There are many people who
admire China for the rapid industrial and economic growth that it has achieved
over a period of two decades.
Many think that China should be
given it’s due, as it has emerged as one of the most important countries
influencing the trend in the global economy. However, such admiration has to be
limited to it’s economic and technological progress.
Giving
up communist philosophy
Though China claims itself to be a
communist country, founders of communist philosophy like Karl Marx would
certainly not approve the Chinese government’s approach to governance today.
The state ownership of enterprises
and prevention of concentration of wealth among individuals and equal
distribution of national income to all people are the basic tenet of the
communist philosophy. Today, large private sector projects operate in China
based on profit motive, which is a negation of communist doctrine.
While countries like Russia, Hungary
and others have admitted that the communist philosophy is impractical for
achieving sustained economic growth and have moved away from communist form of
government, China is following capitalist path but still claims that it is a
communist country, which is not so anymore.
Freedom
to business and not to people
While China has diluted it’s
communist philosophy to move towards capitalist form of economy, it is giving
freedom to business houses but not to it’s citizens. In other words, it is
keeping the worst aspects of communism in practice and giving up the laudable
objectives and procedures of communist philosophy.
Democracy is non-existent in China
and a coterie of people, who organize themselves under an entity called
politburo govern the country. Those in charge of the government are usurpers of
power under the banner of communist party and they do not have the mandate from
the people. In other words, the rulers of the country are a group of people who
have organized themselves under a party and the people in the party struggle
and compete among themselves to get on to the seats of power.
Recent
example of suppression of freedom
Journalists at privately operated
Chinese news portals are only accredited to cover sports or entertainment
events and are required to use only those reports that are released by state
control media for news related to politics and society.
Chinese government has now shut down
several online news operations after authorities accused the operators for
independently reporting and publishing articles about potentially sensitive
subjects.
As a consequence, major Chinese
language portals including Sina, Sohu, Netease and iFeng have been forced to
close some of their freewheeling political and social news sites and social
network accounts after China’s internet control department disapproved their
activities relating to news coverage, comments and discussions, which was
termed by Chinese government as violating the law and regulations.
Can
suppression of freedom take place in a progressive country?
Ultimate criteria to judge that a
country is progressive is the level of freedom enjoyed by the citizens to think
on their own , discuss their view points and express their opinions
irrespective of the stand and policy of the government on any particular issue.
This is not happening in China.
Freedom of expression is certainly
one of the significant contributors for the happiness index of the citizens.
While different level of freedom are enjoyed by people in various countries,
perhaps, China represents the worst case study for denial of liberty to the
people. Today, one of the preconditions to move freely in China is that the
individual has to ensure that he would not be critical of any policy or program
of government of China.
The people in other countries who
have tasted freedom are bound to have sympathies for Chinese citizens ,who are
seeing more of economic prosperity and less of personal liberty. To this
extent, one should think that Chinese people are less privileged and the
government of China is guilty of condemning it’s people to such conditions.
N. S. Venkataraman is a
trustee with the "Nandini Voice for the Deprived," a not-for-profit
organization that aims to highlight the problems of downtrodden and deprived
people and support their cause. To promote probity and ethical values in
private and public life and to deliberate on socio-economic issues in a
dispassionate and objective manner.
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