Whistleblowers in China?

So Hofstede says Chinese are a collectivist society?  Well today there are certainly some brave individuals looking to buck the trend and stand out for their views.

Spoiling For a Fight; Successful Chinese yuppies are bumping up against their country's authoritarian system--and for the first time they're learning to stand up for their rights.
By Sarah Schafer
27 November 2006
Newsweek International
Copyright (C) 2006 Newsweek Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Former physician Chen Xiaolan has made a name for herself exposing some of the many medical quacks in China, along with their bogus cures. Last year she persuaded government officials to close down a company in southern China that was selling a bogus remedy for fevers. Chen learned about the treatment, a bunch of herbs packed into a patch for the forehead, when doctors at a Shanghai hospital convinced her aunt to purchase one.

Chen wasn't always a professional patient advocate. But when doctors foist fake remedies on vulnerable patients to pad medical bills, she takes it personally. Chen once practiced traditional Chinese medicine in her hometown of Shanghai. She made plenty of money--but in the late 1990s, Chen, now 53, discovered that her employer, a state hospital, was injecting patients with a worthless serum. After undergoing the treatment herself, she exposed the fraud. Forced out of her job, she's now a full-time whistleblower, aided financially by her family and supportive government agencies. "Before, I wasn't interested in politics or any of that stuff because [my husband and I] were living comfortably," she says. "I would have liked to have continued that peaceful and happy life, but things were a mess in the hospital, and I couldn't ignore that."

For more than two decades, the Chinese--especially the educated middle class--have lived with a great compromise. They've applauded the sweeping capitalist-style economic reforms implemented by the Communist Party, but turned a blind eye to ongoing political and social oppression. Many in China's richest cities seem content with the party's rule. Some have studied abroad and returned to earn twice as much as their peers. Others have managed to escape from the countryside to attend college. Many are simply businesspeople and professionals who, for the first time in their lives, can afford to buy cars, take vacations and buy homes. Ask many what it would take to get them to man the barricades, and they're hard pressed to come up with an answer.

But this political apathy is not a permanent condition. Increasing numbers of more privileged Chinese are bumping up against their country's authoritarian political system, especially as the government of President Hu Jintao attempts to tighten controls on the press, religion, civil society and the Internet. Many are learning, suddenly, that there's another side to the story of their nation's transformation. And they're learning something else, about themselves: some political goals are worth fighting for. Rebecca MacKinnon, cofounder of the international bloggers' network Global Voices Online, says she's seen more of these middle-class activists speaking out on her forum and others. Her network often helps bring the people behind these stories together and helps them publicize their causes. "This kind of experience really brings out the reserved strength in people," says MacKinnon.

In cities across China, for example, well-to-do Chinese have staged protests against corrupt property development. More than 70 percent of Beijingers now own homes, up from nearly zero in the early 1990s. Among the new crop of high-profile homeowner advocates is former college professor Shu Kexin, who turned his success fighting real-estate developers into a bid for election to the National People's Congress. (He lost.) Another advocate, Zou Tao, a golf-equipment dealer in Shenzhen, launched a campaign in April against rising housing costs, urging the public to "stop buying houses" and paying exorbitant prices set by developers in cahoots with local officials. Zou has received more than 100,000 letters of support from around the country. Thirty-three-year-old Yu Linggang is a successful government-relations manager for Lenovo Computer Corp. in Beijing. But he's been lobbying officials for a parcel of land on which to construct affordable housing for those less fortunate than he is. He's hoping that during next year's National People's Congress he will see some results. "My life is very good now ... I travel, I go to the gym. But this isn't enough," Yu says. "I think I should do something for society."

Some Chinese, such as Zeng Jingyan, learn at a young age that their dreams of comfort and stability might not materialize. Short and wispy with a surprisingly firm and direct way of speaking, Zeng, 22, graduated last year from People's University in Beijing with a degree in economics. As a volunteer for an AIDS organization, she met and fell in love with one of China's best-known AIDS activists, Hu Jia. The couple married soon after they met.

But even before the wedding, the relationship forced Zeng to confront her country's rigid political system. In April 2004, Beijing authorities detained Hu, now 32, upon his return from an AIDS conference in Shanghai. Zeng decided to fight, rather than hope quietly for the best. Despite stone-walling and intimidation by the police, she immediately sent word of Hu's detention to the hundreds of people on her e-mail list, which included AIDS activists, foreign press and international human-rights organizations. After 100 days, the authorities released Hu without charging him. The experience transformed Zeng, and she became a full-time rabble-rouser. "I have this idea to set up a team that will provide services for those whose loved ones are missing or detained," she says. Zeng and Hu continue to be hounded by authorities, and Zeng keeps an online journal about their experiences.

Indeed, courage such as Zeng's is already changing China. These well-educated activists are methodical, well organized and knowledgeable about their legal rights. They use the government's own rhetoric about creating a fair and lawful society against it when those rights are threatened. And they are claiming victories.

Take the recent case of chen Guangchen, a rights activist convicted in August in what supporters around the world maintained was a blatantly unfair trial. In a move almost unheard of in China, a higher court overturned the conviction earlier this month (though Chen must face a retrial). Rights activists say this proves that Beijing is listening. "This is the most important phenomenon, people taking the defense of their rights into their own hands," says Nicholas Bequelin of Human Rights Watch. "This is raising the cost of arbitrariness and unlawfulness by the government and law enforcement. These people ... just don't back down."

Last February a young woman named Nina Wu sought Zeng's counsel about her brother's detention, even though the two women had never met. In her own words, Wu, 36, had spent most of her adult life as a "comfortable little Shanghai capitalist." She put in long hours as an analyst at an investment bank, but was well compensated. She had a loving husband and a bright young daughter. She saw her country the way many Westerners see China--through the lens of the nation's glitziest and most prosperous city. Like many educated urban Chinese, she benefited from the decades of economic reforms.

But her views changed on Feb. 22 of this year, when her brother, documentary filmmaker Wu Hao, 34, was grabbed by security agents and detained. Without a word to his family, his friends or even his lawyer about where he was or why he had been arrested, the agents held him for five months. Some people thought Hao had angered authorities by filming illegal Christian church services. Others, including his lawyer, heard he was being investigated for spying.

The case turned Nina the ignorant yuppie into Nina the human-rights activist. She confronted the realities she had ignored for so long: the lack of rule of law, the party's obsession with secrecy, the government's restrictions on free speech. Though speaking out publicly against the Communist Party is still taboo, she published a detailed blog about her ordeal, describing her frustration with Chinese authorities, who dodged her questions and appeals for help.

Nina's blog was her best weapon. It attracted worldwide media attention for Hao, who was released in July. Neither he nor his sister has spoken publicly since then. And it's still unclear what Hao's alleged offense was. But Nina Wu's view of her country has changed. In one blog entry, she wrote that she worried about the nation's future. And she tried to warn her happy-go-lucky peers enjoying the good life: "You won't know the existence of the underlying rules of the game until you get in trouble with them." For many Chinese, the hard lessons are yet to come.