Brutality behind bargains

The continuing violence last week led human rights groups to demand that Western governments force China to change or lose its newly won, lucrative trade links.

The West last week received a rare glimpse of the treatment meted out to Chinese citizens who refuse to tow the line of the powerful elite. In video footage smuggled out of the country, hired hands were seen using pipes, metal bars and even a shotgun to resolve the stalemate over the Hebei Guohua power company's plans to build a vast storage plant for coal near the city of Dingzhou, north of Beijing.

For two years, the dispute between the firm and farmers in the area had struggled on with no compromise in sight: the villagers refusing compensation for the loss of their land and eventually squatting on the site. But last week, after running battles between the farmers and the assailants paid by the power company, six people lay dead.

The lethal clash could have passed unnoticed by outsiders if it hadn't been filmed surreptitiously, the footage eventually finding its way into the hands of the Chinese and then international media. Yet the battle was only unusual in that it managed to come to the attention of the outside world.

Western politicians may have been shocked by the naked violence on display in the footage, but they could not claim to have been totally surprised. Sixteen years after the Tiananmen Square massacre, in a supposedly reformed People's Republic of China (PRC), protest and repression are nothing new. The Dingzhou episode is an uncomfortable reminder that, for all the moves to rehabilitate it into the international community, to reward its leaders with trade and technological co-operation, even the Olympic Games, China stubbornly refuses to embrace "Western values" as comprehensively as the West would like.

Neglect of human rights, state control of the internet, persecution of minority groups and the detention of dissidents conspire to cast doubt over the efforts of governments to treat the PRC as an equal partner.

China's farms now feed a quarter of the world's population, its factories provide European consumers with everything from socks to telephone handsets. "British trade with China has doubled over the last five years alone," said Foreign Secretary Jack Straw during a visit to Beijing earlier this year. "This growth is faster than that of any other G8 country. Britain is the largest European investor here."

The value of Britain's exports to China totalled 2.4bn last year, but this healthy figure was dwarfed by the volume of traffic in the opposite direction - 10.6bn worth of goods from China during 2004, an increase of 24% on 2003 figures.

But the PRC's stubborn refusal to make progress on human rights, despite years of hostility from pressure groups and more subtle representations from politicians, is now threatening to further estrange Europe from its more significant allies in the United States.

While its international partners squabble among themselves, China is demonstrating that global integration is not dampening its appetite for internal repression at all levels of society. Only weeks before the clash at Dingzhou, more than 20,000 villagers in the coastal Zhejiang Province fought off successive attempts by police to remove them from an industrial park they claimed was polluting their land. Last November, 30,000 villagers and townspeople engaged in violent clashes with police and soldiers in the western province of Sichuan over forced relocation.

At the mercy of unaccountable local governments, and unable to rely on a politically compromised court system, farmers are increasingly resorting to public protest to help resolve their grievances. Complaining of illegal land seizures, inadequate relocation compensation and general abuse at the hands of rapacious local officials, farmers are using protests to appeal to anyone who might listen. Exact figures are sketchy but one report said three million people were involved in 58,000 acts of social unrest in 2003.

In a groundbreaking book published last year, Chinese husband and wife authors Chen Guidi and Wu Chuntao explained how, during three years travelling through the central province of Anhui, they had established that farmers were particular targets of abuse. Their findings made them instant heroes, and though banned within a month, the book remains readily available, having sold an estimated eight million copies in China alone.

Investigating parts of the province where incomes were less than 16 a year, they found officials readily extorting money from villagers. In one passage, the book describes a visit to a village by "family planning" inspectors - a euphemism for those enforcing the government's one child per family policy.

"Many of these officials were poorly educated and behaved very badly," the authors said. "If the people refused to pay, the officials would confiscate pigs, sheep or furniture. The 'investigators' then split the money they had raised from the fines between themselves, and demanded that the villagers pay for all their living and travelling expenses."

Chen and his lawyer Pu Zhiqiang told Scotland on Sunday that some officials have become a law unto themselves: imposing illegal taxes, showing no respect for human rights and seizing agricultural land with little or no compensation to the farmers, only to sell it on at massive mark-ups to developers desperate for land during the country's economic boom.

"At heart, the government has the following characteristics: a monopoly on power, control over the media and a legal system that is not independent," said Pu.

Though presenting an image of omnipotence to outsiders, China's central government is often unaware of the details of individual cases. With five levels of government from Beijing down to village level, China's bureaucracy has over hundreds of years perfected skills of obfuscation and concealment.

Yet Premier Wen Jiabao and his administration cannot claim to be innocent of all the abuses inflicted upon their huge population. Amnesty International's latest assessment of China's treatment of its people makes dismal reading.

"Despite a few positive steps, no attempt was made to introduce the fundamental legal and institutional reforms necessary to bring an end to serious human rights violations," it said. "Tens of thousands of people continued to be detained or imprisoned in violation of their rights to freedom of expression and association, and were at serious risk of torture or ill-treatment."

The report went on to protest at the use of the death penalty, torture and unfair "political trials", and detail the harsh treatment of people protesting against house demolitions and evictions, and also of lawyers, spiritual and religious groups, political activists and internet users.

Significantly, Amnesty also complained that there was evidence that "the international community was taking a softer line on China by confining its human rights concerns to private dialogue sessions rather than public scrutiny".

As news of last week's clashes began to seep into Western media coverage, Yiyi Lu was preparing to address European Union officials on how they could turn their increasing access to China into influence over its internal affairs.

"The EU is uniquely positioned to influence change in China," said Dr Lu, a senior research fellow on China at the Royal Institute of International Affairs. "The EU should be more courageous in urging China to take bigger steps on a range of issues from improving the rule of law and democratic accountability domestically to assuming more responsibility internationally. But I feel that the EU should also be careful not to squander the trust and goodwill it has managed to build up through its 'soft' approach in the past."

It is a delicate balance that has proved beyond many Western leaders hoping to benefit from trade with China and spark the democratic changes demanded by their domestic populations.

Britain's policy of "constructive engagement" - epitomised by the UK-China Human Rights Dialogue, the twice-yearly conference designed to coax PRC leaders into conceding some democratic reforms - has produced what even ministers accept is "mixed progress".

Nevertheless, Jack Straw clings to the existing policy, to the exasperation of those who maintain that China should be isolated, not integrated, in a bid to force improvements in its behaviour.

"Where some years ago the world may have worried about the rise of China, now it welcomes this as truly an opportunity for us all," Straw told his Chinese hosts in January, in a speech which mentioned human rights, in passing, only once.

This approach contrasts sharply with the attitude of his colleagues in Washington. The long-term rapprochement, begun with Richard Nixon's historic visit to China in 1972, has been fruitful, in economic terms at least. But, under President Bush, amid increased tensions over the balance of trade between the countries and particularly strategic differences, the relationship has begun to falter.

"US Republican attitudes towards China are rather schizophrenic at present," said Professor Paul Rogers, global security consultant with the Oxford Research Group. "By and large, neo-conservative elements see China as a potential threat, and point strongly to its poor human rights record, whereas more traditional Republican circles see China more as a potential business partner and perhaps put less emphasis on human rights issues."

Former National Security Assistant Henry Kissinger warned last week: "America needs to understand that a hectoring tone evokes in China memories of imperialist condescension and that it is not appropriate in dealing with a country that has managed 4,000 years of uninterrupted self-government."

Yet Bush's stance has found unexpected support among Western liberals exasperated by their governments' collective failure to demand change from China. His frustration, his refusal to bend too far to accommodate the growing might of a potential rival, may yet protect the US from future embarrassment if China continues to resist the more subtle pressure for it to change its ways.