In May 1988, scant weeks after graduating with an undergraduate business degree, I had the chance to spend 3 weeks touring around China. Deng Xiaoping, the octogenarian leader, appeared to have recognised the need to open up to the west, but equally importantly, to loosen the internal controls imposed by a centralized, State-driven economy. In 1988, “free markets” were in their infancy within the country, giving farmers, traders and entrepreneurs the ability to freely trade, and profit, from their efforts. Using US fast food as a barometer for development, it was very early days. Beijing had but one KFC and Pizza Hut, and bicycles still ruled the capital. Pudong, across the river from Shanghai, was a vision, but ground hadn’t yet been broken. It was a time of general optimism in the country.

That winter, I moved to Beijing, and became an active observer and participant in the apparent opening up of the country. Not once did I feel threatened or that my actions were controlled in any way. I traveled the country freely, engaged in open discussion with students wherever I went, and watched, without any trepidation, as the student/democracy movement took shape in late spring 1989. When the army rolled into Tian an’Men Square on June 3-4, 1989, I felt betrayed. My naiveté and the western lens through which I had witnessed China’s “opening up”, had prevented me from acknowledging that it remained a tightly controlled, Communist country. The brutal crackdown, and subsequent months of living under martial law, gave me an up close and personal look at how effectively the Party leadership was able to swing the other way – moving from open to closed overnight.

Years have passed. Deng Xiaoping is dead and the torch has been passed to a generation of leaders that is too young to have been on the Long March. Beijing is now a sea of privately owned cars, Pudong glistens, and the world is beating a path to Beijing’s door for this summer’s Olympics.

But as I sit here this morning, I was appalled to see that a Chinese court has just sentenced [1] Lu Gengsong to four years in prison on subversion charges. His crime? He published 19 essays on the Internet about corruption. Now, apparently “corruption” is something the Chinese take seriously. Many bureaucrats, including city mayors, have taken a bullet in the back of the head during periodic crackdowns. But Mr. Lu must have hit a nerve as he will spend the next four years in a Chinese jail. Having been inside of a prison in Shandong, think Midnight Express without the opium to dull the pain.

Is Lu Gengsong’s case an isolated incident? Not according to the article:

“China’s ruling Communist Party is cracking down on human rights activists ahead of the Olympics, and still maintains tight control over all media and the Internet.A leading Chinese dissident, Hu Jia, who chronicled the plight of other dissidents through the Internet, was taken from his home in December and was recently arrested and charged with inciting subversion.The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists labels China the world’s leading jailer of journalists, saying at least 29 reporters are currently locked up.”

I know what you’re thinking. “This is a blog on intellectual property. So where’s the connection?”

Intellectual property is a fundamental principle in a free market system. Individual rights and freedoms are integral elements, and include freedom of expression. How can a country that represses free speech, controls information access (Great Firewall of China) ever be expected to play within the rules established for the treatment of intellectual property.

US foreign and economic policy is born of convenience. It needs access to vast quantities of oil to preserve the industrial base, so the Saudi’s sponsorship of madrassas throughout the Muslim world was ignored, even though much of the hatred and vitriol directed our way was fomented from within these schools. The US needs access to the Chinese market and knows that a disproportionate amount of its debt is held by the Chinese, and so it conveniently ignores gross breaches of human rights.

The world reacted in horror in 1989, pulled back momentarily, but economics abhors a vacuum. The world feigned shock at the brutal actions of the central government, but on reflection decided that its suppression of the student movement was somehow to have been expected.

China has a different playbook, and while they may appear to play by civilized rules, their actions show otherwise.

That’s my .02 for today.

Martin Suter

([2] martin.suter@iplicensing.net)