Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

Our sources in China say that it would be a mistake to underestimate the paranoia that is pervading China’s highest reaches of government even though the protests that erupted in Inner Mongolia in late May have died down.

The trouble in Inner Mongolia began when ethnic Mongolians were infuriated by the death of a farmer on 10 May.  He had been trying to protect his land when he was run down and killed, apparently by a Han Chinese driver.  Then five days later, another ethnic Mongolian was killed during a protest at a mine.  The protests in Inner Mongolia revived memories of the riots in Xinjiang in July 2009, which left 200 Han Chinese dead and a further 1,700 injured, and the deadly riots in Tibet in March the year before.

Nerves in Beijing were then further rattled by the incident on 26 May in Fuzhou, Jiangxi province, in which a 52-year-old man angry about property redevelopment set off three explosions at government offices, killing himself and two others.

Parallel to these signs of discontent, there have been more peaceful, but for Beijing equally alarming, signs of political activism, in particular a wave of independent candidates announcing their intentions to run in local elections.  On 25 May, for instance, a popular author called Li Chengpeng announced to his nearly 3m followers on Sina Weibo (a Twitter-style micro-blogging site) that he intended to run as an independent candidate for the People’s Congress of Wuhou District in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province.  His announcement produced a wave of support and a number of high-profile followers declaring similar intentions.

Li Chengpeng was himself following the lead of a woman from Xinyu in Jiangxi Province, Liu Ping, who declared her intention to stand as an independent candidate in April.  She was prevented from standing after the local party chief defined her attempt as “a major political incident manipulated by political forces at home and abroad in order to subvert Communist Party rule”.  She was constantly harassed from the time in April she declared her intention to stand in the 15-16 May poll, and finally she was detained for 5 days from 13 May.

It was this bid that prompted Li Chengpeng to declare himself as an independent candidate, and a comment by Li illustrates well the cumulative effect that these individual demonstrations can have.  He said: “Without her failed bid, I would not have stepped forward bravely.  Without my stepping forward, the over 30 people who came after me might not have stepped forward as candidates representing the popular will.  I think this is a small step for me but a big step for citizens.”

Public support for these activities is also difficult to prevent.  The Southern Metropolis Daily, for instance, commented: “Subjects are turning into citizens. This is a path of hope.  It can be responsibly said that the political apparatuses are caught in a race with bombs [a reference to the Fuzhou bombs].  Civil society is not a trap, and the authorities should let people see hope.”

The danger signals are coming from almost every quarter, from the lowest Mongolian peasant to the highest beneficiaries of China’s booming economy.  As we report in this month’s issue of our sister publication Future Threats Monitor, a new study has suggested that the number of Chinese high net worth individuals is projected to rise to 585,000 in 2011, but that of these nearly 60% are either considering emigration through investment overseas or are already finalising the process.  In 2009, 70% of the 4,218 EB-5 visas issued in the US (that is visas for applicants willing to invest $1,000,000 in a new business or $500,000 in a business in a targeted employment area) were applicants from China, double that of 2008.

Put alongside the events in the Middle East, these and other developments would suggest the government has good reason for the paranoia that we are told has begun to grip its highest echelons.  But there is also plenty of evidence that its intimidatory tactics are working.  For example, as the South China Morning Post pointed out in a piece this week on Beijing’s campaign against human rights lawyers: “Most of China’s roughly 170,000 lawyers and several thousand law professors have kept conspicuously silent about the increasingly serious plight of rights lawyers.  In 2009, over 500 lawyers signed a petition protesting at their colleague Liu Yao’s unjust conviction, resulting in his reduced sentence, but there has been no similar outpouring of support during the current wave of disappearances and repression.”