Say you are a Shanghai-based
economist and doubt the veracity of China’s
latest trade data. You put out a research report to that effect, one that
creates buzz on the Internet and exposes you to something far worse than making
a bad call: prison.
Or say you are a photographer in
Chongqing and circulate images of a politician who loves Rolexes. Bloggers
begin buzzing about how a modestly compensated public official could afford a
stable of $7,000 watches. You, too, may end up in handcuffs.
What if overworked and underpaid Foxconn
Technology Group workers churning out iPhones they can’t afford choose to
vent online? How about an environmentally minded graduate student who questions
the accuracy of Beijing’s air-pollution readings? Or a mother who lost a child
in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake who complains in a blog post that repairs still
look shoddy? Could all of these people get arrested?
Yes, according to a new threat
from Xi
Jinping’s government: three-year jail terms for Web comments deemed
defamatory. This isn’t happening in a place of George Orwell’s imagination, but
in a country many still think is destined for world domination. China’s
escalating war on free expression is unfolding in ways even the author of the
classic 1949 novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four” couldn’t have dreamed up. It’s clear
evidence that hopes Xi’s government would be serious about economic reforms are
also fiction.
Few expected Xi to be China’s
Mikhail Gorbachev, but the president’s crackdown is particularly poorly timed.
Markets are looking for Beijing to roll out a raft of reforms in November and
were hoping for them to be bold — a big bang that would set the Chinese economy
on a more sustainable growth path. Instead, the latest Internet rules signal
timidity rather than strength: The government has clearly been taken aback by
the explosion in online commentary on microblogging services such as Sina Weibo
and is desperately trying to reassert its control however it can.
A similar fear has resulted in a
rollback of the campaign to clamp down on runaway credit growth — a refreshing
sign of discipline that economists had cheered this summer. Li Keqiang, China’s
reform-minded premier, can only go as far as Xi permits him, and the leash
appears rather short. Despite Li’s pledge to rein in excesses, the broadest
measure of new credit nearly doubled in August.
The longer Xi and Li keep the
loan spigot open, the longer state-owned enterprises will dominate. Their
primacy is the biggest barrier both to China switching focus away from
sweatshops toward services and to ending corruption. Similarly, policing the
shadow-banking industry is key to avoiding a Japan-like debt crisis. Yet too
many Communist Party power brokers are making tens of millions of dollars off
state-dominated China Inc. Beijing lacks the political will to irk these
cronies, let alone inflict pain on a restive population.
Nothing would end this corrosive
dynamic faster than a freer media and Internet. In May, a vice chairman of
China’s economic planning agency lost his job after allegations of improper
business dealings made the rounds among bloggers. This month, another official,
Yang Dacai, got 14 years in jail after online photos of his pricey watches
inspired a crowdsourcing investigation. That won’t be possible now that local
cadres can aim politically motivated lawsuits at anyone with a camera and an IP
address.
