Voices of dissent: China today

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

The Beijing Summer Olympics are coming soon. Brace yourselves for mindless television coverage of Panda bears, authentic cuisine and acrobats. Yes, let’s not forget the acrobats.

That’s exactly what the Chinese government wants.

‘The Olympics are meant to show the legitimacy of this regime,’ says Chinese journalist and activist Dai Qing (left). ‘They have lost every other form of legitimacy, but now they want to show the world that our society is rich, open, and the people are happy. That is what the Olympics there will mean.’

Dai Qing’s comments were made in a short interview with me at the close of ‘China and Human Rights,’ a two-day symposium that ended yesterday at Claremont McKenna College. This extraordinary event (sponsored by several of the college’s research centers, including the Family of Benjamin Z. Gould Center for Humanistic Studies) drew several prominent Chinese dissident intellectuals as well as many high-profile experts on China such as Orville Schell and Roderick MacFarquhar. Thursday night, Schell gave a keynote speech, in which he discussed the impact on the environment of China’s industrial development. Yesterday night, MacFarquhar looked at the complex issue of reform in the country.

For me, however, the best thing about the symposium was getting to listen to people like Dai Qing: The facts on the ground are even more poignant when they come from people living the reality of a totalitarian regime every day.

So let’s hear a few more of their voices:

Han Dongfang (workers’ rights activist; photo right): ‘It isn’t a question of asking whether or not a civil society can be built there. We must do it.’

Wang Chaohua (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences): ‘[W]ithout political space for civic activism, a society is ill-prepared to take effective actions against human rights abuses.’

Gao ErTai (writer/painter): ‘Don’t say these conditions only existed during Mao Zedong’s era. Don’t say peoples’ lives have changed. ...The persistence of the ruthless Party’s Central Committee Propaganda Ministry is the most conspicuous signpost that yesterday’s China still exists today.’

Dai Qing: ‘I’m almost 70 and I am among the youngest of the activists. Who will continue to work? There may be more openness, but this doesn’t mean there is victory. There are still the same political and economic systems in place.’

You can hear the inner turmoil in their voices. Angered by oppression, by censure, by bureaucratic insensitivity--yet also hopeful that reform is possible.

‘Have we done enough? So much has changed, yes,’ says Dai Qing, ‘but progress is not good enough. Progress cannot stop.’

The other significant event in China this year is the completion of the massive Three Gorges Dam Project (photo right) on the Yangtze River. The construction has displaced millions of people and scientists fear the longterm ecological impact on the region. Criticism of the project has been stirred by activists like Dai Qing. For her opposition, she has been banned, since 1989, from publishing books and articles or from public speaking. How can a writer wake every morning to the thought that she no longer has an audience?

‘Oh, I have an audience,’ she says with a smile. ‘My writing will find readers in other countries. And there is the internet too. I cannot publish, no, but I also cannot be silent.’

I hope that coverage of the Olympics won’t overlook such bravery. This two-day symposium at CMC was a valuable reminder of the real issues lurking behind all the upcoming athletic photo-ops.

Nick Owchar

(Dai Qing/Photo credit: CMC)