Tiger Trends

Hong Kong Dongxiang (Trends) magazine, which is censored on the mainland, regularly critices the Chinese Communist Party. Many of the commentaries, which are written in Chinese by Chinese commentators, are trenchant and insightful. The strength of criticism usually outstrips anything found in the human rights community, which tries to be objective, and could be said to self-censor itself to avoid accusations of bias and chauvinism. Here is a commentary on the Chinese Year of the Tiger, which began in January. Unfortunately, there is no English language version, so I will attempt to translate some articles. Here is one from earlier this year, which claims that China's internal authoritarianism may result in external aggression.

Tiger Year Tiger Talk

Everywhere you go in China you can see attractive decorative displays of toy tigers, and apart from wishing everybody a happy year of the Tiger, we would also like to say we hope that in the New Year, China will become more amiable and more worthy of respect and not more detestable, terrifying and repulsive.
Decorative tigers are cute and lovely, but a nation which is seen as a tiger is terrifying. Both for China and for the world, the stronger such a country becomes, the greater the disaster. The fascist regimes of the 20th century are an example of this: not only did they bring disaster to the world, but in the end they also destroyed themselves.

After 30 years of reform and opening up, China is greatly changed, the economy has taken off and and quality of life is clearly improved and consequently the country has taken an important role on the international stage. This has been the dream of many Chinese for over a hundred years.
But advanced Chinese people want more than this. The revolutionary pioneers represented by Sun Yatsen called for the Three People's Principles and even the Chinese Communist Party swears by and strives to realise this political principle. But has it been achieved to them date? No, it has not. Today, not only is democratic freedom an empty phrase, even the CCP's much loved and repeated mantra of "Rule by Law" actually just means that the Communist party uses the Law to rule the people, while the powerholders themselves are above the law.
Despite signing international covenant on human rights, these have not been put into practice, and Chinese leaders have even made statements rejecting the universal values of democracy and freedom, rejected the tripartite division of powers and said that China is different. How can the Chinese leaders be so ignorant? It's shocking.
China is on the road to modernisation, and is truly rising in the global village. But modernising and rising are all very well. If you don't have freedom and democracy you will not be allowed into the court room of human civilisation. No matter how many shiny tall buildings, fast rail ways, gleaming airports, advanced missile systems, what matters most is the state of your people. Are your people free, do they have dignity? can they think freely, express themselves freely, make free choices? Are people equal? the People's Republic has been in existence for 60 years, but the power of the Communist party was seized with violence from the hands of the Nationalist party. The Chinese people never authorised the Communist party to exercise power. In order to maintain the party dictatorship, this party keeps tight control of the military, and still uses the slogan "the Party's absolute leadership of the military". From the point of view of the Chinese people, it's the private army of the Communist party, which" takes orders from the party" - this was one of the slogans formed by people's bodies during the 60th anniversary celebrations in Tiananmen Square. This does not smack of modernity.

Ever since the establishment of the People's Republic, the Commons party has monopolised society's resources, concentrated all power in its own hands, and its role has spread into every corner of society, so that the People's Republic has become a pyramid shaped machine. Because economic political and military power are highly concentrated in the party's hands and the party has never been authorised by the people and is not supervised by the people, and since the Party's power is concentrated in the hands of its leaders and the leadership is chosen by its predecessors, this kind of system inevitably creates a hotbed of dictatorship. Anybody who gets to the top of this pyramid can exercise absolute power; that's why Mao Zedong was able to launch the Cultural Revolution and why Deng Xiaoping was able to terminate political reform in the 1990s with his " four principles" speech

As China rises, the Chinese Communist Party is starting to resemble a tiger. As internal repression increases, it is throwing its weight around internationally. Diplomacy Is the extension of the internal affairs, and war is the extension of politics, as the sayings go.
It's inevitable that as the nation's power increases, it will put pressure on other countries. If it cannot achieve its ends peacefully war is inevitable. The Chinese Communist Party is inflaming nationalist fanaticism and only fascist regimes do this.
Nationalistic fanaticism reached a peak in 2008, but in order to raise the temperature this high, the country invested a huge amount and which was really excessive. Last year, with the military parades celebrating 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic, the Chinese Communist party showed its true face. All that advanced new military hardware was there only to show the world China's military prestige. What kind of message were they sending?
It was the face of the tiger!

We hope that our interpretation is wrong, and that our concerns are unnecessary!

Happy Year of the Tiger!

Dong Xiang editor Zhang Weiguo can also be heard weekly on Radio Free Asia's Zhongguoyizhou ( a week in China )