Book Notes

Nipped in the Bud: The Suppression of the China Democracy Party. New York: Human Rights Watch, September 2000. Pp. 36. $5.00.

The Chinese government’s movement toward economic restructuring and modernization, begun after the ascendancy to power of Deng Xiaoping in the mid-1970s, is an attempt by the Chinese government to both “have its cake and eat it too.” Recognizing the connection between economic growth and political and social liberalization, Beijing has drastically loosened its hold on the lives of its people over the past two decades, while at the same time keeping a tight grip on its monopoly on political power. Examples of a dramatic yet unfinished transformation abound: a much more free media must get permission to investigate official corruption, and a National Peo-

ple’s Congress that is no longer a rubber stamp has yet to assume the full powers granted it under the Constitution. Social groups may now organize, but the legal requirements for doing so are quite stringent, and all groups must receive government approval. The Rubicon of allowing the creation of truly independent political or social organizations has yet to be fully crossed.

Nipped in the Bud tells the story of one of the most recent moves to break this longstanding boundary. As the report points out, various activists have attempted to form political parties and independent nongovernmental organizations over the years.[1] But the China Democracy Party, whose rise and fall is chronicled in this report, was unique in a number of ways: taking advantage of improved means of communication, the CDP was the first would-be party to organize on a national scale. At its peak, the group boasted branches or preparatory committees in twenty-nine different locales. The CDP was also the first to attempt to form an opposition political party legally, to register in accordance with relevant law. Although both of these new strategies indicate a greater level of sophistication among mainland Chinese activists, the aspirations met the same fate as those of previous groups. A government still in fear of its own people broke the CDP’s back by sentencing its leaders either to long prison terms or exile abroad.

For a brief moment, it looked like the China Democracy Party might just break through. Plans for the founding of the Party began in late 1997 and continued in secret through the first half of 1998. It was a good time to engage in such plans, as the political climate at that time was relatively relaxed. The report points to such factors as the trouble-free Hong Kong handover in July 1997 and the successful Fifteenth Communist Party Congress in 1998 as reasons for the more permissive atmosphere, but stability on the economic front also likely contributed to the government’s confidence and tolerance on the political front. Because of key differences between its economy and those of many Southeast Asian countries, China was insulated from the worst of the Asian economic crisis, and the country’s deflation woes had yet to begin in earnest.

It was against this backdrop that the CDP made its first public move. Hoping that the presence of President Clinton, who had come for the first state visit by an American President since the Tiananmen Square bloodshed in 1989, would serve as something of a protective shield, the CDP publicly announced its existence on June 25, 1998, in the city of Hangzhou, in China’s southeastern Zhejiang Province. On that day, led by dissident and former student activist Wang Youcai, the group signed and issued the “Open Declaration of the Establishment of the CDP Zhejiang Preparatory Committee.” The group’s luck did in fact hold. As predicted: the government did not move against it until after Clinton left China. On July 10,

1998, roughly a week after Clinton’s departure, Wang Youcai was taken into custody. He was charged in early August with “inciting to overthrow state political power.” Despite the seriousness of the charge, international attention to his case and pressure on the Chinese government led to Wang’s release at the end of August.

Following Wang’s release, Shandong Province CDP members Xie Wanjun and Liu Lianjun tried to register the party with the government as a social group. To the surprise of many, the two were not immediately arrested. Instead, the government officials took the application and recited to the two men various provisions of the registration law. This was, as the report puts it, the “calm before the storm.”

And indeed it was: a string of detentions and arrests followed, and Human Rights Watch does an excellent job of recounting interrelated events by various actors around the country. The report’s brief account of the trials of the more prominent members of the CDP is particularly chilling, even though their basic elements—trumped-up charges, largely closed courtrooms, and long prison sentences—are familiar enough.

As a whole, Nipped in the Bud tells a fascinating and tragic story. Its outcome, like that of a bad detective novel with a guilty butler, is known at the outset: once again, the hammer will drop, once again the international community will protest, once again, a brave attempt at crossing the Rubicon fails. China has made tremendous progress on its rights record over the past twenty years. Reading Nipped in the Bud reminds us that this progress has come at no small cost.

—Tom Kellogg

[1]. The report mentions perhaps the most tragicomic violation of intellectual property rights in China in recent years: one nascent group, quickly quashed by the government, dubbed itself China Human Rights Watch.

Copyright © 2001 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
Harvard Human Rights Journal / Vol. 14, Spring 2001