Demands for more political freedom are growing throughout East Asia. Japan’s current political structure was established after World War II, South Korea’s in the late 1980s, and Taiwan’s in the mid-1990s. All have steadily expanded political freedoms since their inception. Mongolia has had a dramatic expansion of political freedom since abandoning socialism in 1992. China, however, remains under the tight control of an authoritarian regime, and North Korea is even more tightly held. The Figure 9.18 map shows each country’s level of democracy. The red starbursts indicate places where civil unrest has broken out since 1945.

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With China now a globalized economy, many wonder how much longer the Communist Party can remain in control without allowing a significant expansion of political freedom throughout the entire country. The Communist Party officially says that China is a democracy, and indeed some elections have long been held at the village level and within the Communist Party. However, representatives of the National People’s Congress, the country’s highest legislative body, are appointed by the Communist Party elite, who maintain tight control throughout all levels of government. Most experts on China agree that while radical change is unlikely in the near future, a slow but steady shift toward more political freedom is underway. Change might be inevitable as the population becomes more prosperous, educated, and widely traveled, thereby becoming exposed to places that have more political freedoms. However, the Communist Party remains determined to repress any major reform movements that arise from outside the party’s senior leadership.

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Less than a decade after market reforms began, demands for political change culminated in a series of pro-democracy protests that drew hundreds of thousands of people to Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989 (see Figure 9.18A). These protests were brutally repressed, with thousands (the precise number is uncertain) of students and labor leaders massacred by the military. The Tiananmen Square event made clear that China’s integration into the global economy would take place on political terms dictated by the state.

International Pressures Informed consumers and environmentalists in developed countries have criticized China for its “no holds barred” pursuit of economic growth. Much of China’s growth has been built on environmentally destructive activities and harsh conditions for workers, both of which effectively reduce production costs so that the prices of Chinese goods are low on world markets.

The 2008 Olympics in Beijing highlighted a number of issues that have also created an impetus for increasing democracy. Before the games, the international media drew attention to the human rights abuses of workers, protesters, prisoners, ethnic minorities such as Tibetans and Uygurs, and spiritual groups. The most prominent of such groups is Falun Gong, a Buddhist-inspired movement that has been perceived as a threat by the Chinese government because of its independence and capacity to mount a worldwide media campaign for its cause. The extravagance of the 2008 Olympics also became a subject of criticism by the global media, with many journalists pointing out that no democracy would ever be able to devote so much tax revenue (an estimated $40 billion) to such an event, especially not in a country with as many pressing human and environmental problems as China has. Today, many of Beijing’s Olympic venues are unused; at the same time, residents have benefited from the improvements to transportation and infrastructure that were part of the Olympic rebuilding of Beijing.

211. OLYMPIC RELAY CUT SHORT BY PARIS PROTESTS

213. BEIJING OLYMPICS: POLITICAL BATTLEGROUND?

221. REPORTS OF SALE OF EXECUTED FALUN GONG PRISONERS’ ORGANS IN CHINA CALLED “SHOCKING”

Information Technology and Political Freedom The spread of information via the Internet has increased the push for political freedom from within China. Since the revolution in 1949, China’s central government has controlled the news media in the country. By the late 1990s, though, the expanding use of electronic communication devices was loosening central control over information. By 2001, twenty-three million people were connected to the Internet in China; 538 million (or 40 percent of the population) were connected by 2012 (Figure 9.19). However, Internet access is not evenly distributed. A huge digital divide has emerged between the cities, where more than 60 percent have Internet access, and the rural interior, where only about 23 percent do. As economic development spreads over time, it is likely that the divide will diminish.

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Not too long ago, telephones were very rare and people had to obtain permission to use them, but now millions of Chinese people have access to an international network of information. It is much more difficult for the government to give inaccurate explanations for problems caused by inefficiency and corruption. Journalists can now check the accuracy of government explanations by phoning witnesses or the principal actors directly and then posting their findings on the Internet. Analysts, both inside and outside China, see the availability of the Internet to ordinary Chinese citizens as a watershed event that supports the expansion of political freedom.

Social networking technologies have emerged as a powerful tool for collective action in China. In recent years, the use of cell phone–based Twitter-like services known as weibo has grown exponentially. This type of microblogging has been instrumental in forcing major media coverage and public discussion of incidents that expose government corruption and mismanagement. For example, when local officials tried to cover up and censor media coverage of a fire in an apartment building in Shanghai in 2010 and a train wreck in Zhejiang province in 2011, people used weibo to make these become major national discussions.

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Nevertheless, the Internet in China is not the open forum that it is in most Western countries. Since 2013, Chinese Internet users have been required to register their real names when using an online account. This is an attempt by the government to monitor free speech and anonymous criticisms against party officials. And if people writing blogs in China use the words “democracy,” “freedom,” or “human rights,” they may receive the following reminder: “The title must not contain prohibited language, such as profanity. Please type a different title.” Such censorship, informally dubbed the “Great Firewall,” has been aided by U.S. technology firms such as Yahoo and Microsoft, which allow the Chinese government to use software that blocks access to certain Web sites for users in China. Google, in dispute with the Chinese government over state-sponsored censorship, invasion of human rights activists’ email accounts, and cyber-attacks, moved its operations to Hong Kong, where more freedom is allowed (see Figure 9.19B). Meanwhile, the Web browser from the Chinese company Baidu has a much larger market share in China than Google does.

Protests and Political Freedom Protests by workers for better pay and living conditions, and by farmers and urban dwellers displaced by new real estate developments are becoming increasingly common. China’s government reported that there were 58,000 public protests in the country in 2003. This number rose to 74,000 in 2004 and 87,000 in 2005. Since then, the government has stopped issuing complete statistics on protests. The nonprofit group Human Rights Watch estimates that 100,000 to 200,000 such protests are being held each year.

Many people have joined interest groups that pressure the government to take action on particular problems. One of the most publicized of such groups was formed by parents whose children died after schools collapsed during a massive earthquake (which registered 7.8 on the Richter scale) in Sichuan in May 2008. They demanded changes in policies that allowed schools to be poorly constructed and pushed for compensation for their lost children.

In December 2008, people seeking more political freedoms signed a manifesto called the 08 Charter, which calls for a decentralized federal system of government (that is, more power to the provinces), democratic elections, and the end of the Communist Party’s political monopoly. Liu Xiaobo, coauthor of the 08 Charter, was arrested, and in December 2009 he was sentenced to 11 years in prison, even as prominent international human rights activists lobbied on his behalf. In 2010, Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, though neither he nor his family was allowed to attend the ceremony in Norway.

In an effort to maintain control over China’s increasingly articulate protestors, the government has allowed elections to be held for “urban residents’ committees.” The idea seems to be to provide a peaceful outlet for voicing frustrations and creating limited change at the local level. Many of these elections are hardly democratic, with candidates selected by the Communist Party. However, in cities where unemployment is high and where protests have been particularly intense, elections tend to be more free, open, and truly democratic. It could be that interest group protests are an important first step toward actual participatory democracy, even when some, such as those who signed the 08 Charter, are harshly stifled.

Significantly, the government that played such a central role during the post–World War II rise of the Japanese economy was controlled from 1955 to 2009 by one political party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). This led to criticism that Japan lacked a meaningful democracy. In 2009, the Japanese people elected a government led by the opposition party, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), only to reverse course again and bring the LDP back to power in 2012. A main difference between the two parties is that the more nationalistic LDP takes a hawkish stance against China and indeed all neighboring countries (see Figure 9.18B). Having closer relations with China may be advantageous for Japan, though, as China has the potential to be a major market for Japanese exports in the future.

In recent years, political tensions have been rising between the countries of East Asia even as their economies have become more linked. While these tensions are rooted in contemporary economic conditions and political calculations by governments, they are also fueled by the painful legacies of World War II and its aftermath.

Recently, two major disputes between East Asian countries have arisen over uninhabited islands that lie over oil and natural gas reserves. In the case of the Spratly Islands of the South China Sea (see Chapter 10), both China and Taiwan are pursuing claims to the islands, as are several Southeast Asian countries.

In the East China Sea, the Senkaku Islands (in China, these are known as the Diaoyu Islands) are claimed by China, Japan, Taiwan, and Korea. The conflict over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands has escalated lately, mainly because of competing claims on them by China and Japan. Because China and Japan are the world’s first- and second-largest importers of fossil fuels, respectively, they each have an interest in controlling nearby reserves. Within China, the conflict often inflames widespread resentment about Japan’s brutal occupation of China before and during World War II. Japanese nationalists, on the other hand, eager to counter China’s rising power and armed with several treaties that explicitly give it control over the islands, have staged protests and planted Japanese flags on the islands. Many now see this as East Asia’s most risky potential military conflict of the post–World War II period.