The Michigan Daily - Monday, April 20, 1998 - 9
Open discussions of reform
spread to China's universities
The Washington Post
BEIJING -The intellectual seeds of liberal politi-
cal reform are sprouting here, making this the most
open spring since the massive pro-democracy demon-
strations in Tiananmen Square were crushed nine
years ago.
Influential intellectuals here in the capital are
talking about promoting individual rights, expand-
ing low-level direct elections, shrinking govern-
ment and scaling back the ubiquitous role of the
Communist Party.
A professor from the elite Communist Party school
has blasted the "climate of fear" that he says impedes
free speech. A leading business newspaper has hailed
a "third liberation of thinking" and devoted two pages
to excerpts from "Crossed Swords," a book that harsh-
ly attacks orthodox Marxist "leftists."
"Recently, the general environment has relaxed," said
Mao Yushi, whose recent essay, "Liberalism, Equal
Status and Human Rights," has put him in demand on
China's long-dormant college lecture circuit. On a
Saturday night in March, 150 students at the Chinese
Geological University here crowded into a lecture hall
to hear the 69-year-old economist praise Western liber-
alism, denounce the late Communist chair Mao Zedong
and call for human rights.
Beijing's spring appears to reflect a growing awareness
within the party's senior ranks that it must move forward
on political reform as Chinese society changes and the
economy grows more complex and sophisticated. The
party can no longer dictate every aspect of the economy
or people's lives, nor easily represent the diverging inter-
ests of state workers, entrepreneurs, peasants and city res-
idents.
What started early this year as a debate among a few
influential academics has moved this month into the
only in a democratic environment can people dare
to voice new opinions... E
- Shen Baoxiang
Central party school professor
AP PHOTO
Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams speaks at the end of the Sinn Fein annual
conference yesterday in Dublin, Ireland.
SinnFeinlets
hard-1ines. ven
thleir opposition1
state-run mass media, from Shenyang in the northeast to
Shenzhen in the south.
"Only in a democratic environment can people
dare to voice new opinions and can their intelli-
gence, wisdom and ability be fully brought into
play," central party school professor Shen
Baoxiang was quoted as saying by the China
Economic Times this month. "If we don't encour-
age people to think freely and voice new opinions,
our society will actually be utterly stagnant,
though it may seem tranquil."
Many liberals wield economic arguments, noting
that economic progress cannot rely on a handful of
officials and experts. China's 1.2 billion people "are
not only a 'labor force,' they are also the world's
largest thought warehouse and brain. We can thus use
the magic weapon of freedom of thought to achieve
success," Hu Weixi wrote in a March issue of a mag-
azine called Fangfa ("Way").
The opening is limited, and for the time being, true
free speech and democracy remain distant. Open
debate is a relative concept.
For example, Li Bifeng from Sichuan, jailed for five
years after the 1989 demonstrations, was arrested again
this month for publicizing incidents of labor unrest.
Police also seized written materials from Xu Wenli,
briefly detaining the veteran dissident who has called on
China's legislature to allow independent trade unions
and challenged the government to live up to the United
Nations human-rights covenant it agreed to sign.
Nonetheless, many intellectuals here say this is the
most fertile time in a decade for debate about China's
political future.
Mao, the economist with the same name as the
Chinese Revolution leader, traces the relaxation to
January, when Reform Magazine's 10th anniversary
issue featured a hard-hitting article titled "(We
Should) Also Champion Political Reform," by Li
Shenzhi, a prominent reformer and the retired Vice
president of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
The "implementation of political reform will deter-
mine the ultimate success or failure of economic
reform," Li wrote. Rejecting the government line that
feeding people is the top human-rights priority, Li said
China must adopt universal human rights.
In February, Mao, who in 1993 retired from the acad-
emy and established an independent economic think
tank called Unirule, organized a forum to discuss a new
Chinese translation of "The Constitution of Liberty," a
long-banned book by one of socialism's harshest critics
- the late Austrian Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek, a
philosopher and economist. In the 1960 work Hayek
argued, "A society that does not recognize that each
individual has values of his own which he is entitled to
follow can have no respect for the dignity of the indi-
vidual and cannot really know freedom."
DUBLIN, Ireland (AP)= Sinn
Fein leader Gerry Adams, seeking
to keep his IRA-allied party united
on the road to compromise, let hard-
liners within his ranks vent their
opposition to the Northern Ireland
peace accord he helped negotiate
yesterday.
Adams told his party's annual con-
ference that Irish republicans like him
would never accept Northern
Ireland's existence under British rule.
But he hinted they should take seats
in a new Northern Ireland Assembly
alongside the province's pro-British
Protestant majority - a key plank of
the peace accord.
"I totally reject any notion of
accepting the legitimacy of the six-
county state or of partition," he said
in reference to Northern Ireland and
its creation 77 years ago when the
rest of Ireland won independence
from Britain.
He defended the accord as a
"mixed bag" that would enable Sinn
Fein to pursue its "root objective"
- to build its voter support beyond
the 17 percent the party already has
in Northern Ireland.
To reject the accord would mean
adopting "a defensive strategy that
will emasculate our struggle," he
warned in his closing address at the
Royal Dublin Society conference
center.
Adams persuaded the more than
1,000 Sinn Fein delegates to post-
pone a decision on the accord until
an "emergency" conference in two
or three weeks. While he said he
would be confident of winning a
vote now, he wanted lengthy inter-
nal debate first.
The delay allows him and his cir-
cle of supporters the time to identi-
fy outspoken dissidents or waverers
and apply pressure before the next
high-profile gathering.
Crucially, Adams will require
more than 66 percent support to
amend Sinn Fein's party constitu-
tion, which now forbids participa-
tion in any Northern Ireland admin-
istration.
None of the eight participating
parties was required to sign the
peace accord they negotiated on
April 10 in Belfast after 22 months
of negotiations. The accord must be
approved in public referendums
May 22 in both parts of Ireland.
The accord creates a new 108-
seat Northern Ireland Assembly. But
in a nod to Catholic demands for
Irish unity, it requires the
Protestants and Catholics in that
administration to cooperate formal-
ly with the Irish Republic in a new
North-South Ministerial Council.
The major Protestant party, the
Ulster Unionists, approved the
accord Saturday on a decisive 540-
120 vote - and challenged Sinn
Fein to follow suit.
Adams gave activists several
hours over the weekend to vent their
views. Nobody criticized him or
Sinn Fein's chief negotiator, Martin
McGuinness, both of whom
received standing ovations whenev-
er they entered the hall.
Khmer Rouge remnants seek
new role after Pol Pot death
coming'
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CHONG SA-NGAM, Thailand (AP)
- The remnants of the Khmer Rouge
guerrilla group are seeking a new role in
Cambodian politics after Pol Pot's death,
distancing themselves from their new
and equally barbarous leader, Ta Mok.
Their attempt to present themselves
as less brutal and more conciliatory
comes as the United States and
Thailand press to bring the blood-
stained leaders to justice.
Also yesterday, a Thai Army general
denied that Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge
leader who died last week, was poi-
soned. Pol Pot, one of the century's
bloodiest tyrants, was cremated
Saturday. His captors said he died of a
heart attack.
His death dashed hopes that he might
be caught and put on trial for leading
the genocidal regime that caused the
deaths of as many as 2 million
Cambodians between 1975 and 1979.
Pol Pot was deposed last year as
leader of the last Khmer Rouge faction
still fighting the government by Ta
Mok, the one-legged general known as
"The Butcher." But a mutiny against Ta
Mok four weeks ago has led to mass
defections.
In Bangkok, Thailand, the U.S. ambas-
sador to the United Nations, Bill
Richardson, said the United States and
Thailand were cooperating to try to bring
Ta Mok and lesser-known but equally
bloodstained rebel leaders to justice.
"We're all going to make major
efforts to find these individuals and
bring them to justice," Richardson said
after meeting Thai Foreign Minister
Surin Pitsuwan.
Holdouts in the revolutionary group
apparently believe that with Pol Pot
dead, the international community will
be more willing to accept other Khmer
Rouge chieftains if they adopt a differ-
ent banner.
Defectors supported by the
Cambodian army have pressed Ta
Mok's dwindling band of die-hards
against the Thai border. Many in the
rank-and-file are looking for a way out,
according to defectors and Cambodian
and Thai officials.
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