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The Prospect for China: Democracy or Nationalism?
Remarks by Carl Gershman, President
The National Endowment for Democracy

San Francisco
May 5, 2001

Upon receiving the 15th annual Outstanding Contributor to Democracy Award from the Chinese Democracy Education Foundation.

I want to begin by thanking the Chinese Democratic Education Foundation for this award. It is a tribute to all those who are associated with the National Endowment for Democracy's program of support for the democracy movement in China. I want to especially thank my good friend, the sculptor, Tom Marsh, for helping to arrange this award and for his selfless devotion to the cause of democracy in China. Since 1991, the NED's Democracy Award -- presented to heroes of the struggle for democracy in Asia, Africa, Central Europe, and the former Soviet Union -- has been a replica of the Goddess of Democracy, courtesy of Tom Marsh. For Tom, artistic expression is a way to affirm the dignity of the human person, a belief that has elevated him as an artist and set him apart from so many others in his field.

I also want to thank Harry Wu for taking the trouble to be here tonight. Harry is one of the true heroes of our time and also one of the most remarkable people I know. Spending 19 years in the Laogai might have debilitated a lesser person. For Harry, it has given focus to his tireless and remarkably effective campaign to expose and ultimately abolish the system of forced labor and other abominable features of Chinese communism. Among other things, Harry understands how to operate in Washington better than most experienced lobbyists and has made allies across the political spectrum, from Jesse Helms to Nancy Pelosi.

We meet this evening to affirm our belief that China can and will become a democratic country where human rights are respected. Yet this is not an auspicious moment in the struggle for democracy in China. The crackdown continues against political dissidents, anti-corruption and environmental activists, labor organizers, church leaders, and minorities. The arbitrary detention by the Ministry of State Security of Gao Zhan, Li Shaomin, and other scholars of Chinese descent who were visiting China is reminiscent of the Soviet Union in its darker days. The frantic campaign to repress the Falun Gong reveals a regime so afraid of its own people that it must demonize any group it can't control.

It is now 10 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Determined to modernize the economy without losing political control as Gorbachev did in the Soviet Union, the Chinese leaders have pursued a policy of perestroika (restructuring) without glasnost (opening). But their policy contains the seeds of their own undoing. Their goal of building a competitive market economy, which is the only path to modernization in the global economy, is incompatible with maintaining a one-party communist system. The contradiction is inherent and inescapable.

For example, a precondition of China's economic modernization is the dismantling of unprofitable state-owned enterprises, which employ 100 million workers. Some 30 million workers in this sector are redundant and must be laid off, even though there is no safety net to cushion their loss of work or any program of re-training to help them find new jobs. According to a report by the AFL-CIO's American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS), 14 million workers were laid off in 1999 and 2000, and another 5 million will lose their jobs this year. These layoffs have led to mass labor protests, such as the clash between 2,000 coal miners and police in Datong, North Shanxi Province in March and the earlier protests in January in Jilin City.

The workers' protests are only the tip of the iceberg. With China joining the WTO, the agricultural sector in the rural areas, where some 900,million people live and work, will also face stiff competition, with the result that millions of farmers will be forced off the land. Migrant workers from the rural areas are already pouring into the cities along the coast. They are the most exploited and desperate group in China, lacking protection and benefits and unable to provide for their children, who constitute a growing part of the workforce in toy factories and textile mills.

The most explosive aspect of the economic restructuring taking place in China is the intersection between these layoffs and official corruption. Bitter protests have erupted when corrupt company officials have illegally pocketed funds from the sale of the assets of failed enterprises, instead of using those funds to provide laid-off workers with a modest severance payment. When Cao Maobing, a spokesman for laid-off workers at a silk factory in Jiangsu Province, complained to the official All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) about management corruption, he was locked in a psychiatric hospital where he was given shock treatment and forced to take sedatives. This is yet another instance of the Chinese system aping the worst aspects of the old Soviet order.

The protests that are taking place in many parts of China today, and the confinement in prisons and psychiatric hospitals of labor organizers could be a temporary phenomenon tied to the disruptions in the economy, but they could also presage more fundamental changes in the system. American unionists associated with ACILS see the upsurge of labor activism and the establishment of loose networks of workers as early signs of the emergence of a genuine trade union movement, a kind of Chinese version of the Solidarity movement that transformed Poland in the 1980s. The failure of the official unions, which are part of the party apparatus, to defend the interests of the workers during this period of extreme dislocation and hardship, increases the likelihood of such a momentous development.

The problem of official corruption that fuels worker resentments pervades the system at every level. The Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) associated with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce reports that in 1998, the income of government officials from corrupt activities equaled almost 4 percent of the Chinese GDP. An even more shocking estimate of corruption is contained in a study prepared by Dr. Hu Angang, a prominent economist with the Chinese Academy of Sciences. According to Dr. Hu, corruption broadly defined to include smuggling, underpayment for the use of state assets, tax evasion, and monopoly rents amounts to 17 percent of the GDP.

The regime recognizes that rampant official corruption threatens the legitimacy and ultimately the survival of the regime. Yet it can do no more than address some of the symptoms of the problem since the root cause is the nature of the system itself -- the absence of political accountability, a free press, and an independent judiciary; as well as the high degree of state intervention in the economy and the lack of transparency in decision-making and financial transactions.

The regime's inability to conceal official abuse and corruption is compounded by the existence today of a shadow media which is spreading rapidly in China through the growth of the Internet. There are now some 22 million Internet users in China, a figure that is expected to rise to 100 million by 2004. The regime's predicament was highlighted in March when Prime Minister Zhu Rongji was forced to apologize for the explosion at an elementary school that killed 38 children, after reports circulating on the Internet undermined the regime's attempt to deny that the school was being used to manufacture fireworks. Internet reports have also exposed other issues that the regime has tried to hide -- from an AIDS epidemic in Hunan Province to police torture and ecological disasters.

The regime has tried to control the Internet by passing harsh regulations, trying to block access to independent Web sites, making high-profile arrests to intimidate Internet users and encourage self-censorship, and training cadres of cyber-police to man new Internet monitoring units in provincial capitals and major cities throughout the country. But these efforts have been hampered by the ability of users to circumvent restrictions, by the regime's fear that excessive controls might weaken the Internet as an instrument for economic growth, and by the sheer volume of information on the Net, which defies comprehensive monitoring. Thus, the growth of the Internet, like the modernization of the economy, sharpens the contradictions in which the regime is trapped.

The Chinese government has sought to escape this trap and to deflect opposition to its repression by playing to -- and often actually inciting -- anti-Western nationalism. Autocracies frequently resort to this tactic to gain a semblance of popular legitimacy, especially in countries where the dominant ethnic group harbors historic national grievances. But this stratagem offers at best short-term advantages. For a time, Yugoslav President Slobodan Miloevic fanned the flames of Serbian nationalism to gain mass popular support and to keep his opposition off balance. In the end, however, the tactic only brought about immense suffering and hardship for Serbia and the entire region, and left Milosevic increasingly isolated. He is now under arrest in Belgrade and will probably be tried in The Hague for war crimes.

Ironically, it was the accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade during the air-war in Yugoslavia in 1999 that aroused a similar kind of anti-Western nationalism in China. Like the Serbian ultra-nationalism incited by Milosevic, its Chinese counterpart is based on resentment, a condition that Isaiah Berlin once compared to "the bent twig" of Schiller's poetry -- a reactive nationalism that can snap back aggressively against a reputed enemy once pent-up emotions are released. Both forms of nationalism are also alike in that they are intended to fill the post-communist ideological vacuum created in the Serbian case by the collapse of the old communist system and in China by the exhaustion of communist ideology as an instrument of regime legitimation.

But this kind of nationalism, even if it can be sustained for an extended period of time, offers nothing but a dead-end. It fosters negativism, not creativity. It encourages an attitude of victimization, not self-reliance. It leads to self-absorption and paralysis, not to a determination to meet challenges and find solutions to problems. Such attitudes are harmful under any circumstances, and they can often lead to self-destructive conflict with "the enemy." In a global age, when success depends on becoming integrated into the world economy, it is a sure formula for failure.

There are those in China who would like to turn back the clock and retreat into a hostile isolationism. But I don't think they can succeed. As the Marxists would say, the objective forces of history and technology are aligned against them. Still, these reactionaries (for that is what they are -- they are reacting against the challenges of the new era) have the ability to do great harm and certainly to impede change. And they will be a formidable force so long as the people of China cannot see an alternative vision of the future that differs from the model of autocratic modernization proposed by the regime.

In this regard, the new democracy in Taiwan can have a powerful influence on political thinking in China because it offers an alternative model of democracy and economic growth that does not have to be seen through the filter of a foreign culture. Hong Kong, with its dynamic economy and relatively open society, also offers an alternative model, albeit one that is constrained by pressures from Beijing.

But I want to call special attention tonight to the role of the Chinese Diaspora, which offers a bridge to the West in much the same way that Polish, Russian, and other exiles from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe found ways to connect their suppressed homelands to free societies. And that was before the Internet, which has unprecedented power to link people across borders and oceans, and to make information available to people in China on a scale that was never possible during the Cold War

The Chinese Diaspora is aiding the democracy movement in China in a number of critical ways. Some groups focus on governance issues, explaining how institutions that assure accountability, transparency, and the rule of law can help China address the problem of systemic corruption. Others are devoting themselves to defending human rights, while still others, notably Harry Wu, work to bring to light the dark secrets of Chinese totalitarianism such as the Laogai system of prison camps and the profit-making business of selling the vital organs of executed prisoners.

China has reached a crossroads: It can either go forward in cooperation with the democratic world, a path that the Chinese Diaspora can encourage and facilitate; or it can retreat into a posture of nationalist confrontation. Taking the path of cooperation and democracy does not entail sacrificing Chinese values in favor of Western values. Chinese values are not inconsistent with freedom and democracy, which apply to all people everywhere. The people of China have every bit as much claim to these values, as do the people of America, India, South Africa, or any other country. What is needed is to build a new democracy with Chinese characteristics.

Nothing conveys this idea more powerfully than the Goddess of Democracy, which is a Chinese version of our own Statue of Liberty, replete with Chinese features. When it stood aloft in Tiananmen Square, it embodied the aspiration of the people of China for democracy. It still embodies this aspiration, 12 years after it was demolished by the soldiers who invaded the square. It has even become a universal symbol of democracy because of the way it adapts a Western image to Chinese conditions.

The replica of the Goddess that stands in the park across the street signifies that the struggle for democracy in China is still very much alive. It also signifies the distinction that is made today between the people of China and the government, which is one of the enduring achievements of the democracy struggle. Very few people in the West made that distinction before 1989, when it was widely assumed that Chinese culture was inherently authoritarian and that the government was therefore a legitimate representative of the people. That is no longer the case. Today, nobody confuses the government and the people or feels that criticism of the regime is a sign of disrespect toward the people. On the contrary, the legacy of Tiananmen Square is that the people of China are no longer invisible. One respects them by defending their rights.

There is also another important achievement of the movement of the 1980s, which we need to understand. While it was defeated, it raised the struggle for democracy in China to a higher plateau, from which it is being waged today. The labor protests and shadow media I spoke of earlier could not have existed before the democracy movement of that period. I remember the Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski telling me in 1987 about this phenomenon of "victory in defeat" as it occurred in Hungary in 1956 and in Poland in 1981. This perspective is valuable as a way to raise hopes and morale, but it also contains an important insight about democracy. Kolakowski was saying that the struggle for democracy is a process that takes time and proceeds in stages. Defeats take place, but they raise consciousness and expectations and move the process to a higher level. The momentous events that transformed Central Europe in 1989 were the product of struggles that occurred much earlier.

I was struck by a comment made by Li Qiang, a 28-year-old worker from Sichuan Province, now in exile, who led some of the labor protests I have alluded to (China Rights Forum, Spring, 2001). "The June Fourth Movement of 1989," he said, "enlightened me. It broadened my vision. It swept away the prestige of the government. I began to recognize the power of the masses. I also learned that we are not the subjects of the government; we are, in fact, the masters of the nation. We have the right to make demands, to protest and to demonstrate."

This is a vivid example of how the struggle of 1989 changed the consciousness of countless individuals in China. Can anyone doubt that this transformed consciousness will eventually blossom into a new and more powerful movement for democracy?

We cannot know when the new opening will come. But we must prepare for it, to continue the struggle, because its coming is only a matter of time. And when it does come, the memory of Tiananmen Square and the lessons learned from that experience, along with the international solidarity that came about as a result of that movement, will help secure the success of the democracy struggle in China. At that moment, there will be a new birth of freedom that will resonate throughout the world.