He came back. His fans, by and large, forgave him. (He even seemed to get credit for what some interpreted as an act of true romance.) But Wang is not a man accustomed to living within limits, and he had begun to bridle against other restraints.
The ancient sage Mencius once said, “Those who have property are inclined to preserve social stability.” For the past decade, the Chinese Communist Party has thrived on the belief that co-opting those with property will buttress it against pressures for greater political openness. But stories like Wang Gongquan’s suggest that some of the nation’s most prosperous citizens are not comfortable with the status quo.
In China, the Communist Party asks something of its entrepreneurs: be daring and ambitious in business, but not in politics. It is an odd arrangement. Men and women who have made it to the top of society by being unrelentingly determined are advised to relent when it comes to calling for the rule of law, adherence to the constitution, or an end to abuses of power. Wang had trouble with that kind of compartmentalization, and he began to criticize the government and support activists who called, in particular, for China’s government to enforce its own laws. A few years ago, he befriended Xu Zhiyong, a lawyer who organized a petition calling for high officials to disclose their wealth. That project attracted several thousand supporters to what Xu called the New Citizens’ Movement.
But China is in the midst of a new crackdown. In the past six months, the government has detained nearly a hundred people who have attempted to take a more entrepreneurial approach to civil liberties; among them was Xu, the lawyer, who was arrested in August and charged, like Wang Gongquan, with “assembling a crowd to disrupt order.” (That’s a common charge for people who are said to be involved in a public protest; authorities said that Xu had incited people to stage a demonstration.) Wang, the investor, was detained after he organized a petition calling for his friend’s release. The addition of formal charges signals that authorities plan to bring him to trial—a demonstration of how acutely uncomfortable the Party is with the idea of plutocrats with opinions.
In the summer of 2011, the Party declared that it would welcome non-Communist Party candidates to run for local office. One of the people who signed up was a real-estate developer named Cao Tian, who’d made millions of dollars and had been honored in the state media as one of the “Top Ten Influential Citizens in Henan.” He wanted to be mayor of Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province; he said that he would take no salary, and he put up fifteen million dollars of his own fortune as a “deposit for clean governance,” which would go to poor students were he ever convicted of corruption. On his blog, he wrote, “To have a Zhengzhou mayor actually voted in by the citizens? That would bring true hope and confidence to Henan and all of China.”
Then his phone rang. It was an old classmate who had gone into government and climbed the ranks. “Have you lost your mind?” the classmate asked, according to Cao’s notes from the call. “I’m serious about this,” Cao replied. “I’m tired of making money. I’m willing to spend a hundred million yuan for a chance to do something for the public. You’ve been a public servant all these years. Why not give a turn to someone like me?” His schoolmate left him with an old saying: “Remember: The first bird to take flight is the first to get shot.”
Ten days after Cao announced his candidacy, police visited him at home; a team from the local tax bureau arrived at his office and announced that they were opening an investigation. The Henan Provincial Propaganda Department ordered the local press to stop covering his candidacy, because “foreign forces are participating with ulterior purposes and attempting to overthrow our government.” Cao retreated from public view. In the end, the local government ordered him to pay more than five million dollars in back taxes and fees. Cao Tian never ran for office again, but it seems unlikely that his fate can prevent another Cao Tian—or Wang Gongquan—from deciding that he should be allowed to extend his success into affairs of state.
The Party today is facing an expanding problem: losing the confidence of some of its most successful residents. Another pugnacious plutocrat, Charles Xue, is a Chinese-American investor with twelve million followers online. He has been jailed since August, initially accused of soliciting a prostitute and later charged with spreading rumors online. Xue didn’t hide the pleasure he took from gaining influence. He once said that gaining a big voice on the Internet is “like being an emperor.” And that, it turned out, was one luxury the Party could not tolerate.
Original Article
Source: newyorker.com
Author: Evan Osnos
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