Quiet crusade for social justice finds a spokesman
A human rights lawyer sees growing pressure within China for government accountability. He wants nothing less than to change the system.
By KRIS HUNDLEY
Published September 20, 2005
BEIJING - Xu Zhiyong, a 32-year-old human rights lawyer and college professor, feels like a man on the crest of a powerful wave.
And nothing - not seeing a client jailed on politically motivated charges, not being besieged by petitioners with stories of corruption - can shake his belief that Communist China is finally moving toward greater social justice.
"We have some space to do something," Xu said of growing pressure within China for government accountability and rule of law. "Nobody can stop this trend of ours."
China's phenomenal economic growth has taxed its authoritarian government's control. And the strain is being seen not just here in Beijing, the nation's capital and nexus of power, but throughout the country.
Laborers in northern Shaanxi Province are striking, demanding that officials enforce wage and workplace protections already on the books. State-owned newspapers in south China, losing government subsidies, are becoming more critical of local officials.
Large redevelopment projects, including dams, factories and expensive high-rise residential towers, are forcing the relocation of millions of people in every corner of the nation, resulting in a torrent of discontent. And word of that dissent is traveling with lightning speed via cell phone text messages and the Web, despite the government's intense effort to censor the Internet.
The Communist Party, eager to maintain control without interfering with the nation's economic trajectory, releases pressure with one hand, while clamping down with the other.
It allows peasants to migrate by the millions to urban areas for jobs. Then it enforces a stringent household registration system that relegates those migrants to second-class citizenship in the cities.
It welcomes Western investment in everything from manufacturing to McDonald's. But it keeps a tight lock on airwaves and news racks, shutting out everyone from the Disney channel to Time Asia .
Nonetheless, Xu, a professor of constitutional law at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, sees progress.
Two years ago, he was involved in successfully petitioning the central government to abolish a system of 700 detention centers that could hold migrants indefinitely. That landmark decision followed a south China newspaper's expose on a detainee who had been beaten to death while in custody.
Then in December 2003, Xu won election as an independent candidate to the low-level People's Congress. These local assemblies meet just once a year and have little legislative responsibility. Xu, who publicized his candidacy on the Internet, promised to push for better laws governing forced relocations of apartment dwellers, a hot topic in fast-developing Beijing.
Though he spent less than $24 on campaign materials, Xu got the highest number of votes from his university district, beating out three party-sponsored candidates.
"In my district, 20 to 30 of the 400 primary candidates were independent," Xu said. "I think there will be more and more."
But no one is more familiar than Xu with the push-pull dynamic of the Chinese struggle for social justice. Executives at the state-owned newspaper that sparked the public fury over detention centers , Southern Metropolis Daily in Guangzhou, paid dearly for their boldness.
Several months after embarrassing local officials with the detention center scandal, and soon after exposing a new incident of the SARS virus, five top Southern Metropolis managers were arrested and charged with corruption and bribery.
Three, including the paper's star editor, Cheng Yizhong, were released after five month's detention. Yu Huafeng, the paper's general manager, and Li Minying, a retired editor, were convicted and are serving terms of eight and six years, respectively.
Xu, the Beijing law professor, is representing Yu and is appealing his sentence, which already has been reduced from its original length of 12 years. Xu said he agreed to take the case because of its potential impact on China's press.
"I want to do cases that are very important and will be helpful for many people," Xu said. "I must get some results."
Though he is handling highly explosive cases, during an interview at a Beijing hotel, Xu never let his voice rise with anger or frustration.
Dressed in plain gray pants and a dress shirt, he looks more like a worker than an eminent professor and politician. A bachelor, he lives on his professor's pay and accepts no money for his legal work.
But his efforts are gaining international notoriety. In fall 2004, he was a visiting scholar at Yale University. The sabbatical allowed him to observe the Republican presidential convention in New York, leaving him in awe of what he considered peaceful demonstrations.
"In the U.S., protesters were happy," Xu said. "In China, people turn angry because their fury has been suppressed for too long. They never get an exit."
Xu said colleagues at his government-run university have occasionally urged him to focus on teaching rather than associating with controversial cases like the newspaper manager's.
"But I don't mind what happens to me," he said with a shrug.
Xu seemed confident that his client's appeal will ultimately be successful. He is just as determined in another case, where he is trying to clear four peasants from the central China city of Chengdu who were sentenced to death for two murders to which others have confessed.
"There was no evidence against them," he said of his clients, who have narrowly escaped execution five times. "Then when the police got some evidence of the true murderers, they never paid attention."
Their case is being appealed to Beijing's Public Security Bureau as well as China's highest court.
Saving four peasants might seem simple compared with the next project Xu is tackling. He wants to find a way for China to deal fairly with the thousands of rural petitioners who stream to Beijing every year, hopeful that someone in the central government will resolve their injustice.
The petitioners are drawn to Beijing because China is still a nation where all decisions emanate from party-appointed officials at the top.
Flashy high-rise condos and Western-designed skyscrapers may be sprouting all over the city as it prepares for its debut on the international stage with the 2008 Olympics. But Mao's massive image still hangs over the entrance to the Forbidden City. And his body lies in state at the mausoleum across the barren stone plaza that is Tiananmen Square.
The city, with its broad avenues lined with blocky, Stalinist architecture, remains a magnet for the nation's disenfranchised.
Often arriving by train from distant provinces, they have created a squatters' village by the station, which is adjacent to several high-level government offices.
Armed with sheaves of documents tucked into satchels, these peasants complain of corrupt local officials, dishonest employers and unfair court decisions. Storefronts in the area advertise Xerox and typing services and telephones for calls back home. A sign offers food and a room for 60 cents.
Desperate and destitute, most of the petitioners live on the streets, under pieces of cardboard or plastic, waiting for an official hearing that may never come.
They hold out hope, despite statistics showing that only two of 1,000 petitioners ever get their problems resolved. The rest go home voluntarily or are forcibly removed by local officials who have been summoned from their hometowns to take them back.
Embarrassed by the squatters' village, which abuts new high-end, residential high-rises, the central government bulldozed part of the area and built a park. On Sundays, the petitioners can be found there, seeking shade under a few spindly trees.
Xu spent two months living among the petitioners, listening to their complaints. Rather than take up their causes individually, he wants nothing less than to change the system that drives citizens to seek resolution to local problems from central officials.
"These petitioners come to Beijing because so many branches of government never take responsibility for their people," Xu said. "If we want to resolve this situation, we must make a change in local power."
Xu advocates open local elections throughout the country like the one that swept him into office in Beijing. Though the public is supposed to be allowed to elect representatives for the lowest-level assemblies, election rules vary widely throughout the country.
In many districts it is impossible for independent candidates to be elected because of voter intimidation, gerrymandering or official corruption.
Xu also calls for improvements in the judicial system, with more independence and better qualified candidates on the bench.
Ultimately, he would like to see all government representatives, from county through township levels, directly elected by the public at large, rather than selected by party officials.
"If possible in the future, I would like for democracy to move up the ladder," he said.
Xu is careful as he phrases his proposals for social change.
"We're just helping the government, looking for answers," he said, adding that Beijing officials seem concerned about the growing number of petitioners on their doorstep.
"China has made progress in the economic area over the last 20 years. Now it's time for the Chinese government to pay attention to human rights."
--Kris Hundley can be reached at hundley@sptimes.com or 727 892-2996.