New York Times 4/11/04: Political Progress Scale; How's China Doing? Yardsticks You Never Thought Of including as #7 HUMAN RIGHTS FOR DOGS, AND VICE VERSA

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April 11, 2004, Sunday

 

The World: Political Progress Scale; How's China Doing? Yardsticks

You Never Thought Of

 

By ERIK ECKHOLM (NYT)

 

IS China, with its mix of raw capitalism and tattered Leninist

politics, edging toward a more liberal, middle-class state or is it

hurtling toward a political seizure? Hunting for clues, Western

experts track such things as the government's treatment of

dissidents, its willingness to experiment with real elections and the

frequency of labor demonstrations. They search for an emerging

Communist leader who might speak like a Gorbachev, if not a Jefferson.

 

By those measures, progress toward democracy is glacial at best. Yet

even the casual visitor to China senses a society in the throes of

change.

 

So perhaps there are other, more telling markers of change. Following

is an idiosyncratic list of seven trends that bear watching, based on

observations made while I was a correspondent of The New York Times

in China from 1998 to mid-2003, a period of extraordinary growth and

hints of unrest in China.

 

1. THE RETURN OF TALENT -- In the 1980's and 1990's, many of China's

brightest students went abroad to graduate school and never returned.

They saw vastly more opportunity to pursue business or science or

scholarship in the United States, Europe and Japan.

 

In the last few years, lured by China's awesome economic growth and a

hope of greater freedoms, significant numbers of Chinese-born

professionals and even artists are moving back. Many work in the

private sector but some are taking government jobs.

 

The trend is still tentative. Those who have gained permanent

residency in the United States, for example, are hanging onto their

green cards, even as they test the waters at home. If these returnees

stay and join the Chinese establishment, this may indicate that the

rule of law is spreading and that party hacks are losing their grip.

But if many are fed up and leave again, whether because of unbearable

corruption, red tape or repression, watch out.

 

2. MIGRANT LABOR: WAGES -- As much of the countryside stagnates, more

than 100 million villagers are off doing construction or menial labor

in cities, or working on assembly lines in the coastal factory belt.

Often they work for $50 to $100 per month, struggling to send money

home and build a little nest egg. Their home villages, meanwhile, can

seem all the more desolate, populated only by children and the

elderly, who live off remittances from afar.

 

A central question haunting China's development and future stability

is this: Will these migrants gain a toehold to pull their children

and extended families up toward eventual prosperity? Or are they

stuck on a treadmill of poverty, with meager wages consumed by

survival and the land taxes they still must pay in the home village?

 

3. MIGRANT LABOR: RIGHTS -- A large share of migrant workers have no

legal status and are subjected to both official and informal

discrimination in education, housing and employment. They are treated

almost like illegal aliens, even as they perform vital work. Such

treatment of migrants may be China's most widespread human rights

abuse and is kindling resentment among the victims. Some scholars and

civic leaders have begun to acknowledge the injustice, indicating a

possibility -- but no certainty -- that migrants' lives will improve.

 

4. CHILDREN OF LAID-OFF WORKERS -- As China has closed down decrepit

state industries, the country has been rocked by demonstrations,

usually by laid-off workers who feel abandoned or cheated. But

extensive conversations with laid-off state workers -- including

those who have demonstrated over unpaid pensions or executive

corruption -- suggest that many are resigned to their fates.

 

In case after case, the degree of resentment or rebellion hinged less

on the older workers' own plights and more on the prospects for their

children. Those with a son or daughter who is getting higher

education or is ensconced in a modern-sector job tend to be hopeful

still, and they are numerous. The most disaffected are those who face

multigenerational unemployment and despair.

 

5. YUPPIE POLITICS -- The pressures for reform may flare most

powerfully not from the downtrodden, but from the new,

property-owning middle class, which will demand accountability from

officials.

 

In 2003, the most vociferous illegal demonstrations in Beijing were

staged not by desperate workers but by young professionals who said

they had been cheated by developers of their apartment complex,

abetted by local officials.

 

6. WEB SURFERS -- The spread of Internet use has left many experts

wondering about its effects on China's politics. Even in a

modest-sized town in Tibet these days, young people are crowding

Internet bars late into the night. But virtually all of them so

avidly typing and scrolling are playing Web-based games, or posting

messages in frivolous chat rooms.

 

Scholars and determined members of the intelligentsia take advantage

of the Internet to learn things the controlled press conceals, and

the government's Web police arrest those who are caught spreading

''seditious'' literature. But the subversive potential of the

Internet will be realized only if large numbers of game players start

using their computer literacy for more serious pursuits.

 

7. HUMAN RIGHTS FOR DOGS, AND VICE VERSA -- This is no joke. Visitors

to Beijing and other big cities may notice an eerie absence of dogs

on balmy weekend afternoons. This is not because they are regularly

eaten; in fact, the Chinese love their pet dogs as much as any people

anywhere. But because of outdated and draconian laws, tens of

thousands of pet owners in Beijing alone must keep their dogs in the

closet, as it were.

 

In Beijing, dogs are not allowed outside in the daytime; those caught

outdoors are confiscated and killed. They are not allowed in parks,

on grass or on elevators -- even when elderly owners live on the 14th

floor. They may not grow taller than knee-high, on pain of death. And

licenses are expensive.

 

The predictable result: many dogs never go outside. Thousands are

confiscated each year for being in the wrong place at the wrong time,

or growing a little too big. In the back alleys, where the police

can't drive, families flout the law and play with their pets outside

during the day. In fancier parts of town or near any major street,

nobody dares.

 

Many dog owners are seething, even as their pets suffer. And as China

becomes more developed and socially atomized, with a huge increase in

elderly people living apart from their children, the yearning for

canine companionship is certain to grow.

 

Can a rickety urban government respond to this change in social

attitudes and practices? Matters like this, as much as censorship of

the press and the jailing of dissidents, may determine the fate of

the Communist Party.

 

CAPTIONS: Photo: FLOUTING THE LAW -- In China, dogs are not allowed

outside in the daytime. This makes a lot of Chinese mad at their

government. (Photo by Erik Eckholm/The New York Times)

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