By Jay Scott Kanes
(First in a Series)

HONG KONG – There’s a huge “secret”, one that China’s leaders continually use heavy-handed repression and injustice to prevent its people from knowing.

“Chinese leaders hold such strength and power. Why do they even care if someone writes a few articles pointing out the widespread social injustice in China?” asked Beijing-born dissident, human-rights activist and publisher Bao Pu in a recent interview. Forty-three-year-old Bao lives in Hong Kong.

“Well, there’s one big secret, something everyone should know,” he said. “The secret is that there’s no justification – no real need – for continued one-party, authoritarian rule. It doesn’t have to be that way in China. Once people realize it’s not even a good way, then the (ruling) Communist Party will have problems.

“The Chinese leaders don’t deny that rule-of-law, democracy and human rights are good things. Instead, they argue that we’ve got a system better than the West at safeguarding these. But it’s not true. So this falsehood becomes part of the big secret. Anyone with a certain influence in telling the truth forms a threat because it doesn’t take much for people to realize.

“Obviously, many people in China already know the truth, but don’t talk about it. There’s a sense that you shouldn’t talk about it. Anyone breaching the secret suffers.”

On Christmas Day in 2009, a Chinese court sentenced another high-profile dissident, Liu Xiaobo, to 11 years in prison for subversion. Fifty-three-year-old Liu had helped to issue Charter 08, a manifesto for political change signed by hundreds of intellectuals.

“The reason for Liu’s prison sentence is to censor Charter 08, which tells people that we don’t live in a system better than the West,” said Bao Pu. “The authorities picked someone active in promoting Charter 08 and sentenced him to remind everyone else about what happens.

“In a nutshell, the Communist Party sits above the law, which undermines all notions of justice,” said Bao Pu. “Until that’s corrected, there’ll always be troubles. People taking an interest in political and social issues recognize this as the ultimate problem.

“As we all know, a sense of unfairness is widespread. But the elite class believes that’s okay because it’s always other people who suffer – those with no political input.”

Recently, Bao Pu translated and co-edited a popular book, Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang. A bestseller overseas and in Hong Kong, it isn’t easily available on the Chinese mainland.

“For the first time, a Communist leader disregarded the so-called official line and took a position of telling the truth,” Bao Pu said. “Politically, no one stood at Zhao Ziyang’s side. Only truth did.”

Bao Pu’s father, Bao Tong, long worked as a trusted aide to the late Zhao, who spent his final 16 years under house arrest for sympathizing with student protesters in 1989. After the military cracked down and killed many protesters, Bao Tong served seven years in prison for resisting the government’s official line.

Secretly, Zhao recorded his opinions and memories on audio tapes. “He found a quiet spot, one without disturbances,” Bao Pu said. “I don’t know where, but in the recordings, I could sense that he flipped pages.”

After Zhao’s death, the recordings were smuggled away and formed the basis for Prisoner of the State. The transcribing, editing and translation all happened in Hong Kong.

“So many people participated to preserve and transport the recordings,” said Bao Pu. “We shared a sense that the tapes were very important and shouldn’t be lost.

“Carrying the original tapes was a bad idea with significant risks. So we used modern technology to transform the recordings and make them more portable. They left the Chinese mainland on portable storage devices.”

Will China’s people soon feel free to speak their minds fully and to exercise the same human rights considered basic elsewhere? For now, the answer looks like a firm “no”.

“The problems aren’t purely a result of Chinese rulers imposing repression on their people,” Bao Pu said. “The elites, much of the urban population, make a collective choice to tolerate the situation and to help maintain it in return for a big share of the economic pie.

“In China, only maybe a quarter of the people have any input, however indirect, into the political system. Three-quarters have nothing to do with it. No matter how much they suffer, they have zero input.

“The elites get richer faster. Some realize that the freedom issue is a liability, but they say, ‘It’s fine. After all, we want wealth and power. We’ve got both, so why rock the boat?’ They don’t want to challenge the status quo.

“Either the Communist Party stands above the law or under it. There’s no third way. Really, the prospects look grim. We’re several steps away from any successful political reforms to really tackle the issues of freedom and law.

“I realize what a big challenge all this is. It’s part of an historical process that we need to go through. I don’t believe there’s a pre-determined destination. Everything depends on how well we do. We need to push in the right direction.”

Ironically, “democratic reforms in China need not come at the Communist Party’s expense. If the Party stuck to what really should be, then it wouldn’t insist on imposing authoritarian rule. Then it’d gain political support.