Op-Ed Contributors

Address the social conflicts dutifully

By Chan Choi-hi (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-03-31 07:51

Editor's note: Some local governments should give more recognition to public power rather than use administrative power to suppress social conflicts.

China is under the dual pressure of the global financial crisis and changes to its domestic economic environment. Maintaining social stability is a difficult task. If local governments don't handle mass incidents well, it may result in social disharmony. Social conflicts have increased of late, and the rising trend of mass incidents across China reflects that.

Just last Friday, dozens of people were injured and 10 vehicles damaged in a clash between urban management officials and hundreds of residents of Kunming, capital of Yunnan province.

Official figures show the number of mass incidents in 1995 was just more than 10,000. But it increased to more than 60,000 in 2005. The most prominent examples of recent years are the Weng'an and Longnan incidents. In July 2008, the family of a teenaged student in Weng'an county of Guizhou province disputed the official cause of her death. Not satisfied with the local public security bureau's explanations, her family members and thousands of other people went on the rampage and brought Weng'an to a standstill for a couple of days.

Four months later, more than 30 residents of Longnan, Gansu province, went to the local government office with complaints on housing, land and livelihood issues. Within a short time, more than 2,000 people gathered at the office and soon the incident turned into mass action. These two are just a few of the many cases - the proverbial tip of an iceberg - of social conflicts.

Mass incidents have not only increased in number, but also in intensity. This is partly because more and more people are becoming aware of their rights.

From a sociological point of view, mass incidents show that social conflicts cannot be controlled for long. The more they accumulate, the more intense they will become, and their destructive power will be wider and deeper.

Local governments have to pay more attention to the phenomenon. Giving more recognition to public power is, of course, more important than just seeking to strengthen administrative power to suppress social conflicts.

But some local officials still don't know how to respond to mass incidents. As a result, some local governments make the mistake of using hard power to suppress them. They tend to treat all the people involved in mass incidents as troublemakers and even criminals. Such an attitude infuriates the aggrieved public further.

Governments and their departments at all levels still don't have mechanisms that could resolve the contentious issues peacefully and reasonably. Some of them still don't realize that high-handedness doesn't pay when it comes to dealing with the public. As long as these governments don't change their attitude, it would be difficult to build a harmonious society.

Analyses of recent mass incidents show communications between governments (or officials) and the people have been weak, and the public in most cases was not given the chance to express its grievances. The governments have to be patient, and keep their eyes and ears open to people's problems.

Rapid economic growth can improve a nation's economic health. But if local officials think it can keep social conflicts at bay, too, they are mistaken. If social contradictions are not resolved, the "iceberg" of social conflicts will get bigger and bigger. And to resolve the social contradictions, public management reform must be made part of governments' agenda.

In critical economic times, unemployed migrant workers, jobless college graduates and unemployed urban middle-class people feel governments are not doing enough to get them jobs and redress their grievances. If they are not dealt with properly they could vent their anger through mass incidents.

So, it is important for the central government to devise a new strategy not only to deal with mass incidents, but also to prevent them.

It could set up high-level and cross-sectional national working committee with representatives (from, say, the Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of Civil Affairs and the Ministry of Education), and devise indicators and contingency plans at all levels to deal with mass conflicts.

Moreover, the central government must evaluate local governments not only on the basis of their economic growth rates and environmental protection measures, but also on the basis of the way they have handled mass incidents.

The author is chairman of the Hong Kong Public Governance Association and council member of the Central and Western District of Hong Kong.

(China Daily 03/31/2010 page9)