# A question regarding current China and political suppression. **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 7, 2008, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-regarding-current-china-and-political-suppression/448490 "2008-05-07T22:44:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Autolycus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/22d042/32.png) [@Autolycus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Autolycus)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2008, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-regarding-current-china-and-political-suppression/448490/1 "2008-05-07T22:44:32Z")
I was under the opinion that China still arrests and kills people they perceive to be political threats and that this goes beyond Falung Gong members. I was talking to my Chinese girlfriend from Beijing, and she was adamant that this type of thing does not happen anymore. I couldn’t remember any factual support past the Cultural Revolution, and I didn’t trust any of the websites I found with my Google-Fu. So, I turn to you, my savvy Dopers, what is the current state of Chinese freedom of political expression? ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2008, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-regarding-current-china-and-political-suppression/448490/2 "2008-05-07T22:56:43Z")
Go to the Amnesty International webpage and look up China. Your gf is sadly incorrect. Example from just last month, [chosen at random](http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/news/chinese-activist-gets-jail-sentence-20080403): > [@](#): > > Chinese human rights activist Hu Jia has been convicted of “inciting subversion of state power” and sentenced to three and a half years inprison. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2008, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-regarding-current-china-and-political-suppression/448490/3 "2008-05-08T01:06:24Z")
**Auto** , new girlfriend? Cool! Not only does the government directly arrest people, they work the crowds to their will. A recent example is the reaction to a Chinese student in America who tried to intervene between Pro-Tibet and Chinese students in a protest at Duke. As Grace writes in [the Washington Post](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/18/AR2008041802635.html), > [@](#): > > The next morning, a storm was raging online. Photographs of me had been posted on the Internet with the words “Traitor to her country!” printed across my forehead. Then I saw something really alarming: Both my parents’ citizen ID numbers had been posted. I was shocked, because this information could only have come from the Chinese police. A picture [on NPR](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89803198) shows where this went: > [@](#): > > A neighbor in the Chinese city of Qingdao walks past graffiti saying “Kill everyone in the home” and “Kill traitors” painted outside the family home of Duke undergraduate Grace Wang. If you start getting into arguments with your girlfriend, you should be aware that many Chinese are highly patriotic, defensive and pro-government about their country’s politics. For example, if you take the recent Tibet protests, the West looks at the thousands of arrests there as evidence of suppressing freedom of speech, while Chinese believe that the Tibetans should have been grateful to China for civilizing them in the first place. My wife and I have a number of Chinese friends, some in mixed marriages, and the couples regularly get into fights about Chinese politics. We were just talking to a couple of them over the weekend, and the Taiwanese husband of a Chinese woman says they simply never speak of it. I’ll let others decide if that’s better than another set of friends, a Malaysian Chinese wife and Chinese husband who teeter towards divorce because of fights, part of which concern China. ---
**Author:** ![Throatwarbler\_Mangrove](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8c91f0/32.png) [@Throatwarbler\_Mangrove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Throatwarbler_Mangrove)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2008, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-regarding-current-china-and-political-suppression/448490/4 "2008-05-08T01:11:40Z")
> [@](#): > > Not only does the government directly arrest people, they work the crowds to their will. Your example is not conclusive proof of this. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2008, 4:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-regarding-current-china-and-political-suppression/448490/5 "2008-05-08T04:06:27Z")
In fact, since the OP statement was that China arrests and \*kills \* opponents, none of the responses provide evidence for this. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2008, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-regarding-current-china-and-political-suppression/448490/6 "2008-05-08T04:29:05Z")
I don’t think there’s any question that China is killing people; the Chinese government has officially stated it executed 470 people in 2007 ([cite](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7346938.stm)). But the government would probably deny anyone was executed as political suppression; presumedly all of the condemned were convicted of some crime. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2008, 6:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-regarding-current-china-and-political-suppression/448490/7 "2008-05-08T06:05:20Z")
[QUOTE=Exapno Mapcase] In fact, since the OP statement was that China arrests and \*kills \* opponents, none of the responses provide evidence for this. [/QUOTE] Well, the OP question was > [@](#): > > what is the current state of Chinese freedom of political expression? which is much wider than the narrow question of arresting and killing opponents. We can ask **Auto** to clarify his OP, though if necessary. > [@Throatwarbler Mangrove](#): > > Your example is not conclusive proof of this. It’s commonly accepted here in Japan, so my point was less to show proof of government intervention than demonstrating how Chinese tend to be pro-government, which would require less active oppression. That said, there is plenty of evidence of government manipulation of popular anti-Japanese rage, for example. (A call for conclusive proof should be added to all threads, as that would radically reduce the amount of time wasted on the Net.) The Anti-Japanese demonstrations which broke out in 2005 are seen by many as manipulation by the Chinese government which got out of hand. A few quotes [Wiki](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Japanese_sentiment_in_China) > [@](#): > > Some believe that anti-Japanese sentiment in China is partially the result of political manipulation by the Communist Party of China.[23] > > According to this view, Mao Zedong and the Communist party claimed the victory against the Japanese invaders as part of their legacy. Initially, there was no need to resort to anti-Japanese sentiment because the principal enemies of the new country were the United States and later the Soviet Union. > > After the failure of the Great Leap Forward and the disruption of the Cultural Revolution, Deng Xiaoping and other leaders decided to take the country on a path of economic development based on the market economy, without relinquishing the party’s grip on political power. According to this view, the government resorted to nationalism, including an appeal to the CCP’s anti-Japanese credentials, in order to reassert its legitimacy to lead the country and defuse the inevitable tensions that would accompany rapid economic growth. This tendency was intensified by Jiang Zemin, under whose leadership, many foreign scholars and Japanese believe, Chinese schools began instilling anti-Japanese rhetoric into students. > > Today, surveys have shown that anti-Japanese sentiment in China is actually higher among the current generation than among the Chinese who actually lived through the occupation of the Second Sino-Japanese War. [Here is](http://studyofenglish.wordpress.com/2008/01/) a discussion of a memorial hall in Najing. > [@](#): > > Concerns about a possible deterioration in delicate Japan-China relations were behind the Japanese government’s request last week that China tone down the contents of the Memorial Hall to the Victims in the Nanjing Massacre in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province. > > Tokyo said the exhibits on display in the memorial hall, which reopened in December after a major expansion to mark the 70th anniversary of the 1937 Nanjing Incident, could “inspire anti-Japanese feeling and animosity” among Chinese citizens. > (. . .) > In 1997, the hall was designated as a “model base for patriotic education” in a bid to underpin the legitimacy of the Chinese government, which had been shaken in the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators. > > The exhibits reflect the fact that the hall repeatedly has been used for political ends. Patriotic education cannot be compromised as such education is essential if the Communist Party wants to garner public support for its monolithic rule at a time when social ills, such as economic gaps between haves and have-nots, and political corruption are ever proliferating. > > When work to expand the hall was launched in 2005, bilateral relations deteriorated to one of the lowest levels over former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s visits to the war-related Yasukuni Shrine and other thorny issues. Also that year, large anti-Japanese demonstrations were held across China. [And here](http://hnn.us/articles/1837.html) > [@](#): > > Animosity between China and Japan is as complicated as the histories between the sides. The Chinese government does use the anti-Japanese war, as it is called, as a propaganda tool to unify the country, experts acknowledge, and as leverage against Japan. ---
**Author:** ![Autolycus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/22d042/32.png) [@Autolycus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Autolycus)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2008, 7:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-regarding-current-china-and-political-suppression/448490/8 "2008-05-08T07:11:37Z")
I suppose my OP contained both the broad and the specific question. So, yes, all responses have been excellent thanks. ---
**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2008, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-regarding-current-china-and-political-suppression/448490/9 "2008-05-08T13:56:26Z")
This is a complicated question that defies a yes or no, or black and white answer, especially without a lot of context. First off, China is a big country and what some small town yokel does out in the provinces should not be confused with an official government policy taken at the highest levels. I know there is a perception of China as an all seeing all knowing police state that tracks every single thing, but that’s at least 25 years out of date. BTW, I did spend about 6 months in the deep country side and Tibet in the 1980’s. There are still vestiges of a command and control society, but it’s pretty broken these days. The more affluent big cities may be different than the practice in the smaller towns and villages. In fact, I’m pretty sure they are. I don’t spend a lot of time out in the sticks any more. I do a little bit, but it’s in the wealthy Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces that surround Shanghai. Keep in mind that the basic covenant between the government and the populace is that ‘you don’t question our right to rule, and we’ll keep interference in your daily life to a minimum. And by the way, people are generally better off and you have the chance to get rich.’ Also, that China has historically taken the view that the rights of the individual are secondary to the rights of society (be it Emperors, Confucious or Mao). So, the view of freedom of expression in China obviously is a bit different than Kansas. For example, I’m not going to be involved any Tibet discussion on these boards outside of pure fact although I do have personal views and direct experience. The Chinese government has a double edged sword when it plays or allows the patriotism card. Belgrade Embassy bombing, and there were organized protests. Hainan Plane incident, and the government cracked down on any form of protest, the “spontaneous” anti Japanese protests that came up a couple years ago was anything but, the Olympics had a variety of different reactions but one was that the government filtered out web searches and text messaging to stop organized protests. Basically, allows an “acceptable” level of “spontaneous outrage” and then shuts it down before anyone gets the idea that this is commonly acceptable behavior. French Hypermarket Carrefour, which has about 150 superstores in China, was targeted by students for protest after the Olympic Flame incident in France with the paraplegic. Carrefour immediately went on a media blitz offensive to distance itself from any private or public actions by French leaders or the government, to pledge support forth official Chinese line, to show how many jobs it provides, etc. This support for the party line combined with the government putting a lid on protests, translated into a non-incident. Not quite sure what the point is of the quoted site from Tokyo Player (the site, not Tokyo player). The Nanking Massacre happened, the museum (which I took my elderly mother to), seemed to me at least to not be overly sensationalistic. Although, how does one undersensationalize a partially excavated mass grave of massacre victims on site, photo’s of Japanese soldiers committing atrocities, accounts of rape victims, etc. The sheer volume of the atrocities may be debatable, but regardless of either deniers (Japanese right wingers) or gross exaggerators (Iris Chang), it’s something that clearly happened and was far too big to be anything but an atrocity. And documented at the time, clearly the Communists did fight the Japanese while the KMT avoided open battle. Look up Stillwell for one cite. Thus, the Chinese government have always used the patriotic anti-Japanese resistance as one of their mandates to rule. On more than one occasion in the past several years, I’ve witnessed the police rousting squatters and demolishing illegal structures. It starts with education, public notices, I’m pretty sure visits and personal entreaties, and then when the police actually have to go in and evict people from these places, it’s done under video taping. It’s a far cry from jack booted thugs in the middle of the night kicking down doors. My relatives were ordinary workers before the revolution. Several got sent to the countryside during the cultural revolution, one did time in a “reform through labor camp”, another that was too young to get sent out has an elementary school education because the schools were shut, some are on public relief after their state owned enterprise employers went bust and make do with minimal social welfare, others have “jumped into the sea of capitalism” and done well (including the guy that spent 5 years in a prison camp) No doubt, China is a big country without as many of the checks and balances or legal recourse that frankly even the Chinese leadership would probably admit is a “good” level. Then again, they are also trying to keep 1.3 billion people governed without anarchy while modernizing. That’s a tough balancing act. At least in the past 25 years that I’ve largely experienced on this side of the bamboo wall, there have been extraordinary advances in personal freedom, living standards and opportunities.