Impunity, not formal state oppression, is the real human rights problem in China

When Westerners complain about human rights abuses in China, the Chinese are apt to bridle. Partly this is out of sheer patriotic fervour, but a lot of it is rooted in the belief that the Westerner is just parroting recycled material from 30 years ago, and has not grasped how much things have improved for the ordinary citizen since Deng Xiaoping took power. Not just in economic terms, but in terms of simple personal freedoms.

My marriage is one example. Up to about 1984 my wife could have gone to prison for the crime of “li tong wai guo” – foreign connections. Now nobody minds who you talk to, meet or marry. Freedom of speech for the individual is almost total; there are no beady-eyed informers sitting around in bars and restaurants. Except, that is, if you are on some sort of black list, which you only really get on by attempting to organise dissidence. Freedom of association is still a bridge too far.

It’s also true that the State devotes huge resources to policing the Internet. I am sure the Party realises that this attempt is ultimately doomed, both for technological reasons and because economic development demands fairly open access to information. But, for the time being, they are prepared to make the effort in order to stifle organised opposition, and, crucially, to maintain the orthodoxy of the national discourse, not allowing certain ideas even to be contemplated.

And so, a bit of perspective is needed on human rights in China: the things we Westerners worry about most are nowhere near as bad as some of us seem to think. The formal state apparatus of tyranny oppresses a few people badly, but it is a fairly small number, and, many Chinese would argue, it only affects those who have deliberately stuck their heads above the parapet.

The most serious problems in this field lie elsewhere. They were pointed up by a recent Human Rights Watch report picked up by the Independent. The report tells of hundreds of people, mainly from the provinces, who claim to have been maltreated by local officials, and, despairing of getting justice from the tight-knit local government mafias, have come to the capital to seek justice from central government, as Chinese have always done since the high Imperial days. In the capital, of course, they are just a bloody nuisance, and are subject to two main dangers: (a) their local governments sending thugs after them to bring them back, and (b) arbitrary arrest and incarceration by unofficial quasi-police thugs in Beijing. HRW mentions the existence of “black jails” in the capital, into which people are thrown without any due process or any records kept, by goons accountable to no-one who beat and even rape their prisoners.

The government denies categorically that such jails exist, but no other Chinese will deny it. The activities of hooligans who derive their impunity from being generally on the side of government, but who remain both unaccountable and deniable, are as much a fact in China as in Zimbabwe. And the worst of it is that these brutal round-ups tend to coincide with great State occasions – such as the imminent visit of President Obama. They want the riff-raff off the streets for the motorcades and the TV cameras. Some of this might not be happening but for the visit of St Barack.

Impunity is the common factor in all aspects of this problem – the petty local officials who can mess you around and extort money from you with no comeback, the higher local officials who invariably back them up, making it necessary to go and petition central government in the first place, and then the “black jail” system that hits you (all too literally) when you get there, are all part of the same phenomenon. It’s this that represents the real human rights problem in China, not gulags or secret policemen or arrests of active dissidents.

It filters through into the mindset. My wife often sits beside me when I am writing these pieces, her heart a-flutter. “Surely you can’t write that – you’ll get into trouble!” I give the usual spiel about an Englishman, provided that he is not breaking publicly proclaimed laws, being able to do what he likes in perfect serenity. “But they won’t give you a visa next time you want to go to China.” We shall see. Tomorrow I am off to the Consulate in Manchester to apply for one. I’ll let you know if I get the elbow.