- Faced with steadily increasing peasant unrest, the
Communist Party has decreed extensive changes to improve the lot of
farmers and stop rapid economic development from encroaching on their land.

The party declared rural reform a major goal of its new five-year
economic program, which began this month. The government has also
announced the abolition of an agricultural tax that is thousands of
years old, free public school education for peasant children and new
rural insurance to subsidize medical care for those among the country's
800 million farmers who cannot afford to see doctors.

The swift sequence of decisions reflected the depth of concern in the
party and government as farmers outraged by land grabs and pollution
increasingly rise up in violent protests that senior officials have said
pose a threat to stability and continued economic growth. The Public
Security Ministry estimated the number of riots and demonstrations at
87,000 during 2005, up more than 6 percent from 2004 and quadruple what
it was a decade ago.

The violence is in part a reaction to an economic boom that has produced
9 percent annual growth in China but benefited mainly city dwellers.

Some Chinese officials have suggested strong repression is the best
response. Wu Shuangzhan, commander of the paramilitary People's Armed
Police, and Sui Mingtai, the force's political commissar, wrote a joint
article early this month urging stepped-up training and preparation to
put down the unrest. But the senior leadership, while not repudiating
use of force, has emphasized solving farmers' underlying problems as the
long-term solution.

Premier Wen Jiabao last month warned senior rural bureaucrats against
making "a historical mistake" by failing to protect farmers and their
lands, which he predicted would lead to more violence. In particular, he
cautioned, towns should not violate the law in seizing land nor sell
confiscated fields to businesses as a way to raise public funds.

"This is a key issue that affects the stability of the countryside and
the society, and it must be clearly recognized by all levels of
government and party committees," he said, according to a text of his
speech published last week by the party's official People's Daily.

President Hu Jintao drove home the message Friday in an address to the
Politburo, urging resolution of the "major contradictions and problems
we are faced with" in the countryside. "If we cannot succeed in
developing agriculture and rural areas while helping farmers improve
their lives markedly, we will fail to reach the goal of building a
comparatively prosperous society," he said, according to the official
New China News Agency.

But the party's efforts to better manage tension between urban growth
and squeezed farmlands repeatedly have faltered in the hybrid of
socialism and capitalism that has developed here in 30 years of economic
liberalization. In the new era, the Communist Party's main ideology has
become growth, creating a natural and often corrupt alliance between
officials and businessmen that leaves farmers with no advocate.

As a result, some Chinese analysts have pointed out, a genuine
determination to protect farmers and their fields would require
unflinching prosecution of city, county and village officials involved
in illegal land confiscations and sales. There has been no sign that Wen
and Hu have that in mind. In his speech, which was hailed as an
unusually frank discussion of China's rural problems, Wen did not refer
to the role of corruption in land confiscations, although farmers
routinely cite it as a reason for their violent protests.

Elsewhere as well, party solidarity seems to have outweighed the desire
to improve administration of the countryside. Last month, for example, a
county party secretary who in August 2004 decried systemic corruption in
Zhejiang province land dealings was sentenced to life in prison; on
Tuesday, a journalist friend who helped him write his denunciation was
sentenced to three years.

After a string of peasant riots, including one in which People's Armed
Police opened fire and killed a number of people, the Guangdong
provincial party secretary, Zhang Dejiang, last month issued what he
called "three stern directives" threatening local officials with firing
if they improperly seized fields. After another riot this month, he
issued his warning again. But no firings have been announced.

Zhang, a member of the 24-member Politburo, recently was chastised by
fellow senior leaders over the fatal Dec. 6 clash between rioters and
police at Dongzhou, about 125 miles northeast of Hong Kong, according to
Chinese journalists. His official report on the shootings, presented
during an appearance in Beijing, was rejected, they said, and a central
government team was sent to investigate and come up with its own report.

Despite speculation among analysts in Beijing, however, Zhang has not
lost his position as party leader in Guangdong, the capital of China's
assembly-line industry, or on the Politburo. His fate is considered
particularly sensitive because former president Jiang Zemin, not Hu, was
responsible for his ascension to the elite policymaking body.

Wang Yukai, deputy director of the prestigious National School of
Administration and an expert on rural problems, said Hu's decision to
focus now on improving farmers' lives represents a shift in the party's
thinking. Previously, he recalled, the policy was to forge ahead with
economic development with the hope that, as growth spread, farmers
eventually would share more in the benefits along with their urban cousins.

"This is a big goal," he said. "It is not just a slogan for one day.
It's a long process."

Getting rid of the agricultural tax has been especially well received
among peasants, who from imperial times have had to fork over a
percentage of their crops or earnings to local officials. Hu, in
televised visits to farms around the country, has been shown reminding
peasants of his decision, unfailingly generating happy smiles.

But Wang cautioned that such decisions announced in Beijing frequently
do not fully apply in the towns, counties and villages where more than
two-thirds of China's 1.3 billion people live.

For instance, a quarter of last year's government revenues in China went
for the upkeep of the country's 6 million officials at all levels, he
noted, including banquets, chauffeured cars and trips abroad as well as
salaries. Seeing officials enjoying these perks at government expense
frequently has contributed to peasants' anger and their feeling left
out, he added.

At a briefing for senior officials in Hu's office, Wang said, he offered
a 14-character formula for improving life in the countryside. "Strict
discipline for officials" was at the top of the list.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Premier Wen pledges more help for the poor
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-03-05 15:42

Premier Wen Jiabao admitted China faced "glaring" social problems and
pledged more help for the poor as he forecast economic growth of eight
percent this year.

In his annual "state of the nation" address to parliament at the Great
Hall of the People, Wen said a priority of the government would be to
ensure the country's rapid social and economic development was not
reckless.

In the report Wen acknowledged that "we clearly see that problems and
difficulties remain" in guiding the world's fastest growing major
economy while keeping 1.3 billion people happy.

He cautioned that while opening up and reforming China would remain "the
driving force behind all aspects of our work" development must not
happen "recklessly".

"If we do not keep this in mind, we could end up just spinning our
wheels and going nowhere or even suffering serious losses," he told the
near-3000 delegates at the National People's Congress.

As China has raced into the modern age, a stark lack of economic
opportunities among its 800 million rural dwellers has become
increasingly evident, threatening social stability.

Government corruption and power abuse at the local level have been cited
as major reasons hampering the development of the countryside and Wen
vowed the issues would be tackled.

"Some low-income people lead difficult lives and there are more than a
few factors threatening social stability," Wen said.

"Solving the problems facing agriculture, rural areas and farmers
remains a top priority of all our work," said Wen.

One of the main concerns of the rural Chinese is graft within government
and Wen admitted that "formalism, bureaucracy, dishonesty, extravagance
and waste are relatively severe".

"We must face the above mentioned problems squarely and continue to
adopt measures to solve them," he said.

Education would be "a strategic priority" in the year ahead,
particularly in the countryside where various fees for the poor would be
exempted and free textbooks offered.

Some 10.9 billion yuan (US$1.3 billion) will also be allocated to help
laid-off workers find jobs.

To further help farmers, agricultural taxes will be abolished next year,
while subsidies will be increased for grain producers.

To create enough jobs for the nation's millions, Wen announced an
economic growth target of eight percent this year, up from previous
years when seven percent was deemed the minimum to keep enough people
out of unemployment.

"Maintaining steady and rapid economic development is an important issue
that the government must successfully handle," Wen said in his speech.

"This is a period of important strategic opportunities for China, and
the economy should grow rapidly, but not be allowed to overheat."

But he warned of a possible return to overheating of fixed asset
investment while supplies of coal, electricity, petrol and
transportation "are still very tight".

There was also still "considerable" inflationary pressure on prices.

In a wide-ranging speech, Wen also said China should continue to expand
its military capabilities, with modernization of the army of strategic
importance to safeguard the eventual reunification of Taiwan.

China will boost its military spending by 12.6 percent this year to
247.7 billion yuan (US$29.9 billion), about 7 per cent of the US
military budget.

A key task of the NPC during its 10-day session will be to deliberate
and pass a law aimed at curbing any Taiwanese bid for formal independence.

Wen repeated China's assertion that independence would never be tolerated.

"This law represents the common will and strong determination of the
entire Chinese people to safeguard the sovereignty and territorial
integrity of the country and never allow secessionist forces working for
Taiwan independence to separate Taiwan from China under any name or by
any means," he said.





Patrick Bond wrote:

----- Original Message ----- From: "Henry C.K. Liu" <hliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Yes, much still needs to change in Myanmar and in China and
everywhere else to move closer toward socialist ideals, but it all
needs to happen by internal struggle, not dictation from Washington,
and certainly not from Civil Society snake oil nonsense, which is the
equivalence of preaching the importance of proper dress code for
dinner when the kitchen is empty and the children are starving.



Ah, but I think your clever metaphor refers to civilised society. Many
of us will continue promoting uncivil society, especially in sites
like China where repression has been so fierce. Henry, by providing
such *persistent* distortions of reality, you seem to be running
scared. I guess I would be too, if 'dangerous' popular revolts against
your homeland's corrupt bureaucratic-capitalist elites - on the vast
scale reported below - have to be denied, repressed or delegitimised.
I have an article today in SA's main quality newspaper that makes some
of these same points. At 5800 police-recorded protests (13% of which
were illegal) last year in a country of 44 million people, our
official rate is quite a bit ahead of China's (87,000 for 1.3
billion), but I suspect we're not getting all of the reports from the
Chinese sites of especially class struggle in the factories.

***

Reuters.com

China to 'strike hard' against rising unrest

Thu Jan 26, 2006

By Chris Buckley

BEIJING (Reuters) - China is preparing to "strike hard" against rising
public unrest, a senior police official said according to state media on
Thursday, highlighting the government's fears for stability even as the
economy booms.

An unnamed top official of China's Ministry of Public Security told a
Wednesday meeting that China faced a long period of dangerous social
discontent, Xinhua news agency said.

"For a considerable time to come, our country will be in a period of
pronounced contradictions within the people, high crime rates, and
complex
struggle against enemies," the official said.

"Contradictions within the people" is a Maoist term used to describe
domestic social unrest.

China was suffering many "major sudden incidents" -- a term Chinese
officials use to cover riots, protests and accidents -- the official
added.

"Unpredictable factors affecting social stability will increase, and
trends
in protecting social stability don't allow for optimism," said the
official.

He also said that "terrorism is a real threat against our country" and
urged
officers to guard against attacks.

China says that its biggest terrorist threat comes from Xinjiang, the far
western region dominated by the largely Muslim Uighur people who share a
language and culture similar to Central Asian countries.

Uighur groups have campaigned for independence from China, and a few have
had links with Islamic extremists in Afghanistan and Central Asia.

Last week, China's Ministry of Public Security put the total number of
"mass
incidents" -- riots, demonstrations and smaller protests -- at a total
87,000 last year, up 6.6 percent from 2004.

The latest unusually grim police diagnosis of China's social strains
comes
less than a week after Premier Wen Jiabao was reported as warning that
corrupt land seizures in the countryside were stoking protests and riots.

"Some locales are unlawfully occupying farmers' land and not offering
reasonable economic compensation and arrangements for livelihoods, and
this
is sparking mass incidents in the countryside," Wen said in a speech
published on January 20.

Wen said the continued "reckless occupation" of farmland threatened "the
stability of the countryside and whole economy and society." He promised
stricter land controls and improvements to farmers' rights and income.

HARSH RESPONSE

But the police official promised a harsher and more traditional remedy.

Summoning harsh rhetoric that has languished in recent years while the
government promoted "rule of law," the official promised to "strike hard
against all sorts of terrorist activities and resolutely protect state
security and social stability."

During the 1980s and 1990s, regular "strike hard" campaigns were used to
fight crime and threats to order by mobilizing police and courts to catch
and quickly try and sentence many thousands of citizens.

In recent years, legal reformers have criticized such campaigns as
contrary
to China's official embrace of rule of law and human rights.

But on Thursday, a meeting of law and order officials announced a new
campaign against the "sabotage activities of cult organizations," Xinhua
said in a separate report.

China calls the Falun Gong, a spiritual sect banned in 1999, a "cult"
that
threatens the government.

The meeting also called on officials to "strictly prevent destructive
activities by terrorist forces and domestic and foreign hostile forces
and
elements," the report said.

Xinjiang authorities arrested more than 18,000 people there for crime,
including national security offences, the region's official newspaper
said
last week.


***

Sunday Independent, 29 January 2006
By Patrick Bond

The local government election campaigning is revealing deeper and more
durable causes of social struggle than mere party-political bickering.



The ANC will win the vast majority of seats, no doubt. An ANC
commitment that half of its new councillors will be women is an
astonishing show of progress - but only if we ignore the actions of
these politicians.



Last time around, in 2000, ANC placards promised a free lifeline
supply of basic municipal services. Low-income people were offered
patronage plus good public policy.



They got neither. Since then, South Africa has been rocked by strife
over appalling water, sanitation, electricity and housing supplies in
townships and shack settlements. The recent Mabopane uprising in
protest over poor service delivery, which led to 11 arrests, was only
one of many, with the South African National Civic Organisation, an
ANC ally, vowing more rioting until there is delivery.



Charles Nqakula, the minister of safety and security, recorded 5 800
citizens' protests last year. From sustained protests arise activist
networks, including the Anti-Privatisation Forum in Johannesburg, the
Anti-Eviction Campaign in Cape Town and the Abahlali Base Mjondolo
shack-dwellers movement in Durban.



Activism today seems strongest in places such as the impoverished
Foreman Road settlement in Durban, which has a single water tap and
four padlocked, scrap-wood toilets for more than 1 000 shacks. Nearby
Kennedy Road has six non-working toilets serving 6 000 people.



These sites caught the attention of a New York Times reporter last
month: "Residents say Obed Mlaba, the mayor, promised during his last
election campaign to erect new homes on the slum site and on vacant
land opposite their hillside. Instead, however, the city proposed to
move the slum residents to rural land far off Durban's outskirts. In
an interview that he cut short, a clearly nettled Mlaba argued that
the protest was the work of agitators bent on embarrassing him before
local elections."



Perhaps the highest-profile agitator has been Trevor Ngwane of the
Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee. Once head of the ANC's regional
Soweto branch and a Johannesburg city councillor, Ngwane was fired by
the party in 1999 when he wrote a newspaper column against looming
water commercialisation.



Not long afterwards, his council colleagues flew to Buenos Aires on a
tour of the world's most famous water-outsourcing project. The company
that financed the trip, Paris-based Suez, was chosen as Johannesburg's
water manager.



At the same time, a corruption scandal was brewing in Lesotho over
Africa's largest dam, from which Johannesburg draws water. A company
was accused of bribing a key official, Masupha Sole. After a long
investigation, Sole is now in jail and several of the companies have
been prosecuted, with more in the process.



Johannesburg's outsourcing exercise is telling, not only for these
unseemly origins but also because Suez was compelled to quit Buenos
Aires last September due to what the Argentine government claimed was
underperformance.



South Africa was meant to be different, if you took seriously some
uplifting promises: the 1994 reconstruction and development programme
offer of "50 to 60 litres per capita per day of clean water"; the 1996
constitution's "right to have access to sufficient water"; the 2000
election promise that the "government will provide all residents with
a free basic amount of water, electricity and other municipal
services, so as to help the poor. Those who use more than the basic
amounts will pay for the extra they use."



This is all sound social policy, because providing a universal
entitlement means basic needs will be met regardless of inaccurate
"indigence tests". The promise also means that a higher price is
charged per unit after the free basic supply, via cross-subsidies
(namely, redistribution). If the price is high enough, high-volume
users might learn conservation, and thus prevent the construction of
future Lesotho dams.



Durban pioneered the free 6 kilolitres-per-household-per-month scheme
during the late 1990s. Six years ago, Ronnie Kasrils, then the
minister of water (now intelligence), announced that the whole country
should amend water pricing to include a free lifeline: "It would save
money because local authorities would not be saddled with the problem
of administering large numbers of small accounts."



But excess emphasis on the money-saving rationale led municipal
officials to charge much higher water rates once consumers, especially
poor people in large households, were finished with the too-small free
supply.



An MBA thesis at the University of KwaZulu-Natal by Reg Bailey, who
administers Durban's municipal tariffs, reviewed the impact of water
price changes from 1997-2003.



In three categories of metered customers divided by wealth, Bailey
found that the average price of water doubled over those years, from
R2/kilolitre to R4, mainly to the detriment of low- income people.



The poorest third slashed their consumption from 22 kilolitres per
month to 15 kilolitres per month, a stunning decline of nearly a
third. This is deeply worrying, since water is so crucial to good
hygiene, especially during the Aids pandemic and periodic cholera and
diarrhoea outbreaks. These water restrictions are also particularly
onerous for women.



Meanwhile, the middle-income group of Durban households cut back only
a small amount: from 24 kilolitres a month to 22 kilolitres. The
wealthiest third - many with swimming pools and English gardens -
dropped from 35 kilolitres a month to 33 kilolitres a month.
Johannesburg's record is similar. Rich residents barely noticed the 24
percent increase in the price of water during the late 1990s as
Lesotho dams gradually affected their bills. In contrast, those using
a small amount suffered a 39 percent increase in their water bills.



Then, in mid-2001, Johannesburg officials transformed a relatively
slow-rising tariff curve inherited from apartheid into an extremely
convex curve: as consumption rises, the price soars quickly and then
levels off, so hedonistic users have little incentive to conserve
after 15 kilolitres a month.



Thus, for low-income households, after consuming 6 kilolitres a month
for free - too small for large families with several backyard tenants
- water bills jumped sharply. For many, this left the overall cost
higher than before the free basic water promise.



Supported by the Freedom of Expression Institute, a national campaign
lobby against water privatisation is taking Johannesburg to court next
month, with lawyer Wim Trengove arguing that residents' constitutional
rights are being infringed. The campaign opposes prepaid water meters
and will also request that the Suez contract be terminated this year,
instead of being extended for another 25 years. Reaction by the state
and ruling party is often paranoid, with township activists
periodically vilified as a third force' "a conspiracy of ultra-leftists".



Last June, Kasrils was asked by a reporter whether the National
Intelligence Agency was involved, "to see if these protests have been
orchestrated"' He replied: "Well, I'd say that is its mandate. And
wouldn't you, as a citizen and a taxpayer in this country, want to see
your intelligence service alert to any eventualities?"



For Lindiwe Sisulu, the housing minister, activists must be deluded:
"If there are protests, then it is possible we are not communicating
properly."



Joel Netshitenzhe, the government's man in charge of communications,
wrote in the Sunday Times just before the April 2004 presidential
election that "10 million people [were] connected to water, which
cannot by any stretch of the imagination be compared with the few
households occasionally cut off".



"A few?" Mike Muller, the chief water bureaucrat at the time,
acknowledged two months later that according to a 2003 national
survey, "275 000 of all households attributed interruptions to
cut-offs for non-payment"' meaning roughly 1,5 million people lost
their home water access at some point that year.



In short, a central reason behind the sustained municipal dissent is
what might be called micro-neoliberalism: the application of the
market as far into the terrain of human rights as people will permit.
But no matter the sweet words at election time, permission to
commodify water and other services out of affordable reach is simply
not being granted.



Patrick Bond directs the University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil
Society

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