Twin domestic crises spotlight local abuses in China - Washington Post

BEIJING â€" The dramatic escape from unlawful house arrest by blind lawyer Chen Guangcheng and the ongoing investigation into former Communist Party Politburo member Bo Xilai have presented China’s rulers with twin crises with a common theme: corrupt and abusive behavior by local party bosses and security officials operating with impunity in their fiefdoms many miles from the capital, Beijing.

How the two cases are ultimately resolved may also help answer one of the underlying puzzles of modern China’s political structure: how much do the central authorities tolerate such blatant abuses in the provinces, and how much escapes the notice or control of Beijing?

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A human rights activist says Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng is likely to get U.S. asylum this week. Chen, a blind lawyer, escaped from house arrest last week.

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Activists say a blind Chinese lawyer who'd been under house arrest has now fled to a safe hiding place in Beijing. Chen Guangcheng's escape has apparently triggered a frantic search by authorities.

Most analysts agree that given the party’s rigid hierarchy, little goes on that central government authorities are not fully aware of, and largely condone. But the rulers in Beijing also give local officials a wide degree of autonomy, including how to handle critics and stifle those considered troublemakers. And central leaders seem reluctant to intervene in local matters until problems escalate into full-blown crises that they cannot ignore.

In Chen’s case, his supporters, including in the international community, have complained long and loudly that he was being confined illegally by plainclothes armed thugs in his farmhouse in Dongshigu village in Shandong province. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and others regularly raised Chen’s case with senior Chinese officials. And when actor Christian Bale was roughed up trying to visit Chen in December, central government censors knew enough about the case to black out the story on the CNN broadcast here.

“There’s no way they could have ignored it,” said Nicholas Bequelin, a senior Asia researcher based in Hong Kong for the group Human Rights Watch. “Because they want deniability, they delegate it to the local authorities.”

After years of facing international criticism of its human rights record, China’s rulers now seem to be allowing local authorities to take the lead in silencing critics, sometimes through spurious legal charges, large fines and lengthy jail sentences, and often through other extrajudicial means, such as house arrests and “disappearances.”

In the case of renowned artist and activist Ai Weiwei, for example, the Beijing municipal tax authority has taken the lead in bringing charges against him â€" for alleged tax evasion involving a company he controls.

In Chen’s case, the local authorities behaved so crudely â€" and, ultimately, ineptly â€" that his plight last year attracted the attention of Beijing’s Global Times newspaper, which is owned by the Communist Party and largely echoes the official line. “It is reported that both individuals and media were prevented from visiting [Chen] by local authorities,” the paper wrote in an Oct. 21 editorial. “Whether this is true and whether such measures are legal, there needs to more reliable information released by local governments.”

Likewise, central government authorities, and the state-run media parroting the party line, have tried to paint the case of Bo Xilai as an isolated incident. They have said the Communist Party’s central disciplinary committee, in charge of enforcing rules on more than 80 million party members, is currently investigating Bo for “serious violations,” reportedly including corruption and abuse of his power.