'Chinese Putin' gets tough on Internet's 'dangerous ideas'

By Willy Lam*
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Thursday, March 2, 2006
Political sources in Beijing said President Hu Jintao, also CCP general secretary, told his aides in a recent internal meeting that security and propaganda departments must do a more thorough job in exterminating “heresies and dangerous ideas [from the West].”

This is despite the fact that the CCP’s recent crackdown on the Internet and liberal journals such as Freezing Point has exacerbated Hu’s reputation as a “Chinese Putin.”

“We must redouble efforts to counter attempts [by the West] to infiltrate China and wreak havoc on the political and moral standards of party members and intellectuals,” Hu said. “We must counter attempts by hostile forces in the West to transform China into a capitalist country via a process of peaceful evolution.”

The party chief gave instructions to security and propaganda cadres to “pay more attention to, get rid of, and impose tighter control over” politically incorrect elements in the media, particularly the Internet.




(Notice the words politically incorrect and our news media uses politically correct)

What is even more significant is Hu’s idea about “expanding the propaganda base,” that is, increasing the number of papers, journals and websites that are deemed patriotic and ideologically above board. Moreover, given the big role that nongovernmental organizations played in “velvet revolutions” in nearby countries, including Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, party authorities have urged relevant departments to foster “patriotic” NGOs. While a government-controlled NGO is a contradiction in terms, Beijing apparently believes that such outfits could serve as conduits for Chinese with grievances to let off steam — and in such a way as not to challenge the supremacy of the CCP.

Hu and company’s most efficacious weapon against alleged efforts by hostile Western powers to spread democratic ideas in China is, of course, the “tools of the dictatorship of the proletariat.” While central authorities have since the early 1990s sought to streamline the government bureaucracy, units such as the paramilitary People’s Armed Police (PAP), the Ministry of State Security and the police have vastly expanded their staff and modernized weaponry, including high-tech equipment to keep track of dissident intellectuals as well as non-CCP affiliated trade unions.

Such iron-fisted repression carries a heavy price tag. Beijing admitted last month that there were 87,000 “mass incidents” — including riots and demonstrations — last year, and that every day, 1.2 policemen on average lose their lives on the job.

There are no signs, however, that Hu and his Politburo colleagues are about to defuse worsening social contradictions by introducing real political reforms. As usual, the CCP leadership has sought to divert the attention of the disgruntled public by playing up the bogey of the U.S. trying to introduce multi-party, parliamentary politics to China.

In the annual Provincial People’s Congress held in late February in Guangzhou, capital of the rich southern Guangdong Province, senior local police officers claimed that recent confrontations between peasants and authorities in several villages resulted from “infiltration and instigation” by hostile forces outside of China. PAP officers killed at least 25 villagers in the district of Shanwei last December. The rural folks were holding a demonstration after their land had been expropriated to construct a power plant.


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