Who needs Democracy?

President Bush warned that Britain and America have been "willing to tolerate oppression for the sake of stability." They won't necessarily do any longer, he said.

But nowhere has the blind eye been more closed than in the case of China. Since the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 China has experienced rip-roaring capitalism combined with the harsh suppression of dissent.

Under the new leadership of Hu Jintao it's supposed to be changing. But how fast? In the third of our special reports from China, Paul Mason found out.

PAUL MASON:
If you're looking for democracy in China, this is as close as you'll get. There's a local election coming in Beijing and this is part of the official propaganda and motivation phase. The leaflets aimed at migrant workers, and list their rights to vote, to stand to scrutinise the count. The one right they don't have is to vote for anybody but the ruling Communist Party. The party knows it's more popular now with the middle class than the ordinary people here, hence the song and dance. In a repressive society pressure for change finds curious outlets. The modern art scene in Beijing is as radical as in London, only here instead of sheep pickled in formaldehyde you get Maoism steeped in irony. Denied political reform, China's young people have decided to have a revolution in their heads. We found one man whose art consists of dabbing spots of his own blood onto pages of the Chinese constitution.

WANG CHU YU:
(Performance artist, in translation)
In China we have a constitution, but the government has done a lot of things that are against the constitution, like the Cultural Revolution and like June 4th 1989, and other things. As an artist, I have the responsibility to express my attitudes and to point out unconstitutional behaviour. What I did in my performance today was to ask everybody to read out bloodstained pages of the constitution because every time the government breaks it, it ends up with lots of people dead, a blood sacrifice. This is really horrible and that's what I want to express.

MASON:
Piao Guang Xie uses a more conventional medium. His generation lived through the June the 4th massacre in Tiananmen Square. Now he lives in a rural commune with 300 other artists, subject to the frequent attention from the police. He speaks guardedly about politics on camera.

PIAO GUANG XIE:
(Artist, in translation)
This is a picture of myself. I was born in 1970. I want to reflect our generation's hesitancy and confusion. Things are different now. We don't know where to go and often feel lost, hurt and confused. This is how I feel about our life now.

MASON:
On canvas the message is clear. Pink is the colour of surface prosperity, the wading lotus the symbol of desolation, into which he himself sinks in an endless series of self portraits, again bleeding. The Tiananmen Square massacre still haunts China. In 1989 Deng Xiaoping's troops crushed the student-led democracy movement. Thousands were killed, and the more liberal wing of the party leadership was purged. Tiananmen Square today is still tightly policed. China may be economically liberal, but the state doesn't tolerate dissent. There are sporadic protests here over layoffs and religious freedom, but they don't last long. China's constitution guarantees lots of rights in theory, but in practice there is no democracy. Behind the facade, according to Amnesty International, hundreds of thousands of people are arbitrarily detained. Torture is widespread and systemic and freedom of expression curtailed. The last generation of Chinese leaders, whose troops opened fire here in 1989, went on to build a kind of capitalism that has stunned and puzzled the world. The effects of economic growth are obvious everywhere, and even for the poorest living standards are rising, but it's a capitalism without democracy. No one wants it here is the official line and that's been accepted by many in the West. But now there is a push for democracy, not just from below but from above. Because China's new generation of leaders has begun to accept that without transparency, accountability and the rule of law China can't become a 21st century economic superpower. Shenzhen has been chosen to lead the way. The city was built from scratch in just 20 years and pioneered China's market reforms. Now Shenzhen is supposed to be in the midst of a democratic experiment. These are the men who rule Shenzhen. They're lined up to promote a product launch for a local private drug company. The panel includes the city's health service chief. When people worry about the party being enmeshed in the economy this is what they mean. Local politicians are very powerful. There are no checks and balances between them, civil servants and law enforcement bodies. In future there will be. But it's very early days. The reforms were supposed to start last spring but they're still awaiting orders. Are you able to tell us anything about the administrative reforms that Shenzhen is planning?

LIU YINGLI:
(Vice Mayor, Shenzhen Government)
I think this is controlled by central government. So if central government tells me, I tell you, OK?

MASON:
The experiment has been hailed in the Western press, but at a Shenzhen think tank, seen as close to the national leadership, they're keen to dampen expectations.

PROFESSOR LIU LUOLI:
(China Development Institute, in translation)
The separation of powers in government is planned, but the Western media propaganda makes it sound like a pilot of democracy. That's not true, it's a misunderstanding, it's an administrative reform, separating decision making, executive and supervision within the local administration. The Western media has totally misunderstood what we're trying to do. It is only administrative reform.

MASON:
In the West the ultimate form of supervision is by the people in the form of elections. Can he see that happening in China?

PROFESSOR LUOLI:
I think the whole process will take a long time because it needs a lot of preparation. In general the cultural and educational level of ordinary people is still below average. Many people still don't understand the need for, and the meaning of, an election. If people can't understand the rules there is no point. This is one thing we have to work on and it will be a long process.

MASON:
Part of the process is opening up the media. Last October the government ordered journalists to become more critical and to get closer to the masses. At this regional TV station they've been happy to obey.

SHENG NING:
(Chief Producer, Tianjin TV, in translation)
In recent years the content of TV has changed a lot. Because of the economic reform and opening up people's minds are changing too. Now we can see a lot of programmes we weren't allowed to see before, critical news, documentaries about sensitive social issues. The audience can now watch programmes they actually want to see and they want the media to be a watchdog, to change the bad side of society.

MASON:
The Chinese journalists we met were all aware that the BBC ran a story that could have brought down Tony Blair, but could this station ever run a story that would bring down Hu Jintao?

NING:
Every country has its own political system, cultural background. We're all different. A lot of things being done in Western media can't be done in China. We can't copy it, we have to adjust it according to our situation. Whether we'll become like a Western country, or the same as the Western media, that's very difficult to predict.

MASON:
What happens next in China depends on the Communist Party itself. At the Beijing Party School they train the men and women who will run China in the mid century. Once Marxism dominated the curriculum, but now it shares pride of place with American management theory. And sometimes you get a mixture of both. This visiting American lecturer seems more left wing than most. He's talking about how globalisation destroys the jobs of American workers and creates jobs in China, with an added advantage you won't hear about in a US business school.

UNNAMED AMERICAN LECTURER:
When that idea sinks deeply enough into their consciousness, they're going to begin to doubt the desirability of capitalism. And then Marx's prediction that he made in 1848 that the globalisation of capitalism will give rise to a militant international working class will come true.

MASON:
Liu Yang, who runs the school, is frank about the shortcomings of China's own political system.

PROFESSOR LIU YANG:
(Beijing Party School, in translation)
In China we have moved from a planned economy to a market economy and the government has to behave the same way. It should be clean, effective, democratic and based on the rule of law, just like in the West. Traditionally China's government has had weaknesses in the area of democracy and the rule of law, and that's held back China's development. We're still only at a medium stage of industrialisation. Backward attitudes from rural society still influence the way government behaves.

MASON:
While the cadres practice Qi Gong in the School garden, the party's energies are focused on getting rid of its own bad karma, with a crackdown on corrupt officials and a re-education campaign. But would they ever consider another solution:
a multi-party system?

PROFESSOR YANG:
We all want to push forward to democracy. But to realise democracy is a practical procedure. You have to balance the advantages and disadvantages and you can't ignore reality. Otherwise there are reforms that could destroy stability and the result would ruin our economic development.

MASON:
But what about China's Western- facing elite, like the students here at Tsinghua University. 70% of these high fliers will go to well paid business jobs in the West, and in 1989 this was a hotbed of unrest. So what do they think now?

RUBY LIU:
(Student, Tsinghua University)
It's a political problem, not an economic problem. In my opinion I don't care about the system, the society system, my concern is that if the country's really growing better, yeah? I don't care about the system.

CHARLIE QUE:
(Student, Tsinghua University)
Everything should be under control. We should be making progress step by step, because such a great country as China, stability is very important for it. If one day China is out of control I think its very terrible news for everyone in the world.

FRANK YANG:
(Student, Tsinghua University)
For a long time we have only one government, one government, it's hard for us to accept the fact that we have two parties, that is two governments. It's hard to accept.

MASON:
It's not as if you haven't got political debate within the CCP, so shouldn't it be more obvious to people what the debates are?

YANG:
No.

MASON:
Why doesn't it matter?

YANG:
Chinese people only care that we have the government, the government is stable.

ASHLEY PENG:
(Student, Tsinghua University)
I don't think there is any possibilities for anyone who wants to start another party and to lead the country. I think, yes, this happened a lot in the history, but maybe not now. So I think the only way for the situation to change is coming from the CCP itself.

MASON:
The theory in the West is that capitalism brings democracy. The workings of the market demand some form of the political system we take for granted. The public consensus in China disagrees with that for now, but there are big choices ahead. All over the world, experts and politicians are talking about where China should go next, with its economy, political system, and its place in the world. The one group excluded from this discussion is the Chinese people. All the reforms proposed to date have been designed as alternatives to direct democracy. How badly they want it, and how they get it, are questions that will shape not only their century but our own.

This transcript was produced from the teletext subtitles that are generated live for Newsnight. It has been checked against the programme as broadcast, however Newsnight can accept no responsibility for any factual inaccuracies. We will be happy to correct serious errors.