A straitjacket for criticism

AS CHINA'S Communist Party prepares to celebrate the 30th anniversary of reforms ushered in by Deng Xiaoping, party bosses preside over an incomplete remodeling job. A lot of modern furniture has been brought into the house, but many of the old Maoist fixtures still reek of totalitarian disdain for the civil rights of the commoners.

A telling example appeared in a recent exposé in the government-owned Beijing News. It described how citizens in Shandong Province who petition for the redress of grievances have been committed to psychiatric hospitals. The local party lords are most likely to resort to this cynical gambit when a citizen tries to take the complaint to higher-ups in Beijing.

The victims are not political dissidents in the classic sense, but people who suffered from official corruption or had their property seized without proper compensation.

Until government-tolerated websites in China were flooded with indignant denunciations of the practice, the local Shandong Communists made no effort to hide their practice of treating complainers as mental deviants. Indeed, since their purpose was to intimidate, they spoke proudly about their cut-rate method for silencing critics.

The great irony is that President Hu Jintao has just told the Politburo, "China is under growing tension from its large population, limited resources and environment problems, and needs faster reform of its economic growth pattern."

Reform is needed for sure, but not only in the economic sphere. The ultimate break with the old Maoist ways would be to let the Chinese people speak their minds.