A Freedom House Special Report
January 2015

The Politburo’s Predicament
Confronting the Limitations of Chinese Communist Party Repression

 Contents
Executive Summary 

1

Overview 2
I. Information Controls 

7

II. Legal and Security Apparatus 

16

III. The Limitations of Censorship and Repression 

31

IV. Recommendations 

38

Notes  

41

About the author
Sarah Cook, senior research analyst for East Asia at Freedom House, served as project director and the primary author of this
report. She manages the editorial team producing the China Media Bulletin, a biweekly news digest of media freedom developments related to the People’s Republic of China. She was also the author of a 2013 special report, The Long Shadow of Chinese
Censorship: How the Communist Party’s Media Restrictions Affect News Outlets Around the World.

Research, editorial, and advisory team

Acknowledgments

Sophia Lin, former Asia research fellow at Freedom House
courtesy of American University Law School, provided extensive research and administrative support for this project.
Tyler Roylance (staff editor), Natalie Sykes, and Kristian McGuire (research assistants) provided editorial and research
assistance.

Special thanks to Arch Puddington, Daniel Calingaert,
Robert Ruby, and Annie Boyajian at Freedom House for
their comments and feedback. Gerry Fey served as graphic
designer.

Bruce Dickson (professor of political science and international affairs, George Washington University), Ashley Esarey
(visiting assistant professor of East Asian studies and political science, University of Alberta), and Carl Minzner (professor of law, Fordham University) served as academic advisers.

on the cover
Photo, by Jonah M. Kessel, shows protesters calling for
greater press freedom outside the offices of the newspaper
Southern Weekly in Guangdong Province, Jan. 2013. Large
banner says, “Southern Weekly defends freedom of speech.”

 A Freedom House Special Report

Executive Summary

The Politburo’s Predicament
A prominent Chinese-American businessman and
online commentator is arrested in Beijing four days
after President Xi Jinping urges party cadres to
reassert control over social media. A pastor from a
state-sanctioned church is sentenced to 12 years
in prison after defending his congregants’ rights. A
producer for the state broadcaster is forced to resign
after criticizing his station’s role in aiding propaganda.
And hundreds of villagers use their thumbprints and
real names to sign a petition urging the release of a
neighbor persecuted for his adherence to the Falun
Gong spiritual practice.
This sample of incidents over the past two years
illustrates the current Chinese government’s determination to impose its will on society and the public
resistance it has encountered as it attempts to do so.
The Politburo’s Predicament examines the state of the
censorship and internal security apparatus inherited
by Xi, the evolution of the system since the Communist Party leadership transfer in November 2012, and
the impact of institutional and policy changes in practice. It also explores the limitations of the regime’s efforts to suppress dissent, and offers recommendations
to the international community on how to respond.
Drawing on an analysis of hundreds of official documents, censorship directives, and human rights reports,
as well as some 30 expert interviews, the study finds
that the overall degree of repression has increased
under the new leadership. Of 17 categories of victims
assessed, 11 experienced greater restrictions after
November 2012. Among the victims are new targets
whose activities were previously tolerated, including
individuals from the economic elite or with official ties.
The methods of repression have also evolved. The
current authorities are mounting more coordinated
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and multipronged campaigns to dominate online
discourse, obstruct human rights activism, and
preempt public protests. Punishments meted out to
dissidents have shifted, with various forms of criminal,
administrative, and extralegal detention replacing the
abolished “reeducation through labor” camp system.
And tactics and terminology reminiscent of the Mao
era, such as televised confessions and expansive
community monitoring, have regained prominence.

Repression has increased under the new
leadership, yet fear of the regime
appears to be diminishing.
The efforts of Xi and his cohort have reduced the
potency of some perceived threats to party rule, such
as independent-minded online opinion leaders and
the reformist New Citizens Movement. Yet they have
also fueled resentment and recruitment to the cause
of rights defense, both within society and among
some party members, public security personnel, and
censors. In spite of the heightened repression, fear of
the regime appears to be diminishing.
By broadening the targets of repression and censorship while concentrating authority over the coercive
apparatus in the hands of Xi himself, the Communist
Party has moved away from long-standing strategies
designed to balance the need to use coercion against
the damage it can cause to regime legitimacy. As a
result, the actions of China’s new leaders are reinforcing a vicious circle of repression that could undermine
the resilience of party rule and potentially dissolve the
implicit social contract of the post-Tiananmen era.
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 SPECIAL REPORT: The Politburo’s Predicament

Overview

Confronting the Limitations
of Chinese Communist Party Repression
“The most important matter is
persisting in the leadership of the
Party.”
- CCP Central Committee Third Plenum
Resolution, November 2013

“At the ground level, people are
more vulnerable to all sorts of
punishment for what we thought
was normal before, like just
getting together, discussing
democratic ideas. Gatherings like
that, even in someone’s home,
aren’t being allowed.”
- Wendy Lin, Chinese Human Rights Defenders,
April 2014

Since coming to power in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has constructed a multilayered
system for censoring unwanted news, stifling opposition viewpoints, and suppressing alternative
sources of popular inspiration and mobilization. Each
new set of leaders has added its own innovations
to the system, as each—despite outward displays
of confidence—has suffered from a deep sense of
insecurity, driving a constant search for more effective methods.
The current Politburo Standing Committee led by Xi
Jinping is no different. Party documents and high-level
speeches since Xi took power in November 2012 have
explicitly rejected democratic concepts such as a free
press, judicial independence, and universal human
rights. Indeed, these components of democracy are
viewed as an existential threat to the party’s rule.
And like its predecessors, the Xi leadership has developed its own ideas on how best to strengthen the
CCP’s legitimacy and reinforce party dominance over
Chinese media, politics, and society.
This study assesses the evolution of the party’s censorship and security apparatus during the first year
and a half after the change of leadership in November
2012. It seeks to shed light on the following questions:
•  What have been the main changes in the strategy,
structure, methods, and practices of the censorship
and security apparatus?
•  To what degree have these adaptations been effective in achieving the CCP’s aims?
•  What are the implications of these developments
for the durability of CCP rule?
In preparing this report, Freedom House analysts ex-

2

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amined hundreds of official documents and speeches,
media accounts, censorship directives, and research
by scholars, think tanks, and human rights groups in
Chinese and English. The report also draws on roughly
30 interviews with lawyers, bloggers, civil society
activists, commentators, and scholars both inside and
outside China.
Signs of crisis and the Xi leadership’s response
At the time of the leadership change, commentary
inside and outside China warned of the many challenges facing the country, including rampant corruption, environmental pollution, and slower economic
growth. There was also a sense that certain dimensions of the CCP’s repressive apparatus—such as
controls on social media—were proving ineffective,
and that the rapidly expanding internal security agencies were generating waste, international criticism,
and a domestic backlash. And within the party, there
were mounting concerns over the emergence of an
alternative power center headed by security czar Zhou
Yongkang.
In this context, a consensus emerged among scholars
studying the party that CCP rule was stagnating, its
legitimacy was waning, and some form of political
change or adaptation would be required.
The efforts of Xi Jinping and his colleagues to resolve the party’s problems have been multifaceted.
Perhaps the most visible innovations have been Xi’s
more down-to-earth personality compared with his
predecessor, Hu Jintao; his shift to a more nationalist
propaganda narrative for the party, symbolized by the
coining of the “China Dream” slogan; and his pursuit
of the most aggressive anticorruption campaign in
years. Meanwhile, adjustments to the censorship and
security apparatus have comprised an incongruous
combination of quasi-reformist rhetoric and minor
institutional changes on the one hand, with ideological retrenchment and intensified repression on the
other.
Specifically, management of information controls and
internal security under Xi Jinping can be distinguished
from that of the Hu Jintao era in four major ways:
•  Concentration of power at the very top: Ultimate
authority over information controls and domestic
security has been consolidated in the hands of Xi
himself via new party entities and special “leading

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groups” of which he serves as head. During the
Hu era, fellow members of the Politburo Standing
Committee, Zhou Yongkang and Li Changchun,
each held sway in their respective command of the
security and information systems.
•  Strategic coordination: The authorities have
employed better-coordinated, multipronged
campaigns—combining detentions, propaganda,
surveillance, and cross-regional communication—
to dominate online public discourse, obstruct rights
activism, and preempt public protests.
•  Expanded targets: The targets of censorship and
offline repression have broadened beyond the
“usual suspects” of the Hu period, reaching previously tolerated activities, topics, and individuals. Of
17 target groups identified by Freedom House, 11
experienced an increase in repression after Xi took
power. Similarly, in the media, seemingly innocuous
official activity and news related to public health
and safety were among the most targeted topics in
censorship directives. Party elites have not escaped
the general trend, as Xi’s aggressive but politically
selective and strictly top-down anticorruption
campaign has ensnared current, former, and possible future members of the Central Committee, the
Politburo, and even the Politburo Standing Committee.
•  Revival of old practices: Tactics and terminology
reminiscent of the Mao Zedong era have been revived to deter and stamp out dissent, including the
use of televised confessions, expansive community
surveillance, and the historically loaded term “struggle” (douzheng), which evokes the Cultural Revolution and other harsh Maoist political campaigns.
The impact of Xi’s policies
The party’s repressive actions since late 2012,
combined with Xi’s populism, have been effective in
many ways. Public political debate and the agendasetting capacity of microblogs are a shadow of what
they were in 2010 and 2011. Detentions have largely
silenced charismatic, credible, and popular critics
like the activist lawyers Xu Zhiyong and Pu Zhiqiang,
stalling the momentum of reformist civil society initiatives like the New Citizens Movement. The stateled anticorruption campaign has fueled Xi’s popularity among many Chinese and struck fear into officials
throughout the country’s massive bureaucracy.

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 SPECIAL REPORT: The Politburo’s Predicament

Given these developments, the massive resources
employed, the regime’s external displays of confidence, and day-to-day expressions of faith in the
government by some Chinese citizens, one might be
led to conclude that the CCP’s hold on power is as
strong as ever. Yet the overall increase in repression
is driven by a deep sense of insecurity and an explicit
assessment that the party is losing the loyalty of the
public and some of its own members.
Evidence supporting that perception emerged as
a recurring theme in interviews and internal party
documents reviewed for this study. Civic participation in rights-defense initiatives is growing despite
the heightened repression. Intensified censorship has
prompted a rise in netizen resentment, while banned
information circulates via alternative channels. Activities that the authorities have invested tremendous
resources in suppressing—petitioners traveling to
Beijing, rights lawyers taking up sensitive cases, Tibetans possessing Dalai Lama photos, or Falun Gong
adherents disseminating literature on rights abuses—
have continued and even expanded.
Civil society resilience is undergirded by the waning
of fear as a deterrent, general disillusionment with the
party, and a sense of solidarity with the victims of CCP
repression at a time when more and more people feel it
touching their own lives. More worrisome for the party
is that these dynamics have been accompanied by a
certain degree of internal resistance among the ranks
of party cadres, security agents, and media censors.
The role of restraint in the regime’s resilience
To fully appreciate the implications of the Xi leadership’s actions, one must understand the relationship
between the regime’s survival to date and its willingness to limit rather than expand political repression.
Scholars studying the resilience of CCP political dominance, particularly since the June 4, 1989, crackdown
on Tiananmen Square protesters, have pointed to a
combination of factors that have facilitated the party’s
continued hold on power. These include nationalism
as an alternative source of legitimacy, unity among
party leaders, the cooptation of economic elites, and
the preservation of the military’s loyalty to the party.
But two of the most important if contradictory pillars of
CCP rule in recent decades have been rapid economic
growth—with a related expansion of certain personal

4

freedoms—and the systemic use of coercion.
The party has sought to balance the ongoing need
for coercion against the damage it can cause to other
sources of resilience by employing what one might term
a “containment strategy.” Its basic imperatives include:
•  Contain the targets: Relative to the country’s overall
population, the share of people subject to the harshest forms of repression—imprisonment, abductions,
beatings, torture—must be limited so as to protect
CCP legitimacy among the broader public. These
tactics are used (1) against those perceived to be
the most serious threats to the regime’s authority, (2)
against individuals who persist in undesirable behavior after verbal warnings and the use of lesser forms of
violence, and (3) at key moments of regime insecurity.
•  Contain the blame: When possible, the blame for incidents of violence against ordinary citizens must be
shifted to local officials. In this manner, the central
authorities and the regime itself are shielded from
public resentment, but they also enhance their legitimacy by acknowledging problems and occasionally
punishing some of those responsible. Another variation of the tactic is to blame the victim of repression,
a crucial aspect of the party’s propaganda against
perceived political enemies. Dissidents are portrayed
by state media as crazy, dangerous, traitorous, or
instigated by foreign “anti-China” forces.
•  Contain the news: The regime seeks to restrict
the circulation of information and incriminating
evidence on official wrongdoing, information supporting victims’ innocence, details challenging the
official narrative, and when relevant, any connection
to the central party leadership. Notably, it does not
attempt to control or suppress all news, but the ability to pick and choose what information is accessible
requires overall control of the information landscape.
The interplay between the different dimensions of this
strategy has shifted under recent generations of party
leaders, as each has responded to real or perceived
threats to CCP rule, as well as social, economic, and
technological changes. Actions to address threats in one
realm have often generated new liabilities in another.
For example, the first stages of the “Great Firewall”—
China’s internet filtering system—were built as early

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as 1996. But Jiang Zemin, the predecessor of Hu
Jintao, expanded the targets of repression with a
1998 crackdown on the China Democracy Party,
the first prosecutions of cyberdissidents, and most

had to resort not only to technological and administrative methods of internet censorship, but also to
offline retaliation against a growing number of online
commentators and internet users. And rather than

These dynamics hint at the Xi leadership’s struggle to resolve a central
predicament facing the CCP—that the very actions taken to maintain
power risk alienating the population and some of its own members,
undermining the regime’s long-term unity, legitimacy, and security.
significantly, the 1999 launch of a campaign to wipe
out Falun Gong, then practiced by tens of millions of
Chinese. The development of online censorship was
subsequently accelerated to contain news of abuses
committed during these crackdowns and to restrict
use of the internet for political organization.
In another case of containment efforts with problematic
side effects, the Hu leadership was initially so successful
at shifting the blame for abuses of power to lower-level
officials that the years 2003 to 2006 featured a wave
of petitioners traveling to Beijing to seek justice from
central authorities. This was then seen as a threat to
stability, and local officials were encouraged to stem the
tide of petitioners, leading to new rounds of repression.
These examples illustrate a fundamental weakness of
the containment strategy. At its core, it is designed to
control the damage caused by the repressive apparatus, not to address and resolve underlying grievances,
because to do so would mean reforms that are fatal to
CCP supremacy: the rule of law, freedom of information, religious freedom, property rights, and other
basic features of democratic governance.
The vicious circle of repression
As with their predecessors, the policy choices available to the current Chinese authorities are tightly
constrained by the internal contradictions and tradeoffs of the CCP’s survival strategy. Consequently, Xi
and his cohort are responding to new threats by falling back on repressive tactics—including some that
date to the mid-20th century—rather than changing
course and experimenting with more liberal policies.
In its intensifying effort to contain information about
its own abuses and policy shortcomings, the party has

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cracking down only at times of acute crisis or political
sensitivity, the regime now appears to be engaging in
a more proactive and comprehensive quashing of dissent. This has led to the normalization of heightened
repression and the regular targeting of new categories
of victims, including people who see themselves as
apolitical and individuals from the economic elite.
Furthermore, Xi’s attempts to assert centralized control over the security apparatus and increase its effectiveness have exposed the highest echelons of the
party to blame for the system’s abuses. The authorities have sought to mitigate this in part by finding new
ways of discrediting the victims, charging activists
and online commentators with crimes like disturbing
public order, spreading harmful rumors, illegal business activities, and solicitation of prostitution.
Taken together, these dynamics hint at the Xi leadership’s struggle to resolve a central predicament facing
the CCP—that the very actions taken to maintain
power risk alienating the population and some of its
own members, undermining the regime’s long-term
unity, legitimacy, and security.
The CCP is effectively trapped in a vicious circle.
Each act of repression generates the need for more
repression. As the chilling effect induced by one
crackdown fades, a new escalation is required. The
severity must be hidden to maintain legitimacy, motivating further censorship, but it must also be known
to have a deterrent value, driving further expansion.
And as the scope of repression and censorship inexorably grows, more people find themselves colliding with the unsavory dimensions of the party-state.
With economic growth also slowing, the implicit
social contract of the post-Tiananmen era—the

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 SPECIAL REPORT: The Politburo’s Predicament

creation of conditions for prosperity and personal
consumer freedoms in exchange for the surrender
of political and civic rights to the CCP—begins to
unravel, becoming less palatable to more and more
citizens.
China’s future
It is difficult to predict the future of any regime, but
the findings of this report suggest that the prospects
for top-down liberalization under the current leadership are slim to none. Meanwhile, signs of support for
bottom-up change are appearing: reduced fear among
dissidents, ideological disloyalty within the party,
noncompliance within the repressive apparatus, and
growing public resentment at restrictive policies. This
is a volatile combination. It could produce anything
from a more radical dictatorship or violent upheaval to
a successful popular movement for greater freedom.
The status quo alone is destructive, depriving China
and the world of vital news and information as well as
human lives and potential.
Therefore, rather than tolerating CCP aggression
in the hope of preserving a superficial, increasingly
fragile authoritarian stability, the international community has a responsibility to prepare for a wide range
of contingencies while taking action to mitigate the
immediate effects of repression. Policymakers and
international civil society should redouble their efforts
to assist victims, pressure the CCP to respect citizens’
rights, and design comprehensive diplomatic and advocacy strategies that will facilitate the best possible
outcome for China’s political development.

6

Report structure
The remainder of this report consists of four
parts:
Part I focuses on the information control
apparatus. It includes sections covering key
developments during the Hu era, speeches by
Xi and other top officials that illustrate their
approach to media freedom, an outline of major
trends since November 2012, and an analysis of
hundreds of censorship and propaganda directives issued during this period.
Part II focuses on the legal and security apparatus. It similarly includes sections covering key
developments from the Hu era, reforms initiated
under Xi, and the recent evolution of the “stability maintenance” apparatus and its targets in
practice.
Part III explores the limits of the effectiveness
of CCP repression, considering evidence of
resilience and resistance by civil society and
internal regime actors, respectively, as well as
the factors that are driving these dynamics.
Part IV offers recommendations to the international community on how to respond to the
report’s findings and the changing nature of
Chinese authoritarianism.

 Freedom House

Part I: Information Controls
A. The legacy of the Hu Jintao era
By the time Xi Jinping became leader of the CCP in
November 2012, the information landscape—and the
party’s control over it—looked dramatically different
than they did in 2002 when Hu Jintao took the helm.
Indeed, this is one of the ways in which Chinese society and the party apparatus changed the most during
the Hu decade, although robust media control has
always been a hallmark of CCP rule.
A nearly tenfold increase in internet penetration,
from 59 million users in 2002 to 560 million in 2012,1
was a key aspect of the transformation, along with
the rise of applications that facilitate user-generated
content—from bulletin boards and blogs to social
media and video-sharing sites. As the CCP explored
ways of maintaining its grip on information flows,
these technological advancements provoked new,
innovative, and more pervasive controls.
In examining the resulting apparatus and its implications for the regime’s adaptive capacity and legitimacy
on the eve of the Xi leadership’s inauguration, four
points are worth special consideration:
•  Strategic control over key nodes in the information flow. The authorities do not attempt to dictate
all or even most content, especially on topics such
as sports and entertainment. Rather, they seek to
establish strategic control over key nodes in the
information flow in order to enable the censorship
and manipulation of content that is perceived to
be detrimental to the regime’s survival or other
party priorities. They achieve this by, for example,
retaining at least majority state ownership of all
traditional media outlets and mobile service providers, controlling chokepoints in internet networks to
enable the blocking of access to overseas-based
websites, and ensuring the dominance of domestic
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search engines that filter results based on party
and government imperatives.
•  Outsourcing of censorship to domestic internet
companies. In addition to search engines, the
Chinese government has used the “Great Firewall”
to restrict access to popular international applications and social-media sites, thereby fostering domestic alternatives. These private Chinese
companies have a strong incentive to preemptively
censor their own users, lest they lose their license
to operate or face other state reprisals. The result
is a highly manipulated and controlled information
environment whose maintenance does not rely on
government resources alone—an important innovation of the Hu era whose scale and effectiveness is
unique to China.
•  An increase in the number of citizens who directly
experience censorship. Content restrictions that
were once encountered mainly by professional
journalists in newsrooms have become familiar to
tens of millions of Chinese, as a growing number
of internet users have their microblog posts, chat

Content restrictions that were once
encountered mainly by professional
journalists in newsrooms have become
familiar to tens of millions of Chinese.
messages, and self-made videos deleted or held for
screening by private companies’ in-house censors.
Although many take it for granted that censorship is part of the netizen experience in China, the
expanding interaction between ordinary users and
the censorship apparatus has spurred a growth in
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 SPECIAL REPORT: The Politburo’s Predicament

public dissatisfaction and frustration with the limits
placed on free expression.2
•  The empowerment of citizen voices relative to official information sources. Despite the adaptations
of the censorship system, the growth in internet
access and user-generated content has enabled
Chinese citizens to communicate with one another
in unprecedented ways. The shift was amplified by
the rise of the Sina Weibo microblogging platform
beginning in the summer of 2009, shortly after
authorities blocked access to Twitter. Within the
bounds of state censorship that Sina enforced, individual users were able to instantaneously broadcast
their ideas, thoughts, and eyewitness accounts to
thousands, hundreds of thousands, and in some
cases millions of fellow citizens. The result was a
weakening of the agenda-setting capacity of official
news sources, a growing sense that officials were
being put on the defensive, and a trend of alternative sources of information gaining public trust at
the expense of key state media like national broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV).

“Lack of belief among party members
is a problem that needs to attain
the highest attention.” – Xi Jinping, August 2013
As the number of Weibo users grew to the hundreds of
millions in 2011, and journalistic coverage of important
breaking news events was increasingly driven by users
who challenged the official narrative (most notably
immediately after the Wenzhou train crash), high-level
officials and party publications began voicing the need
to reassert party dominance over online public debate.3
Throughout 2011 and 2012, various efforts were made
to limit anonymity, tighten censorship, and provoke
self-censorship among users, particularly via real-name
registration rules. However, the implementation and
effectiveness of these measures were limited, and
influential social-media commentators (many of whom
already published under their real names) continued to
gain credibility and millions of followers.4

B. The new Communist Party leadership’s
approach to media freedom
It is in this context that Xi rose to take the CCP’s helm.
Freedom House analyzed a series of both public and
internal speeches and documents issued by CCP
8

leaders, including Xi himself, that provide insights into
how the new party leadership perceives the current
information landscape and how it intends to resolve
the challenges arising from the spread of social media. Four major themes stand out:
•  Emphasizing the party’s leadership role in managing the media. This approach to the information
landscape is certainly not new for the CCP, but
its reemphasis by the Xi leadership indicates that
the party is unlikely to voluntarily loosen its grip
on the media or the internet sector. One set of
internal party instructions, known as Document
No. 9, warned against “propagating Western news
views” and “opposing Party leadership of our media,
in an attempt to open breaches for the ideological
infiltration of our country.”5
•  Conveying a heightened sense of insecurity. Official documents reflect a perceived lack of control
and depleted ability to influence public opinion, to
the point that it is seen as an existential threat to
the regime. The speeches and documents convey
an especially high level of anxiety over the spread
of ideas about democracy and its components,
including judicial independence and an unfettered
press. In an August 2013 speech by Xi to cadres
involved in propaganda work, he acknowledges
popular dissatisfaction with the government, notes
that positive comments about the party are challenged or attacked online, and expresses concern
that mainstream media are losing their influence,
especially among young people who instead look to
the internet for information. According to reports
of the speech published by Xinhua News Agency
and an apparently authentic, more complete leaked
version, Xi notes that “we are currently engaged in a
magnificent struggle that has many new historical
characteristics; the challenges and difficulties we
face are unprecedented.”6 Interestingly, one of the
concerns Xi voices is that party cadres themselves
are not ideologically “clear,” warning that the “lack
of belief among party members is a problem that
needs to attain the highest attention.”7 As a result,
according to Xi, “on this battlefield of the internet,
whether we can stand up, and gain victory, directly
relates to our country’s ideological security and
regime security.”8
•  Placing blame on weak, inefficient management,
especially online. In a speech to cadres at the
CCP’s Third Plenum in November 2013, Xi alludes to several “malpractices” that he sees in the

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regulation of the information and media landscape,
principally “multi-headed management, overlapping
of functions, lack of unity of powers and responsibility, and low efficiency.” He also notes that “online
media management can by far not catch up with
… the changes in the situation … [especially] in the
face of microblogs, WeChat, and other such social
media that have rapid dissemination, great influence, broad coverage, and a strong capacity for
social mobilization.”9
•  Responding with militant rhetoric and calls for innovation. In outlining what the party should do in
response to the sense of weakened influence and
control, Xi draws on warlike imagery, describing
the situation as an “ideological battleground.” In
a more disturbing use of terminology reminiscent
of Mao-era campaigns, he urges a “public opinion struggle” (yulun douzheng).10 This seemingly
anachronistic aggressiveness is combined with
calls for innovation, including steps to increase
the attractiveness of state media content, improve
expertise regarding new media to resolve a “skills
panic,” and develop different approaches for different segments of the population and across various
media types.

C. Evolution of the information control apparatus under the new leadership
These speeches and attitudes have translated into
a number of concrete actions, reflecting an effort
to reinvigorate party dominance over public debate
and media coverage that is in many ways more
sophisticated, strategic, and effective than previous
attempts. The effort appeared to accelerate after a
January 2013 strike by journalists at a major newspaper sparked calls from various segments of society to
reduce censorship.11 This incident occurred alongside cumulative pressure from microblog users and
exposés by investigative journalists in early 2013 that
compelled the government to offer concessions, such
as the release of wrongfully detained individuals, the
closure of a notorious labor camp, and the dismissal
of corrupt officials.12
The authorities responded to these threats and the
concerns noted in the previous section with measures to intensify and centralize ideological controls,
including the following:
•  June 2013 – Mass Line campaign: At a high-level
conference in Beijing, Xi launched a year-long Mass
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Line education campaign to discipline officials
through study sessions, self-criticism, and propaganda. The concept is closely associated with
the Mao era and calls for the Communist Party to
remain close to the masses. This campaign was the
party’s first internal “rectification” effort in almost a
decade. CCTV and other party mouthpieces repeatedly aired footage and published articles about the
campaign’s launch.13
•  December 2013 – Greater ideological emphasis in
journalist training: News emerged of plans by the
CCP’s Propaganda Department to appoint senior
propaganda officials to head journalism programs
in top-tier universities.14 During the same month,
regulators announced that Chinese journalists
would need to pass a new ideological exam in early
2014 in order to receive or renew their press cards,
a prerequisite for working in the formal media sector in China. The exam was based on a minimum
18-hour training course on topics like “Marxist
news values,” with a 700-page manual.15
•  January 2014 – Enhanced influence over liberal
media: Beijing’s municipal propaganda department purchased a 49 percent stake in the Beijing
News, a leading liberal paper, from the Guangzhoubased Southern Media Group. The new shares
supplemented an existing ownership stake held
by a party mouthpiece, the Guangming Daily.16
Some observers, such as prominent blogger Wen
Yunchao, interpreted the move as a blow against
the process of media commercialization, which
since the late 1990s had allowed more space for
investigative journalism and critical commentary.17
A few weeks earlier, news emerged that Southern
Media Group executives had themselves submitted
written testimony to assist authorities in prosecuting activists who supported the January 2013 strike
at its Southern Weekly publication.18 Other political
and financial pressures—including the dismissal
of prominent investigative reporters and news
consumers’ preference for internet-based sources—have weakened the reporting of several liberal
commercial newspapers.19
•  February 2014 – New Leading Small Group: State
media reported on the establishment of a new
CCP body to coordinate work on cybersecurity and
internet management, known as the Central Internet Security and Informatization Leading Group.
The group is headed by Xi, Premier Li Keqiang, and
longtime propaganda chief Liu Yunshan. It appears
9

 SPECIAL REPORT: The Politburo’s Predicament

to have full authority to coordinate decisions on the
entire online sector (including cybersecurity, the
urban-rural digital divide, and content regulation).
Though few details about the new body’s functioning have been made public, its creation signals an
effort to centralize and streamline management of
the Chinese internet.20
Social-media crackdown
Perhaps the most dramatic action taken by the
new leadership on information control has been its
aggressive campaign to reassert dominance over
social-media platforms. In one striking case, four
days after Xi’s August 2013 speech to party cadres,
Chinese-American businessman Charles Xue, whose
web commentaries on social and political issues
were regularly shared with more than 12 million
followers on Sina Weibo, was detained for allegedly
soliciting prostitutes.21 He was later shown handcuffed on state television, expressing regret over the
way he had used his microblog account to influence
public opinion.22 The appearance and statements,
which were unrelated to the actual charges against
Xue, reinforced suspicions of a politically motivated
prosecution, and his detention became the first in a
series of events signaling a multifaceted clampdown
on social media.

Regulators also tightened rules regarding journalists’ creation and use of microblog accounts, a
reaction to a popular practice in which reporters
used microblogs to post content that had been
or would be censored by their formal outlets. A
veteran producer at CCTV was dismissed in 2013
over Weibo posts that questioned the use of state
media to air public confessions by government
critics.24 In March 2014, the first signs emerged that
the crackdown was being extended to Tencent’s
WeChat instant-messaging service, a semiprivate
platform that allows users to share information with
a closed circle of acquaintances, to which many
Weibo users were migrating. At least 39 public
accounts, which allow users to broadcast one message per day to tens of thousands of followers, were
shut down or suspended. Nearly all of the targeted
accounts were known for carrying commentaries
or articles on current affairs, with some belonging
to popular columnists, well-known journalists, or
online portals.25
•  Increasing the criminalization of online speech. In
September 2013, the country’s highest judicial authorities issued a joint legal interpretation that expanded the scope and severity of criminal offenses
covering online speech, including alleged “online
rumors.” The interpretation also allowed prosecu-

Throughout August and September 2013, police detained and
interrogated hundreds of social-media users across the country.
Xue was ultimately released from custody in April
2014, prompting another round of state media coverage and repentant statements by the businessman,
though it remained unclear whether he would be
brought to trial. Meanwhile, several aspects of his
treatment were replicated more broadly in an effort to
reduce the influence of independent-minded commentators and public outcries online:
•  Silencing individuals who have large followings
or alternative news feeds. Besides Xue, other
public figures with large microblog followings faced
growing pressure in the form of deletions, locked
accounts, and selective arrests and interrogations.
Writer Murong Xuecun, who had 8.5 million followers across several microblogging platforms and
frequently discussed issues like media censorship
and labor camps, reported in May 2013 that web
administrators had shuttered all of his accounts,
apparently under orders from the authorities.23
10

tors to initiate criminal defamation cases when
online expression “seriously harms” public order or
state interests. Under the new rules, a user can receive up to three years in prison for posting content
that is deemed false or defamatory if the circumstances are considered “serious,” for instance if the
post was viewed more than 5,000 times or reposted
more than 500 times. The decision to set such a
low threshold for potential imprisonment illustrated
the party’s increasing intolerance for the sharing
of undesirable information with even a relatively
small audience. Throughout August and September
2013, police detained and interrogated hundreds of
social-media users across the country, with most
subjected to brief periods of detention rather than
full criminal prosecution.26
•  Televising contrite statements to discredit commentators and journalists. This phenomenon,
which has drawn comparisons to the Mao era, was

 Freedom House

not limited to Xue’s confession. Within weeks of
that broadcast, CCTV aired an interview with Chinese real-estate mogul Pan Shiyi, whose Weibo account was followed by 16 million users and served
as an important forum for raising public awareness
about air-pollution indicators.27 Although he was
not detained, the usually articulate Pan displayed
a pronounced stutter during the interview as he
described the need for online opinion leaders to be
more disciplined.28 Over the following 10 months,

and commentary. Under Xi, however, the strategy—
dubbed “Control 2.0” by David Bandurski of Hong
Kong University’s China Media Project32—has been
further expanded and linked more systematically with
repressive tactics.
With regard to social media, the effort has driven an
exponential increase in the number of official microblog accounts.33 In addition, important state and
party media outlets have enhanced their presence

The most dramatic action taken by the new leadership on information
control has been its aggressive campaign to reassert dominance
over social-media platforms.
three journalists were paraded on state television
to admit their guilt after being arrested on various
charges related to their reporting for domestic and
overseas news outlets.29
•  Increasing verbal abuse by pro-CCP users. Since
2004, CCP and government officials at all levels
have recruited and trained an army of paid web
commentators, known informally as the Fifty Cent
Party. Their tasks include posting progovernment
remarks, tracking public opinion, disrupting or diverting criticism, and participating in public online
chats with officials to provide the appearance of
state-citizen interaction. In tandem with the crackdown that began in 2013, social-media observers
like Oiwan Lam of Global Voices noted a more coordinated and nastier use of insults on Sina Weibo
to attack those who voiced liberal viewpoints.30
Indeed, some of the intellectuals who abandoned
Sina Weibo during 2013—such as law professor He
Weifang, who had more than 1.1 million followers—
attributed their decisions as much to this verbal
abuse from aggressive CCP supporters as to fears
of direct official reprisal.31
Promotion of official narratives
Such repressive measures have been combined with
an increase in resources devoted to amplifying official voices and directing citizen critiques to official
channels, such as formal anticorruption complaint
platforms. This approach to information control is
not new. During the Hu era, the party also sought to
proactively promote certain content and position
party-controlled media as the main (and sometimes
exclusive) source of information on breaking news
events, even as it marginalized independent news
www.freedomhouse.org

on microblogging platforms, slowly overtaking or
displacing the news feeds of more liberal, commercialized outlets. A comparison of two lists of the 25
most influential media accounts on Sina Weibo—released by Sina at the end of 2012 and in early 2014—
shows that the CCP-run People’s Daily displaced the
popular financial magazine Caijing in the top spot.34
Interestingly, the 2014 list also features the appearance of six thematic feeds published by Sina itself,
another potential tactic for increasing control over
mainstream microblog debate and news dissemination (see Figure 1 on next page). Depending on how
manipulated one believes the ranking to be, these
and other changes reflect either a desire to increase
the credibility of more tightly controlled outlets or
an actual increase in their influence compared with
other sources.
Beyond the social-media sphere, “Control 2.0” is
clearly reflected in the censorship and propaganda
directives that are distributed to news outlets,
websites, and portals. They often allow key staterun outlets to cover potentially damaging news in
a timely but selective manner, then require other
media to restrict their reporting to the established
narrative. The aim is to preempt unfavorable coverage by bloggers, foreign journalists, and the more
aggressive commercial news outlets (see Case Study
1, Page 13).
The application of this strategy under Xi is evident in
an analysis by Freedom House researchers of leaked
censorship and propaganda directives published
between November 2012 and May 2014 (see Figure
2). Of the more than 300 directives examined, not
surprisingly, 294 ordered some form of negative ac11

 SPECIAL REPORT: The Politburo’s Predicament

Figure 1. Regaining the Upper Hand: The Influence of Media
Outlets on Weibo, 2012-14

At the end of 2012 and in early 2014,
the internet portal Sina released lists of
the 25 most influential media accounts
on its Weibo microblogging platform.1
Freedom House researchers analyzed
the two lists, categorizing each outlet
based on its closeness to the CCP.
Although all news outlets in China
are state owned, some, such as the
national broadcaster China Central
Television, are closely affiliated with the
party, while financial magazines and
more liberal, commercialized papers
have a degree of independence.
The two lists show that by 2014,
sources linked to the party and Weibo
feeds published by Sina itself had
displaced commercialized sources
and outlets based in Hong Kong or the
United States. For example, the CCP
mouthpiece the People’s Daily replaced
the financial magazine Caijing in the top
slot. An account maintained by the Wall
Street Journal’s Chinese edition disappeared from the list, but one operated
by the U.S. National Basketball Association gained a position, though it is not
strictly a news outlet. The addition of six
Sina feeds (covering breaking news, entertainment, international news, sports,
finance, and China news) is especially
noticeable, and could represent another
tactic for increasing control over mainstream microblog content.
Depending on how manipulated one
believes the rankings to be (they do not
correlate exactly with the number of
followers), the 2012–14 changes reflect
either a desire to increase the credibility of more tightly controlled outlets
or an actual increase in their influence
compared with other sources.

25 most influential
media accounts
Centrally
controlled

CCP
Sina
Commercialized
Hong Kong
Foreign
more
independent

2012
Foreign 1

Sina 0

Hong
Kong 2

CCP 8

Commercialized 14

2014

CCP 11
Sina 6

Commercialized
7

Hong
Kong 0

Foreign 1

1.  “Weibo Influence 2012: Media” [Translation] (accessed April 2014), http://data.weibo.com
/summary/2012year/influence; Weibo Changing List [Translation] (accessed April 2014),
http://data.weibo.com/top/influence/media (screenshots on file with author).

12

tion, such as deletion of content or refraining from
independent investigations. However, approximately
one-third, or 109 directives, also required some form
of corresponding positive action, primarily using the
coverage by more tightly controlled official news
sources, such as Xinhua, as the sole basis for any
reporting on the topic in question. In addition, 24
directives required only positive action, demanding
that media outlets or online portals publish, post,
or promote a particular article in their coverage or
on their home pages. The following directive, issued
on March 12, 2014, illustrates the standard method
of promoting Xinhua copy while restricting all other
sources:
Take heed to delete the article ‘39 Missing in Shanxi
Tunnel Explosion.’ Related print and broadcast
content must only use information from relevant
government authorities and Xinhua wire copy.35

D. Types of content targeted
for censorship
Among the topics targeted for censorship in China
is a contingent of long-standing taboos, such as
the writings of prominent dissidents, unfavorable
coverage of CCP leaders, calls for greater autonomy
in Tibet and Xinjiang, Taiwanese independence and
democracy, and the Falun Gong spiritual group.36
Also included are historic crimes—certain Mao-era
atrocities and the June 4, 1989, massacre of protesters on and around Tiananmen Square—as well
as more recent systematic rights abuses against
dissidents and religious and ethnic minorities. The
restrictions on both traditional media coverage and
internet communications related to these topics
have been well documented in a variety of academic
and other studies.37
An additional facet of media and internet controls,
largely unique to China, is the regular, often daily
issuance of highly specific state and party directives
to news outlets and websites on whether and how to
cover newsworthy events on any number of topics,
far beyond the established taboos described above.
While the existence of this system is widely recognized, the actual content of the directives is less commonly known. Indeed, until several years ago, it was
extremely difficult to obtain copies of the instructions.
But in an example of the challenges the party faces in
keeping its internal documents secret in the internet
age, a growing number of media directives are being
leaked and posted online.

 Freedom House

Figure 2. Communist Party Media Controls: Censorship and Propaganda

Media directives in China include both negative actions—instructions to refrain from publishing content—
and positive actions—promotion of official narratives or sources, especially Xinhua news agency. Of 318
directives issued between November 2012 and May 2014 and analyzed by Freedom House, 185 ordered
only negative actions, 109 ordered both negative and positive actions, and 24 called for positive actions
only. Xinhua was specifically mandated as a guiding source in 74 of the directives.
Negative only

Negative + Positive

185

109

24

Positive only

case study 1. Control 2.0 in the Age of Social Media: The Bo Xilai Trial
Media coverage of the August 2013 trial of Bo Xilai, the
former Chongqing Communist Party secretary and Politburo member, was a prime example of the CCP’s Control
2.0 strategy and its evolution in the age of social media.
The strategy entails proactively setting the news agenda
by allowing key state-run outlets to cover potentially
damaging news in a timely but selective manner, then
requiring other media to restrict their reporting to the
established narrative.
During Bo’s trial on charges of bribery, embezzlement,
and abuse of power, foreign media were barred from the
courtroom, and only 19 reporters from Chinese state
media were allowed to attend. Most coverage consisted
of wire copy from the official Xinhua news agency or
other approved sources, while journalists’ social-media
accounts were kept on a short leash. This was in keeping
with a series of propaganda directives issued before and
during the event. For example, the following instructions
were reportedly issued by the Central Propaganda De-

partment on August 20, two days before the trial opened:
The media must absolutely follow Xinhua wire copy
as the standard in covering the Bo Xilai trial. Heads
and sponsors of news media must conscientiously
strengthen monitoring of the weibo and blogs of
subordinates.1
The court in Jinan took the unprecedented steps of
releasing regular updates on the proceedings via a
microblog account and publishing a partial transcript on
its website,2 but the excerpts were selective and omitted
portions of the trial that touched on high-level official
involvement in some of Bo’s decisions.3 The releases
effectively directed netizen discussion toward sensationalist aspects of the case, including new revelations
about the dysfunctions of the defendant’s family life and
the details of exotic meat that his son brought back from
Africa.4 Bo was ultimately convicted and sentenced to
life in prison.

1.  “Ministry of Truth: The Bo Xilai Trial,” China Digital Times, August 20, 2013, http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/08/ministry-of-truth-the
-bo-xilai-trial-2/.
2.  8 Yue 22 Ri Bo Xilai An Tingshen Jilu,” [August 22nd Bo Xilai Court Case Transcript], People’s Daily, August 27, 2013, http://politics
.people.com.cn/n/2013/0827/c1001-22705324.html.
3.  See Keith Zhai, “Bo Xilai trial transcripts censored, sources say,” South China Morning Post, August 26, 2013, http://www.scmp
.com/news/china/article/1299432/bo-xilai-trial-transcripts-censored-sources-say; “Bo Xilai’s trial (day 5): Wang Lijun defected after
exposure of illicit relationship with GuKailai, says Bo,” South China Morning Post, August 26, 2013, http://www.scmp.com/news
/china-insider/article/1299447/bo-xilais-trial-day-5-wang-lijun-defected-after-exposure-illicit; and Brian Spegele, “China’s Bo Coverage:
Extensive and Selective, ” Wall Street Journal China Realtime (blog), August 24, 2013, http://stream.wsj.com/story/bo-xilai/SS-2-42626
/SS-2-308457/.
4.  Carlos Tejada, Liyan Qi and Kersten Zhang, “What Meat Did Bo Guagua Bring From Africa?,” Wall Street Journal China Realtime (blog),
August 24, 2013, http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2013/08/24/what-meat-did-bo-guagua-bring-back-from-africa/.

www.freedomhouse.org

13

 SPECIAL REPORT: The Politburo’s Predicament

Figure 3. Most
Commonly
Censored Breaking
News Content

In addition to longstanding taboo
topics, censors
in China target
breaking news
content on a variety
of subjects. The
breakdown below is
based on an analysis of 318 party and
government censorship directives
issued between
November 2012
and May 2014.
Official wrongdoing

72
Innocuous official
activity

56
Health & safety

52
Civil society

32
Foreign affairs

30
Media & censorship
26

Economics

The California-based website China Digital Times
(CDT) has become especially adept at obtaining
leaked instructions and publishing them in both Chinese and English under the facetious Orwellian moniker “Directives from the Ministry of Truth.”38 While it is
difficult to verify their authenticity beyond the efforts
of CDT staff, the leaked directives often match visible
shifts in coverage and are generally treated as credible
by observers of Chinese media.
Between November 1, 2012, and May 3, 2014, CDT
published over 400 media directives issued by central
and provincial authorities. Although the sample is
by no means exhaustive, it is sufficiently robust and
detailed to provide insight into several aspects of CCP
information controls and the party’s sensitivity toward
various types of content since the leadership change.
An analysis by Freedom House researchers of 318
instructions from the central authorities during the
first year and a half of the Xi leadership yielded several
significant findings.
1. Wide range of topics censored.
The topics targeted for censorship or other forms
of manipulation by the Chinese authorities are far
broader than mere criticism of the regime, dissident
activities, or perennially censored issues. The seven
most commonly targeted topical categories of emerging news were as follows:
•  Government or Communist Party official wrongdoing (72 directives). Among these, the forms of
wrongdoing or alleged wrongdoing that were most
commonly deemed sensitive were corruption (39
directives), violence by state actors (25 directives),
and sex scandals (8 directives).
•  Seemingly innocuous or even positive official
activity (56 directives), including official appearances, speeches, policy initiatives, or governmentinitiated reforms, discussion of which the authorities sought to control.
•  Public health or safety (52 directives), including
news or commentary about environmental pollution, such as a February 2014 study of smog in
Beijing;39 natural disasters, such as the April 2013
earthquake in Sichuan;40 manmade accidents, such
as a November 2013 oil-pipeline explosion in Qingdao;41 violent attacks, such as the May 2014 train
station attack in Urumqi;42 and food or drug safety,
such as contamination of children’s food.43
•  Foreign affairs (30 directives), including news
related to the United States (such as the comments
and meetings of President Barack Obama), North

18

14

Korea, Japan, and Ukraine, among other countries.
•  Civil society (32 directives), including news related
to protests, civic initiatives, the detention of prominent activists and their remarks, such as reformist
lawyer Xu Zhiyong’s defense statement at his trial in
January 2014.
•  Media sector and censorship policies (26 directives). A notable proportion of these instructions
(9 directives) involved efforts to limit criticism or
damaging stories about flagship state outlets like
Xinhua or CCTV.
•  The economic sphere (18 directives), including
information about business disputes, economic
statistics, and pension shortfalls.
As noted above, restrictions on these topics often
entailed not a complete news blackout, but rather
various actions to control, limit, or promote the circulation of certain details, thereby distorting the information available for public consumption. They reveal
a desire to control not only information that might
present the party, propaganda organs, or officials in
a negative light, but also facts related to potentially
positive or neutral developments, including Xi’s own
anticorruption campaign.
2. A focus on news over commentary.
Of the 318 directives analyzed, 280 sought to
manage or stifle reporting of what Freedom House
researchers identified as “news”—that is, events
and stories one would expect to find on a news
wire. (Some directives are multilayered, targeting
both the factual news and related commentary on a
story.) Directives concerning editorials or web-based
commentary were far less common. A total of 103
directives targeted outlet-produced news commentary, while only 34 targeted interactive commentary
(user-generated content on forums, blogs, and
microblogs). A 2013 Harvard study of deletions on
Sina Weibo highlighted the degree to which censors
on the microblogging platform focus on “collective
action” comments rather than mere criticism of the
government.44 The above findings indicate that facts
about emerging events—and especially how mainstream media report on them—remain a key priority
for the CCP’s information control apparatus.
3. Censorship overkill.
The directives exhibited an extreme attention to
detail and a willingness to prohibit reporting on
relatively obscure topics, leading to a sense of
information-control overkill. For example, on April 10,
2014, the following directive was issued by the State

 Freedom House

Council Information Office: “At 0:49 in the music
video for Deserts Chang’s song ‘Rose-Colored You,’
the person in the ambulance is holding a ‘Free Tibet’
kerchief…. Please delete this video.”45 While the Tibet
taboo is well known, the specificity of this directive—
targeting a fleeting, mostly obstructed view of a
message written in English—indicates the incredible
scope and micromanagement of the party’s censorship apparatus.
Beyond the media directives, other signs that the
authorities are overextending information controls
have appeared in recent years. Regulatory bodies
have issued a series of new rules that restrict various forms of entertainment programming, including
popular shows on primetime television and online
streaming sites. For example, in April 2014, the State
Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film,
and Television (SAPPRFT) ordered leading videostreaming sites to remove four U.S. television shows
from their services. One of the programs, the sitcom
The Big Bang Theory, was especially popular, scoring
more than a billion views by Chinese users before its
removal.46
While the stated justification for such measures is
often to limit the proliferation of “vulgar content”
or foreign influence, an additional goal may be to
reduce competition for CCTV programming from both
provincial stations and online streaming, at a time
when the national broadcaster’s popularity (among
young viewers especially) appears to be dropping.47
Such decisions tend to generate collateral damage
for the regime, as public anger over the bans and the
arbitrary, biased censorship apparatus they represent
typically reaches well beyond the community of committed press freedom advocates.

Figure 4. Censorship of News Versus Commentary

The censorship apparatus tends to focus on news items more than
professional editorials or user-generated comments. The below breakdown is based on an analysis of 318 party and government censorship
directives issued between November 2012 and May 2014.
News

280
103

Commentary
Interactive
commentary

34

expert reviews pointed to a marked decline in traffic
and political discussion on the Sina Weibo microblogging platform.48 The regime’s increased success
appears to have resulted from more centralized
management and the strategic, simultaneous application of multiple tactics, particularly those aimed
at neutralizing the political and social impact of
online opinion leaders. Research has shown that the
vast majority of social-media users in China repost
the writings of others—especially on more sensitive topics—rather than authoring their own original
messages. 49 Consequently, the authorities’ ability
to silence an elite stratum of content producers has
generated a cascading effect on social-media debate
as a whole.50

The authorities’ ability to silence an
elite stratum of content producers has
generated a cascading effect on
social-media debate as a whole.

E. Conclusion
The actions of the new CCP leadership offer little hope
that the regime will significantly and voluntarily loosen
information controls. On the contrary, exercising such
control seems to be an even higher priority, and the
focus of an even more concerted effort, than under
the previous leadership.
Indeed, the authorities’ recent moves to regain dominance over online discourse have so far proven more
effective than similar attempts under Hu. Following
the aggressive crackdown on influential users and
expanded criminalization of microblog posts in 2013,
data from social-media analysis firms and other
www.freedomhouse.org

Nevertheless, as the Chinese authorities expand
the scope of censorship, increase the costs of
noncompliance, and issue arbitrary regulatory
decisions, they risk reinforcing the very trends they
fear. In many cases, the actions of the authorities
have provoked anger and disillusionment, as well
as active resistance.51 Even if it has been pushed
underground, public discontent over censorship
and injustice does not appear to have dissipated.52
From this perspective, the regime’s efforts to retain
its legitimacy and its hold on power in the short
term may in fact be undermining these goals in the
medium to long term.
15

 SPECIAL REPORT: The Politburo’s Predicament

Part II: Legal and Security Apparatus
A. The legacy of the Hu Jintao era
Close monitoring of the population and quick repression of perceived threats to one-party dominance are
enduring hallmarks of CCP rule in the post-1989 era.
Jiang Zemin, who led the party from 1989 to 2002 and
held the state presidency from 1993 to 2003, oversaw
crackdowns on groups like the China Democracy
Party in 1998 and Falun Gong in 1999, as well as
corresponding innovations to the security apparatus
to implement them. Even so, the decade-long tenure
of his successor, Hu Jintao, who served alongside
Jiang loyalists on the Politburo Standing Committee,
featured a dramatic expansion of the country’s security apparatus and considerable changes in the legal
system that resulted in a very different relationship
between the security state and Chinese society.
The human, financial, and bureaucratic resources
dedicated to the regime’s coercive apparatus increased tremendously during the Hu era, mirrored by
the growing prominence of the term “stability maintenance” or “stability preservation” (weiwen, short for
weihu wending) in party rhetoric. Although the term
and the emphasis on “stability above everything else”
(wending yadao yiqie) date back to the rule of Deng
Xiaoping, the rise of the shortened weiwen accelerated after 2007, prompting some observers in China
to refer to the years of Hu’s leadership as the “stability
preservation decade.”53
The term refers in part to maintaining law and order, but
it also implies taking a hard line against peaceful dissent and closely monitoring the populace in the face of
rising social tensions and legitimate public grievances.
Key components on the implementation side include
state intelligence and police agencies, such as the Public Security Bureau (PSB); paramilitary forces like the
People’s Armed Police; extralegal CCP-based entities
like stability-maintenance units or the 610 Office;54 and
local administrative enforcers called chengguan.
16

Between 2002 and 2012, the reported budget
dedicated to internal security increased from 134.8
billion yuan ($16.2 billion) to 702 billion yuan ($111
billion), ultimately surpassing published figures for
the military budget.55 Surveillance also intensified,
as tens of millions of new closed-circuit cameras
were installed,56 monitoring by party street committees and informants increased,57 and new initiatives
extended the presence of party representatives into
private-sector entities like law firms and internet
companies.58
This expansion was driven by a number of factors,
including the opportunities and threats presented
by technological advancements, the greater availability of financial resources amid a rapidly growing economy, and the regime’s rising insecurity in
the face of a better-educated and more assertive
citizenry. Internal CCP dynamics also played a role,
as influential individuals within the security apparatus—most notably Politburo Standing Committee
member Zhou Yongkang—took advantage of events
like the “color revolutions” in Eastern Europe, the
Beijing Olympics, and the Arab Spring to press for
more resources.
In a parallel development during the latter half of the
Hu era, the regime turned away from an earlier push
for legal norms and judicial professionalism. The first
years of the Hu-led Politburo Standing Committee
had featured reforms that created limited autonomy
for judges, and at least one major decision acknowledged the constitution as a legal basis for protecting
citizens’ rights.59 However, these gains were rolled
back after more citizens and lawyers began challenging repressive party policies through the courts, and
after courts proved incapable of meeting rising public
expectations. Citizens increasingly turned to nonjudicial petitions, which officials interpreted as a sign that
the courts were failing to maintain social control—the
central purpose of the legal reforms.60

 Freedom House

As a result, scholars tracking rule of law developments
have repeatedly noted a clear stalling in the progress of
legal reforms and even a reversal beginning in 2006.61
In 2008, after Wang Shengjun, a veteran of the party’s
security apparatus with no formal legal training, was
appointed as chief justice of the Supreme People’s
Court (SPC), the doctrine of the “Three Supremes” was
promoted in the judiciary, reminding judges to place
the interests of the party above the law. As Wang noted
in a June 2008 media interview, judges should consider
“the supremacy of Party work, the supremacy of popular interests, and the supremacy of the constitution
and law,” in that order of importance.62 Judges were
pressured to resolve civil disputes through mediation
(sometimes forced) rather than adjudication, extralegal forms of detention expanded, and harassment of
defense attorneys intensified.
In examining the implications of these trends for
the regime’s adaptive capacity and legitimacy as Xi
prepared to take power, three points are worth special
consideration:
1. More of the population was encountering
state violence.
The expansion of the “stability maintenance” apparatus
and related practices spurred a rise in the number of
people encountering official violence from 2002 to 2012.
On the one hand, those perceived to pose a challenge
to one-party rule continued to face harsh repression. This category included individuals who explicitly
advocated democratic change or started political parties, like Liu Xiaobo and Guo Quan, respectively. Both
men were sentenced to 10 or more years in prison in
2009.63 On the other hand, as other Chinese became
more active in asserting their rights—whether by
petitioning against abuses of power or, in the case of a
new generation of human rights attorneys, seeking to
defend fellow citizens from violations—they too began
to encounter abductions, beatings, and torture.
Each year from 2007 to 2012 brought renewed restrictions on dissent surrounding a politically sensitive
anniversary or event.64 The year 2011, coinciding with
the Arab Spring, featured one of the worst crackdowns on civil society activists in recent memory, with
dozens abducted and held incommunicado for weeks
or months.65 In a 2011 congressional testimony, Duihua Foundation executive director John Kamm said,
“Based on our analysis of sentencing trends … we have
concluded that there are now more people serving
[prison] sentences for political offenses in China than
www.freedomhouse.org

at any time since 1989, the year of the Tiananmen
Square crackdown.”66
In addition to political and legal activists, the regime
stepped up its repression of those who asserted their
religious rights or ethnic identity during Hu’s leadership. The CCP devoted considerable resources to
suppressing Falun Gong and coercing adherents into
renouncing their beliefs, typically through the use
of violence.67 Hundreds of thousands of adherents
were sentenced to labor camps and prison terms,
making them the largest contingent of prisoners of
conscience in the country.68 Many were detained
and punished for simply possessing spiritual texts in
the privacy of their homes,69 or for taking actions like
printing homemade leaflets to inform others about
abuses against fellow believers.70
Underground Christian congregations also reported
growing harassment, ranging from arrests to indirect
pressure on utility companies to deny them services.71
The suppression of antigovernment protests and
ethnic clashes in Tibet and Xinjiang beginning in 2008
and 2009 included new rounds of abductions, imprisonment, torture, and executions, in some instances
affecting hundreds or thousands of people at a time.72
Official statistics gathered by the Duihua Foundation
illustrate a dramatic rise in the number of trials and
indictments for “endangering state security” beginning
in 2008, with many of those punished believed to be
Tibetans and Uighurs.73

The expansion of the “stability
maintenance” apparatus spurred a rise
in the number of people encountering
official violence from 2002 to 2012.
Some observers may argue that even after this expansion, the number of Chinese subjected to the most
severe forms of political repression remained small
compared with the total population. However, a much
broader swath of society, including many citizens with
no links to political dissent or ethnic and religious
minorities, encountered state violence or injustice on
a lower level. This category of victims encompasses
people attacked by abusive law enforcement agents
like chengguan, riot police, or thugs implementing
forced evictions, as well as those subjected to torture
and wrongful conviction in ordinary legal cases. Many
became petitioners in an effort to obtain justice, often
17

 SPECIAL REPORT: The Politburo’s Predicament

bringing them into contact with even harsher repressive measures.
2. Less violent but still coercive tactics were also
employed.
Part of the subtlety and sophistication of the “stability maintenance” apparatus under Hu rested in its
use of restrictive but not necessarily violent tactics
to suppress dissent and minimize grassroots unrest.
These include widespread surveillance, pressure on
family members to stop a relative’s protests, and the
use of both “carrots” (like monetary compensation)
and “sticks” (threats of dismissal, loss of pension, or
arrest) to discourage residents from petitioning higher
authorities or collectively protesting.74 On the surface
these tactics may successfully curb outward displays
of public discontent, but by failing to address the root
of citizens’ grievances, they also risk alienating people
from the regime.
3. Stability maintenance policies generated inefficiency and new challenges for regime legitimacy
and social stability.
The backsliding on judicial reforms produced disillusionment within the legal profession and reduced
popular trust in the courts, contributing to growing
protests. The latter dynamic was reinforced by the
increase in internet and social-media access, as news
of official injustice provoked public outcries, online
and offline.75

Ironically, the expansion of the security
apparatus coincided with a rapid
increase in street protests, social unrest,
and rights activism.
At the same time, the prerogatives and attributes
of the “stability maintenance” apparatus itself led to
waste, inefficiency, and additional abuses. To enhance
their stature and secure additional resources, local
authorities in some regions would respond to a single
petition or act of protest with escalating repression,
engulfing family members or the wider community.
One extreme example of such excesses is the $10
million that Shandong Province authorities reportedly spent on enforcing the house arrest of blind legal
activist Chen Guangcheng.76
According to one study by a Chinese professor,
despite the increase in central government spending
18

on internal security, local governments were required
to collect extra revenue to cover part of the stabilityrelated expenditures. The funds were often generated
in ways that undermined citizens’ rights (fines for
violating family-planning regulations, selling collective land to developers, or extracting fees from local
businesses), further contributing to tensions in statesociety relations.77 It is therefore not surprising that
the expansion of the security apparatus coincided
with a rapid increase in street protests, social unrest,
and rights activism.78
As these problems multiplied, Chinese scholars and
some domestic media outlets began raising concerns
about the country’s “stability maintenance” policies.79
The authorities attempted to make adjustments,
urging local authorities to limit the use of violence in
responding to protests, or emphasizing preemptive
monitoring, temporary detention, and even resolution
of grievances to prevent such protests—an approach
known as “comprehensive social-order management”
in many party documents.
Still, such admonishments were drowned out in
practice by ever harsher and more onerous security
operations, culminating in the run-up to the 18th
Party Congress in November 2012, which included a
massive lockdown in Beijing and nationwide restrictions on petitioners, human rights defenders, Falun
Gong practitioners, and others.80 Meanwhile, violent
acts against symbols of authority during protests,
public outcries against abuses of the labor camp
system, and a local revolt triggered by the death in
custody of a village leader highlighted the costs to
the regime’s legitimacy of an overzealous coercive
apparatus.

B. The new CCP leadership’s approach to
the rule of law
Following the backsliding on judicial reforms in the latter years of the Hu era, and partly in response to dissatisfaction within legal circles and the general public,
the CCP leadership under Xi has attempted to signal a
shift in approach, both rhetorically and through some
actions—all while retaining “stability maintenance” as
a priority and avoiding reforms that might challenge
party control over the judiciary. Between November
2012 and May 2014,81 the new leadership’s adjustments took several forms.
1. Reshaping the meaning of ‘rule of law’
In two speeches soon after he became CCP general

 Freedom House

secretary—in December 2012 and in February 2013—
Xi stressed the importance of the constitution and
promotion of the rule of law. According to state media,
he said, “No organization or individual should be put
above the constitution and the law.”82 Similar rhetorical acknowledgment of the need for judicial reform
appeared in key policy documents such as the Third
Plenum resolution issued in November 2013.83 This
represented a welcome change in tone compared
with the period of 2008 to 2012, during which the
doctrine of the “Three Supremes” was widely propagated among judges, explicitly placing party interests
above legal norms.84
Nevertheless, such superficially progressive rhetoric
has been offset by outright rejection of judicial independence and constitutionalism in internal directives.
This was starkly evident in Document No. 9, the internal party memorandum titled, “A Communiqué on the
Current State of the Ideological Sphere,” reportedly
issued in April 2013. The document warns cadres of
the dangers of “false” ideas like “Western constitutional democracy” and its components, such as judicial
independence.85 Subsequent official reports have emphasized the importance of constructing “the socialist
rule of law with Chinese characteristics,” meaning a
pliant form of legalism that serves the party’s aims.86
The regime also revealed its stance on the issue
through its response to an episode in early 2013,
when some members of the legal community, civil
society, and the media sector called for genuine
adherence to the constitution. In January, Guangdong Province censors altered a New Year editorial
by the liberal Southern Weekly that had urged greater
respect for constitutional rights, sparking the biggest
standoff over press freedom in years.87 Over the following months, party-controlled media and affiliated
intellectuals published a series of articles, editorials,
and commentaries that rejected any interpretation of
“constitutionalism” that would require CCP actions to
be placed under constitutional or judicial oversight.
A May 2013 editorial in the journal Red Flag argued
that constitutionalism was a feature of “capitalism and
bourgeoisie dictatorship.” A subsequent article in the
journal Party Construction claimed that constitutionalism would mean abolishing the CCP’s leadership
role and overthrowing the “socialist regime.”88
2. Making minor improvements to upgrade
judicial performance
Despite its rejection of wholesale reform, the CCP has
taken steps to address discontent within legal circles
www.freedomhouse.org

and improve public trust in the judiciary, while taking
care not to undermine party control or its ability to
suppress perceived threats to its rule.
For example, the leadership has made an effort to revive judicial professionalism, an aspect of legal reform
that eroded during the latter part of the Hu Jintao
era. The most prominent manifestation of this was
the March 2013 appointment of Zhou Qiang, a man
with a legal education, to replace Wang Shengjun,
who lacked such qualifications, as head of the SPC.89
Wang’s promotion of the “Three Supremes” doctrine
had triggered widespread frustration and thousands
of resignations among the country’s judges.
The party has also made small moves to increase transparency and experimented with limiting interference
by local officials in the work of nearby courts. After
these goals were outlined in the November 2013 Third
Plenum resolution, the SPC ordered courts to publish
written judgments on a website accessible to the public beginning on January 1, 2014.90 In June 2014, the
government announced that six provinces and municipalities would host pilot programs to remove control
over local judicial funding and appointments from party
cadres at the same bureaucratic level, with provinciallevel officials making such decisions instead.91 Even
these tentative efforts have their limits, however. For
example, decisions involving state secrets (potentially
including politically motivated prosecutions) were
excluded from the new publication guidelines.92
3. Deflecting petitioners
Officials under Xi have initiated several reforms to the
petitioning system in an apparent effort to reduce
the number of petitioners arriving in Beijing to seek
justice from the central authorities.
First, the government is promoting the use of online
and written petitions to help curb in-person appeals.93
Second, in February 2014, the CCP Central Committee and the State Council issued an opinion instructing lower-level authorities to separate law-related
petitions (complaints regarding a court decision) from
other types and ensure that the former are returned
to the judiciary for processing and kept out of the
petitioning bureaucracy.94 Third, the same opinion
prohibited officials from accepting complaints from
petitioners who have “leapfrogged” over lower authorities rather than working their way up the chain of
command.95
There are reasons to doubt the effectiveness of these
19

 SPECIAL REPORT: The Politburo’s Predicament

measures in improving the quality of responses to petitioners or curbing the abuses they routinely encounter.
Moreover, the changes in official guidelines appear side
by side with sections urging local officials to maintain
“social stability,” a signal that such officials are still
ultimately responsible for curbing petitioning activity.
According to Chinese legal expert Carl Minzner, in the
absence of more fundamental institutional reforms,
that [social stability] imperative will likely override
tentative efforts to proceduralize or separate out
the “law-related petitions” from other petitions. So
repression will continue … and Chinese authorities will encounter significant difficulties in carrying out their announced policies of trying to steer
law-related citizen grievances back towards legal
and judicial channels.96
Similarly, Victor Clemens, a researcher with Chinese
Human Rights Defenders, a rights group that maintains regular contact with petitioners throughout
China, explained the current dynamics as follows:
Regulations over the past 1.5 years have been
geared to trying to keep petitioners off the
streets—and away from Beijing—but it is hard
to say if these goals are being achieved. Authorities have claimed that they are receiving fewer
petitions in Beijing, but that of course raises questions about what is happening to those folks who
ordinarily would be appealing to central authorities. Our vague sense is that their grievances are
not being handled or resolved any better than
before, and that such folks from the provinces are
simply being “contained” closer to home, like in
“legal education” centers.97
4. Replacing ‘reeducation through labor’
Perhaps the most significant positive change to the
CCP’s coercive apparatus since November 2012 has
been the abolition of the “reeducation through labor”
(RTL) camp system.
A relic of the Mao era, the network of camps has
long been a focus of both domestic and international
criticism. Throughout the Hu period, proposals were
submitted to reform or dismantle the system, which
allows police to sentence citizens for up to four years
without trial. However, the reform plans never took
hold, as both local and central authorities found the
camps to be an efficient and convenient mechanism
for dealing with various “troublemakers.” At the end
of 2012, there were thought to be about 350 camps
20

with several hundred thousand inmates, though official and unofficial estimates varied widely, with some
inmate figures reaching into the millions.98
In January 2013, to the surprise of many observers, the
newly appointed head of the CCP Political-Legal Committee (PLC), Meng Jianzhu, announced at an official
meeting that the RTL system would be phased out in
the coming year.99 Reports soon emerged of detainees—including political and religious prisoners—being
released from notorious camps like Masanjia in Liaoning
Province.100 The abolition of RTL was further solidified
with a short declaration in the Third Plenum resolution,101 and with a resolution by the National People’s
Congress (NPC) Standing Committee that December.102
However, even as camps have been closed or repurposed and many detainees released, the party and
state have shied away from actions that might signal
a more fundamental break with the abuses of the
RTL system, such as prosecuting guards accused of
torture or permitting courts to accept petitions for
redress from former detainees.103
Several factors appear to have contributed to the final
dismantling of the RTL system. First, the change was
initiated from a high level within the CCP, whereas previous proposals emerged from the much weaker NPC
or the advisory Chinese People’s Political Consultative
Conference (CPPCC). 104 The new leadership was likely
motivated by a desire to signal a break from the past,
to improve perceptions of its reform credentials, and to
weaken certain security officials affiliated with outgoing Politburo Standing Committee member and PLC
chief Zhou Yongkang. Second, in addition to international criticism, domestic opposition to the camps had
grown in recent years. Throughout 2011 and 2012 and
into 2013, a series of cases of RTL-related abuse were
exposed and garnered public attention.105
Third, alternatives were developed to deal with inmate
populations that central authorities still considered a
threat to CCP rule or social order. These solutions included “custody and education” centers for sex workers,106 “rehabilitation” centers for drug offenders,107
and “community correction” centers for criminals
on probation or serving a suspended sentence.108 A
network of extralegal “black jails” had arisen in recent
years to handle petitioners, while Falun Gong cases
were already being redirected to either judicial channels or extralegal forced-conversion centers.109
Indeed, for political and religious activists, the aboli-

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tion of RTL has brought little relief from the risk of
detention. Since late 2012, the authorities have
employed judicial prosecutions, as well as short-term
criminal and administrative detention, against civil
society activists, social-media users charged with
spreading “rumors,” and Falun Gong adherents. Some
petitioners released from camps were rearrested
when they continued their petitioning activities, and
were then sent to mental hospitals.110 While in some
cases the abolition of RTL has resulted in shorter
periods in custody, in others it has opened the door to
longer incarceration.

system has yet to be passed, it is governed by interim
provisions issued by central and provincial authorities.118 Provincial regulations explicitly place the most
stringent monitoring—including daily phone calls and
weekly written “thought reports”—on individuals whose
past or potential offenses relate to political, religious,
or petitioning activities, particularly during politically
sensitive national holidays or official meetings.119 The
regulations also require subjects of monitoring to participate three times a month in some form of organized
“legal education” session, often a euphemism for political indoctrination or forced conversion.120

Outside the realm of formal institutions, the number
and use of various extralegal “reeducation” facilities appears to have expanded.111 Such sites operate under different names, most commonly “legal
education centers”—often referred to by activists
as “brainwashing centers”112—but also “petitioner
education centers” and “reprimand centers.”113 It is
difficult to ascertain how many such facilities exist.
Accounts from official websites, former detainees,
and lawyers who have attempted to investigate them
indicate that hundreds operate throughout China.114
According to prominent attorney Teng Biao, abusive
conditions at these centers can exceed the horrors
of RTL camps:

C. Evolution of the security apparatus
under the new leadership

Torture occurs far more frequently and cruelly in
detention centers than in jails, and labor camps
were still worse, but the so-called legal education
centers are the worst of all. The number of innocent citizens tortured to death in these centers
across China is in four figures.115
For those released from custody, an expanded community corrections system has been employed to monitor
their activities. The system combines extensive surveillance by officers and resident informants with the
threat of 30 days’ detention. It is used to control known
petitioners, rights defenders, or religious activists in a
particular locale, as well as to track ordinary convicts
on probation or serving suspended sentences.
Originally introduced via pilot projects in 2003 and
nationwide in 2009, the community corrections
system has grown rapidly under the Xi leadership, in
tandem with the abolition of RTL. Between mid-2012
and early 2014, the total number of people who had
passed through the system quadrupled, from 400,000
to 1.8 million.116 As of May 2014, 709,000 people were
in community corrections, according to the Ministry
of Justice.117 Although legislation formalizing the
www.freedomhouse.org

The new leadership has apparently attempted to address the inefficiencies and public discontent surrounding the enormous “stability maintenance” apparatus left
behind by the Hu administration. However, rather than
shrinking the system, some of these efforts have actually expanded its size and influence on governance.
1. Consolidating control at the top
One of the key questions hanging over the CCP leadership transition in November 2012 was the possible
impact of Zhou Yongkang’s retirement. Zhou had risen
through the party ranks over the previous decade,
joining the Politburo Standing Committee in 2007 and
taking over the portfolio of the PLC—the party committee overseeing judges, prosecutors, and a wide
range of internal security and intelligence agencies.
Under Zhou’s watch, the power, budget, and influence
of the security apparatus had increased dramatically.121 This led some observers to speculate that Zhou’s
departure and the transfer of the PLC portfolio to
Meng Jianzhu—a member of the Politburo but not its
more powerful Standing Committee—might weaken
the status of the internal security forces.
However, a close examination of developments since
November 2012 shows that the bureaucratic authority of the security apparatus has in fact grown, even as
the influence of Zhou and those close to him wanes.
For example, although Meng ranks lower than did
Zhou, it has become clear that his immediate supervisor is Xi Jinping himself. This relationship was consolidated with the creation of the National Security Committee in November 2013. The new body is headed by
Xi and tasked with overseeing both foreign affairs and
domestic security.122
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 SPECIAL REPORT: The Politburo’s Predicament

Zhou’s retirement and the anticorruption investigation
that has since closed in on him appear to be aimed at
removing a potential threat to Xi’s power—especially
after 2012 rumors that Zhou had plotted against him
with disgraced Politburo member Bo Xilai—rather
than signaling a reduction of the security apparatus’s
role in governance.
Promise Letter

2. Mainstreaming into overall governance
The integration of the security apparatus into the
main axes of political leadership has been apparent
at lower levels of the party’s bureaucracy as well. A recent academic study tracking PLC-related personnel
changes in the November 2012 rotation found that
although security officials like PSB leaders no longer
chaired the PLCs in many regions, more senior CCP
cadres—especially deputy party secretaries—have replaced them, as opposed to judges or other members
of the legal profession.123

case study 2.
Defusing Environmental
Protests in Kunming
Copy of document sent by Kunming authorities
to work units for signature on May 13, 2013, and
subsequently circulated on WeChat
This unit has conveyed to me the situation related to the
“CNPC’s Yunnan refinery project.” I hereby promise the
following:
1 I will not participate in any rally or demonstration
related to “CNPC’s Yunnan refinery project.”
2 I  will not paste car stickers with content related to the
“CNPC’s Yunnan refinery project,” and will not via Weixin
[WeChat], Weibo, QQ, or other similar internet media
means of transmission relay related content.
3 I will not publicly express any personal views on the
matter.
4 My family members will not participate in the above
activities.

Officials in the southwestern city of Kunming employed
a mixture of surveillance, threats, and concessions to
quash a protest movement against a new state-owned
petrochemical plant that residents feared would release
paraxylene, a suspected carcinogen.
In February 2013, China National Petroleum Corp.
(CNPC) announced that it had obtained approval for
construction of an oil refinery in Anning, part of the
Kunming municipality. The local government was
simultaneously considering approval for an additional
facility to process paraxylene, a byproduct of the refining process. On May 3, shortly after construction began,
messages calling on Kunming residents to stage a
protest went viral on social media. The following day,
approximately 2,000 people gathered in the city’s commercial district. Over 100 police officers surrounded the
group, but the demonstration passed peacefully. As one
eyewitness noted, “After all, Kunming’s security forces
have to breathe the city’s air just the same as anyone.”1
As news spread of plans for another protest on May
14, the Kunming authorities took steps to prevent it.

22

 Freedom House

These and other personnel changes that occurred in
November 2012 point to a dispersal of power over the
security and law enforcement system among several
officials at each bureaucratic level. While this breaks
up the command structure created under Zhou, it
does nothing to reduce the size or importance of the
apparatus. In fact, it causes security priorities to seep
into a wide array of governance areas, a process the
study’s authors term the “securitization of the state.”
3. Adding resources
As noted above, the official budget for internal security began to outstrip that of national defense in 2011,
drawing much international attention and speculation
about the domestic threats to the CCP’s power.124 The
trend continued through March 2013, when the government’s annual budget reportedly allocated 769.1
billion yuan ($125 billion) for internal security and
740.6 billion yuan ($119 billion) for national defense.125

Employees at public institutions or companies affiliated
with the government were required to come to work
that day. Both government employees and a range of
middle-class professionals—including accountants,
doctors, teachers, and architects—were urged to sign a
written promise not to join future protests (see image at
left). Leaders of government work units were threatened
with dismissal should they participate. One prominent
radio host reported being closely monitored by his boss
to make sure that he remained at work and deleted all
of his social-media posts related to the protest.2
As a result, no large protest occurred on May 14.
However, about 2,000 people gathered on May 16, this
time in front of the provincial government buildings.3

In 2014, for the first time in over a decade, the overall
figure for internal security—including contributions
from provincial and local governments—was not
reported.126 Instead, a smaller figure representing funds
coming directly from the central government was
released: 205 billion yuan ($33 billion).127 This figure, too,
represents an increase from 2013, of approximately 5.4
billion yuan ($870 million), or nearly 3 percent.128 The
rise, though smaller than in previous years, reinforces
speculation that the overall number went unpublished
in 2014 to avoid drawing attention to the additional
resources devoted to domestic security. According to at
least one interviewee who is in regular touch with grassroots activists across China, the increase in personnel
and resources has been palpable at the ground level.129
4. Enhancing community surveillance
As noted above, as part of its “stability maintenance”
efforts, the CCP in recent years has also been empha-

There was no violence, though at least one person
was arrested. The authorities subsequently increased
their monitoring of local activists, restricted the sale of
facemasks and t-shirts used by protesters, and intensified media censorship. Meanwhile, the mayor promised
greater transparency and opened a Weibo account to
communicate with the public. On May 25, the public security department staged a “live drill” involving armored
vehicles, riot police, and police dogs, signaling to residents that future protests could be forcibly suppressed.4
The demonstrations died out, but media reports
indicated that the refinery project had been delayed,
ostensibly due to concerns about overcapacity rather
than as an explicit concession to public opinion.5

1.  “Anatomy of a protest: Kunming citizens voice concern over chemical plant,” East by Southeast (blog), May 6, 2013, http://www
.eastbysoutheast.com/anatomy-of-a-protest-kunming-citizens-voice-concern-over-chemical-plant/.
2.  Email communication and interview with former Kunming resident who wished to remain anonymous, July 2013 and June 2014.
3.  Jonathan Kaiman, “Chinese protesters take to streets in Kunming over plans for chemical plant,” The Guardian, May 16, 2013,
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/may/16/chinese-protesters-kunming-chemical-plant.
4.  Patrick Boehler, “Kunming restricts face mask and T-shirt sales ‘to prevent more environmental protests,’” South China Morning
Post, May 27, 2013, http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1247205/kunming-restricts-face-mask-and-t-shirt-sales-prevent
-more-environmental.
5.  Judy Hua and Chen Aizhu, “PetroChina delays operation of refineries on overcapacity,” Reuters, January 23, 2014, http://www.reuters
.com/article/2014/01/23/china-oil-delay-idUSL3N0KX1IN20140123; Gaurav Sharma, “China’s refining sector gets a reality check,”
Forbes, September 16, 2014, http://www.forbes.com/sites/gauravsharma/2014/09/16/chinas-refining-sector-gets-a-reality-check/.

www.freedomhouse.org

23

 SPECIAL REPORT: The Politburo’s Predicament

sizing “comprehensive social-order management,”
meaning steps to prevent protests and avoid the public
backlash that came with their forced dispersal. This approach, which includes enhanced surveillance and early
intervention, has gained further prominence under Xi.
In an October 2013 speech, Xi praised the “Fengqiao
experience” and urged cadres to follow its example as
part of his Mass Line campaign.130 The term refers to
a district in Zhejiang Province that supposedly carried out Mao’s “Four Clean-ups” political campaign in
1963 without arresting anyone. The local party leader
reported that the “masses” had taken part in public security work by monitoring, reporting on, and helping to
“reeducate” their neighbors. In November 1963, Mao
urged other regions to follow the Fengqiao example.131
Qian Gang of the University of Hong Kong’s China
Media Project explains the unusual nature of Xi’s
adoption of the term:
The reemergence of the “Fengqiao experience”
and its rise in temperature had to do directly with
the intensification of the regime of stability preservation in China. Until recently, no top Chinese
leader since Mao Zedong had ever been quoted
publicly in the People’s Daily or other state media
making remarks on the “Fengqiao experience.”
Not Deng Xiaoping. Not Jiang Zemin. Not Hu Jintao. But now Xi Jinping has broken the mold with
his “important instructions on the development of
the ‘Fengqiao experience.’”132
Shortly after Xi’s speech, an article in Guangdong
Province’s Southern Weekly newspaper presented a
contemporary example of how police were applying
the “Fengqiao experience.” In July 2013, a man whose
father had been killed in a traffic accident urged police
to investigate whether the other driver had been under
the influence of alcohol, but they failed to do so. A day
before the man planned to gather others to protest, the
authorities discovered his intention. The deputy chief
of police used one of the man’s former classmates to
urge him to accept mediation and peacefully resolve
the case. The use of friends and family to pressure individuals is a common tactic for demobilizing would-be
protesters, dubbed “relational repression” by professors
Yanhua Deng and Kevin J. O’Brien.133
The weekly describes how the man’s protest plans
were detected through a network of informants:
The town has 28 villages and two communities,
but the town police sub-station only has 27 police
24

officers.… They also hired 48 “peace managers”
stationed in each village. The peace managers’ responsibility is to get to know every household and
everything that happens in these households.… In
addition, the town employs a “grid management”
mechanism: every village has a “village working
group” and the group leader is responsible for
gathering all of the information within the “grid”
and communicating it to the police.134
5. Refocusing party members’ performance goals
The CCP’s cadre evaluation system, instituted in the
1980s, provides a unique window on the policy priorities of the party’s leadership. It is a primary method employed by the central leadership to communicate these
priorities to lower-level cadres and incentivize their
implementation. Performance targets are set for various policy areas and serve as the basis for determining
cadres’ promotion, demotion, and even dismissal. As
such, they are what ultimately motivates many officials,
so that in the case of a conflict between meeting a target and legislation barring abusive behavior to achieve
it, the former typically trumps the latter.
Not all performance targets are created equal. There
are three categories with varying influence on a
cadre’s career advancement, and the assignment of
a goal to a given category indicates its significance in
the eyes of senior officials.135
•  “Priority targets with veto power” (yipiao foujue,
literally “one-ticket veto”) – These are performance
criteria that officials must meet if they are to be
a candidate for promotion. The reference to “veto
power” reflects the fact that failure on one such target automatically cancels out positive performance
in other areas and can even lead to termination.
•  “Hard targets” (ying zhibiao) – For officials whose
advancement is not doomed by failure on a “veto
power” target, a high score on the second-tier hard
targets yields promotions and bonuses, while a low
score means a stagnating career and no additional
income. Hard targets typically consist of more
quantifiable indicators, such as the local economic
growth rate or the amount of tax revenue collected.
•  “Soft targets” (yiban zhibiao) – Soft targets are often
general criteria in fields such as education, health
care, or cultural development that are not as easily
quantifiable as hard targets and are less likely to
make or break a cadre’s career. As a result, local officials typically devote less time and attention to them.

 Freedom House

Given the impact that “veto power” targets can have
on an official’s career, one would expect them to be
reserved for a small number of policy areas. However,
the number has expanded over the years as different parts of the party bureaucracy have sought to
promote effective action on various issues.
For example, according to media reports, party authorities in the city of Dongguan, Guangdong Province, had
14 “veto power” targets by 2009.136 In some regions,
seemingly mundane indicators crept into this all-important category, including the number of pigs slaughtered, the number of activities held on a school campus, and the amount of alcohol and cigarettes sold.137
Such excesses inevitably contributed to conflicting priorities, dilution of resources, increased corruption and
faking of numerical indicators, and ultimately, reduction
in the incentive power of the target system.138
The Xi leadership set out to correct the distortions,
streamline the system, and reserve “veto power” status for a limited number of truly important issues.
In December 2013, the Organization Department of
the CCP Central Committee published a notice instructing local leaders to limit the use of “veto power”
targets.139 The directive was soon reflected in lowerlevel cadre evaluation criteria that appeared online,
calling on officials to eliminate all such targets except
for a select few, and to prohibit the establishment of
new “veto power” targets without authorization from
the central or provincial authorities.
Based on an examination of several provincial and
city-level guideline documents, 140 the main “veto
power” areas designated by the central authorities as
of May 2014 appear to be:
•  Social stability (or social management)
•  Population and family planning
•  Party discipline
Two other areas appear in many but not all such
documents, indicating that they may have been
determined by provincial authorities, or by the central
government for certain regions:
•  Environmental protection
•  Safety in production lines
Not surprisingly, “maintaining social stability” is a constant on the lists. “Social stability” targets are often
broken down into several sub-indicators. First, the
www.freedomhouse.org

documents note certain types of incidents for which
a “zero” occurrence is required, such as large protests,
collective petitions, a petitioner reaching Beijing or
the provincial capital during a sensitive political period, or Falun Gong practitioners meditating in public
or distributing leaflets.141 The lists then turn to less
politically fraught topics like criminal activity, gambling, prostitution, drug use, and fatal accidents such
as fires, factory mishaps, or traffic collisions.
The impact of each incident or other perceived threat
to social stability is assessed through a point system.
Increasingly, this includes failure to conduct “social
stability risk assessments” for official actions that
might trigger public discontent. Any official in charge
of a village, work unit, or other bureaucratic entity
whose total points drop below a certain level is subject to a “veto power” decision.142 It can be applied on
an individual basis or collectively to multiple cadres
in responsible positions. In some cases, monetary
rewards and punishments are attached to the prevention or occurrence of negative incidents.
The inclusion of family planning on the list of major priorities highlights the extent to which the regime’s highly
intrusive measures to control reproduction continue
apace under the new leadership, despite the muchtouted reform that expanded the number of families
permitted to have two children.143 It is the designation
of family planning as a “veto power” performance target
that encourages local officials to continue employing
abusive practices like forced abortion and sterilization,
despite nominal prohibition of such tactics by central
authorities. Indeed, according to the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC), at least 22
out of China’s 31 provinces retain regulations that urge
officials to employ “remedial measures” for “out-of-plan”
pregnancies, a CCP euphemism for abortions conducted without parents’ consent.144
The identification of party discipline as a “veto power”
target area is consistent with the Xi leadership’s aggressive anticorruption campaign, designed partly to
address a key source of public discontent.145 The party
discipline targets vary somewhat from place to place.
For example, in the city of Xinghua, Jiangsu Province,
actions triggering a “veto power” decision are defined
to include any disciplinary violation that results in an
investigation by the party’s disciplinary committee, as
well as “any officials who are found to be keeping ‘little
coffers,’ hidden caches of cash siphoned from public
funds.”146 Interestingly, in Xian, a “veto power” decision
appears to be triggered not by a disciplinary violation
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 SPECIAL REPORT: The Politburo’s Predicament

or action that “harmed the taxpayers’ interests,” but
only when such an incident is also discovered and
exposed by the official’s superiors or the media.147
Environmental protection is clearly an issue of rising
importance for both the public and the regime.148 The
targets related to pollution appear to focus on reducing air contamination, which has become a catalyst for
public protests even in medium-sized cities. Based on
local government websites in the provinces of Liaoning,
Hubei, and Sichuan, the environmental targets are defined to include controlling emissions involving major
pollutants, PM 2.5 airborne particles, construction, and
aging vehicles.149 In some areas, the “veto power” effect
is tied to an annual evaluation on implementation of
specified emission-reduction measures.150
It is worth noting that economic performance is not
listed as a “veto power” target, despite its importance to party legitimacy. Instead, economic growth
is typically included as a “hard target.” This is partly
because the “veto power” areas tend to focus on
preventing “negative” developments that pose an
immediate threat to party rule. A mediocre or poor
economic performance could ultimately lead to
protests and other expressions of discontent, but it
is apparently not seen as a direct threat in itself. The
December 2013 notice by the Organization Department of the Central Committee reinforced this point
by noting that gross domestic product and growthrelated targets cannot be the sole evaluation criteria
for provincial officials.151

D. Evolving targets and tactics of repression
The Xi leadership has moved to improve the image,
reorganize the structure, and refocus the goals of the
security apparatus, but it has also sought to quash
perceived threats to CCP rule with renewed energy
since the November 2012 transition. As with the crackdown on social media, the intensified repression of civil
society has combined previously employed tactics with
a more subtle, systematic, and comprehensive strategy
for weakening the country’s “rights defense movement.”
To identify trends in political repression under the new
CCP leadership, Freedom House researchers examined 17 categories of individuals or groups that are
targeted by the party-state’s coercive apparatus. These
include not just dissidents, activists, and minorities,
but also CCP members who face detention and abuse
within the party’s extralegal shuanggui disciplinary
system. Taken together, the categories represent tens
26

of millions of Chinese citizens and a wide range of human rights causes (both political and socioeconomic),
although not all members of the relevant groups are
subject to harsh repression or imprisonment.
The enclosed chart evaluates changes in the level of
repression for each of the 17 categories between the
two years preceding November 2012 and the period
since the change in leadership. The assessment draws
on the interviews conducted for this study, media
reports, and documentation and analysis by Chinese
Human Rights Defenders, the Duihua Foundation, the
China Labor Bulletin, and the CECC.
Three notable trends emerged from the assessment:
•  Overall increase in repression: Of the 17 categories, 11 experienced an increase in repression since
Xi Jinping took office as head of the CCP, indicating
an overall intensification of repression. (Five experienced a consistent level of repression, and only one
a minor decrease.)
•  Increase: grassroots rights activists, online
opinion leaders, ordinary internet users, civicminded businesspeople, CCP cadres, labor
leaders, scholars and professors, print and television journalists, Christians, Tibetans, Uighurs
•  Consistent: political dissidents, human rights
lawyers, formal nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), protest participants, Falun Gong
practitioners
•  Decrease: petitioners
•  Expansion to new targets: Those subject to public
humiliation, detention, imprisonment, and physical
abuse since November 2012 include individuals
whose activities, social status, or relationship with
the government had previously placed them on
the safe side of the party’s “red lines.” Among the
new targets were a pastor from a state-sanctioned
church, an internet entrepreneur, a businessman
with millions of social-media followers, a nationally
acclaimed lawyer, and various middle-class professionals. Party cadres also faced physical abuse, with
three reportedly beaten to death in the custody of
shuanggui officials in 2013. In several cases, people
were punished not for participating in public displays of defiance, but rather for gathering privately
to commemorate the killings on June 4, 1989, or to
practice their religious faith.
•  Especially harsh treatment of religious and ethnic
minorities: Members of religious and ethnic minori-

 Freedom House

ties (Falun Gong practitioners, Tibetans, Uighurs,
and to a lesser degree, Christians) were more likely
than other categories of victims to be subjected to
long prison sentences of 10 years or more, systematic torture, and death in custody. This tendency
was driven by a combination of party priorities,
centrally issued incentives, routine impunity, and
vilifying propaganda.

detention instead of other forms of intimidation,
such as house arrest. A large number of grassroots
activists and petitioners were subjected to brief
stints of criminal or administrative detention, typically ranging from 5 to 37 days, even if their cases
were not forwarded to prosecutors for trial and
potential imprisonment.153 Meanwhile, for Falun
Gong practitioners, the abolition of the RTL camp
system coincided with an increased use of prison
sentences on the one hand, and detention in extralegal “legal education centers” for forced conversion
on the other. Many petitioners were also sent to
extralegal detention facilities that appeared to be
proliferating under a variety of names.

Changing tactics
The assessment also clarified several ways in which
the authorities’ tactics have evolved since November
2012:
•  Shift to less overtly political charges: There has
been an increase in arrests on charges related to
assembly, such as “gathering a crowd” or “disrupting public order,” instead of more overtly political
crimes like “inciting subversion.” Some journalists,
activists, and members of the economic elite have
been detained on seemingly trumped-up charges of
fraud, bribery, illegal business activities, or prostitution. By using these charges, the authorities may
be attempting to obfuscate the political motivation
behind the arrests and suggest that they are necessary to maintain order and root out corruption.152
•  Changes in types of detention: In some cases,
authorities appear inclined to use short periods of

•  Revival of forced confessions on national television: Recalling the political campaigns of the Mao
era, such confessions were employed against online
opinion leaders and journalists, adding public humiliation to the formal punishments they faced and
serving to intimidate other would-be dissidents.154
•  Imposition of high fines: Several individuals who
were sentenced to prison terms also faced very
high fines, in some cases amounting to hundreds
of thousands of yuan. This could be an attempt by
authorities to impose an additional cost on those
who may not fear imprisonment but whose families
would be affected by financial penalties.155

Changes in Repression Level for Chinese Targets
Compared with
pre-November 2012 levels
Target category
Change in level
of repression

Increase

Minor
Increase

Consistent

Minor
Decrease

Decrease

Trend summary since November 2012

Political
dissidents
Consistent

The CCP’s attitude toward this group remained the same, though there were fewer highprofile cases of imprisonment for organizing a political party—a reflection of the changing
nature of political activism. Instead there was a crackdown on activists who met privately
to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. The authorities increasingly charged dissidents with nonpolitical crimes such as “disturbing public
order,” which may carry shorter sentences but obfuscate the true reason for punishment.

Grassroots rights
activists
Increase

The crackdown on individuals affiliated with the loosely organized New Citizens Movement
or engaging independently in grassroots activism led to the detention of hundreds of people
across the country and prison sentences for at least 20. While the leadership pursued a topdown anticorruption campaign, citizen-led anticorruption activities were harshly suppressed.
Individuals who stood in public with banners calling for officials to declare their assets were
prosecuted, and several were sentenced to prison. Anticorruption bloggers also faced reprisals. Some activists were detained merely for participating in private gatherings, representing
a tightening of political space. In March 2014, Cao Shunli died in custody from mistreatment
and denial of medical attention, the first such case involving a prominent civic activist in years.

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27

 SPECIAL REPORT: The Politburo’s Predicament

Target category
Change in level
of repression

Trend summary since November 2012

Human rights
lawyers
Consistent

Although human rights lawyers did not suffer the sort of extralegal abductions that were
employed in early 2011, they continued to face harassment and disbarment. They were
also increasingly subjected to physical attacks and administrative detention when representing clients or seeking to expose extralegal detention centers. In addition to several
lesser-known figures, two nationally prominent lawyers—Xu Zhiyong and Pu Zhiqiang—
were arrested for their activism, with the former sentenced to four years in prison.

Online opinion
leaders
Increase

Efforts to curtail the influence of online opinion leaders gained momentum in August
2013 and included arrests, interrogations, harassment, online verbal intimidation, and
shuttered accounts. As a result, numerous politically liberal commentators, including
several who had millions of followers, disappeared from what had been the premier socialmedia platform, Sina Weibo.

Ordinary
internet users
Increase

A new set of judicial interpretations issued in September 2013 expanded the criminalization of online speech, particularly for alleged “rumors.” This coincided with the
reported arrest and punishment via administrative detention of hundreds of ordinary
internet users. Even absent the threat of arrest, the guidelines contributed to a chilling
of online debate.

Civic-minded
businesspeople
Minor increase

A number of entrepreneurs were among those swept up in crackdowns on online opinion
leaders and the New Citizens Movement, in some cases because of financial support they
provided to activists. These individuals include Charles Xue, Wang Gongquan, and Li Huaping.
Dong Rubin, an internet entrepreneur, was sentenced in July 2014 to 6.5 years in prison and
fined 350,000 yuan ($57,000). The inclusion of even a few members of the economic elite
among those targeted for political repression represented a new development, and was a
reaction to their growing public influence and links to like-minded professionals.

CCP cadres
Increase

As part of Xi’s aggressive anticorruption campaign, the number of CCP members subjected to investigation, detention, and imprisonment increased. Many were held—and some
abused—in the party’s internal, extralegal shuanggui detention system. At least three
suspicious deaths of officials in custody occurred in 2013. Although this group of targets
does not garner much public sympathy, the lack of due process and the politicized selection of targets violate the rule of law, and the campaign has generated uncertainty, fear,
and displeasure among the party ranks.

Formal NGOs
Consistent

Registration requirements for certain NGOs, primarily service-oriented “social organizations,” were loosened under new regulations in most of China’s provinces and municipalities, though passage of national legislation was delayed. Some activists affiliated with
formal NGOs noted a mild decline in official intimidation as security forces turned their
attention to informal activist networks, which were viewed as more politically threatening.
However, these trends were offset by increasing pressure on other NGOs, including highlevel probes into the activities of foreign organizations. Two prominent advocacy groups
working on public health issues also faced harassment, raids, and other obstacles to their
operations due to the tightened political environment.

Petitioners
Minor decrease

The abolition of the “reeducation through labor” camp system resulted in the release of
many petitioners, as it had been the primary form of long-term detention used against
them. Nevertheless, human rights groups documented hundreds of cases of petitioners being sentenced to shorter stints of administrative detention or held in “black jails.”
Instructions for courts to handle petitions on legal matters led to speculation that
some petitioners might be spared retaliation. However, the impact of the new policies remained to be seen, as some repression appeared to simply shift from Beijing to
localities, contributing to a proliferation of “legal education centers” and other extralegal
detention facilities.

28

 Freedom House

Target category
Change in level
of repression

Trend summary since November 2012

Protest
participants
Consistent

In addition to arrests of protest organizers, various measures were taken to intimidate
past or potential participants. Expanded community surveillance facilitated official efforts to intervene early and preempt demonstrations. In some cases, concessions were
made, and officials reiterated Hu-era instructions for local security agents to avoid the
use of force when possible. Nevertheless, as in previous years, several cases of official
violence against unarmed protesters circulated on social media and made international
headlines.

Labor leaders
Minor increase

After several years in which it was unusual for a labor leader to face arrest for organizing workers or striking, several individuals were prosecuted in early 2014 for leading or
participating in a labor protest. None were sentenced to more than nine months in prison,
and all were quickly released on the basis of time served or because prosecutors dropped
charges. Nevertheless, the cases were widely publicized in state media in an apparent
effort to deter other labor activists. More generally, according to the China Labor Bulletin,
there was a noticeable increase in police interventions in the latter half of 2013, sometimes involving beatings and brief arrests. This reflected a tougher stance taken by local
governments against workers’ protests, though it remained unclear whether this was due
to a change in the attitude of central authorities.

Scholars and
professors
Minor increase

The space for academic discussion of democratic ideas and institutions was threatened
in May 2013, when the CCP Central Committee reportedly issued orders to universities
to avoid “Seven Don’t Speak” topics in their teaching, including universal values, press
freedom, judicial independence, and civil rights. According to multiple sources, this directive was subsequently withdrawn. Nonetheless, at least two scholars were dismissed from
their positions at universities in Beijing and Shanghai for writings that criticized the oneparty political system.

Print and television journalists
Minor increase

The space for investigative reporting shrank, as several prominent journalists were forced
to leave their positions, while others were detained and faced potential imprisonment. In a
new tactic reminiscent of the Mao era, at least three journalists were paraded on national
television to give suspicious confessions of crimes ranging from bribery to leaking state
secrets.

Falun Gong
practitioners
Consistent

Falun Gong practitioners continued to be at risk of arbitrary detention, torture, and imprisonment amid a renewed three-year campaign to force adherents to renounce their faith,
an often-violent process termed “transformation.” The campaign included transformation
quotas for local officials. The abolition of “reeducation through labor” led to some early
releases, and some local officials reportedly began showing leniency despite central directives. Nevertheless, hundreds and possibly thousands of Falun Gong adherents were sent
to “legal education centers” for forced conversion or sentenced to prison terms of up to 12
years via the courts. According to several attorneys handling Falun Gong cases, adherents
are the group—with the possible exception of ethnic minorities—most likely to die from
abuse in custody, and numerous such cases occur each year.

Christians
Minor increase

Harassment of both underground and state-sanctioned churches increased, particularly in Zhejiang Province. A government campaign against “illegal structures” led to the
removal of religious symbols and the demolition of many church buildings, including
facilities that were previously approved by the government. In an unusual development,
Zhang Shaojie, a pastor from a state-sanctioned church, was detained in November
2013 and sentenced to 12 years in prison in July 2014, apparently in retaliation for his
defense of the church’s land rights and assistance to congregants seeking justice for
official abuses.

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29

 SPECIAL REPORT: The Politburo’s Predicament

Target category
Change in level
of repression

Trend summary since November 2012

Tibetans
Minor increase

As self-immolations reached their peak in November 2012 and then continued periodically, official reprisals for those involved intensified. In a form of collective punishment,
a regulation allowed those found to have assisted a self-immolator to be charged with
homicide. A late 2013 crackdown in one county alone led to at least 58 detentions and
15 prison sentences of up to 18 years. At least two monks, including a popular religious
leader, were beaten to death in custody in 2013 within weeks of their detention.

Uighurs
Increase

The already repressive environment in Xinjiang was further tightened amid official reports
of attacks by Uighur extremists. The presence of security services like the People’s Armed
Police intensified, as did the use of informants and restrictions on religious attire and
beards. The Duihua Foundation estimated that the number of “endangering state security”
trials in Xinjiang increased by 10 percent to 300 in 2013. Such charges typically relate to
acts involving speech or association rather than the use of violence. According to rights
groups, security forces used deadly force to suppress some protests in the region. The
party’s intolerance for nonviolent opposition to its policies in Xinjiang was evident in the
January 2014 arrest of Ilham Tohti, a prominent Uighur scholar and supporter of improved
interethnic understanding. He was sentenced in September to life in prison on charges of
separatism.

E. Conclusion
The findings above indicate that Xi and his colleagues
have indeed taken steps to address problems with the
legal and security apparatus that had emerged toward
the end of the Hu era. For example, they dealt with the
fact that authority over the system was concentrated
in the hands of Zhou Yongkang and his subordinates,
rather than the CCP general secretary and other party
officials. However, notwithstanding a handful of minor
reforms, the Xi leadership has done little to fundamentally change course and bring the repressive apparatus under the rule of law or reduce its enormous role
in governance. In fact, the current leaders appear to
be increasing repression, expanding the targets and
reach of the security agencies even more than their
predecessors.
In the process, they have adjusted the tactics employed
to suppress critics and perceived threats to the CCP’s
political dominance. On the one hand, there seems to

30

be a greater emphasis on more formal types of punishment—such as administrative detention, brief criminal
detention, and full prosecutions—and on punishments
that discredit or humiliate the target, most likely a bid to
enhance the legitimacy of the crackdown. On the other
hand, this has not translated into an actual reduction
in the use of extralegal detention, since the abolition
of the discredited RTL system has led to the reported
proliferation of less visible alternative facilities.
In some ways, the increased repression has succeeded in achieving party goals, such as neutralizing
the New Citizens Movement, cowing corrupt officials,
and preventing some public protests. However, these
accomplishments have come at a cost. The regime’s
actions are generating resentment among the public,
damaging the party’s legitimacy, and even stoking resistance from some of its own members, as discussed
in the following section.

 Freedom House

Part III: The Limitations of
Censorship and Repression
Given the prodigious resources, bureaucratic incentives, and brutality the CCP has employed against
those it sees as a threat to its rule, it is tempting to
conclude that the regime’s opponents are fighting for
a lost cause. Yet the interviews and other research
conducted for this study consistently indicated that
CCP censorship and repression are not as effective as
they may appear at first glance.

A. Civil society resilience
Civil society has manifested its resilience in the face
of increased repression in four key ways:
•  More people are joining rights-defense activities.
People who previously would not have become involved in challenging corruption or rights abuses by
the regime are increasingly willing to add their voice,
or even take to the streets, to demand change.156 For
example, people will join a protest or sign a petition
even if the complaint in question does not touch
directly on their own interests. Similarly, the subset
of attorneys who are willing to take on human rights
cases, self-identify as human rights lawyers, and
join colleagues to call for the release of detainees or
fellow lawyers has grown dramatically over the past
decade.157 According to one such attorney, “every
day new human rights lawyers become active.”158
Even with so many human rights defenders being detained or disbarred by the authorities, he says, other
lawyers, activists, and citizen journalists are emerging to take their place.
•  Coordinated activism yields concessions, with officials on the defensive. A larger number of people
joining rights-defense causes and initiatives puts
greater pressure on the government to concede
to citizens’ demands, at least some of the time or
temporarily. In some instances such activism can
www.freedomhouse.org

fend off more serious repression, while in others
it can lead to the dismissal and even prosecution
of corrupt officials (as occurred in several cases
prompted by netizens’ exposure of officials’ luxury
watches or multiple residences).159 In a case that
emerged in September 2013, a teenager in Gansu
was initially swept up in the authorities’ social-media crackdown, but a public outcry led to his release
and the suspension of the local police chief (see
Case Study 3, next page).160
•  Activities targeted for suppression continue.
These include tenacious efforts by petitioners to
have their complaints heard by higher officials,
rights lawyers taking sensitive cases despite the
threat of disbarment, and internet users vigorously reposting forbidden information on Weibo
even as censors try to delete it.161 For persecuted
religious and ethnic groups, the risks of even quiet
resistance are significant given the harsh repression they face. Yet such resistance is widespread.
Large numbers of Tibetans continue to keep an
image of the Dalai Lama in their possession despite
the threat of punishment and “patriotic education”
campaigns that urge them to denounce their revered spiritual leader. Similarly, despite a ferocious
15-year bid to eradicate Falun Gong, the group has
survived, and some observers estimate that millions of people continue to practice.162 According
to a lawyer who has handled dozens of Falun Gong
cases, large numbers of people have even taken
up the practice for the first time in recent years.163
One overseas Falun Gong website, whose editors
maintain close, confidential contact with mainland
adherents, has published over 500,000 statements
since 1999 in which practitioners, having been
released from custody, renounce statements they
signed under threat of torture and reaffirm their
dedication to the practice.164
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 SPECIAL REPORT: The Politburo’s Predicament

Case study 3. Civil Society Victory: Teenage Netizen Released,
Police Chief Suspended after Outcry
nent attorneys signed a petition calling for Yang’s
release. Meanwhile, netizens began uncovering possible evidence of corruption among local officials.
Yang was released without charge on September
23. The following day, the Zhangjiachuan County
police chief was suspended.

Illustration referencing
the threshold of 500
reposts included in
the regulations under
which Yang was initially
detained.

At the height of the Chinese government’s crackdown on social media and online “rumors” in
August and September 2013, authorities in Gansu
Province detained 16-year-old Yang Hui. The student was arrested on September 17 in Zhangjiachuan County after he used his microblog to castigate
the local police for their handling of the death of a
karaoke bar manager. He accused the authorities of
covering up a murder by quickly deeming the death
a suicide. The postings prompted a street protest
by hundreds of people at the alleged crime scene.

Manhuaju/Weibo,
China Digital Times

A reporter from the Beijing Times found a notice
of Yang’s detention on a government website and
published a story about the case. The article was
posted online and picked up by other publications,
drawing national and international attention. Two
lawyers traveled to Gansu, and more than 40 promi-

32

Yang was thought to be the youngest and one of the
first microbloggers to be detained under a judicial
interpretation announced earlier in September that
allows users to receive up to three years in prison
for posting allegedly harmful information that is
viewed more than 5,000 times or reposted more
than 500 times. Although hundreds of people were
detained administratively during the crackdown,
as of May 2014 only one person had reportedly
been sentenced to prison under the new judicial
guidelines, a possible indication that the civil society pushback against Yang’s detention had a much
broader impact on enforcement.

1.  See Patrick Boehler, “Is a 16-year-old boy’s release a victory for netizens in China’s internet crackdown?,” South
China Morning Post, September 25, 2013, http://www
.scmp.com/news/china-insider/article/1315878
/teenagers-release-rare-victory-chinas-internet
-crackdown; and Jonathan Kaiman, “Chinese police
chief suspended after online storm over teenager’s
detention,” The Guardian, September 24, 2013,
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/24
/chinese-police-chief-suspended-yang-hui-detention.
2.  Dan Bloom, “Chinese blogger jailed for three YEARS for
rumour mongering in bid ‘to turn himself into internet
star,’” Mail Online, April 17, 2014, http://www.dailymail
.co.uk/news/article-2606913/Chinese-blogger-jailed
-three-YEARS-rumour-mongering-authorities-claim
-slandered-government-celebrities-turn-internet-star.html.

 Freedom House

•  Information spreads despite censorship. Even
following the crackdown on microblogs, banned information continues to spread via various channels,
including the more private social-media application
WeChat, to which many Sina Weibo users have
migrated. In recent testimony before the U.S.-China
Economic and Security Review Commission, Xiao
Qiang, a Chinese internet expert at the University
of California, Berkeley, also noted the “fast growing
traffic of Chinese internet users using circumvention tools to access blocked websites outside the
Great Firewall.”165 Even within the firewall, a test
conducted by Freedom House researchers on a
small sample of censorship directives found that 9
of the 14 articles (64 percent) targeted for deletion
continued to survive on the Chinese internet over a
month after the directive was issued. Queries with
the exact wording of titles cited in the directives returned hundreds of search results, and at least one
link within the top 10 included the full text of the
original article.166 In addition, users employ a variety
of memes, code words, and cultural references to
circumvent automatic filters and discuss or voice
support for sensitive topics or individuals, with
their posts sometimes reaching tens of millions of
people.167

B. The regime’s internal resistance
Even more disconcerting for the CCP than civil society resilience are signs of dissent within the partystate apparatus. Some of those tasked with implementing censorship, propaganda, and repression are
instead showing sympathy with victims, questioning
party methods, quietly refusing to comply with orders,
and expressing regret for their role in obstructing
other citizens’ freedoms.
Although it is difficult to gauge the actual extent
of such actions, a number of examples since 2012
suggest that they are more than an anomaly. Comments by Xi Jinping himself also lend credence to
the notion that the party is facing an internal crisis of
legitimacy.
1. Within the media and censorship apparatus
In January 2013, during the showdown over censorship at the liberal Guangzhou newspaper Southern
Weekly, a Sina Weibo manager acknowledged that
his colleagues had deliberately let news on the story
circulate until they were explicitly told to suppress
it.168 Two months later, a retired “news examiner”
from Southern Weekly’s internal censorship prowww.freedomhouse.org

gram passed away, and a confessional letter he had
written circulated widely online. In it, he expressed
regret over his role in the censorship apparatus, but
not his support for the journalists in their protest.
He wrote:
Looking back on the last four years, I made
mistakes. I have killed some drafts that I shouldn’t
have killed, I have deleted some content that I
shouldn’t have deleted, but in the end I woke up,
I would rather not carry out my political mission
than go against my conscience, I don’t want be
a sinner against history. In the Southern Weekly
New Year’s editorial incident, I stood up and spoke
up out of [a] sense of justice. I have a clear conscience, no regrets.169

Even more disconcerting for the CCP
than civil society resilience are signs of
dissent within the party-state apparatus.
In November 2013, Wang Qinglei, a veteran producer at the national broadcaster CCTV, used his Sina
Weibo account to question the station’s journalistic ethics and its role in aiding the government’s
campaign to rein in influential bloggers by airing
their coerced confessions. He was subsequently
forced to resign, then authored a lengthy open letter
describing what had happened and criticizing both
CCTV and the party’s propaganda and censorship
system.170 He also asserted that he was not alone in
his views:
Kill one to warn a hundred. The leaders know very
well that there are many people at CCTV who
think like me, but I was just the one who dared to
speak out, that’s all. This is the method they can
use to fetter everyone’s thinking, futilely.171
More recently, in May 2014, following the detention
of prominent attorney Pu Zhiqiang and despite heavy
censorship, one of the individuals who implicitly
expressed support for Pu was Zhou Zhixing, the editor
of two journals read by official elites. Zhou posted the
following statement on Weibo:
Joining the party used to be sacred, but it has been
made profane; going to school used to be joyful,
but has been made somber; going to prison used
to be miserable, but has been made glorious.172
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 SPECIAL REPORT: The Politburo’s Predicament

2. Within the security apparatus
Several activists and lawyers interviewed for this
report relayed knowledge of or experience with
incidents in which police disobeyed their superiors’ instructions and eased pressure on targets of
repression, out of either sympathy for their cause or
awareness that they were not “real criminals.” One human rights lawyer who has handled Falun Gong cases
around the country said,
It feels like the central policy has remained the
same, always wanting to repress. But because
Falun Gong practitioners have talked to local
officials, some of them have changed their attitude and realize that Falun Gong members are
not that threatening, so they won’t arrest them.
Orders for arrests continue to come down from
high-level authorities, but sometimes the [local]
Public Security Bureau agents will say no, [we
won’t arrest them,] they are only exercising to be
healthy.173
Another mainland activist familiar with the suppression of Falun Gong gave a similar description,
explaining that security agents are assigned certain
targets but do not want to participate in persecuting practitioners. They might go to someone’s house
and urge them to keep their activities quiet, refuse
to arrest them, or arrest and then quickly release
them.174
A forthcoming academic article analyzes the path-dependency problem the CCP faces with this particular issue. The authors reach the following conclusion, which
could also be applied to other repressive policies, and
even the “stability maintenance” imperative as a whole:
There is a growing malaise among party cadres
and others charged with prosecuting the campaign.… [Yet] the unrecoverable investment of
more than a decade’s worth of suppression work,
compounded by the ineffectiveness of these
efforts (as evinced in official documents and by
the continuation of resistance activities), limit the
state’s ability to halt its campaign.175
3. In CCP communications
Speeches and campaigns by CCP leaders point to

concerns about the “ideological clarity” of party
members, media workers, and other officials. Xi commented on the problem in his August 2013 speech
to cadres working on propaganda. Using an unusual
metaphor, he likened party members’ lack of “ideals
and convictions” to a spiritual “calcium deficiency,”
and warned that without improvements, the CCP
would be at risk of “rickets,” a disease whose symptoms include bone tenderness and skeletal deformity.176
To some extent, such rhetoric evokes the corruption and ill-gotten wealth that is endemic among
CCP officials. But it also refers to a dearth of sincere
commitment to the regime, its ideology, and its
authoritarian methods, as do internal directives such
as Document No. 9.177 If there were no officials who
believed that a free press and independent judiciary
might be beneficial to China, there would be no need
to explain to them why and how to oppose those
ideas.

C. Factors driving these dynamics
1. For civil society
•  Growing personal exposure to repression and
censorship: As the targets of repression expand
and the internet censorship system becomes
more pervasive and intrusive, a growing number
of Chinese citizens are personally encountering
infringements on their freedoms. This generates
a sense of solidarity with other victims and an
understanding of the beneficial effect that judicial
independence, official transparency, or media
freedom might have on their own lives. According to Eva Pils, a Hong Kong–based law professor
whose research has focused on property rights
and the country’s growing corps of human rights
attorneys, “The rise of civil society that is more explicitly political in its goals, agenda, and language
is a reaction to greater repression. Politicization
comes out of day-to-day interactions with the legal
problems and larger political system.”178 This process is reinforced by some activists’ and citizens’
innate sense of justice, religious faith, or commitment to universal principles, as well as a sense of
entitlement among the country’s growing middle
class. As one lawyer explained, “People realize the

“The psychological foundation of freedom from fear is being formed.”
– Xiao Qiang, Chinese internet expert, May 2014

34

 Freedom House

importance of human dignity. They feel it is right to
fight for human rights.”179
•  Waning fear of repression: A reduction in fear may
seem unlikely given the extent of repression, but it
was one of most noticeably recurring points in interviews and related research. There was a palpable
chilling effect immediately after the 2011 crackdown on hundreds of activists and lawyers, which
was triggered by anonymous calls for a Tunisianstyle “Jasmine Revolution” in China. Many were abducted and taken to extralegal detention facilities,
and a number were severely abused. Yet nearly all
of them have since resumed their activism, in some
cases becoming more daring, confrontational, and
dedicated to political change than before.180 The reduced fear is evident in activists’ accounts of their
conversations with security agents when “invited
to tea,” essentially a summons for questioning or to
deliver official warnings. The activists often report
turning the tables on the agents by asserting legal
rights, asking for the agents’ identification numbers,
or urging them to acknowledge the problematic
nature of their task.181 Meanwhile, for the broader
population, the CCP’s own censorship on the 1989
crackdown and other incidents of regime violence
has helped to create a generation of citizens who
are unfamiliar with the party’s potential brutality,
weakening what had been an important deterrent
to protests.182
•  Waning fear of censorship: Rather than inducing fear, censorship of social and other media is
apparently generating resentment among netizens
and the general public. According to Xiao Qiang,
“more and more netizens are less intimidated by
repressive measures. The psychological foundation of freedom from fear is being formed.”183 The
widespread public support received by the striking
journalists of Southern Weekly in January 2013
reinforces Xiao’s assessment. The expressions of
support came not just from activists, but also from
academics, students, and celebrities.184 In some
cases, censorship may also have the counterproductive effect of motivating netizens to seek out
banned information. One recent study by Margaret
Roberts, a professor at the University of California,
San Diego, found that “awareness of censorship

www.freedomhouse.org

on the part of consumers and producers of blog
posts does not deter the spread of information and
instead often undermines government legitimacy
and induces information seeking.”185
•  Safety in numbers: Contributing to the reduction
in fear is a sense of lowered individual risk as more
people join rights-defense activities and netizens
associate with like-minded individuals. According
to one human rights attorney, “the cost [of being a
human rights lawyer] is decreasing because of the
safety in numbers. If the number of human rights
lawyers is higher, the political risk is lower. And even
if someone is disbarred, his cases are taken up by
other lawyers.”186
•  General disillusionment with CCP corruption:
Even when individuals do not have a direct stake in
a case of repression or activism, they tend to add
their support out of disillusionment with, and anger
at, the CCP. Some are motivated by the perception that the authorities are arresting good people
but not corrupt or abusive officials. One lawyer
described the situation as follows: “Because people
are realizing that the country isn’t going in a good
direction and is becoming more corrupt, they feel
like they need to do more.”187
•  Impact of activists’ awareness raising: Partly
because of the regime’s hard-line stance and the
relative rarity of concrete victories like the release
of a detainee or the punishment of a torturer, many
activists define success as their ability to raise
awareness and sympathy for their cause among fellow citizens. A human rights lawyer explained:
The definition of victory is not in court. In Guo
Feixiong’s case, for instance, we consider it a victory because we have been able to successfully
raise the visibility of his case. People in China have
been changing the profile picture on their Weibo
account to Guo’s photo. That is the impact we have
been having and these things will yield a result.188
Several interviewees noted in particular the persistent efforts of Falun Gong adherents to talk to local
officials, distribute leaflets and DVDs to residents, and
rebut vilifying party propaganda against the group. As

35

 SPECIAL REPORT: The Politburo’s Predicament

Case study 4. Civil Society Resilience:
Grassroots Pro–Falun Gong Petitions
officials have joined ordinary
residents in signing the documents.2

Photo of the
original petition

Launched in 1999, the CCP’s bid to wipe out the
Falun Gong meditation and spiritual discipline has
become one of the party’s longest-running repressive campaigns, absorbing considerable resources
and pushing the authorities’ enforcement capacity
to its limits. Yet adherents continue to practice and
expose rights abuses, and they are increasingly
gaining grassroots support for their efforts. The
latter trend began as assistance from prominent
rights lawyers, who openly defended practitioners
in court. In recent years, the phenomenon has
expanded to include dozens of petitions signed by
villagers to urge the release of a neighbor detained
for practicing Falun Gong, or to seek justice for an
individual who was tortured to death. The number
of signatories has ranged from hundreds to as many
as 15,000.1 In some instances, local police or village

Falun Dafa
Information Center

Although these events began
during the Hu Jintao era,
they have continued under
Xi Jinping. In a clear example
of spiraling repression and
resistance, government efforts
to punish those responsible
for collecting signatures have
sometimes yielded second and
third rounds of petitions. One of
the most prominent cases occurred in Zhengding
County, Hebei Province, where local Falun Gong
adherent Li Lankui was detained in June 2012
ahead of a visit to the region by Iowa governor Terry
Branstad and then vice president Xi.3 A petition
urging Li’s release initially garnered 700 signatures.
After a government crackdown,4 it snowballed into
multiple successive petitions, so that by early 2013
the latest document had collected nearly 11,000
signatures.5
According to two Chinese activists familiar with the
trend, only a small number of the petitions have
yielded the release of detainees, but many have
succeeded in ensuring their access to legal counsel, raising awareness of their cases, and “recalling
people’s sense of justice.”6

1.  Amnesty International, “Document-China: Mother and Daughter at Risk of Torture,” July 16, 2012, http://www.amnesty
.org/en/library/asset/ASA17/024/2012/en/3796dcb5-59be-4849-adbc-0e8824ee57b9/asa170242012en.html; Amnesty
International, “China: Local Residents Petition for Falun Gong Releases,” November 14, 2011, http://www.amnesty.org
/en/news/china-thousands-publicly-support-falun-gong-releases-2011-11-14; and “Falun Gong in China: Review and
Update,” statement by Caylan Ford to the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, December 18, 2012,
http://www.cecc.gov/sites/chinacommission.house.gov/files/documents/hearings/2012/CECC%20Hearing
%20Testimony%20-%20Caylan%20Ford%20-%2012.18.12.pdf.
2.  Amnesty International, “Document-China: Falun Gong Practitioners at Risk of Torture,” May 31, 2012, http://www
.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/ASA17/013/2012/en/5f4a84f0-3afb-4c8c-af41-0d22c85c79bd/asa170132012en.html.
3.  Amnesty International, “Urgent Action: Villagers Detained, at Risk of Torture,” October 22, 2012, http://www.amnestyusa
.org/sites/default/files/uaa28212.pdf.
4.  Falun Dafa Information Center, “Inside China: Falun Gong Practitioners Abducted, Killed in Crackdown ahead of U.S.
Governor’s Visit,” August 21, 2012, http://www.faluninfo.net/article/1244/Inside-China-Falun-Gong-Practitioners
-Abducted-Killed-in-Crackdown-ahead-of-US-Governor-s-Visit/.
5.   Falun Dafa Information Center, “Signature Drives for Falun Gong Continue, Despite Dangers,” April 29, 2013,
http://www.faluninfo.net/article/1299/Signature-Drives-for-Falun-Gong-Continue-Despite-Dangers/.
6.  Interview with Zhang Lianying, Falun Gong activist and former prisoner of conscience, April 2014; Interview with Chinese activist, who wished to remain anonymous, April 2014.

36

 Freedom House

a result, since 2011, thousands of non-adherents have
signed petitions urging the release Falun Gong neighbors from custody,189 or assembled to guard against
their arrest (see Case Study 4).190
2. Within the regime
•  Realization that victims of repression are not ‘bad
people’: This was cited by activists and lawyers
interviewed for the study as one of the reasons why
not just civilian observers but also officials within
the system might take action to ease or prevent the
suffering of victims. Such sympathy may arise because the official personally knows the victim, because a family member has described their plight,
or because a defense lawyer has demonstrated the
victim’s innocence.
•  Fear of future punishment: There appear to be two
sources of this fear. First, some officials hesitate to
be too active in implementing persecutory directives because they could face punishment if the regime’s attitude or leadership changes in the future.
When high-level officials affiliated with particular
campaigns are removed and prosecuted under
new policies or due to political infighting, many
subordinates can be pulled down with them, as is
occurring with former security czar Zhou Yongkang
and Li Dongsheng, a former vice minister of public
security and 610 Office head.191 Second, the fear of
public exposure by activists and humiliation before
family, friends, and neighbors can serve to mitigate
the zeal with which officials carry out repressive
measures.192 Exposure of abuses by civil society can
also compel higher authorities to punish them as
scapegoats.
•  Inside knowledge of troubling abuses: Individuals

working within the party-state apparatus are often
privy to behind-the-scenes abuses or questionable
activities, which may ultimately motivate them to
resist. For some, like CCTV producer Wang Qinglei
or a former prison guard who reportedly signed
a petition seeking justice for a religious detainee
killed in custody, this is what compelled them to
speak out.193
•  Common interests with targets of repression:
According to professor Li Lianjiang of the Chinese
University of Hong Kong, this is especially relevant
to environmental protests, as some members of
the political elite and security forces are local and
therefore personally affected by pollution and
other damage to the environment. By contrast, the
highest-ranking officials in many regions are appointed by the central government and “parachuted
in” from another region.194 The result is that in some
cases, local officials and government employees
have helped mobilize environmental protests or
participated in demonstrations, and police have
avoided repressing such assemblies or expressed
sympathy with the protesters’ cause.195

D. Conclusion
Given the difficulty of obtaining comprehensive
information on topics like reduced societal fear and
intraparty dissent, the analysis above entails a degree
of speculation as to scale. Nevertheless, even these
limited examples hint at fundamental flaws in the
CCP’s repressive apparatus. They indicate that even if
the party appears to be winning the battle for control
over the streets or social media, it may be losing the
war when it comes to the hearts and minds of the
Chinese people.

Even if the party appears to be winning the battle for
control over the streets or social media, it may be losing
the war when it comes to the hearts and minds of the
Chinese people.

www.freedomhouse.org

37

 SPECIAL REPORT: The Politburo’s Predicament

Part IV: Recommendations
Regardless of their implications for the CCP and the
resilience of its authoritarian regime, the developments described in this report entail real costs for Chinese society. On an almost daily basis, injuries are suffered, families are shattered, and lives are lost. News
consumers are deprived of information on matters
with life-or-death consequences, including environmental pollution and threats to public health. And as
the previous section indicates, even the implementers
of censorship and repression can become victims of
the regime, enduring the psychological toll of being
forced to perpetrate crimes against fellow citizens and
their own consciences.
At a time when more and more Chinese citizens are
jeopardizing their livelihoods and safety by standing up against repression, it behooves those outside
China, who risk much less, to join their cause.
Members of the international community weighing a
response to the findings of this report should consider
a combination of immediate assistance to victims,
support for processes that mitigate the impact of
current repression and lay a foundation for a more
open and just political-legal system in the future, and
careful planning on how best to facilitate a positive
outcome in a variety of possible scenarios for political
change in China.

A. For policymakers in the United States,
Europe, and other democracies
•  Stress that universal rights apply to China. Speak
publicly in defense of democratic institutions and
their applicability to China. Avoid comments implying that universal rights do not suit China. Rhetorical concessions to the CCP’s official narrative of
Chinese cultural relativism and exceptionalism
skew the debate in the party’s favor, betray the
founding values of all democracies, and reduce the
legitimacy of the United States and other govern38

ments in the eyes of Chinese citizens who share
these values. 196
•  Hold hearings to draw attention to repression in
China. The U.S. Congress and parliaments in other
countries should hold hearings on topics that
•  affect large segments of the Chinese population, such as environmental pollution, internet
censorship, and systemic corruption;
•  entail egregious abuses, such as extralegal
detention, torture, and deaths in custody,
including against ethnic and religious minorities; and
•  highlight the work and mistreatment of prominent Chinese dissidents, scholars, and other
victims of persecution.
•  Raise individual cases and other crucial topics
at the highest levels. The top echelons of the
government—including the president or prime
minister—should raise the cases of individual
victims of political and religious repression in
public and in meetings with Chinese leaders. Ministers of defense and commerce should also raise
relevant cases in meetings with their Chinese
counterparts. Such discussions should not be
relegated only to human rights dialogues between
lower-level officials. Even when the individuals
named are not released from detention, there is
consistent evidence that they are less likely to be
mistreated in custody than their more anonymous
counterparts.
•  Take action against individual perpetrators. Although systemic accountability in China is unlikely
in the near future, external pressure on individual
officials and security personnel can cause them
to think twice about implementing repressive
measures. Democratic governments should make
use of publicly available information to identify officials involved in human rights abuses and begin to

 Freedom House

respond, for instance by refusing meetings, denying
visas, and allowing lawsuits by victims in their own
courts.
•  Engage in multilateral action. Past experience has
demonstrated that multilateral measures are more
effective than action by an individual country in
pushing the CCP to ease repression. The United
States and other democracies should collaborate
more closely in addressing human rights violations
in China, including via collective or coordinated
public statements, sharing of information about
perpetrators and restrictions on their travel, and
emergency support for victims. Democracies
should consider collectively introducing a resolution on China at the next session of the UN Human
Rights Council. 
•  Speak to the Chinese public directly. Communicate factual and important information—such as air
pollution readings, examples of censorship, and the
legal shortcomings of official actions against dissidents—directly to Chinese audiences via socialmedia posts, “town hall” meetings, and embassy
websites. When heads of democratic governments
visit China, they should insist on opportunities to
speak at events broadcast on local media without
filters.
•  Respond forcefully to repression surrounding
official visits to China. In advance of official visits
to China or international events, the Chinese
government typically takes extra steps to silence
peaceful activists, petitioners, and religious believers, whether through detentions, house arrests, or
forced relocation. Democratic officials traveling to
China should signal to Chinese counterparts that
such crackdowns are unacceptable. They should
strongly protest if news of such repression reaches
their ears after their departure, or provide support
to the victims.
•  Prepare for change. Draw up serious contingency
plans for responding to various scenarios of political change in China, both negative and positive,
including the emergence of widespread popular
movements for a more open society. Planning
should include the identification of specific points
of contact and leverage (political, economic, and
military) that could be used more effectively than
rhetorical condemnation to dissuade Chinese authorities from employing force against protesters.
More broadly, policies on China should not rely on
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the assumption that the current system and conditions will persist indefinitely.

B. For international civil society
•  Raise the international profile of Chinese dissidents. Engage in public education and awareness
campaigns to raise the profile of Chinese civil society leaders, political dissidents, scholars, religious
believers, and lawyers who have been persecuted
for standing up to repression, asserting the fundamental rights of Chinese citizens, or advocating for
a more open, law-abiding society. Intensify efforts
to make their names, biographies, and causes
common knowledge in households, schools, and
corporations around the world.
•  Mobilize domestic support for colleagues and
coreligionists in China. Activists should reach
beyond the world of international human rights
advocacy to organize networks of support in their
own professions or religious communities. Rather
than responding ad hoc to individual cases, for
example, academics should establish permanent
mechanisms for assisting persecuted scholars in
China. Non-Uighur Muslim organizations should
extend existing activism to support their Chinese
coreligionists, and journalists, lawyers, and civicminded entrepreneurs should work to demonstrate
solidarity with their Chinese counterparts.
•  Form umbrella organizations to unify disparate efforts focused on China. While specialized advocacy
is important, diverse constituencies can magnify
their impact through collective action on themes
of common interest, particularly when lobbying
democratic governments and international institutions on policies toward China. Tibetans, Uighurs,
Christians, and Falun Gong adherents all have a
stake in religious freedom and the rule of law, for instance, and all share an interest in internet freedom
with organizations focused on combating censorship. Such groups should develop collaborative
projects and lend weight to one another’s individual
campaigns.
•  Establish a documentation center to identify and
expose perpetrators. Some human rights groups
and civil society initiatives have begun the process
of identifying Chinese officials who have engaged in
egregious abuses, but their databases are disparate, may lack independent verification, and are
not always accessible in English. A documentation
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 SPECIAL REPORT: The Politburo’s Predicament

center could consolidate, research, verify, and publicize such information. The findings could highlight
individual responsibility for gross human rights
violations; inform policymaking, business dealings,
training programs, and civil society exchanges; and
provide some deterrence to members of the repressive apparatus in China.

C. For international donors
In addition to supporting the civil society initiatives
proposed above, international donors should consider
the following topics for new projects on China.
•  Reviving censored content: Tracking, preserving, and recirculating media and internet content
produced within China that has been deleted by
censors.
•  Disseminating details on the censorship apparatus: Translating into Chinese and disseminating
reports describing the censorship system, along
with tools for seeking out alternative sources of
information or circumventing the “Great Firewall.”
As noted above, studies have shown that netizen
awareness of censorship often yields a greater
desire to access uncensored information.
•  Awareness raising inside China: Raising public
awareness of the cases of individual victims of repression, the regime’s human rights record overall,
and how democratic institutions function. This is
an important goal in itself, and the effectiveness of
advocacy projects in China should be measured not
only in concrete results—like changes in legislation
or the release of a detainee—but by the degree to
which they have gained exposure among Chinese
citizens.
•  Support for investigative journalism: Funding
investigative reporting by both Chinese and foreign
journalists on politically sensitive subjects—such
as the wealth of the political elite or the various
facilities for extralegal incarceration.

40

D. Further research for scholars
and journalists
The findings of this study point to a variety of potential
areas for further research and investigative reporting,
including:
•  Limits of repression and censorship: The various
limitations on the effectiveness of CCP censorship and repression, including signs of resistance
among the regime’s own agents. This might include
a large-scale analysis of which and how many news
articles that are explicitly mentioned in censorship
directives continue to circulate on the Chinese
internet.
•  Activist victories: Examination of civil society
actions that yield official concessions or imply a
failure of a repressive campaign, such as the cases
of Yang Hui and the pro–Falun Gong petitions.
•  Motives driving ‘rights defense’: Studies of what
motivates people to join “rights defense” activities,
including the role played by personal encounters
with censorship and repression.
•  Deaths in custody: Investigation of reported deaths
in custody, their perpetrators, and causes, including allegations of organ harvesting. While the death
of civic activist Cao Shunli received much international attention, other deaths referred to in this
study, particularly of religious and ethnic minorities,
have not.
•  Extralegal detention: Investigation of various
forms of extralegal detention for petitioners and
dissidents, including “black jails,” “legal education
centers,” and psychiatric institutions.
•  Impact of social-media crackdown: Follow-up
data analysis of social-media sites, especially Sina
Weibo, to evaluate whether the initial chilling effect
following the 2013 crackdown has persisted or
slowly dissipated.

 Freedom House

notes
1. 

“China Internet Stats and Usage Report,” Miniwatts Marketing Group, last modified March 30, 2011, http://www
.internetworldstats.com/asia/cn.htm.

2. 

Xiao Qiang, “Fear and Anger on the Chinese Internet: The
Struggle Between Censors and Netizens,” Written testimony presented to the U.S.-China Economic and Security
Review Commission, May 15, 2014, http://www.uscc.gov
/sites/default/files/Xiao_Written%20Testimony.pdf.

3. 

Tania Branigan, “China to step up social media censorship,”
The Guardian, October 26, 2011, http://www.theguardian
.com/world/2011/oct/26/china-social-media-censorship;
For the original piece see Xinhua, “Shouquan Fabu: Zhonggong Zhongyang Guanyu Shenhua Wenhua Tizhi Gaige Tuidong Shehui Zhuyi Wenhua Da Fazhan Da Fanrong Ruogan
Zhongda Wenti De Jueding,” [Authorized Release: CPC
Central Committee Decision on Deepening Cultural System Reform to Promote Major Development and Prosperity
Issues], Xinhua, October 25, 2011, http://news.xinhuanet
.com/politics/2011-10/25/c_122197737_4.htm.

4. 

See Freedom House, “China,” Freedom on the Net 2012,
http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2012
/china#.U6md3qh2elg; and Freedom House, “China,” Freedom of the Press 2013, http://www.freedomhouse.org
/report/freedom-press/2013/china#.U6mb6qh2elg.

5. 

The existence of this communiqué was widely reported and
its authenticity generally acknowledged by China watchers.
Several translations into English were published, including:
Rogier Creemers, “Communiqué on the Current State of
the Ideological Sphere (Document No. 9),” China Copyright
and Media (blog), April 22, 2013, http://chinacopyrightand
media.wordpress.com/2013/04/22/communique-on-the
-current-state-of-the-ideological-sphere-document-no-9/;
and “Document 9: A ChinaFile Translation,” ChinaFile (blog),
Asia Society website, November 8, 2013, http://www
.chinafile.com/‍‌document-9-chinafile-translation.

6. 

Xinhua, “Xi Jinping: Xionghuai Daju Bawo Dashi Ba Xuanchuan Sixiang Gongzuo Zuo Geng Hao,”[Xi Jinping: Grasp
General Trends, Look Towards Great Matters, Do Propaganda and Ideological Work Even Better], August 20, 2013,
Communist Party of China News, http://cpc.people
.com.cn/n/2013/0820/c64094-22634049.html; An English
translation is available here: Rogier Creemers, “Xi Jinping:
Keep the Larger Picture in Mind, Grasp General Trends,
Look Towards Great Matters, Do Propaganda and Ideological Work Even Better,” China Copyright and Media (blog),
August 25, 2013, http://chinacopyrightandmedia
.wordpress.com/‍‍‌‌2013/08/20/xi-jinping-keep-the-larger
-picture-in-mind-grasp-general-trends-look-towards-great
-matters-do-propaganda-and-ideological-work-even-better/.

7. Ibid.
8. 

“Wang Chuan Xi Jinping 8.19 Jianghua Quanwen: Yanlun
Fangmian Yao Gan Zhua Gan Guan Ganyu Liangjian,”
[Netizens shared full text of Xi Jinping’s remarks on August
19: We must dare to arrest, dare to manage, and dare to
bare the sword when it comes to regulating speech], China
Digital Times, November 11, 2013, http://chinadigitaltimes
.net/chinese/2013/11/%E7%BD%91%E4%BC%A0%E4
%B9%A0%E8%BF%91%E5%B9%B38%E2%80%A219
%E8%AE%B2%E8%AF%9D%E5%85%A8%E6%96%87
%EF%BC%9A%E8%A8%80%E8%AE%BA%E6%96%B9
%E9%9D%A2%E8%A6%81%E6%95%A2%E6%8A%93
%E6%95%A2%E7%AE%A1%E6%95%A2/. An English
translation is available here: Rogier Creemers, “Xi Jinping’s
19 August speech revealed? (Translation),” China Copyright
Media (blog), November 12, 2013, http://chinacopy right-

www.freedomhouse.org

andmedia.wordpress.com/‍‍‌2013/11/12/xi-jinpings
-19-august-speech-revealed-translation/.
9. 

“Xi Jinping: Guanyu ‘Zhongguo Zhongyang Guanyu Quanmian Shenhua Gaige Ruogan Zhongda Wenti De Jueding’
De Shuoming,” [Xi Jinping: Explanation Concerning ‘The
CCP Central Committee Resolution Concerning Some Major Issues in Comprehensively Deepening Reform], Xinhua,
November 15, 2013, http://news.xinhuanet.com
/politics/2013-11/15/c_118164294.htm; An English
translation is available here: Rogier Creemers, “Explanation
concerning the ‘CCP Central Committee Resolution Concerning Some Major Issues in Comprehensively Deepening
Reform (Translation),’” China Copyright and Media (blog),
November 19, 2013, http://chinacopyrightandmedia
.wordpress.com/2013/11/19/explanation-concerning-the
-ccp-central-committee-resolution-concerning-some
-major-issues-in-comprehensively-deepening-reform/.

10.  Qian Gang, “Parsing the ‘public opinion struggle,’” China
Media Project at The University of Hong Kong, September
24, 2013, http://cmp.hku.hk/2013/09/24/34085/.
11.  Natalie Thomas, “Testing time for Chinese media as party
tightens control,” Reuters, December 18, 2013, http://www
.reuters.com/article/2013/12/19/china-media-idUSL3N
0JQ1FI20131219.
12.  For example, Tang Hui’s release from a labor camp, Lens
magazine’s exposé of torture at Masanjia labor camp, and
netizens’ discovery of signs of corruption for Yang Dacai (aka
Watch brother) and Gong Aiai (aka House sister), ultimately
leading to their dismissal and prosecution. See Tania Branigan, “Outcry in China over mother sent to labour camp after
daughter’s rape,” The Guardian, August 16, 2012, http://www
.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/16/china-tang-hui
-labour-camp; Didi Tang, “China Human Rights Abuses:
Report On Horrifying Conditions At Masanjia Labor Camp
Sparks Outrage,” Associated Press, April 9, 2013,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/09/china-human
-rights-abuses-masanjia-labor-camp_n_3044470.html;
Michael Evans, “China’s netizens bring down corrupt ‘smiling
official,” Asian Correspondent website, September 26, 2012,
http://asiancorrespondent.com/89954/corrupt-officials
-downfall-no-reason-to-celebrate-china-media-says/; Yueran
Zhang, “How Online Sleuths Are Transforming Chinese Officialdom,” Tea Leaf Nation (blog), Foreign Policy, October 2,
2012, http://www.tealeafnation.com/2012/10/how-online
-sleuths-are-transforming-chinese-officialdom/; and Tom
Mitchell, “Jail sentence for China’s ‘house sister,’” Financial
Times, September 29, 2013, http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0
/bedf2286-28ec-11e3-8d19-00144feab7de.html.
13.  Russell Leigh Moses, “What to Make of Xi Jinping’s Maoist
Turn,” China Real Time Report (blog), Wall Street Journal,
June 21, 2013, http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime
/2013/06/21/what-to-make-of-xi-jinpings-maoist-turn/.
14.  Teddy Ng, “Propaganda officials to head top-tier Chinese
journalism schools,” South China Morning Post, December
19, 2013, http://www.scmp.com/news/china
/article/1385380/propaganda-officials-head-top-tier
-chinese-journalism-schools; By mid-2014, the first such
appointments were already being made: Damon Yi and
Amy Qin, “Appointment at Chinese Journalism School
Highlights Growing Party Role,” Sinosphere (blog), New York
Times, August 25, 2014, http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes
.com/2014/08/25/appointment-at-chinese-journalism
-school-highlights-growing-party-influence/?_r=0.
15.  Thomas, “Testing time for Chinese media as party tightens
control.”

41

 SPECIAL REPORT: The Politburo’s Predicament

16.  Patrick Boehler, “Sale of stake in outspoken Beijing News may
turn it into ‘propaganda mouthpiece,’” South China Morning
Post, January 27, 2014, http://www.scmp.com/news/china
-insider/article/1414865/sale-stake-outspoken-beijing-news
-turns-it-propaganda-mouthpiece; Oiwan Lam, “China’s Southern Media Group Turns Back on Anti-Censorship Supporters,”
GlobalVoices, December 29, 2013, http://globalvoicesonline
.org/2013/12/29/chinas-southern-weekend-newspaper-turns
-back-on-anti-censorship-supporters/.
17.  Interview with author, February 2014.
18.  Kentaro Koyama, “Beijing continues to tighten grip over
media in wake of censorship flap,” Asahi Shimbun Asia &
Japan Watch, January 30, 2014, http://ajw.asahi.com
/article/asia/china/AJ201401300058.
19.  John Garnaut, “Beijing sacks editor for expose,” The Age,
May 13, 2010, http://www.theage.com.au/world/beijing
-sacks-editor-for-expose-20100512-uy0q.html.
20.  “Xi Jinping leads Internet security group,” Xinhua, February
27, 2014, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2014
-02/27/c_133148273.htm; Shannon Tiezzi, “Xi Jinping
Leads China’s New Internet Security Group,” The Diplomat,
February 28, 2014, http://thediplomat.com/2014/02
/xi-jinping-leads-chinas-new-internet-security-group/.
21.  David Barboza, “Chinese-American Commentator and
Investor Is Arrested in Beijing,” New York Times, August 25,
2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/26/world/asia
/chinese-american-commentator-and-investor-is-arrested
-in-beijing.html?_r=0.
22.  Keith Zhai, “Charles Xue Biqun admits Weibo fuelled ego,
state media reports,” South China Morning Post, September 16, 2013, http://www.scmp.com/news/china
/article/1310567/charles-xue-biqun-admits-weibo-fuelled
-ego-state-media-reports.
23.  “Chinese internet: ‘a new censorship campaign
has commenced,’” The Guardian, May 15, 2013,
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/may/15/chinese
-internet-censorship-campaign. In another example, in
September, authorities in Beijing detained a blogger writing
under pseudonym “Huazong” who had gained notoriety for
compiling and analyzing images of government officials
wearing luxury wristwatches whose value exceeded their
legal income; “Whistle-blower ‘Huazong’ becomes latest
victim of online speech crackdown,” South China Morning
Post, September 17, 2013, http://www.scmp.com/news
/china-insider/article/1311786/whistle-blower-huazong
-becomes-latest-victim-online-speech. 
24.  Chris Luo, “Dismissed CCTV producer Wang Qinglei slams
censorship,” South China Morning Post, December 2, 2013,
http://www.scmp.com/news/china-insider/article/1371255
/dismissed-cctv-producer-wang-qinglei-slams-censorship.
25.  Euan McKirdy, “WeChat’s conversations gagged: Are China’s
censors behind it?,” On China (blog), CNN, March 17, 2014,
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/17/world/asia/wechat
-censorship/.
26.  Freedom House, “China,” Freedom of the Press 2014,
https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/2014
/china#.VICzl3vwBz8
27.  “Small beginnings: Microblogs are a potentially powerful force for change, but they have to tread carefully,” The
Economist, April 6, 2013, http://www.economist.com/news
/special-report/21574632-microblogs-are-potentially
-powerful-force-change-they-have-tread
28.  “Netizen Voices: CCTV Reins in Pan Shiyi,” China Digital
Times, September 13, 2013, http://chinadigitaltimes
.net/2013/09/netizen-voices-cctv-reins-pan-shiyi/.

42

29.  The journalists were Chen Yongzhou (October 2013) Gao Yu
(May 2014), Xiang Nanfu (May 2014), http://freedomhouse
.org/cmb/105_050714#1; David Bandurski, “Paper goes
public over reporter’s detention,” China Media Project at The
University of Hong Kong, October 23, 2013, http://cmp.hku
.hk/2013/10/23/34376/; Patrick Boehler, “Beijing detains,
parades journalist Gao Yu on state TV for ‘leaking state
secrets,’” South China Morning Post, May 8, 2014,
http://www.scmp.com/news/china-insider/article/1507195
/beijing-detains-parades-journalist-gao-yu-state-tv-leaking
-state.
30.  Interview with author, November 2013.
31.  Patrick Boehler and Laura Zhou, “Prominent scholar He
Weifang says ‘goodbye’ to online debate,” South China
Morning Post, December 31, 2013,http://www.scmp.com
/news/china-insider/article/1394040/prominent-scholar
-he-weifang-says-goodbye-online-debate.
32.  David Bandurski, “The Shishou riots and the uncertain
future of Control 2.0,” China Media Project at The University
of Hong Kong, June 29, 2009,http://cmp.hku
.hk/2009/06/29/1673/.
33.  Li Yongchun, “Number of Gov’t Weibo Accounts Soars,”
Caixin Online, March 28, 2013, http://english.caixin
.com/2013-03-28/100507640.html.
34.  Weibo Influence 2012 (accessed April 2014), http://data
.weibo.com/summary/2012year/influence; Weibo Changing
List (Translation) (accessed April 2014), http://data.weibo
.com/top/influence/media.
35.  “Minitrue: 39 Missing in Shanxi Explosion,” China Digital
Times, March 13, 2014, http://chinadigitaltimes.net
/2014/03/minitrue-39-missing-shanxi-explosion/.
36.  Freedom House, “China,” Freedom of the Press 2014,
https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/2014
/china#.VICzl3vwBz8
37.  Jedidiah R. Crandall et al., “Chat program censorship and
surveillance in China: Tracking TOM-Skype and Sina UC,”
First Monday, http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php
/fm/article/viewArticle/4628/3727; “China,” OpenNet
Initiative, August 9, 2012, https://opennet.net/research
/profiles/china-including-hong-kong; Freedom
House, “China,” Freedom on the Net 2013,
http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2013
/china#.VFj-EeLLJn9.
38.  “Directives from the Ministry of Truth,” China Digital Times
(web archive), http://chinadigitaltimes.net/‍‌china/directivesfrom-the-ministry-of-truth/.
39.  “Minitrue: Delete ‘Beijing Nearly Uninhabitable,’” China
Digital Times, October 4, 2014, http://chinadigitaltimes
.net/2014/02/minitrue-delete-beijing-nearly-uninhabitable/.
40.  “Ministry of Truth: No Bad Earthquake News Allowed,”
China Digital Times, April 26, 2013, http://chinadigitaltimes
.net/2013/04/ministry-of-truth-no-bad-earthquake-news
-allowed/.
41.  “Minitrue: Qingdao Oil Pipeline Explosion,” China Digital
Times, November 25, 2013, http://chinadigitaltimes
.net/2013/11/minitrue-qingdao-oil-pipeline-explosion/.
42.  “Minitrue: Attack on Xinjiang Train Station,” China Digital
Times, May 1, 2014, http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/05
/minitrue-attack-xinjiang-train-station/.
43.  “Ministry of Truth: Holiday Leftovers,” China Digital Times,
January 2, 2013, http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/01
/ministry-of-truth-holiday-leftovers/.
44.  Gary King, Jennifer Pan, and Margaret E. Roberts, “How
Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but
Silences Collective Expression,” American Political Science

 Freedom House

Review (May 2013): 1-18, http://gking.harvard.edu/files
/gking/files/censored.pdf.
45.  “Minitrue: Snow Lions, Insider Trading, and More,” China
Digital Times, April 11, 2014, http://chinadigitaltimes
.net/2014/04/minitrue-snow-lions-insider-trading/.
46.  Bree Feng and Shanshan Wang, “China Orders 4 U.S.
Shows Off Streaming Sites,” New York Times, April 27, 2014,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/28/business
/international/china-orders-4-us-shows-off-streaming-sites.
html; Liz Carter, “The Big Bang Theory in Little China,” Tea
Leaf Nation (blog), Foreign Policy, January 14, 2014,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/01/15
/the_big_bang_theory_in_little_china.
47.  Adam Taylor, “China: Where ‘The Big Bang Theory’ is too hot
to watch, but ‘Game of Thrones’ is just fine,” World Views
(blog), Washington Post, April 29, 2014,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews
/wp/2014/04/29/china-where-the-big-bang-theory-is-too
-hot-to-watch-but-game-of-thrones-is-just-fine/.
48.  For example, research commissioned by the Telegraph
showed a drop of nearly 70 percent in traffic over Weibo
in the latter part of 2013, following the launch of the
authorities’ aggressive campaign in August. Malcolm
Moore, “China kills off discussion on Weibo after internet
crackdown,” The Telegraph, January 30, 2014,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia
/china/10608245/China-kills-off-discussion-on
-Weibo-after-internet-crackdown.html; See also: Patrick
Boehler, “Is anti-rumour crackdown silencing voices of
online dissent at Weibo?,” South China Morning Post,
September 13, 2013, http://www.scmp.com/news/china
/article/1308860/anti-rumour-crackdown-silencing
-voices-online-dissent-weibo; Megha Rajagopalan and
Adam Rose, “China crackdown on online rumors seen as
ploy to nail critics,” Reuters, September 18, 2013,
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/18/net
-us-china-internet-idUSBRE98H07X20130918. The analysis of knowledgeable observers of Weibo matched these
findings: David Wertime, “Whisper Together: Startling
new findings suggest China’s social media crackdown is
working. But where are the users going?,” Tea Leaf Nation
(blog), Foreign Policy, http://www.foreignpolicy.com
/articles/2014/01/30/whisper_together_death_of_weibo.
49.  Patrick Boehler, “Almost all Weibo messages are generated by
just 5 per cent of users,” South China Morning Post, April 8,
2014, http://www.scmp.com/news/china-insider/article
/1469338/weibo-less-active-expected-says-new-study.
50.  David Wertime, “Testimony before the U.S.-China Economic
and Security Review Commission on ‘Lessons from Tiananmen and Implications for the United States,’” May 15, 2014,
http://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/Wertime
_Written%20Testimony.pdf.
51.  See Part III below.
52.  Wertime, Testimony.
53.  Qian Gang, “Preserving Stability,” China Media Project at
The University of Hong Kong, September 14, 2012,
http://cmp.hku.hk/2012/09/14/27074/.
54.  Sarah Cook and Leeshai Lemish, “The 610 Office: Policing
the Chinese Spirit,” China Brief 11, no. 17 (2011),
http://www.jamestown.org/programs/chinabrief/single
/?tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=38411#.VFfSU_TF9Fk.
55.  Xie Yue, “Rising Central Spending on Public Security and
the Dilemma Facing Grassroots Officials in China,” Journal of Current Chinese Affairs 42, no. 2 (2013),
http://journals.sub.uni-hamburg.de/giga/files/journals/3
/articles/633/public/633-658-1-PB.pdf ; In U.S. 2002

www.freedomhouse.org

dollars – per Oanda Currency converter March 1, 2002,
http://www.oanda.com/currency/converter/; In U.S. 2012
dollars – per Oanda Currency converter March 1, 2012;
Ministry of Finance [People’s Republic of China], Report
on the Implementation of Central and Local Budgets for
2011 and on Draft Central and Local Budgets for 2012,
Fifth Session of the Eleventh National People’s Congress,
March 5, 2012, http://online.wsj.com/public/resources
/documents/2012NPC_FinanceWorkReport_English.pdf;
Malcolm Moore, “China’s leader warns of urgent need
to rebalance its society,” The Telegraph, March 5, 2012,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia
/china/9123869/Chinas-leader-warns-of-urgent-need
-to-rebalance-its-society.html.
56.  Tania Branigan, “China extends surveillance into supermarkets, cinemas and classrooms,” The Guardian, August 2,
2011, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011
/aug/02/china-surveillance-cameras; Frank Langfitt, “In
China, Beware: A Camera May Be Watching You,” National
Public Radio, January 29, 2013, http://www.npr
.org/2013/01/29/170469038/in-china-beware-a-camera
-may-be-watching-you.
57.  Andrew Jacobs and Jonathan Ansfield, “Well-Oiled Security
Apparatus in China Stifles Calls for Change,” New York Times,
February 28, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/01
/world/asia/01china.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0; Wai Hei
Samson Yuen, “The Politics of Weiwen: Stability as a Source
of Political Legitimacy in Post-Tiananmen China,” European
Consortium for Political Research Joint Sessions Workshops
2014, https://ecpr.eu/Events/PaperDetails
.aspx?PaperID=16450&EventID=12.
58.  Elizabeth M. Lynch, “I Pledge Allegiance to the CCP…
Chinese Lawyers’ New Oath Requirements,” China Law &
Policy (blog), March 22, 2012,http://chinalawandpolicy.com
/tag/three-supremes/.
59.  Carl Minzner, “China’s Turn Against Law,” Human Rights
Watch, October 30, 2013, http://www.hrw.org
/news/2013/10/30/china-s-turn-against-law.
60.  Minzner, “China’s Turn Against Law”; Fu Hualing and Richard
Cullen, “From Mediatory to Adjudicatory Justice: The Limits
of Civil Justice Reform in China,” Social Science Research
Network Accepted Paper Series, November 28,2008,
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract
_id=1306800; Benjamin L. Liebman, “Assessing China’s Legal
Reform,” Columbia Journal of Asian Law (Fall 2009),
https://litigation-essentials.lexisnexis.com/webcd
/app?action=DocumentDisplay&crawlid=1&doctype=cite
&docid=23+Colum.+J.+Asian+L.+17&srctype=smi&srcid
=3B15&key=c735277dbd3bb1f639e26254e40be73c.
61.  Ibid. See also: Human Rights Watch, “Walking on Thin Ice”:
Control, Intimidation and Harassment of Lawyers in China,
April 2008, http://www.hrw.org/reports
/2008/china0408/5.htm.
62.  “Are Chinese Authorities Seeking to Rein in the Courts?,”
China Law and Politics Blog, November 16, 2008,
http://sinolaw.typepad.com/chinese_law_and_politics
_/2008/11/are-chinese-authorities-seeking-to-rein-in-the
-courts.html.
63.  Jonathan Watts, “Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiaobo
sentenced to 11 years in jail,” The Guardian, December 25,
2009, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/dec/25
/china-jails-liu-xiaobo; “Jiangsu Court Sentences Guo Quan
to 10 Years for Organizing Political Party,” CongressionalExecutive Commission on China homepage, December 4,
2009, http://www.cecc.gov/publications/commission
-analysis/jiangsu-court-sentences-guo-quan-to-10-years
-for-organizing.

43

 SPECIAL REPORT: The Politburo’s Predicament

64.  Human Rights Watch, “China: Olympics Harm Key Human
Rights,” August 7, 2008: http://www.hrw.org/news/2008
/08/04/china-olympics-harm-key-human-rights; Sarah
Cook, “Dissent Crushed as Communist Party Leaders
Gather,” International Business Times, November 8, 2012,
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/402869/20121108
/jiang-tianyong.htm.
65.  Chinese Human Rights Defenders, “We can dig a pit and
bury you alive”: Annual Report on the Situation of Human
Rights Defenders in China, 2011, March 9, 2012,
http://chrd.equalit.ie/2012/03/we-can-dig-a-pit-and-bury
-you-alive-annual-report-on-the-situation-of-human-rights
-defenders-in-china-2011/.
66.  John Kamm, “Separate and Unequal: State Security Detainees in China: Testimony to the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives,” Dui Hua Foundation
website, November 3, 2011, http://duihua.org
/wp/?page_id=2558.
67.  Some scholars have argued that the party successfully
crushed the movement, leading to an apparent drop in the
campaign’s momentum in recent years. However, a range
of other analysis and evidence points to Falun Gong’s
resilience, as well as the campaign’s continuation as a high
priority for Party leaders and a nationwide focus of security
force activity. See James Tong, Revenge of the Forbidden
City: The Suppression of Falun Gong in China, 1999-2005,
Oxford University Press 2009; Congressional-Executive
Commission on China, 2012 Annual Report, October 10,
2012, http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-112shrg76190
/pdf/CHRG-112shrg76190.pdf; Sarah Cook and Leeshai
Lemish, “The 610 Office: Policing the Chinese Spirit,”
China Brief 11, no. 17 (2011), http://www.jamestown
.org/programs/chinabrief/single/?tx_ttnews%5Btt
_news%5D=38411#.VFfSU_TF9Fk; Caylan Ford, “Falun
Gong in China: Review and Update,” Testimony to Congressional-Executive Commission on China, December 18,
2012: http://www.cecc.gov/pages/roundtables
/general/roundtable2/CECC%20Hearing%20%20Falun%20Gong%20in%20China%20-%20Caylan
%20Ford%20Written%20Statement.pdf.
68.  Some experts, such as journalist Ethan Gutmann, estimate
the number of practitioners in custody in the mid- to
late 2000s at between 450,000 and one million at any
given time. His estimate is based on an assessment from
extensive interviews that Falun Gong practitioners made
up 15 to 20 percent of those held in labor camps, prisons,
and various other detention facilities. Ethan Gutmann,
The Slaughter: Mass Killings, Organ Harvesting, and
China’s Secret Solution to Its Dissident Problem, (Amherst:
Prometheus Books, 2014). See also Amnesty International,
“Changing the Soup but not the Medicine?”-Abolishing
Re-Education Through Labour in China, (London: Amnesty
International Publications, 2013), 34, http://www.amnesty
.org/es/library/asset/ASA17/042/2013/en/f7e7aec3
-e4ed-4d8d-b99b-f6ff6ec860d6/asa170422013en.pdf and
Chinese Human Rights Defenders, Re-education through
Labor Abuses Continue Unabated: Overhaul Long Overdue,
February 4, 2009, http://docs.law.gwu.edu/facweb/dclarke
/public/CHRD_RTL_Report.pdf.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/28/world/asia/28china
.html?_r=0#sthash.qWUkRtNR.dpuf; Falun Dafa Information Center, “Arbitrary Arrest and Imprisonment,” 2010
Annual Report, April 25, 2010, http://www.faluninfo.net
/article/1024/Arbitrary-Arrest-and-Imprisonment/.
71.  Dave Bohon, “China’s Churches Face Renewed Government
Persecution,” The New American, March 4, 2013,
http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/asia/item
/14676-china-s-churches-face-renewed-government
-persecution.
72.  Human Rights Watch, “We Are Afraid to Even Look for
Them: Enforced Disappearances in the Wake of Xinjiang’s Protests,” October 21, 2009, http://www.hrw.org/
reports/2009/10/22/we-are-afraid-even-look-them-0; Human Rights Watch, “I Saw It with My Own Eyes”: Abuses by
Chinese Security Forces in Tibet, 2008-2010, July 21, 2010,
http://www.hrw.org/node/91850.
73.  Kamm, “Separate and Unequal: State Security Detainees in
China.”
74.  Yanhua Deng and Kevin J. O’Brien, “Relational Repression
in China: Using Social Ties to Demobilize Protesters,” The
China Quarterly, (August 2013), 1-20, http://polisci
.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/people/u3854/CQ13.pdf;
Jonathan Benney, “Stability maintenance at the grassroots:
China’s weiwen apparatus as a form of conflict resolution,”
LOEWEResearch Focus, “Extrajudicial and Judicial Conflict
Resolution,” Working Paper Nr. 8 (2013),
http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index
/index/docId/32100.
75.  In June 2008, for example, tens of thousands of residents
in Weng’an in Guizhou Province rioted over suspicions
that local police helped cover up the murder of a teenage
girl and may have beaten family and friends who appealed for a proper investigation. Protesters torched CCP
buildings and police vehicles. Jim Yardley, “Chinese riot
over handling of girl’s killing,” The New York Times,
June 30, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/30
/world/asia/30iht-30riot.14086300.html. In August 2012,
an outcry erupted online when news spread of the labor
camp sentence of a mother who had petitioned for a
review of light punishments given to men who had raped
her 11-year-old daughter. See Tania Branigan, “Outcry in
China over mother sent to labour camp after daughter’s
rape,” The Guardian, August 16, 2012,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/16/china
-tang-hui-labour-camp. See also Joseph Fewsmith, “An
‘Anger-venting’ Mass Incident Catches the Attention of
China’s Leadership,” China Leadership Monitor, No. 26,
September 2, 2008, http://media.hoover.org/sites/default
/files/documents/CLM26JF.pdf.
76.  Xi Chen, “The Rising Cost of Stability,” Journal of Democracy 24, no. 1 (January 2013), 57-64.
77.  Xie Yue, “Rising Central Spending on Public Security and
the Dilemma Facing Grassroots Officials in China,” Journal
of Current Chinese Affairs 42, no. 2, 79-109, http://journals
.sub.uni-hamburg.de/giga/jcca/article/viewFile/633/631.

69.  See for example the case of Bu Dongwei from Beijing: “China: Fear of Torture or Ill-Treatment/Prisoner of Conscience:
Bu Dongwei (Also Known as David Bu), (M),” Amnesty
International, August 29, 2006, http://www.amnesty.org
/en/library/asset/ASA17/049/2006/en/39b7f82c-d3fc
-11dd-8743-d305bea2b2c7/asa170492006en.html.

78.  A commonly cited set of official and scholarly statistics
notes that the number of reported “mass incidents” grew
from 8,700 in 1993 to 180,000 in 2011. Jason Todd, “China’s
Rigid Stability-Yu Jianrong analyses a predicament,” The
China Story, Australian Center on China in the World, January 27, 2013, http://www.thechinastory.org/2013/01
/chinas-rigid-stability-an-analysis-of-a-predicament-by
-yu-jianrong-%E4%BA%8E%E5%BB%BA%E5%B5%98/.

70.  Andrew Jacobs, “China Still Presses Crusade Against Falun
Gong,” New York Times, April 27, 2009,

79.  See for example: Xu Kai and Li Weiao, “The Machinery of
Stability Preservation,” Caijing, June 6, 2011, trans. Dui Hua

44

 Freedom House

Foundation, http://www.duihuahrjournal.org/2011/06
/translation-machinery-of-stability.html; and Jason Todd,
“China’s Rigid Stability-Yu Jianrong analyses a predicament.”
80.  Leslie Hook, “Beijing lockdown begins as congress nears,”
Financial Times, November 4, 2012, http://www.ft.com
/intl/cms/s/0/54e7e070-2645-11e2-9109-00144feabdc0
.html#axzz35mTOz8Wy; Yueran Zhang, “As Handover
Looms, China Enters Extreme Lockdown,” Tea Leaf Nation
(blog), Foreign Policy, October 31, 2012,
http://www.tealeafnation.com/2012/10/as-handover
-looms-china-enters-extreme-lockdown/.
81.  In October 2014, the CCP held its Fourth Plenum, focusing
on the legal system. The event took place after the coverage period of this report and is therefore not examined in
detail. However, although several initiatives were announced, the official statements made during and after the
session did not suggest a significant change in approach.
Instead they largely matched the findings presented here,
with the final communiqué asserting, “persisting in Party
leadership is the basic requirement for the socialist rule of
law.” See Donald Clarke, “China’s Fourth Plenum Communiqué: Little Sizzle, Less Steak,” Chinese Law Prof Blog,
October 23, 2014, http://lawprofessors.typepad.com
/china_law_prof_blog/2014/10/chinas-fourth-plenum
-communiqu%C3%A9-little-sizzle-less-steak.html; Shannon
Tiezzi, “4 Things We Learned from China’s 4th Plenum,” The
Diplomat, October 23, 2014, http://thediplomat
.com/2014/10/4-things-we-learned-from-chinas-4th
-plenum/.
82.  Choi Chi-yuk, “Xi Jinping vows to uphold constitution
and rule of law,” South China Morning Post, February 25,
2013, http://www.scmp.com/news/china
/article/1157878/xi-jinping-vows-uphold-constitution
-and-rule-law; Zhao Yinan, “Uphold Constitution, Xi says,”
China Daily, December 5, 2012, http://usa.chinadaily
.com.cn/china/2012-12/05/content_15985894.htm; Qian
Gang, “The missing speech,” China Media Project at The
University of Hong Kong, September 4, 2014,
http://cmp.hku.hk/2014/09/04/35905/.
83.  “CCP Central Committee Resolution concerning Some Major Issues in Comprehensively Deepening Reform,” trans.
China Copyright and Media (blog), November 15, 2013,
http://chinacopyrightandmedia.wordpress
.com/2013/11/15/ccp-central-committee-resolution
-concerning-some-major-issues-in-comprehensively
-deepening-reform/; For original Chinese document see:
“Zhonggong Zhongyang Guanyu Quanmian Shenhua Gaige
Ruogan Zhongda Wenti De Jueding,” [CCP Central Committee Resolution concerning Some Major Issues in Comprehensively Deepening Reform], The State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China, November 15,
2013, http://www.scio.gov.cn/zxbd/tt
/Document/1350709/1350709.htm.
84.  Jerome Cohen, “Jerome Cohen on the ‘Three Supremes,’”
Home Is Where The Heart Dwells (blog), October 23, 2008,
https://blogs.law.harvard.edu/guorui/2008/10/23
/jerome-cohen-on-the-three-supremes/.
85.  The Editors, “Document 9: A ChinaFile Translation-How
Much Is a Hardline Party Directive Shaping China’s Current
Political Climate?” ChinaFile (blog), Asia Society website,
November 8, 2013, http://www.chinafile.com/document
-9-chinafile-translation.
86.  “Full Text: Work report of NPC Standing Committee,”
Xinhua, March 16, 2014, http://news.xinhuanet.com
/english/special/2014-03/16/c_133189961_8.htm;
“The Socialist Legal System with Chinese
Characteristics,” Human Rights in China,

www.freedomhouse.org

http://www.hrichina.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/law
/White-Paper-on-Socialist-Legal-System-with-Chinese
-Characteristics-en.pdf.
87.  David Bandurski, “A New Year’s greeting gets the axe in China,” China Media Project at The University of Hong Kong,
January 3, 2013, http://cmp.hku.hk/2013/01/03/30247/.
88.  Mu Yao, “Zhong Xuan Bu: Xianzheng Jiushi Tuifan Zhonggong Dianfu Shehui Zhuyi,” [Central propaganda department: To carry out constitutionalism is to overthrow the
Chinese Communist Party leadership and Chinese socialist
government], DW News, March 30, 2013, http://china
.dwnews.com/news/2013-05-30/59202630-all.html.
89.  “Zhou Qiang elected president of China’s Supreme People’s
Court,” Xinhua, March 15, 2013, http://news.xinhuanet
.com/english/china/2013-03/15/c_132235706.htm; Ng Tze
Wei, “Pedigree of top judge Zhou Qiang offers hope for legal
reform,” South China Morning Post, April 4, 2013,
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1206564
/pedigree-top-judge-zhou-qiang-offers-hope-legal-reform.
90.  Sherry Gong and Jun Wei, “China to Publish All Court Judgments, with Some Privacy Protections,” Chronicle of Data
Protection, January 24, 2014, http://www.hldataprotection
.com/2014/01/articles/international-eu-privacy/china-to
-publish-all-court-judgments/; Supreme People’s Court,
“Zuigao Renmin Fayuan Guanyu Renmin Fayuan Zai Hulianwang Gongbu Caipan Wenshu De Guiding,” [The Supreme
People’s Court on Issuing the Provisions on the Issuance of
Judicial Documents on the Internet by the People’s Courts],
November 21, 2013, http://www.chinacourt.org/law
/detail/2013/11/id/147242.shtml.
91.  “Judicial Reform Pilots,” China Law Translate (blog), June 6,
2014, http://chinalawtranslate.com/en/judicial
-reform-pilots/.
92.  The Supreme People’s Court, “Judicial Opinions of China,”
(accessed November 24, 2014), http://www.court.gov.cn
/zgcpwsw/.
93.  Some observers have questioned the degree of official
sincerity behind the online petitioning system, citing the
fact that it crashed on the first day, that callers to a phone
number listed on the site encountered a message that the
number did not exist, and that the site requires appellants
to provide detailed personal information that could expose
them to retribution. Xiaoqing Pi, “China Online Petition Site
Crashes on Day One,” China Real Time Report (blog), Wall
Street Journal, July 1, 2013, http://blogs.wsj.com
/chinarealtime/2013/07/01/china-online-petition-website
-crashes-on-first-day/.
94.  The Central People’s Government of the People’s Republic
of China, “Guanyu Chuangxin Qunzhong Gongzuo Fangfa
Jiejue Xinfang Tuchu Wenti De Yijian,” [Opinion on the Innovative Mass Work Method of Solving Outstanding Petition
Issues], February 25, 2014, http://www.gov.cn/jrzg
/2014-02/25/content_2621605.htm.
95. Ibid.
96.  Email communication with author, March 2014.
97.  Email communication with author, October 2014.
98.  “Prospects for Reforming China’s Reeducation Through Labor
System,” Congressional-Executive Commission on China,
http://www.cecc.gov/publications/issue-papers
/prospects-for-reforming-chinas-reeducation-through-labor
-system.
99.  Christopher Bodeen, “Official says China to end labor camp
sentences,” Associated Press, January 7, 2013,
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/official-says-china-end-labor
-camp-sentences.

45

 SPECIAL REPORT: The Politburo’s Predicament

100. Amnesty International, “Changing the Soup but not the
Medicine?”; Dennis Lynch, “China Closes Re-education
Through Labor Camps,” International Business Times,
January 10, 2014, http://www.ibtimes.com/china-closes
-re-education-through-labor-camps-1535050.
101. See for example the following report regarding Yunnan:
Xinhua, “Yunnan suspends ‘laojiao’ reeducation system,”
China Daily, February 6, 2013, http://www.chinadaily.com
.cn/china/2013-02/06/content_16209655.htm; “Zhonggong Zhongyang Guanyu Quanmian Shenhua Gaige
Ruogan Zhongda Wenti De Jueding,” [CCP Central Committee Resolution concerning Some Major Issues in Comprehensively Deepening Reform], China Copyright and Media
(blog), November 15, 2013,
http://chinacopyrightandmedia.wordpress
.com/2013/11/15/ccp-central-committee-resolution
-concerning-some-major-issues-in-comprehensively
-deepening-reform/; For original Chinese document see:
“Zhonggong Zhongyang Guanyu Quanmian Shenhua Gaige
Ruogan Zhongda Wenti De Jueding,” [CCP Central Committee Resolution concerning Some Major Issues in Comprehensively Deepening Reform], The State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China, November 15,
2013, http://www.scio.gov.cn/zxbd/tt
/Document/1350709/1350709.htm.
102. “NPC Standing Committee Decision On LaoJiao,” China
Law Translate (blog), December 30, 2013,
http://chinalawtranslate.com/en/npc-standing-committee
-decision-on-laojiao/.
103. Associated Press, “China To Release Prisoners Of Reeducation Labor Camps,” Huffington Post, December 27, 2013,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/27
/china-reeducation-camp-prisoners-released_n_4510589.
html; “Decision of the Standing Committee of the National
People’s Congress on Repealing Legislation on Reeducation through Labor,” Xinhua, December 28, 2013,
http://big5.xinhuanet.com/gate/big5/news.xinhuanet.com
/politics/2013-12/28/c_118749199.htm.
104. Chinese Human Rights Defenders, Re-education through
Labor Abuses Continue Unabated: Overhaul Long Overdue.
105. “Prospects for Reforming China’s Reeducation Through
Labor System,” Congressional-Executive Commission on
China.
106. Asia Catalyst, “Custody and Education”: Arbitrary Detention
for Female Sex Workers in China, December 2013,
http://asiacatalyst.org/blog/AsiaCatalyst_Custody
Education2013-12-EN.pdf.
107. “Prospects for Reforming China’s Reeducation Through Labor
System,” Congressional-Executive Commission on China.
108. Yaqiu Wang, “Community Corrections and Stability
Maintenance,” China Brief 14, no. 18 (2014),
http://www.jamestown.org/regions/chinaasiapacific
/single/?tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=42870&tx_ttnews
%5BbackPid%5D=52&cHash=c6deb125d403b750b680dc
83b57ad723#.VFfxh_TF9Fk.
109. Interview with Yiyang Xia, Senior Director of Policy and
Research at the Human Rights Law Foundation and Director of Investigation Division for the World Organization to
Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong, March 2014;
Amnesty International, “Changing the Soup But Not the
Medicine?” 37.
110. Amnesty International, “Changing the Soup But Not the
Medicine?” 40.
111. Teng Biao, “What Is a ‘Legal Education Center’ in China,”
China Change, April 3, 2014, http://chinachange.org
/2014/04/03/what-is-a-legal-education-center-in-china/.

46

112. Amnesty International, “Changing the Soup But Not the
Medicine?” 37.
113. “Henan Duo De Jian ‘Fei Zhengchang Shangfang Xunjie
Zhongxin,’” [Henan builds many ‘abnormal petitioning
admonition centers’], The Beijing News, February 13, 2014,
http://epaper.bjnews.com.cn/html/2014-02/13
/content_494560.htm?div=-1; “To End Arbitrary Detention,
Bring Officials to Justice,” Human Rights Journal on Dui
Hua Foundation website, March 3, 2014,
http://www.duihuahrjournal.org/2014/03/to-end-arbitrary
-detention-bring.html.
114. For example, according to attorney and scholar Teng Biao, a recent investigation found 449 “legal education centers” in existence across China, with concentrations in Shandong, Hebei,
Sichuan, Hubei, and northeastern provinces like Heilongjiang.
Teng Biao, “What Is a ‘Legal Education Center’ in China.”
115. Ibid.
116.  See Dui Hua Foundation, “Community Correction
Expands as RTL Contracts,” Human Rights Journal on Dui
Hua Foundation website, December 19, 2013,
http://www.duihuahrjournal.org/2013/12/community
-correction-expands-as-rtl.html; and Yaqiu Wang, “Community Corrections and Stability Maintenance.”
117. Ibid.
118. Dui Hua Foundation, “Community Correction Expands as
RTL Contracts.”
119. See, for example, these rules from Guangdong Province,
dated October 12, 2013: Office of the Guangdong Provincial
People’s Government, “Guangdong Sheng Sifa Ting Guanyu
Shequ Jiaozheng Renyuan Kaohe Ji Fenlei Guanli De Zhan
Hang Guiding”[Guangdong Province Department of Justice
Interim Provisions on the Assessment and Classification of
Community Corrections Personnel Management], Guangdong Provincial Government website, October 12, 2013,
http://www.gd.gov.cn/govpub/bmguifan/201311
/t20131104_188065.htm; See also for Hubei, Hunan,
Shandong and Jiangsu provinces: Southern Metropolis Daily,
“Guangdong Ben Yue Qi Zhixing Shehui Jiaozheng Renyuan
Kaohe Ji Fenlei Guanli Zhan Hang Guiding” [From This Month
Guangdong will Implement Community Correction Personnel Assessment and Classification Management Interim
Provisions], Southern Metropolis Daily website, December 16,
2013, http://epaper.oeeee.com/A/html/2013-12/16
/content_1991707.htm.
120. Ibid.
121. This trend began under Zhou’s predecesor Luo Gan, but
accelerated during Zhou’s tenure and gained greater attention from observers inside and outside China. Karita Kan,
“Whither Weiwen?: Stability maintenance in the 18th Party
Congress era,” China Perspectives, 1(2013), 87-93,
http://chinaperspectives.revues.org/6120.
122. Shannon Tiezzi, “China’s National Security Commission
Holds First Meeting,” The Diplomat, April 16, 2014,
http://thediplomat.com/2014/04/chinas-national-security
-commission-holds-first-meeting/.
123. Yuhua Wang and Carl Minzner, “The Rise of the Security
State,” The China Quarterly (forthcoming),
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~yuhuaw/yuhuawang/Research
_files/The%20Rise%20of%20the%20Security%20State.pdf.
124. Chris Buckley, “China domestic security spending
rises to $111 billion,” Reuters, March 5, 2012,
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/05/us-china
-parliament-security-idUSTRE82403J20120305.
125. Ben Blanchard and John Ruwitch, “China hikes defense
budget, to spend more on internal security,” Reuters, March

 Freedom House

5, 2013, http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/05
/us-china-parliament-defence-idUSBRE92403620130305;
For original NPC document see: Ministry of Finance of the
People’s Republic of China, Report on the Implementation of
Central and Local Budgets for 2012 and on Draft Central and
Local Budgets for 2013, First Session of the Twelfth National
People’s Congress, March 5, 2013, http://online.wsj.com
/public/resources/documents/BudgetReport_Eng_2013.pdf.
126. Edward Wong, “Beijing Goes Quiet on Rise of Local Security
Budgets,” Sinosphere (blog), New York Times, March 6,
2014, http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/06
/beijing-goes-quiet-on-rise-of-local-security-budgets/.
127. Michael Martina, “China withholds full domestic-security
spending figure,” Reuters, March 4, 2014,
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/05/us-china
-parliament-security-idUSBREA240B720140305; For original NPC document see: Ministry of Finance of the People’s
Republic of China, Report on the Implementation of Central
and Local Budgets for 2013 and on Draft Central and Local
Budgets for 2014, Second Session of the Twelfth National
People’s Congress, March 5, 2014, http://online.wsj.com
/public/resources/documents/2014Budget_Eng.pdf.
128. Ministry of Finance of the People’s Republic of China, Report on the Implementation of Central and Local Budgets
for 2012 and on Draft Central and Local Budgets for 2013,
First Session of the Twelfth National People’s Congress,
March 5, 2013, 7, http://online.wsj.com/public/resources
/documents/BudgetReport_Eng_2013.pdf and Ministry of
Finance of the People’s Republic of China, Report on the
Implementation of Central and Local Budgets for 2013 and
on Draft Central and Local Budgets for 2014, Second Session of the Twelfth National People’s Congress, March 5,
2014, 11, http://online.wsj.com/public/resources
/documents/2014Budget_Eng.pdf.
129. Interview with Wendy Lin, Chinese Human Rights Defenders, April 2014.
130. Legal Network-Legal Daily, “Chuangxin Qunzhong Gongzuo
Fangfa Guanjian Shi Yao Yifa Banshi,” [Innovative methods
of mass work are critical to acting in accordance with the
law], NEWS.163.COM, October 14, 2013, http://news.163
.com/13/1014/06/9B4JT80000014AED.html.
131. Qian Gang, “Xi Jinping, playing with fire,” China Media
Project at The University of Hong Kong, October 17, 2013,
http://cmp.hku.hk/2013/10/17/34310/.
132. Ibid.
133. Yanhua Deng and Kevin J. O’Brien, “Relational Repression
in China: Using Social Ties to Demobilize Protesters.”
134. Qian Haoping and He Jiawen, “Chong Ti ‘Fengqiao Jingyan,’”
[Re-mentioning ‘The Fengqiao Experience’], Southern Weekend, October 18, 2013, http://www.infzm.com/content/95122.
135. The following explanation draws on analysis and research
from several publications. See Christian Göbel and Lynette H.
Ong, Social Unrest in China, (London: Europe China Research
and Advice Network, 2012), http://www.euecran.eu/Long
%20Papers/ECRAN%20Social%20Unrest%20in%20China
_%20Christian%20Gobel%20and%20Lynette%20H.%20Ong
.pdf; Carl F. Minzner, “Riots and Cover-Ups: Counterproductive Control of Local Agents in China,” University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law 31 (2009), on Social
Science Research Network, November 9, 2009, http://papers
.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1502943.
136. Jin Yu and Wang Shu, “Bufen Diqu Pi Zhi Lanyong Guanyuan ‘Yi Piao Foujue’ Zhi” [Some local officials accused of
abusing ‘one-vote veto’ system], The Beijing News, November 4, 2013, http://epaper.bjnews.com.cn/html/2013-11/04
/content_475442.htm?div=-1.

www.freedomhouse.org

137. Ibid.
138. Ibid.
139. Organization Department of the CCP Central Committee,
“Guanyu Gaijin Difang Dang Zheng Lingdao Banzi He Lingdao Ganbu Zhengji Kaohe Gongzuo De Tongzhi” [Notice on
Improving the Performance Evaluation of Local Party and
Government Leading Bodies and Cadres] in People’s Daily,
December 10, 2013, http://renshi.people.com
.cn/n/2013/1210/c139617-23793409.html.
140. See, for example, the following lists from Anhui, Shaanxi,
and Zhejiang provinces: Dongzhi County CCP Organizational Committee, “Anhui Sheng ‘Liang Ban’ Xia Fa
Tongzhi: Qingli Guifan ‘Yi Piao Foujue’ Shixiang,” [Anhui
Province’s ‘Two Offices’ issues a notice: clarify standard
‘one-vote veto’ matter], Anhui Vanguard Net, December
31, 2013, http://www.dzxf.gov.cn/news/rdjj/2013-12
-31/1357.html; City Assessment Office, Weinan City,
“Guanyu Yinfa ‘Weinan Shi 2014 Niandu Mubiao Zeren
Kaohe Pingjia Shishi Banfa’ De Tongzhi,” [On the issuance
of ‘Weinan City 2014 annual target responsibility assessment evaluation of implementation measures’], Weinan
Communist Party website, April 8, 2014,
http://www.wndj.org.cn/khgz/zcwj/2014/04/0810592095
.html; CCP Chengcheng County Office, “Guanyu Yinfa
‘Chengcheng Xian 2014 Niandu Mubiao Zeren Kaohe
Pingjia Shishi Banfa’ De Tongzhi,” [On the issuance of
‘Chengcheng County 2014 annual target responsibility
assessment evaluation of the implementation measures’],
Chengcheng County Government Public Information
Platform, http://www.chengcheng.gov.cn/Government
/PublicInfoShow.aspx?Id=1934; Jiapu Town CCP Committee, “Jiapu Zhen 2014 Nian Cun Ji Zuzhi ‘San Bi Yi Jiang’
Mubiao Zeren Zhi Kaohe Banfa,” [Jiapu Town 2014 villagelevel organizations ‘three to one stresses’ target responsibility assessment methods], The People’s Government of
Changxing County website, February 24, 2014,
http://zfxxgk.zjcx.gov.cn/xxgk/jcms_files/jcms1/web46
/site/art/2014/2/24/art_4524_32934.html.
141. County Office, Longchuan County, “Guanyu Yinfa ‘2014
Niandu Longchuan Xian Pingan Chuangjian Ji Zong Zhi
Weiwen Gongzuo Kaohe Banfa’ De Tongzhi,” [Notice on the
Issuance of ‘2014 Annual Longchuan County Safety Establishment and Comprehensive Management of Stability Work
Assessment Methods’], Longchuan Government website,
May 30, 2014, http://www.longchuan.gov.cn/T/2014-05-30
/blue_Article_37401_1.shtml; “Guanyu Yinfa ‘Baisha Zhen
2013 Nian Zong Zhi Xinfang Weiwen Gongzuo Kaohe Ji
Jiangcheng Banfa’ De Tongzhi,” [Notice on the Issuance of
‘2013 Baisha Town Comprehensive Management of Petition
Stability Work Assessment and Incentive Measures’], Baisha
Town Administrative Office, April 1, 2013, http://webcache
.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www
.yddflz.gov.cn/info/82620; Wuhan Civil Affairs Bureau,
“Shi Minzheng Ju Bangongshi Guanyu Zuo Hao Quanshi
Minzheng Xinfang Wending He Zong Zhi Gongzuo De Tongzhi,” [Municipal Civil Affairs Bureau Office Notice on the Civil
Affairs Petition Stability and Comprehensive Management
Work], Wuhan Civil Affairs Bureau website, October 16, 2013,
http://www.whmzj.gov.cn/News_View.aspx?id=11626.
142. Zicheng Town CCP Committee, “Zicheng Zhen 2013
Niandu Zong Zhi Xinfang Weiwen Gongzuo,” [Zicheng
Town 2013 Annual Comprehensive Management Petition
Stability Work], The People’s Government of Zijin website,
February 22, 2013, http://www.zijin.gov.cn/xxgk/gezhen/zcz
/wenjian/3958197178918054.htm; County Office, Longchuan County, “Notice on the Issuance of ‘2014 Annual Longchuan County Safety Establishment and Comprehensive
Management of Stability Work Assessment Methods.’”

47

 SPECIAL REPORT: The Politburo’s Predicament

143. Sophia Lin, “China’s Population-Control Machine Churns
On,” Freedom At Issue (blog), Freedom House website,
January 13, 2014, http://www.freedomhouse.org/blog
/china-population-control-machine-churns#.VFg9bvTF9Fk.

Leading Bodies and Leading Cadres Work Performance
Evaluation,” People’s Daily website, December 10, 2013,
http://renshi.people.com.cn/n/2013/1210/c139617
-23793409.html.

144. Congressional-Executive Commission on China, 2014 Annual Report, October 9, 2014, http://www.cecc.gov/sites
/chinacommission.house.gov/files/2014%20annual
%20report_0.PDF.

152. Email communication with Victor Clemens, researcher at
Chinese Human Rights Defenders, October 2014. See also,
Chinese Human Rights Defenders, “Deprivation of Liberty
and Torture/Other Mistreatment of Human Rights Defenders in China (Partial data: January 1-June 30, 2014),” http://
chrdnet.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/FOR
-WEB-Partial-data-2014.06.30_-pdf.pdf; Chinese Human
Rights Defenders, “Deprivation of Liberty and Torture/Other
Mistreatment of Human Rights Defenders in China (Partial
data: January 1, 2012-December 31, 2013),” http://chrdnet
.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/FOR-WEB_PDF_Partial
-data-2013-before-updated-July-2014.pdf.

145. Xi acknowledged corruption as an existential problem
for the party in his November 2012 speech at the 18th
party congress, immediately after taking the helm of the
Communist Party. Edward Wong, “New Communist Party
Chief in China Denounces Corruption in Speech,” New York
Times, November 19, 2012, http://www.nytimes
.com/2012/11/20/world/asia/new-communist-party
-chief-in-china-denounces-corruption.html; For original
Chinese, see “Authorized copy: Xi Jinping’s speech in the
first collective study session of the Politburo,” Xinhua,
November 18, 2012; http://news.xinhuanet.com
/2012-11/19/c_123967017.htm.
146. CCP Xinghua City, Zhaoyang Town Committee, “Guanyu
2014 Niandu Dang Feng Lianzheng Jianshe Gongzuo
Kaohe Shishi Yijian,” [Opinion on 2014 Party Conduct and
Building an Honest and Clean Government Work Assessment Implementation], Xinghua City Information Disclosure, March 11, 2014, http://xxgk.xinghua.gov
.cn/xxgk/jcms_files/jcms1/web55/site/art/2014/3/11
/art_2097_25486.html.
147. State Administration of Taxation, “Xi’an Chanba Shentai
Qu Guojia Shuiwu Ju 2014 Niandu Dang Feng Lianzheng
Jianshe Zeren Shu,” [Xi’an Chanba Ecological Zone State
Administration of Taxation 2014 Annual Party Conduct and
Building Honest and Clean Government Responsibilities],
Xi’an Chanba Ecological Zone State Administration of Taxation website, March 6, 2014, http://www.sn-n-tax.gov.cn
/portal/site/site/portal/xags/cbqgs/nrpage.portal?contentId
=MQOKSC50A4PK80EXLA64SBHZ1TADKPG1&categoryId
=70NEIIYABWVPX35MED9M46MS8ZHMLTZ6.
148. Bloomberg News, “Chinese Cadres Told Going Green Rivals
GDP to Rise in Party,” Bloomberg, March 13, 2014,
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-12/chinese-cadres
-told-going-green-rivals-gdp-to-get-ahead-in-party.html.
149. Chaoyang Daily, “Luoshi Jian Pai Renwu Shixing Huanbao
‘Yi Piao Foujue,’” [Implementation of Emission Reduction
Task to Carry Out Environmentally-Friendly ‘One-Vote Veto’],
Chaoyang City People’s Government website, April 14,
2014, http://www.zgcy.gov.cn/zwgk/zwyw/z_zwyw
_disp.asp?item_id=37165;Hubei People’s Government,
“Hubei Sheng ‘Shier Wu’ Zhuyao Wuran Wu Zong Liang Jian
Pai Kaohe Banfa,” [Hubei Province ‘Twelfth Five-Year Plan’
Main Pollutant Emissions Assessment Methods], Jianshi
County, Hubei Province website, http://xxgk.hbjs
.gov.cn/xxgk/jcms_files/jcms1/web54/site//art/2013/7/17
/art_2635_38985.html.
150. Shiyan Daily, “Shiyan Shi Huanjing Baohu Shixing ‘Yi Piao
Foujue’ Zhidu,” [Shiyan City Environmental Protection to
Implement ‘One-Vote Veto’ System’], Shiyan People’s Government website, http://www.shiyan.gov.cn/SY/zwgk
/zcjd/2014/04/content_79975.html; Yilong County People’s
Government, “Yilong Xian Renmin Zhengfu Guanyu Yinfa
‘Yilong Xian Huanjing Baohu Yi Piao Foujue Zhidu Shishi
Banfa’ De Tongzhi,” [Yilong County People’s Government on
the Issuance of ‘Yilong County Environmental Protection
One-Vote Veto System Implementation Methods’], Yilong
County Environmental Protection Bureau website,
http://www.ylhbj.gov.cn/site/showArticle.aspx?id=550.
151. People’s Daily, “Notice on Improving Local Government

48

153. Ibid.
154. See, for example, the cases of Charles Xue: William Wan,
“China broadcasts confession of Chinese-American blogger,” Washington Post, September 15, 2013,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/china-broadcasts
-confession-of-chinese-american-blogger/2013
/09/15/3f2d82da-1e1a-11e3-8459-657e0c72fec8_story
.html; and Gao Yu: Patrick Boehler, “Beijing detains, parades
journalist Gao Yu on state TV for ‘leaking state secrets,’”
South China Morning Post, November 8, 2014, http://www
.scmp.com/news/china-insider/article/1507195/beijing
-detains-parades-journalist-gao-yu-state-tv-leaking-state.
155. See, for example, the cases of Zhang Shaojie: Chinese
Human Rights Defenders, “Prisoner of Conscience-Zhang
Shaojie,” Chinese Human Rights Defenders website, September 1, 2014, http://chrdnet.com/2014/09/prisoner
-of-conscience-zhang-shaojie/; and Dong Rubin: Chinese
Human Rights Defenders, “Prisoner of Conscience-Dong
Rubin,” Chinese Human Rights Defenders website, August
12, 2014, http://chrdnet.com/2014/08/prisoner-of
-conscience-dong-rubin/.
156. Interview with Chinese human rights lawyer A, who wished
to remain anonymous, November 2013
157. Interview with Eva Pils, associate professor of law, Chinese
University of Hong Kong and author of a recent book
China’s Human Rights Lawyers: Advocacy and Resistance,
November 2013.
158. Interview with Chinese human rights lawyer B, who wished
to remain anonymous, November 2013.
159. See, for example, the cases of the “watch brother” and
“house sister” whose corruption was initially exposed by
netizens. Ben Blanchard and Maxim Duncan, “China’s grinning and corrupt ‘watch brother’ gets time,”
Reuters, September 5, 2013, http://www.reuters.com
/article/2013/09/05/us-china-corruption
-idUSBRE9840AC20130905; and Tom Mitchell, “Jail sentence for China’s ‘house sister,’” Financial Times, September
29, 2013,http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bedf2286-28ec-11e3
-8d19-00144feab7de.html.
160. Freedom House, “Teenage netizen released after outcry
amid social-media crackdown,” China Media Bulletin: Issue
No. 94 on Freedom House website, October 8, 2013,
http://freedomhouse.org/cmb/94_100813#4.
161. Xiao Qiang, “Fear and Anger on the Chinese Internet: The
Struggle Between Censors and Netizens,” Written testimony presented to the U.S.-China Economic and Security
Review Commission, May 15, 2014, http://www.uscc.gov
/sites/default/files/Xiao_Written%20Testimony.pdf.
162. See description of observer and overseas Falun Gong
community estimates in Stephen Noakes and Caylan Ford,

 Freedom House

“Path-Dependence and the Management of Political Opposition Groups: Explaining the Continuing Anti-Falun Gong
Campaign,” forthcoming in the China Quarterly, September
2015.
163. Interview with Chinese human rights lawyer C, who wished
to remain anonymous, November 2013.
164. “57 Ren Shengming Congxin Kaishi Xiulian,” [57 people
state they will restart their practice-so far, 520,048 statements made], Falun Dafa Minghui.org, October 10, 2014,
http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2014/10/11/57
%E4%BA%BA%E5%A3%B0%E6%98%8E%E4%BB%8E
%E6%96%B0%E5%BC%80%E5%A7%8B%E4%BF%AE
%E7%82%BC-298788.html.
165. Xiao Qiang, “Fear and Anger on the Chinese Internet: The
Struggle Between Censors and Netizens.”
166. The directives were issued in March and April 2014, and
the tests were conducted in May 2014 on the Baidu search
engine via an application that mimics the experience of users inside China. Given the time that passed between the
directives’ issuance and the testing, it is unclear whether
the articles were never deleted or were reposted later.
167. In one recent example cited by Xiao, following the detention of prominent attorney Pu Zhiqiang in May, thousands
of Chinese netizens expressed their support for Pu despite
heavy censorship. In one case, actress and model Zhang
Ziyi recommended on Weibo that her 20 million followers
watch the 2013 South Korean film The Attorney, indirectly
comparing Pu’s plight to the film’s story, inspired by the
life of former South Korean president and human rights
lawyer Roh Moo-hyun. Her post was retweeted 16,000
times. According to Xiao, despite the heavy censorship,
many of these posts had not been deleted days later. See
Xiao Qiang, “Fear and Anger on the Chinese Internet: The
Struggle Between Censors and Netizens.”
168. Zhang Hong, “Southern Weekly row won’t lead to a loosening of rules on China’s media,” South China Morning Post,
January 10, 2013, http://www.scmp.com/comment/
insight-opinion/article/1123951/southern-weekly-row
-wont-lead-loosening-rules-chinas-media.
169. Patrick Boehler, “Confessional last letter of Southern
Weekly’s in-house censor days before he died,” South China
Morning Post, April 4, 2013, http://www.scmp.com/news
/china/article/1206991/confessional-last-letter-southern
-weeklys-house-censor-days-he-died.
170. Wang Qinglei, “A Farewell to CCTV—Some True Words for
This Era,” China Change website, December 9, 2013,
http://chinachange.org/2013/12/09/a-farewell-to-cctv/.
171. Ibid.
172. Xiao Qiang, “Fear and Anger on the Chinese Internet: The
Struggle Between Censors and Netizens.”
173. Interview with human rights lawyer C, who wished to
remain anonymous, November 2013.
174. Interview with Chinese activist, who wished to remain
anonymous, April 2014.
175. Noakes and Ford, “Path-Dependence and the Management
of Political Opposition Groups: Explaining the Continuing
Anti-Falun Gong Campaign.”
176. Rogier Creemers, “Xi Jinping’s 19 August speech revealed?”
177. The Editors, “Document 9: A ChinaFile Translation-How
Much Is a Hardline Party Directive Shaping China’s Current
Political Climate?”
178. Comment made during public event at Columbia University
Law School, “The Future of Rights Activism in China,”
March 2014.

www.freedomhouse.org

179. Interview with human rights lawyer B, who wished to
remain anonymous, November 2013.
180. Interview with human rights lawyer A, who wished to
remain anonymous, November 2013. For a fascinating
selection of such accounts, see In the Shadow of the Rising
Dragon: Stories of Repression in the New China edited by
Xu Youyu and Hua Ze, translated from the Chinese by Stacy
Mosher (New York: Mosher Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 236.
181. For a review and excerpts, see: Perry Link, “How to Deal
with the Chinese Police,” ChinaFile (blog), Asia Society
website, November 7, 2013, http://www.chinafile.com
/how-deal-chinese-police.
182. Interview with Professor Li Lianjiang, City University of
Hong Kong, November 2013.
183. Xiao Qiang, “Fear and Anger on the Chinese Internet: The
Struggle Between Censors and Netizens.”
184. Ibid.
185. Margaret E. Roberts, “Fear or Friction? How Censorship
Slows the Spread of Information in the Digital Age,” Prepared for the Association of Asian Studies Annual Meeting,
Philadelphia, PA, March 2014, http://scholar.harvard.edu
/files/mroberts/files/fearfriction_0.pdf.
186. Interview with Chinese human rights lawyer B, who wished
to remain anonymous, November 2013.
187. Interview with Chinese human rights lawyer A, who wished
to remain anonymous, November 2013.
188. Interview with Chinese human rights lawyer D, who wished
to remain anonymous, November 2013.
189. Interview with Chinese human rights lawyer C, who wished
to remain anonymous, November 2013; Interview with
Zhang Lianying, Falun Gong activist and former prisoner of
conscience, April 2014.
190. See, for example, the case of Li Shanshan, when over one
hundred people gathered at the gates of a labor camp to
prevent her being rearrested upon her release: Amnesty
International, “Changing the Soup But Not the Medicine?”
15.
191. Natalie Thomas and Sui-Lee Wee, “China sacks vice police
chief with connections to Zhou Yongkang,” Reuters, February 24, 2014, http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/24
/us-china-corruption-idUSBREA1N03Y20140224; Interview
with Yiyang Xia, March 2014.
192. Interview with Yiyang Xia; Noakes and Ford, “Path-Dependence and the Management of Political Opposition Groups:
Explaining the Continuing Anti-Falun Gong Campaign.”
193. Interview with Zhang Lianying.
194. Interview with Li Lianjiang, November 2013.
195. Interview with former resident of Kunming, the site of
environmental protests in May 2013, June 2014.
196. See, for example, comments reportedly made by Secretary
of State John Kerry at a meeting with Chinese journalists and bloggers in February 2014. Michael R. Gordon,
“Chinese Ask Kerry to Help Tear Down a Firewall,” New York
Times, February 15, 2014, http://www.nytimes
.com/2014/02/16/world/asia/chinese-ask-kerry-to
-help-tear-down-a-firewall.html?_r=0; and Simon Denyer,
“Chinese bloggers ask Kerry to put pressure on Beijing over
Internet, press freedoms,” Washington Post, February 15,
2014, http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/chinese
-bloggers-ask-kerry-for-support/2014/02/15/a8786670
-963c-11e3-ae45-458927ccedb6_story.html.

49

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