You read about it in the news. Another case of several hundred Chinese villagers gathering together to protest illegal taxes. Or, a group of migrant workers demanding that local officials compel the construction company that they work pay them the back wages they are owed. And you think, is this is China? Don't Chinese leaders have authoritarian political controls they can use to stamp out these protests? Why don't they do it in every case?
One - it's tough. There is a lot of discontent in China. Squelching every protest through armed force requires a big investment of time, energy, and money. It also results in a lot of negative publicity at home and abroad. Central Chinese authorities prefer to save their strongest repressive measures for cases such as Tiananmen Square in 1989 or organizations such as Falun Gong.
Second, China's leaders themselves recognize that some of these protests are valid. Many citizen protests are directed against local corruption and illegal abuses by local cadres, rather than directly challenging Communist Party rule by officials in Beijing. In recent years, Chinese officials have repeatedly emphasized that 80% of citizen petitions are justified, and 80% of them reflect problems of local governance. Central Chinese leaders are willing to tacitly permit some of these citizen protests, such as those that challenge local abuses they themselves are trying to crack down on, as long as the protests don't get too out of hand, and as long as the protests remain directed at local (rather than central) officials.
Third, instead of simply calling in the troops every time a group of farmers mount a protest, Chinese authorities have developed an alternative strategy for dealing with citizen unrest: taking out the leaders. The thinking goes, if you can remove the organizational structure behind protests, you don't need to crack down so hard on the hundreds of participants who simply join in. This is why Chinese leaders often come down like a ton of bricks on those they perceive as active organizers of citizen protests, whether or not those leaders have attempted to pursue peaceful and legal methods of protest.
This focused (and long-standing) policy of selective use of criminal sanctions is reflected in a recent opinion issued by the Supreme People's Procuratorate on December 26, 2006. It directs procuratorate officials to "strike hard" against those who organize or lead "mass incidents" (a term that Chinese officials use to include riots, demonstrations, or collective protests against government action). In contrast, it directs procuratorators to "cautiously use coercive measures and criminal suits against ordinary participants," and notes that "if it is necessary to file suit, [procuracy officials] may request leinency from the people's courts."
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