Neither a date nor a phone call, a famous feminist activist who wishes not to be identified excuses herself. The police warned him The harms of speaking to the foreign press During the congress, the facial recognition camera monitors your door and microphone suspicion. “Our task is now more difficult because the government uses technology to control us. Before renting a lost house in the countryside to hold a meeting without registering our identity. Now, with covid policy, it is mandatory to scan the health code” keeps in a text message in an encrypted app.
The space for inconsistency in official rhetoric has been constrained during the decade of Xi Jinping, who was re-elected as leader of the Chinese Communist Party for a historic third term this Sunday. The president identified lukewarm ideological adherence and loose control over it. coercive organs of the state as the reasons collapse of the soviet union and imposed suggestion and deepened patriotism and the party’s influence on civil society.
scored a goal in 2015 unprecedented blow in a party with a secular intolerance of opposition. 709 campaign, Arrest of more than 300 lawyers and human rights defenders. There have been mass incarceration, house arrest, and professional license revocation. Political opposition has always been brutally punished, if we mean the defense of democracy or other attacks on the scaffolding of the system. In Hu Jintao’s time, Xi’s predecessor, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, was convicted of calling for political reform and would die in prison.
social control
The difference with Xi lies in the radical expansion of what is considered hostile. Social control is an overwhelming limit, and any activism is suspect until proven otherwise. this growing hostility to the US and the constant sense of siege by the Government motivated a law that stifled the actions of foreign NGOs. It was the normative regulation of an intra-party statement that forbade the defense of “Western liberal values”. democracy or freedom of the press.
The persecution reached insane levels. Five feminists were detained for 37 days for condemning the attack. sexual harassment in public transport and some LGTB organizations in universities are banned. The campaigns, paradoxically, brought understandable contempt for a country that showed more gender equality than its more developed neighbours, and was devoid of homophobic rhetoric. The obsession flies into common sense and punishes even those who advocate official policies such as women’s equality in the street.
yang zhan qing She defended the rights of AIDS and hepatitis B patients against her NGO Yiren Ping: “Now this is much more difficult and dangerous than Hu’s tenure. In those days, the local press published our work, and the government graciously responded to our criticism and reviews. Even the Ministry of Human Resources visited our offices to get information and develop their policies,” he says via email. The NGO was shut down in 2014, Yang was arrested a year later for several articles denouncing patient discrimination and traveled to the United States in 2017.
An unprecedented censorship
The devastating result is that a civil society, contrary to the stereotype, is neither monolithic nor conformist, clogging the means of expression. Art gallery owners and editors of harmless entertainment magazines complain of unprecedented censorship of this newspaper.
Control is emphasized by political events like this congress. Activists are threatened, placed under house arrest or forced on vacation to prevent them from speaking to the foreign press. An LGBT center in Beijing refused the paper’s request, despite its commitment to anonymity. Imprisonment, arrest or harassment awaits the stubborn. “The detainees are then kept under surveillance in their homes. It’s scary because they can do whatever they want. A colleague was prevented from sleeping for ten days. The police are telling young people to stay away from me and spread rumors online that almost ruined my online sales business,” says the feminist activist.
Paranoia squeaks in context. China has eradicated poverty and is making progress on its social roadmap, Xi has absolute power and the government has massive support, which prestigious US institutions estimate more than 80%. It’s worth wondering if the building could leave a space for expression to the dissatisfied minority, but nothing indicates that it will manage success with generosity. “The constitutional reform that blew up the terms of the presidency has driven me to despair, i don’t know when i will be back Chinese. I believe the situation will worsen with more pressure on civil society and human rights defenders in the coming years,” adds Yang.
It is a daily and unequal struggle. On the one hand, officials were convinced that progress and opposition did not mix. On the other hand, citizens who never thought they would be chosen as the enemies of the country. Some dropped out of school, some went abroad. Activism was never for the faint-hearted in China, but now it demands heroism. Some fear the harassment has undermined current and future protest movements. Feminist is less pessimistic. “New generations will always find a way to carry out acts of rebellion. Even if the price is high,” he predicts.