Day: February 24, 2024

Frank Dikötter, author of the “People’s Trilogy” about China under of Mao Zedong, has been chair professor of humanities at the University of Hong Kong since 2006. He recently published “China After Mao,” in which he argues that claims that the Chinese Communist Party has significantly changed direction in the post-Mao era are a misreading by those outside the country who “live in a fantasy world.”

He told RFA Mandarin in a recent interview that Chinese leaders have been very consistent in their messaging on political reform, and their economic goals and determination to maintain their dictatorship at all costs. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

RFA: What is the difference between the Mao era and the post-Mao era?

Dikötter: So, what have [Chinese leaders] been telling us? A very simple story: China is in the process of “reform and opening up.” So, there will be economic progress, and with economic change there will be political progress. China will become first a capitalist country and then a democracy.

Of course, what has happened is the exact opposite. If you read the documentation carefully, you find out that never at any one point did Deng Xiaoping, Hu Yaobang, Zhao Ziyang, Jiang Zemin, all the way up to today, never did a single leader ever say, “We want a capitalist system.” They all said the exact opposite, that they would uphold the socialist road. It is in the Constitution. 

All along, they were very clear about what they wanted. They wanted to reinforce the socialist economy. So what is a socialist economy? [It’s] not necessarily something that you have under Mao. A socialist economy is one where the state has or controls the means of production.

Money, labor, fertilizer, energy, transportation, all these are the means of production. They all belonged to the state. Today the money belongs to state banks. The land belongs to the state. Energy is controlled by the state. Large enterprises are controlled by the state. That was their goal, and they achieved it.

The second point is democratization. At no point did anyone say they wanted to have a separation of powers. On the contrary, Zhao Ziyang said very clearly back in 1987 that China would never have the separation of powers. Xi Jinping also made that very clear. But nobody in the West heard them, because they didn’t want to hear it.

RFA: Has everyone misjudged the Chinese Communist Party?

Dikötter: There is a profound failure on the part of a great many people, politicians, experts and scholars outside China to simply listen to what all of these leaders said very clearly and also to read and understand what’s been happening. The failure is reasonably straightforward. It is a refusal to believe that a communist — a Chinese communist — is a communist.

The truth is that the origins of the People’s Republic of China are not in the Tang Dynasty, not in the Song Dynasty, not in the Ming or the Qing. They are in 1917, when Vladimir Lenin seizes power and establishes a communist system. That is what inspired China after 1949.

That was the system behind it. So, if you do not understand that China is communist, if you keep on saying it’s not really communist, that they pretend to be communist, you will never understand anything.

RFA: Will China ever have a true democracy?

Dikötter: In the People’s Republic, you have a dictatorship, but they call themselves a democracy. They have no elections, but they say they have free elections. So what is an election in the People’s Republic? If you vote for the person they tell you to vote for. They give you a list one, two, three names. You can you can pick one of these three. That’s it. That’s an election.

RFA: You devote an entire chapter in your book to the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, but you don’t go into the rights and wrongs of it. Why not?

Dikötter: The Tiananmen massacre is … the most important moment after 1976. The 200 Chinese tanks that entered Beijing in June 1989 crushed Chinese people. That’s really quite extraordinary. It’s important because it shows that the party had an iron determination to retain its monopoly on power.  

RFA: Do you believe that the Chinese people want democracy?

Dikötter: Nobody knows what people in China want, for a very simple reason — they can’t vote. … If you do not have freedom of expression, if you cannot express your opinion at the ballot box, then we simply don’t know. You don’t know what people think in a dictatorship. 

But it’s probably safe to assume that a system based on the separation of powers, including freedom of the press and a solid judicial system, would probably be beneficial, for instance, for the economy. … This is basically a modern economic model based on debt. You spend to create the illusion of growth. Then you spend more. My feeling is that there may be people in the People’s Republic of China who are probably thinking about whether this is really a successful system or not. That’s all we can say.

RFA: Did China choose to destroy Hong Kong because it couldn’t control Hong Kong, or was it to transform Hong Kong’s system from the Western model to the Chinese model?

Dikötter: [Chinese leaders] believe that politics and the economy can be separated, and you have to give them a little bit of credit. They believe, with some justification, that the economy of China has been transformed beyond recognition over the last 40 years. Many parts of the world have been transformed beyond recognition, and none of them have all the structural problems that the People’s Republic of China has today.

But nonetheless, they’re quite convinced that you can have a Leninist system of monopoly over power, a Marxist system which controls the banks, controls the prices of energy, controls most state enterprises, controls the land, and yet have economic growth. That is what they believe. So why should Hong Kong be any different?

RFA: Why is the United States regarded as the enemy, and how does that relate to the concept of “peaceful evolution?”

Dikötter: The United States has always been perceived as the enemy from 1949 onwards because the U.S. is the heart of the capitalist system — the capitalist imperialist system — and the capitalist system is opposed to the socialist system.

What is peaceful evolution? It’s a notion that goes back to former U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles who came up with it. He said we should help countries like Poland and Hungary economically by investing so they would evolve peacefully into a democracy. This is exactly what happens with Poland on June 4, 1989, when the people voted themselves out of communism, and effectively and peacefully evolved into a democracy.

It is not just a notion, it’s a reality. And that is the biggest fear of the leaders in Beijing — that they will follow the example of Poland, not that of the former Soviet Union — and collapse. They afraid of what will happen with all these investments from capitalist countries, all these foreign ideas, Mickey Mouse T-shirts, Winnie the Pooh — that it will change the whole system.

RFA: You mention in your book that Mao Zedong’s belief that the United States would collapse was his biggest misjudgment. Does that misjudgment continue to this day?

Dikötter: Mao, in the last years of his life, and Deng Xiaoping, saw the United States pull out of the Vietnam War. At that moment, they thought the big enemy was no longer the United States, which was on the decline. The Soviet Union was the big enemy. What is this philosophy based on? It is based on Marxism. Marxism announces the imminent collapse of capitalism. We’re still waiting, right? But if you are a committed Marxist, you keep on thinking that the capitalist system is collapsing. 

In the 1970s, Deng Xiaoping sent missions to Japan and the United States. When they came back, the conclusion was that the U.S. economy was terrible with lots of unemployment and big debt. “They need us. They are about to collapse. This is a great opportunity for us.” — this was what [Chinese leaders] said when they were pretty much unable to feed their own people in the 1970s.

The same story has repeated itself. The biggest moment was in 2008 with the global financial crisis. At that moment in Beijing thought, “This is it. This is the collapse of the capitalist system. Our social system is superior.” So, they went around the world in 2009 and 2010, talking about “the China way,” that “our socialist system is superior to the capitalist system.”

RFA: Is Chinese President Xi Jinping a follower of all the other Chinese leaders who came before him?

Dikötter: The difference is Xi Jinping has what others didn’t have. He’s got much greater clout. Xi Jinping … merely says what all his predecessors have said very consistently since 1949. He is no different from any of his predecessors. He’s not a creator; he’s a follower. In fact, he’s created very little. If you want me to come up with a creator who created the most, it’s Jiang Zemin who came up with the idea of “going out” and establishing factories abroad, not just inside China. He emphasized the importance of Xinjiang as a strategic region. Jiang Zemin is the one who inserted party committees inside private enterprises. He is the one who emphasized from the summer of 1989 onwards, the great threat posed to China by peaceful evolution.

Xi Jinping has faithfully followed all the measures introduced by Jiang Zemin. It is not Xi Jinping who introduced party committees into private enterprises. It was Jiang Zemin. It’s not Xi Jinping who clamped down on Western culture. It was Jiang Zemin. Jiang was the one who joined the World Trade Organization, so all of this has been followed quite faithfully.

 Translated and transcribed by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Roseanne Gerin.

More than 20 years after similar legislation was stalled following mass protests, the Hong Kong government has launched a public consultation on a rewritten draft of its planned Safeguarding National Security Ordinance, which will criminalize “treason,” “insurrection,” the theft of “state secrets,” “sabotage” and “external interference,” among other national security offenses.

The legislation, which is mandatory under Article 23 of Hong Kong’s Basic Law, is being billed by the government as a way to close “loopholes” in the already stringent 2020 National Security Law, which was imposed on the city by Beijing, ushering in a crackdown on dissent in the wake of the 2019 protest movement.

The law is highly likely to be passed by the Legislative Council in the absence of any opposition lawmakers since electoral rules were changed to allow only “patriots” to run for election.

Debates about the content of the law began in the 1980s, and a close examination of its history sheds light on the political ideology and historical events that still drive Beijing’s crackdown on dissent in Hong Kong to this day.

Hong Kong-based former Straits Times reporter Ching Cheong, who served a five-year prison sentence in China for “espionage” for doing his job, takes a look at the story behind the law:

Why has the Article 23 legislation been described as the “sword of Damocles” over Hong Kongers’ heads? 

Because essentially this law is the culmination of a long-running attempt to graft the ideology, political ideas, and behavioral patterns of the Chinese Communist Party’s totalitarian system onto a pro-Western capitalist society that respects ​​universal values.

Our sense of helplessness dates back to the history of the Sino-British [handover] negotiations, from which the people of Hong Kong were excluded with no say or control.

Weaker legal protections

Yet Hong Kong representatives on the Basic Law Drafting Committee did object to the requirement to legislate against acts of “subversion” and other crimes, because everyone believed that Article 23 legislation would deprive the people of Hong Kong of their rights and freedoms, particularly freedom of the press and freedom of speech, as well as weakening legal protections for Hong Kong citizens, giving the central government unlimited power, and introducing Chinese-style “counter revolutionary” crimes to Hong Kong.

Article 23 isn’t mentioned at all in the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration [governing the 1997 handover].

Yet, if the government fails to legislate against “rebellion” effectively enough, Beijing can invoke Article 17 of the Basic Law, and impose direct, mainland-style governance in Hong Kong. This is in violation of the promise in the Sino-British Joint Declaration that Hong Kong would enjoy a “high degree of autonomy” after the handover.

Other objections during the 1980s were based on the differences between Hong Kong’s common law judicial system and mainland China’s civil law system, and on the vagueness of the definitions of “subversion” and [other crimes under the law]. For example, “subversion” isn’t the same thing as treason under British rule.

Yet Hong Kongers have neither the right nor the wherewithal to subvert the Central People’s Government in Beijing.

So this provision reveals the central government’s extreme distrust of the Hong Kong government and its people, not to mention its own lack of self-confidence.

The Basic Law drafting committee pushed back against Article 23, insisting on a clearer definition of the crimes under the law, and calling for Article 23 not to apply to areas where people exercise their freedoms of speech, assembly, protest and petition.

They were also insistent that the legislation be drafted based on Hong Kong’s legal system, rather than a piece of socialist legislation imposed on the city.

Tougher after June 4 protests

Then the student-led pro-democracy movement happened on Tiananmen Square, followed by the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen massacre, and the draft got tougher still.

Chinese officials wanted Hong Kong to legislate to prohibit “any act of treason, secession, sedition, subversion of the Central People’s Government and theft of state secrets, prohibit foreign political organizations or groups from conducting political activities in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, and to prohibit political organizations or groups [there] from establishing contact with foreign political organizations or groups.” 

Article 23 now specified seven crimes, up from two in the first draft, and the drafting committee’s objections were completely ignored. 

Two of its most vocal members, Democratic Party founder Martin Lee and veteran pro-democracy politician Szeto Wah, were kicked off the committee after they protested against the killing of protesters and civilians on June 4, 1989.

They continued to argue that the Article 23 legislation could seriously affect freedom of speech and of publication. They even foresaw that Hong Kong activists overseas might not be covered by local laws, but could still run afoul of a Chinese law.

Fast forward to the imposition of Beijing’s National Security Law on Hong Kong in 2020, and its content was exactly what the Basic Law drafting committee had envisioned for the Article 23 legislation three decades earlier.

The worst fears of the Basic Law drafting committee had come true.

After the handover in 1997, Chinese officials kept urging the Hong Kong government to legislate under Article 23. The direct trigger this time was their suppression of the Falun Gong spiritual movement, which rocked the ruling Chinese Communist Party regime in April 1999 with a mass gathering of its members outside Zhongnanhai, just meters from Tiananmen Square, in protest at denunciations of their practices in state media.

‘Evil cult’

The group also took over a radio station in a bid to counter negative official reports on its activities. It was later declared an “evil cult” by Beijing, its members detained and tortured and their organs harvested. 

According to former Hong Kong Justice Secretary Elsie Leung, the Falun Gong’s mass protests had roused the ire of then Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Jiang Zemin, who ordered a nationwide crackdown on the group.

The problem was, Leung told me, that Beijing was aware that the Falun Gong was still allowed to practice freely in Hong Kong, something that angered Jiang.

So much so that when he appointed Tung Chee-hwa as chief executive, he attached a condition that he must legislate under Article 23 as soon as possible, so that the Hong Kong government would have a legal basis to ban Falun Gong. He was actually required to complete this legislative work before July 1, 2003.

According to Leung, most of the “seven deadly sins” in the law were already covered by colonial-era legislation, with the exception of “prohibiting foreign political organizations or groups from conducting political activities in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.”

Those laws could have been adapted to meet the requirements of Article 23 without the need for new laws, Leung said.

But Beijing wasn’t having it. It insisted on a new law, which must contain a clause barring Hong Kongers from membership in organizations already banned in mainland China.

And there would be no fully democratic elections for either the Legislative Council or the Chief Executive without it, Leung said, citing Chinese officials at the time.

Hong Kong officials pushed back, arguing that without democracy, it would be impossible to legislate accurately so as to preserve the city’s existing freedoms, if they didn’t exist yet. But to no avail.

Eventually, the Hong Kong government released a consultation document in 2002 that was criticized for violating the United Nations-endorsed Johannesburg Principles governing national security and human rights law. Under these principles, restrictions to freedom of speech on the grounds of national security aren’t legitimate if they seek to “entrench a particular ideology,” rather than to stave off a violent threat of a military or internal nature.

Universal suffrage

Speech is only a legitimate target for national security legislation if it is likely to trigger immediate violence. But speech that peacefully requests a policy change, criticizes or insults a nation or its symbols or government, doesn’t count as a national security crime, the principles say.

Any national security prosecution should place the burden of proof on governments to show that the defendant did in some way endanger the nation’s survival or territorial integrity, according to a 2017 analysis by University of Hawaii law professor Carole Petersen.

In 2002, Baroness Frances D’Souza, who had a hand in drafting the “Johannesburg Principles,” was invited to visit Hong Kong to comment on the Article 23 legislation. She told RFA Cantonese that the draft Article 23 legislation wasn’t in line with the Johannesburg Principles. 

Public opinion at the time indicated that the draft law should go before the Law Reform Commission before being tabled in the Legislative Council as a white paper draft.

But the government had already skipped a step in publishing a formal “blue paper” draft without issuing a “white paper” draft for public comment.

Then Chinese vice premier Qian Qichen weighed in, insinuating that anyone in Hong Kong who had a problem with the Article 23 legislation likely had a guilty conscience.

And Hong Kong’s own Secretary for Security Regina Ip sneered at calls for universal suffrage, with the comment: “Hitler was elected under one person, one vote.”

Asked about whether Hong Kongers would get a chance to comment on the draft law, she sneered: “So I have to listen to what the aunty who washes the dishes in McDonalds has to say?”

Ip’s domineering attitude was one of the key reasons for the failure of the 2003 legislation.

The government’s attempt to strong-arm the legislation meant that 500,000 people took to the streets on July 1, 2003 to protest the law, prompting even the pro-Beijing Liberal Party to withdraw its support for the bill in the Legislative Council.

Faced with the prospect of a humiliating defeat in LegCo, the government shelved the bill, while Ip resigned from her post.

Editor’s note: On Jan. 12, 2024, the Hong Kong government released a draft of new legislation under Article 23 for public consultation, vowing to “eradicate the causes” of dissent that officials claim still linger in the city despite a 28-month-long crackdown on criticism of the authorities since the 2019 protest movement.

Translated and summarized by Luisetta Mudie.