The Pacific Narrows, has an interesting post on the recent incidents involving slave labor in China. I have not done anything on this important story yet, mostly because there is plenty of excellent coverage on it already. But I am writing on it now because I so much like the questions Pacific Narrows raises:
The parents (as quoted from a story in Southern Weekend) wrote a letter to Wen Jiabao and tried to use a television station in order to accomplish their goals. I am sure they tried the police, but clearly that is not an avenue that was extraordinarily effective.
* * * *
And, as I often ask myself when I hear stories of local-level-corruption … at what point does the central government begin to be held accountable for the sins of its representatives at the local level (if ever)? As noted in this story, the aggrieved parents thought it worth their time to appeal to Wen Jiabao … setting him up in the traditional role of the center as the well-meaning father figure whose wayward local representative has gone under the radar to violate the rules and abuse citizens. Will this change?
And how is it that the center perpetuates the belief amongst common people that it is listening and that appealing to Wen Jiabao is an effective use of one’s time? Some of these poor supplicants travel immense distances and expend plenty of their scarce resources to appeal at the Center … is it effective? I assume someone has done a study on the success rate of these Last-Resort/Beijing-Pleading trips, right? And I know China recently made doing this a no-go, right? The presentation of petitions in Beijing is now a no-no, no? Has it stopped the process? Has there been any popular blowback to this tradition? Were there any popular, negative repercussions along the lines of, “oh, so now they don’t want to hear us, hunh?
So is the center good and always fighting with the peripheral or is it all one core? I am of the view that Beijing would prefer this sort of thing not go on, but not enough to fight against it as vigorously as it must. It seems pretty clear that when forced to choose between the masses and the apparatchiks, the masses had better really mass to have any chance at all.
I am hoping Mutant Palm will comment on this because he and I have had similar/related discussions at various times involving various aspects of governance and I know he has something insightful to say on this.
Update: The Useless Tree thoughtfully answered some of these questions in its own post, Confucian Apparatchiks and it concludes that China’s system can never really work well for the little guy.
What do you think?