Author: William Safire

Source: The San Jose Mercury News

Date: May 25, 1995

William Safire is a New York Times columnist.

The Television series soaring in popularity in China is about the exploits of Bao Qing Tien, a magistrate of the Soong Dynasty.

This legendary judge of a thousand years ago is shown dispensing evenhanded justice, punishing wrongdoers and exposing lawless government officials. The TV series is produced in Taiwan but can be seen in mainland China because it seems to be politically non-controversial.

What makes the show such a hit, however, is its implicit criticism of corruption on high. Such kickback economics are rampant in China, making millionaires out of relatives of Communist leaders, Deng Xiaoping's son famously included. That is one tea leaf in the reading of the rising tide of popular resentment in the world's most populous nation. China today is showing all the signs of being on the brink of a major upheaval.

On the eve of the sixth anniversary of the repression of freedom in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, longtime dissidents are being rounded up; scholarly signers of petitions for reform are being harassed and jailed; designated ``troublemakers'' from all over China are being denied entry to the capital.

As Deng Xiaoping prepares to ``meet Marx,'' the sclerotic regime he leaves behind, embracing the dangerous excesses of capitalism without its saving freedoms, is left to face the ``four fears.''

First is the average Chinese consumer's fear of being robbed by inflation, now over 20 percent, which means that half of what he saves disappears after four years. The economic chief, Zhu Rongi, once a reformist who Richard Nixon thought might become the savior of China, has reverted to regulation, central control and protection of state-owned defense monoliths.

Second is the workers' fear of growing underemployment, commu-capitalism's dirty secret, especially away from the prosperous coast. Inland workers are migrating eastward, overcrowding cities and driving down wages, worsening inflation's impact.

Third is fear of the anger of farmers, their land encroached on by industrialization, who now prefer to sell to local entities and black markets rather than to Beijing's state purchasers. As in pre-revolutionary days, food shortages loom.

Finally, there is the well-founded fear in Beijing of some expression of the people's disgust at pervasive corruption. That explains not just the popularity of a Soong Dynasty Perry Mason, but the willingness of Deng's hand-picked successor to crack down on a ring of grafters in Beijing's city government who make Tammany's Boss Tweed look like an innocent.

In the sincere syntax of Sinology, President Jiang Zemin's arrest of the head of the Communist Party in Beijing, a sleaze who was promoted to the Politburo for his brutality in crushing the Tiananmen demonstration, is perceived as a way for the transitional Jiang to gently dissociate himself from Deng's increasingly hated hard-liners.

Too many of us fall for subtle interpretations of maneuvering inside the Forbidden City as if it were comparable to jockeying for leadership within our Republican Party.

Forget that inside ping-pong, because the stakes are of a different magnitude: The after-Deng convulsion will determine whether a billion-plus people will progress toward democratic stability -- or regress to the rigid totalitarianism that would lead to civil war within a nuclear power.

That's why we should be more actively on the side of the dissident scholars and students, publicizing their arrests, demanding their

release, embarrassing their harassers.

That's why we should identify ourselves with courageous workers like the electrician Wei Jingsheng, jailed 15 years ago for wall posters protesting corruption, now held incommunicado lest his voice reach a new generation of workers. (A Nobel prize would help.)

That's why we should align ourselves with Asian decentralized democracy, protesting human rights abuses in Tibet; welcoming official visitors from Taiwan; using our market muscle to encourage freer enterprise.

The ``four fears'' may produce brittle dictators or leaders not fearful of freedom. We should know who to root for and be willing to use what influence we have.