DHARAMSHALA, September 4: With Beijing preparing for its once-a-decade leadership change, a senior editor of Study Times, a mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, has launched a scathing attack on the country’s outgoing leaders, accusing them of creating “more problems than achievements.”
Deng Yuwen, a deputy editor of the newspaper, in a rare assessment of the decade-long reign of President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao, blamed the mounting problems that China is facing on the “lack of real political reform.”
The South China Morning Post, in a report, quoted Deng as saying that Hu and particularly Wen often talked about democracy and the need for political reform, “but they seldom explained what they actually meant or set forth any timetable.”
“The biggest and the most pressing issue for the party is … the crisis over the legitimacy of its rule due to its failure to address the widening wealth gap and worsening corruption, to carry out effective social integration and to meet the public demands for greater democracy,” the report cited Deng as saying.
“The essence of democracy is how to restrict government power; that’s the most important reason why China needs democracy so badly. Over-concentration of government power without checks and balances is the root cause of so many social problems.”
Deng’s outburst follows the recent suicide of Xu Huaiqian, 44, editor-in-chief for the Dadi (Earth) supplement of the CCP’s mouthpiece, People’s Daily.
According to reports, he jumped to his death on August 22.
In an interview he gave before his death, Xu spoke about his inability to express freely and the fear for his family’s security if he leaves “the system.”
“My pain is I dare to think, but I don’t dare to speak out; if I dare to speak out, I don’t dare to write it down, and if I dare to write it down, there is no place to publish.
“I admire those freelance writers, but I can’t leave the system because if I do that my family will suffer.”
In an article entitled “Let Death Be the Witness”, he also wrote: “Death is a heavy word, but in China, in many cases, without deaths society will not sit up and pay attention, and problems won’t be resolved.”
The New York based Committee to Protect Journalists in their 2011 annual report named China, for the 12th consecutive year, as one of the most repressive regimes for free and fair journalism.
The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China, in a survey last year, had found that ninety-four percent of the journalists who responded felt the work environment in China had deteriorated, while seventy percent had experienced harassment or violence of some kind. A whopping 99% had said that reporting conditions in China do not meet international standards.
