China reforms: ‘An important step, but not the end of the road’

The social and economic changes unveiled by China on Friday have been hailed as the boldest and most significant changes in the communist country in decades. 

The measures include pledges to loosen the controversial one-child policy, abolish labor camps, speed up residential registration, or hukou, system reforms and let the market play a "decisive role" in the world's second largest economy. 

The sweeping changes were contained in a document released by the Communist Party following a four-day meeting of senior leaders in Beijing. The more-than-20,000 Chinese character statement listed 60 reforms.

Chinese leaders have a penchant for gradualism, and reforms, particularly of this magnitude, typically take years — if not decades — to implement. President Xi Jinping and his colleagues have given themselves until 2020 to achieve "decisive" results.

GlobalPost asked Elizabeth Economy, director for Asia studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, and Nicholas Bequelin, senior researcher in the Asia division of Human Rights Watch, for their views on the significance of the reforms. 

As a whole, how significant are these reforms and how quickly can we expect to see them implemented?



Economy: These reforms, when taken together, represent an easing in social policy and an attempt by the Chinese leadership to address some of the Chinese people's most serious grievances. How significant they become depends on how they are implemented. The Chinese policy world is littered with failed attempts at reform – policies that are announced and then only partially or barely implemented. Once we see the more specific implementing guidelines and policies that are designed to facilitate, for example, hukou reform, we will have a better understanding of their real meaning.

Bequelin: The abolition of re-education through labor is very significant. This system was the exclusive province of the Public Security (police) who could on a whim send people for up to three years of hard labor without any kind of judicial process: no trial, no lawyer, no appeal. Historically, this is a system that was tainted by decades of arbitrary detention of victims of political purges and government suppression, starting in the mid-1950s with the victims of the anti-rightist campaign, and continuing with "counter-revolutionaries," "hooligans," followers of "evil cults" and "illegal religious activities." There had been a consensus in China for a long time that the system was arbitrary, abusive and unconstitutional and had to be scrapped. The only obstacle was the police, who did not want to do away with a system that gave it such power. Xi Jinping finally prevailed on the security apparatus, seizing in part on the fact that Bo Xilai abused the re-education through labor system in Chongqing in such an extravagant way during his years in Chongqing. The loosening of the so-called one-child policy is less groundbreaking. It does not change the foundations of China’s government-enforced family planning policy – which includes the use of legal and other coercive measures to control reproductive choices.

On the one-child policy, why is China now taking steps to ease the restrictions? And do you think many eligible Chinese couples will take up the opportunity to have more than one child? 

Economy: The reform of the one-child policy is not a transformative reform. It will affect only a small portion of the population – perhaps 10 million couples by one count. It could produce a bump of one million new babies per year, but this is not that significant in the context of a population of 1.3 billion and given China's current demographic challenges. Part of the issue is that urban dwellers often don't want to have more than one child given the expense. Nonetheless, the policy is a step in the right direction.

Bequelin: I think the driving factor behind the move is the shrinking labor force. Whether the measure will or not lead towards a general relaxation of the population planning system remains doubtful. The government is wary of touching a system that also serves a function of social control, and can always address its demographic concerns by becoming more lax in the enforcement of the policies, rather than in abolishing it. In that sense this is not a "rights" reform – the government is just enfranchising one category of people (about 10 million couples if recent reports are to be believed) to have a second child.

China has been under intense pressure from foreign governments and human rights groups for years about its use of labor camps. Why is it now moving to abolish this system and do you think this change will be respected by local police and government officials?



Economy: The reform of the re-education through labor camps is less a response to the international community than to the Chinese people. They have come to view this form of imprisonment without charges or trials as inhumane and not representative of the type of governance they desire. With the internet, some of these cases have garnered widespread attention within China, embarrassing the government. We will have to wait to see what happens to all the people currently incarcerated in these prisons and what new form the legal system takes at the local level.

Bequelin: Yes, the re-education through labor system will be dismantled nationwide. Already since the beginning of the year the police has stopped sending people to RTL in many provinces. So no more RTL, that's for sure. The question is: what will take its place? There are several options being discussed now, one being to institute a similar system of administrative detention (that is, decided administratively rather than judicially) for "minor offenders." The system would be better than RTL (more procedural guarantees, shorter maximum detention term, and not under the sole control of the police) but it would also entrench a new system of administrative detention, which is a concern. Besides, China has several other existing administrative detention systems, including forced detoxification, detention for "prostitutes and their clients," forced commitment to psychiatric institutions, short-term administrative detention, not to mention illegal "black jails," "legal education classes" and so on. So abolishing RTL is an important step, but that's not the end of the road.

What does Friday's announcement tell us, if anything, about the Chinese leadership and their attitude towards reforms? Do you have any sense from these reforms that this generation of leaders will be bolder than the previous leadership team? 

Economy: Many of the reforms that this leadership is articulating have been discussed or underway in experimental form for years. They are recognizing the public demand for change and pushing forward in a way that is definitely more decisive – at least rhetorically. It is important to remember that this is only stage one of the reform process: stage two represents the actual policies, laws, and regulations; and stage three is the most important of all, implementation. We will know more in the next three to six months and even more in the next three to six years.

Bequelin: The plenum document is decisively more reformist than anything that came out under the previous leadership of Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao. But it comes out of the same mold: all the action points are elements on which there was already a wide agreement under Hu and Wen – they were just too timid and risk-adverse to push them through. Now it seems that Xi is making the calculation that, for the Party, the dangers of not reforming are greater than the risks of pushing some reform. But Xi is undoubtedly politically conservative: we see no relaxation on the political front, on the opposite. The crackdown on human rights activists, government critics, the media and online activists is more severe that it was under the previous leadership. So we have this odd combination of intra-system reform, but no opening of the political system at large. Whether reforms – including economic reforms – are possible under these conditions remains to be seen. I am personally skeptical that Xi can avoid to see his reform efforts progressively bogged down if he doesn't allow greater freedoms in Chinese society, starting with media freedom, freedom of association, and a stronger, more independent, judiciary.