China's coming around
Friday, October 2, 2009 at 12:41AM OP-ED: Beijing strains to hear the voice of the people, By David Pilling, Financial Times, September 9 2009
This is well-written and worth reading. It speaks about how Beijing is becoming responsive, in its own crude way, to people power.
Key bit:
The authorities' responsiveness - even hyper-sensitivity - to public opinion is not exactly democratic. There are no regular soundings in the form of elections. Rather, there are eruptions of anger in the street or, increasingly, on the internet. That makes for a crude barometer.
Arthur Kroeber of Dragonomics, a research company, says that, in some instances, the authorities actively encourage the press to dig up information. When controversy first flared in June over a proposal to install Green Dam filtering software in all personal computers, the media were given a one-week grace period before reporting restrictions came crashing down. The information unearthed persuaded Beijing to water down its plans. The government also expends considerable effort on surveys and investigations. Not unreasonably, it does not trust local officials to inform party bosses about scandal, corruption and catastrophe in their own backyard.
Yet if there is a conscious effort to seek out, and respond to, popular opinion, the outcomes are arbitrary at best. In the absence of elections and free speech, the government's ability to uncover the true state of public opinion is limited. For every victory of people power, there are dozens - perhaps hundreds - of cases that never come to light.
To me, this is a ton of change in the right direction. How fast will it go? It will go as fast as it can and no faster (reminding me of a favorite note from the composer in a piece I once played in my HS orchestra: "Play as fast as possible, but no faster!").
(Via WPR Media Roundup)
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