The New York Times - November 15, 2013
By CHRIS BUCKLEY
HONG KONG — The Chinese government will ease its
one-child family restrictions and abolish “re-education through labor” camps,
significantly curtailing two policies that for decades have defined the state’s
power to control citizens’ lives, the Communist Party said Friday.
The changes were announced in a party decision that
also laid out broad and potentially far-reaching proposals to restructure the
economy by encouraging greater private participation in finance, vowing market
competition in several important parts of the economy, and promising farmers
better property protection and compensation for confiscated land.
Senior party officials, led by President Xi Jinping,
endorsed the 60 initiatives at a four-day Central Committee conference that
ended Tuesday, but details were released Friday. Mr. Xi described the document
as a bold call for economic renewal, social improvement and patriotic
nation-building — all under the firm control of one-party rule.
“We must certainly have the courage and conviction to
renew ourselves,” he said in a statement accompanying the decision. Both were
issued by the official news agency, Xinhua.
Mr. Xi, who assumed
China’s top party leadership post a year ago and the
presidency eight months ago, has tried to project an image as a leader who
can pursue a potentially conflicting agenda: making China’s economy more
responsive to market forces and giving its people greater social and economic
freedom while fortifying traditional one-party rule.
For months, analysts have speculated about the
economic policies that could be introduced at the meeting. But the planned
changes to population policy and punishment, two areas where overhauls have been
debated, and delayed, for years, gave the decision significance beyond the
economy. They could stir public expectations of even bolder changes under Mr. Xi
and Prime Minister Li Keqiang in the decade they are likely to spend in office.
“Xi Jinping may have the most concentrated power of
any Chinese leader since Deng Xiaoping,” said Xiao Gongqin, a professor of
history in Shanghai who closely follows Chinese politics and advocates
“neo-authoritarian” rule to protect the march of market overhauls. “Politically,
he has pursued an ideological tightening, because he wants to prevent the kind
of explosion in political demands that could come in a relaxed environment.
That’s the biggest danger for any government entering a period of reform.”
For decades, most urban couples have been restricted
to having one child. That has been changing fitfully, with rules on the books
that couples can have two children if both parents are single children. But that
policy will now be further relaxed nationwide. Many rural couples already have
two children, and some have more.
“This is the first time that a central document has
clearly proposed allowing two children when a husband or wife is an only child,”
said Wang Guangzhou, a demographer at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in
Beijing. “Now it’s just talking about launching this, but the specific policies
have to be developed at the operational level.”
If carried through, the relaxation would be the first
significant nationwide easing of family size restrictions that have been in
place since the 1970s, said Wang Feng, a demographer who teaches at both the
University of California, Irvine, and Fudan University in Shanghai. He estimated
the policy could lead to one million to two million more births in China every
year, on top of the approximately 15 million births a year now.
“This step is really, I think, the middle step toward
allowing all couples to have two children, and eventually taking away the
state’s hand,” Professor Wang said. “But this shift is historical. It’s
fundamental. To change the mentality of the society of policy makers has taken
people more than a decade.”
The one-child restrictions were introduced to deal
with official fears that China’s population would devour too many resources and
suffocate growth. But they have created public ire and international criticism
over forced abortions, and have created a population of 1.34 billion, according
to a 2010 census, that is aging relatively rapidly, even before China
establishes a firm foothold in prosperity. Experts have for years urged some
relaxation of the controls.
The party leaders also confirmed an announcement made
earlier this year, and then abruptly retracted, that they intend to abolish
re-education through labor, which since the 1950s has empowered police
authorities to imprison people without any real judicial review. Experts and
officials have debated whether to adjust or abolish the system of camps since
the 1980s. Now abolition is closer.
“Abolish the system of re-education through labor,”
said the decision, which proposed expanding community corrections to partly
replace the system.
“This is a significant step forward,” said Nicholas
Bequelin, a senior researcher who specializes in China with Human Rights Watch,
an advocacy organization based in New York.
“It doesn’t mean that China is going to be kinder to
dissent and to its critics,” Mr. Bequelin said. “But it’s an important step to
do away with a system that not only profoundly violated human rights, but was
also standing in the way of any further legal reform.”
Re-education through labor was introduced under Mao
Zedong to lock away those considered political opponents, and it expanded into a
system of incarceration holding more than 100,000 people, many of them working
in prison factories and on farms. Sentences are determined by the police, and
defendants have scant chance to appeal imprisonment that can last up to four
years.
The document gives no date for bringing labor
re-education to an end, or for introducing the changes to family planning
policy. And there is the possibility that the government will delay or dilute
the changes, or introduce similar restrictions under another name, Mr. Bequelin
said. The decision also leaves in place labor camps that are part of the general
penal system for those convicted in court.
In a country that carries out more executions than the
rest of the world combined, the document pledged to gradually reduce the number
of crimes that can result in the death penalty. But it gave no details about
which crimes may be affected.
Under Mr. Xi, the government has pursued a broad
crackdown on political dissent, critical opinion and rumors on the Internet, and
perceived ideological threats. But the decision promised fairer and more
predictable treatment from the police and the courts, hinting at support for
long-discussed measures intended to make judges more independent of the local
officials in their jurisdictions.
“Improve the transparency and public credibility of
the judiciary,” Mr. Xi said in his statement. But he also promised more
stringent controls on the Internet: “Ensuring order, national security and
social stability in the dissemination of information on the Internet has become
a real and pressing problem facing us.”
The bulk of the Central Committee decision dwelt on
economic changes intended to rejuvenate growth by encouraging private
investment, more efficient use of bank capital and the leasing of land by
farmers into larger, more viable holdings.
“Reform of the economic system is the focal point of
comprehensively deepening reform,” the decision said. “The core issue is
properly handling the relationship between the government and the market.”
The most important changes propose to reduce risks and
distortions in government finances, which give local administrations many tasks
but relatively few sources of revenue, forcing them to rely on taking land from
farmers for relatively little compensation. Other proposals include introducing
more market-based pricing into areas such as energy and water.
But these changes could encounter resistance from
government ministries, large state-owned companies, local governments and
consumers potentially hurt by price rises. “They’ve gone a long way to meet
market expectations, and everyone is going to look at implementation,” said
Stephen Green, head of Greater China research for the banking and financial
services company Standard Chartered.
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