Hu Yaobangpolitics - Remembering Hu Yaobang, start of a new tradition?
I try to avoid too much cynicism in my pieces, but when it concerns politics with a big P, it is very hard to avoid. Much has already been written about the backgrounds of former reformist leader Hu Yaobang, just ahead of the visit of US president George Bush.
Traditionally such a visit would cause under Hu Jintao's predecessor Jiang Zemin some major political upheaval. The release of high-profile prisoners would be demanded before the high-level US visitor would arrive. Often those prisoners seemed to be arrested just weeks ahead of the visit, sometimes by rogue security forces eager to embarress their leaders. I would always look up who was on his way to China, when people were rounded up. They often go a one-way ticket to the US days or even hours before the honored guests would arrive in Beijing.
That routine has disappeared over the past few years. People are still arrested now and then, but they seldom seem to make it to the political agenda.
The move to reinstate former leader Hu Yaobang, possibly as a first careful step to more change, must just be a new way to serve different political agenda's, including putting a high-level visitor in a good mood.
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From yesterday's Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/20/AR2005112000827.html):
Bush's Asia Trip Meets Low Expectations
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On human rights, Bush's team handed Hu's aides a list of political prisoners when the two met in New York two months ago and had expressed hope that at least some of them would be released by the time the president arrived here, as has been customary in the past. Instead, in the weeks before the visit, Chinese authorities sentenced an underground Christian pastor to three years in prison for illegally printing Bibles and closed down the firm of a prominent human rights lawyer.
Chinese police detained a group of 30 people who tried to see Bush to complain about the lack of political freedoms here, according to a member of the group who called the Associated Press after police stopped them outside the church where the president worshiped Sunday morning. The incident coincided with reports that the authorities had ordered several dissidents to leave Beijing during Bush's visit and were holding others under house arrest.
Rice said U.S. officials complained "quite vociferously" about the crackdown and acknowledged that the Chinese had not acted on the U.S. list. "We've certainly not seen the progress that we would expect, and I think we'll have to keep working on it," she said.
Still, Bush did not directly raise the list with Hu, according to U.S. and Chinese officials, and his words on human rights were muted. "Honestly, human rights issues made up a tiny, tiny, tiny part of the meeting between the leaders of the two countries," said Kong Quan, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman.
(...)
Well, I did not expect the US-side would not have their demand. But surprisingly enough there is no Chinese reaction in terms of sending dissidents to the US anymore.
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