China has witnessed a vigorous crushing of civil liberties over the past decade

CIVIL LIBERTIES

On June 3, 1989, the Chinese government sent tanks, armoured vehicles, soldiers and armed police to clear Tiananmen Square, which is among the world’s largest public spaces, and its periphery off protesters and bystanders. A large number of people were killed overnight and until next evening.

Thousands had gathered from across the country in the weeks leading up to the crackdown to demand political reforms, support the protests or witness what turned out to be one of the 20th century’s most significant events. The Communist Party of China has since done a lot to keep any challenge to its rule, even notional, at bay.

China has witnessed a vigorous crushing of civil liberties over the past decade. India saw the freedoms of speech and faith come under strain during a similar period. While the two countries cannot be compared on this matrix, India could heed the lessons from China.

This year, the Hong Kong police detained an artist for drawing “8964”―a reference to the date of the Tiananmen Square crackdown―in the air. Others were arrested for gestures such as turning on their phone torch, associated with a vigil that is no longer allowed. The commemoration is barred in China. Under a national security law following the pro-democracy protests in 2019-20, Hong Kong is being made to resemble the mainland. Thousands, mostly youth, were arrested after that. Tiananmen Mothers, an NGO of the families of students killed that summer in Beijing, are not allowed to grieve in public.

So far, the party has termed the Mao-era Cultural Revolution (1966-76) a turbulent phase. It has not acknowledged 1989 more than a “political incident”.

Maya Wang, interim China director at Human Rights Watch, a US-based global NGO, described the condition of civil liberties in today’s China as “dystopian”. “Things have gotten worse since Xi came to power in 2012,” she said. “The deepening repression is particularly significant in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong.”

Earlier, for instance, “people from Tibet could escape to India,” she said, now that is impossible. Wang gave an example of “how people are being treated”. A Tibetan monk had donated money to Nepal’s post-earthquake (2015) recovery. He forgot his mobile phone in a public place. A good Samaritan took it to the local police who tracked down the monk and detained him, because he had contacted foreigners.

“The direction of civil liberties in India is not going well,” Wang said before votes in the Lok Sabha elections were counted on June 4. “But it is important for civil society ―people and activists―to communicate with each other.”

Wang said India had a responsibility to itself and the world, as the world’s largest democracy, to not just stay on course but do better on civil liberties. “Because India and China have different systems, the mechanisms of both control and resistance are also different.”

PARTY SUPREMACY

After years of totalitarian control in Mao-era China and the damage to the party’s credibility caused by the Cultural Revolution, there was a phase when independent writing, filmmaking and online publishing were not actively discouraged by the government. “It was a good time for civil liberties,” said Ian Johnson, a Pulitzer-winning journalist who covered China in the past, about the 1980s, 1990s and some part of the 2000s. The atmosphere, perhaps, also led many to mistakenly believe that the Tiananmen Square protests would succeed.

The turning point in the clampdown on civil liberties came with Liu Xiaobo’s arrest, said Johnson. Liu, the Nobel Peace Prize winner who died of cancer in 2017, had called for a gradual shift of China’s one-party system towards democracy in a manifesto, co-produced with some of his peers in 2008. He was handed an 11-year sentence for the “subversion of state power”. He was behind bars previously, twice, including for his participation in the Tiananmen Square protests.

One could expect to see judicial process in non-political cases; but political cases are treated differently. Johnson said the chances of arbitrary arrests had increased, compared with the relatively relaxed years, amid a stricter form of authoritarianism under Xi. People have been imprisoned for political reasons since imperial times. But the authorities have more sophisticated means at their disposal since then―technological surveillance. Even so, the preferred method of monitoring continues to be personnel on the ground, said Johnson.

Although the Chinese constitution gives freedom of speech to citizens, activists say the government suppresses dissent by bringing national security, subversion, public disturbance and other charges against individuals. Under a Leninist system, few civil liberties are guaranteed by the law, said Victor Shih, a China-specialist professor at the University of California, San Diego. “In the Xi era, civic associations, especially foreign-funded ones, have been systematically shut down. Intellectuals who criticise the government are being systematically punished.” Civic engagement has been reduced in the past 10 years, he added.

While the constitution is supreme in a democracy, in China, the party constitution trumps. “The ‘four cardinal principles’ make the separation of power, as it exists in a democracy, non-existent in China,” said Srikanth Kondapalli, professor of China studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. The “principles” are: following the path of socialism, Marxism-Leninism and Mao thought, and upholding the dictatorship of the proletariat and the party leadership.

As per the edicts declared by Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s when economic reforms were launched, no debate is allowed on the “principle” of upholding the party’s leadership. The irony: the public cannot vote, except at some grassroots levels, on party recommendations.

POLICY OF CONTROL

The Chinese government amplifies the problems of democracy―chaotic and messy―to the domestic audience via state-controlled media (which is nearly all mainland media), while promoting its own model. Wang said her top concerns include the lack of press and internet freedoms, and workers’ right to unionise.

According to Freedom House, a US-based NGO, denying workers trade unions constitutes a violation of the conventions of the International Labour Organisation on the right to association and collective bargaining. For the Chinese government, that is not a problem. China has a party-affiliated trade union. Workers’ rights groups such as the Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin ask, is the official union effective in ensuring workers’ welfare?

“Despite 40 years of economic reforms, there remains a crisis of freedoms in China,” said Alka Acharya, a China-specialist professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi. In its 2024 “freedom in the world” report, Freedom House said China had one of the most restrictive media environments, with the most sophisticated censorship system, especially online.

In China, where social media is heavily monitored, netizens and the armies of online censors are often engaged in a cat-and-mouse game over different topics, especially those considered sensitive (that covers a range). At the end, the censors win. China is also a country of bans. Western social media and foreign news sites, including Indian (some), are among the many things banned. India banned dozens of Chinese apps in the aftermath of a violent border clash with China in 2020.

The same Freedom House report said attacks on press freedom had escalated under the Modi government in India. “Hindu nationalist campaigns aimed at discouraging forms of expression deemed ‘anti-national’ have exacerbated self-censorship.” It also mentioned “a rise in persecution affecting Muslims”.

According to “the state of the world’s human rights” 2024 report by Amnesty International, a UK-based transnational NGO, India had the highest number of internet shutdowns in the world, for five years in a row. The government has criticised western institutions publishing democracy ratings, calling them “self-appointed custodians of the world” whose approval India is not seeking.

Some of the worst excesses in China were witnessed during the strict implementation, over two years, of the “zero-Covid” policy. At first, some citizen journalists were arrested for trying to show ground reports from Wuhan, where the outbreak was first detected in late 2019. Then came the lockdown of cities, towns and villages that lasted for months; frequent mandatory mass testing and restrictions on access to public spaces and facilities without a QR code verification.

The policy was abruptly lifted after university students and others staged large-scale protests towards the end of 2022. By then, the government, which earlier said the policy had helped to control the disease and save lives, was looking for a way out of the excessive spending on the world’s harshest set of pandemic measures.

“A major fallout from this policy has been control,” said Wang.

MAJORITARIAN PUSH

The US-based Pew Research Center, which tracks religious restrictions around the world, has found some of the highest number of government restrictions on freedom of religion in China. In a 2023 report, it said enforcement had varied over time and by province, but since Xi took office, local officials had been less likely to overlook religious activities.

The Chinese government (which is officially atheist) recognises Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Catholicism and Protestantism but all must be practised in its way. For instance, the domes and minarets of mosques are required to be built in Chinese style. Media reports have shown satellite photos of demolished mosques. All places of worship need a government licence and approval to appoint religious heads, and funding is monitored.

In Xinjiang, Muslim women are not allowed to wear headscarves or veils, and men cannot sport “abnormal” beards, children cannot be given names with religious meanings and those below 18 are barred from entering mosques; and restrictions are placed on religious studies of those below 18 in Tibet. China does not allow minors to have formal religious affiliation.

According to human rights groups, since 2017, nearly a million Uyghur and other Muslims in Xinjiang have been held in internment camps that the Chinese government call “re-education centres” where Mandarin, Chinese culture and party doctrines are taught. They have reported the profiling of people, constant surveillance and forced assimilation in the heavily policed region. The Chinese government has denied human rights abuses and said its actions were against the threats of terrorism and extremism there. Under Xi, the Sinicization of ethnic and religious identities has picked pace, said Kondapalli.

In India, religion-related social hostilities have increased in the past 10 years, media reports showed. Acharya said the difference was two-fold: restraining religion is not new in China, although new approaches are being taken. In India, the state does not deny freedom of religion, because it is constitutionally mandated, but it has fronted religious identity. “In the last decade, the idea of democracy has been promoted less than the notion of a Hindu nation,” she said.

Ian Chong, an associate professor of Chinese politics at the National University of Singapore, said, “Even though the BJP often faces allegations of having authoritarian tendencies, it still has to face elections and operates within a more competitive political system.”

RESPONSE OF THE CHINESE EMBASSY IN NEW DELHI

Q/ Freedom House and Amnesty International say civil liberties have vastly deteriorated in China over the past decade. Their latest reports particularly talk about Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong.

A/ Their comments or reports on China are invariably filled with distortion of facts. The Chinese people are in the best position to judge China’s human rights condition. Since the founding of the PRC (People’s Republic of China), China has continued to improve its protection of the people’s economic, political, social, cultural and environmental rights, and ensured the development of human rights in all respects.

The Chinese people enjoy full freedom of religious belief according to law. Issues related to Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong are not about human rights, but about major principles including China’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity, which brook no foreign interference.