NO MIRACLE IN CHINA

by Wei Jingsheng

The International Herald Tribune, Saturday-Sunday, December 6-7, 1997

New York - Since I was released from a Chinese prison a few week ago, I have heard the same statement over and over.

Given China's special situation, people say to me, democracy is not a prerequisite for modernization.

That proposition was not true 19 years ago, when I posted an essay on a downtown Bejing street corner known as Democracy Wall. There I stated that the policy of Four Modernizations (in industry, agriculture, defense and science) advocated by Deng Xiaoping and the Communist Party would be inadequate without a fifht - democracy.

That bit of thruth landed me in prison, where I spent nearly 18 years. And in that time my prediction - that modernization would not occur without democracy - has proved correct.

The same year I was arrested, Deng Xiaoping told the Chinese people: "Important national matters are the consideration of the Communist Party leadership. Ordinary people need not say too much; they should just keep their heads down and work hard."

To put it another way, a billion Chinese should give up their fundamental human rights and freedom of expression if they wanted to enjoy the modernizations promised by the Communist Party.

But I have never known the Chinese Communist Party to demonstrate a sincere willingness to modernize people's lives.

The glorified economic accomplishments of China in recent years are actually filled with holes. China's economic miracle is already being eaten away by a new class of corrupt bureaucratic capitalists.

Public enterprises are debt-ridden. To compensate, the government has delayed paying workers' wages and used bookkeeping chicanery. Many people have lost their jobs, and rural areas are not being economically developped.

Meanwhile, the dictatorial political system protects the extraordinarily corrupt bureaucratic class. All manner of legal and illegal means are used to wring the people dry and deplete the ressources of Chinese society as a whole.

What kind of economic miracle is this ?