Author: Nicholas D. Kristof
Publication: The New York Times
Date: December 17, 2003
I've been searching for the limits
of freedom on this visit to China, and I found them here on Saturday -
when the authorities detained me.
"China is a country of laws," explained
one of the three government officials who accosted me here outside the
home of Yao Fuxin, an imprisoned labor leader. "We must go somewhere else
to talk."
"But I don't want to talk to you,"
I protested. "I want to talk to Yao Fuxin's family."
"China is a country of laws," the
man repeated, politely but sternly. "And we are the government. Come with
us."
"I don't want to speak to the government,"
I replied. "I want to speak to Yao Fuxin's wife."
"China is a country of laws," said
the man, who refused to show any identification. "Come with us."
I had come to this gritty industrial
city, 375 miles northeast of Beijing, to investigate labor unrest, potentially
one of China's biggest challenges. Last year, thousands of workers from
20 factories took to the streets in Liaoyang, protesting official corruption
and demanding unemployment payments, pensions and back pay.
Last May, the authorities sentenced
Mr. Yao to seven years, and another protest leader, Xiao Yunliang, to four
years. Presumably because of beatings, Mr. Xiao appeared to be blind at
the sentencing and was unable to recognize family members.
So I dropped in to visit the families
of Mr. Yao and Mr. Xiao. But the wives are apparently kept under some kind
of house arrest. When I arrived, I tried phoning Mr. Xiao's wife; she spoke
one word before a man took the phone and hung up. A few minutes later,
the three officials nabbed me outside Mr. Yao's home.
To their credit, they were very
polite. I was traveling with a colleague from The New York Times on the
Web, Naka Nathaniel, and my intrepid 9-year-old son, and we were all taken
to a nearby hotel. They let us use the bathroom - under careful escort
in case we tried to break out.
"China is a country of laws," the
leader explained, after offering us cigarettes. "So your interviews must
go through State Council rules and local officials. You must go through
the procedures for this to be legal. So interviews now are impossible.
But you are welcome to come back to Liaoyang any time as a tourist."
"Well, then," I suggested, "I'll
go and talk to Yao Fuxin's family about the local tourist spots."
They didn't even crack a smile.
Instead, they put one goon in my taxi and sent another carload to escort
us to the Shenyang airport and wait there until we boarded a plane to Shanghai.
My son was tailed in the airport as he went to get an ice cream. (For a
Web accompaniment to my China trip, go to www.nytimes.com/kristof.)
The Chinese government is worried
about labor problems. Americans are resentful about job losses that they
blame on the Chinese export behemoth, but China is also full of millions
of laid-off workers - and they are getting angrier and bolder.
Last month alone, according to China
Labor Bulletin, 1,000 taxi drivers took to the streets in the city of Dazhou,
protesting the cancellation of taxi permits; some 10,000 workers blocked
roads and rail lines in Xiangfan to protest job losses arising from privatization;
and 2,000 teachers in Suizhou rallied to demand salary increases.
The Chinese government is right
to close inefficient factories and nudge workers into more productive employment.
But Beijing is going to have to tackle labor issues with openness, rather
than repression. It will have to learn that strikes and protests can be
a sign of a country's strength and freedom, not weakness and chaos.
China is emerging as one of the
world's great powers, a status that it has earned with shrewd management
and increasingly mature diplomacy. But a great power cannot go around crushing
peaceful protests and torturing labor leaders. It is disgraceful that "People's
China" goes around locking up people like Mr. Xiao and beating his wife
unconscious at his sentencing hearing - and holding family members of labor
leaders incommunicado.
"This is not the China of the 1970's
or the 1980's," I complained to the men who nabbed me. "China has reformed.
It should be open enough now to allow foreigners to speak to family members
of prisoners."
The curt answer: "China is a nation
of laws."
Someday soon, I hope, it will be.
