Asked why Beijing had halted plans to let foreign newspapers print in China, Shi Zongyuan, the country’s top press regulator, did not mince his words. “When I think of the ‘colour revolutions’, I feel afraid,” he said.
Mr Shi is far from alone in his concern. Since popular protests toppled the authoritarian government of Georgia in 2003, Chinese leaders and government academics have watched with increasing concern the copycat collapse of similar regimes in Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan.
Many in Beijing now see the “colour revolutions” – so-called because of the colour and flower symbols adopted by protesters – as a phenomenon to rival the 1989 collapse of communism in Europe and a potential threat to the survival of China’s ruling Communist party.
Chinese analysts suggest that repeated calls by George W. Bush, US president, for the global promotion of democracy have fuelled such revolts and, with Mr Bush stressing the theme again in Japan on Wednesday, it is likely to be a hidden subtext to his weekend visit to Beijing.
The official People’s Daily recently railed against US media for shaking the “ideological mindsets and cultural foundations” of other countries by exporting US-style values of “freedom and democracy”.
Officially favoured Chinese academics insist that the US uses such values to undermine unsupportive governments. A recent edition of the party publication Foreign Theoretical Trends said the US had been using “street politics” to push western interests, and warned that Washington was seeking to promote colour revolutions throughout the world. “Facing US cultural hegemony’s assaults and infiltration, we must be serious and vigilant,” said contributor Gong Shuduo.
Such calls have been heeded. In an unambiguous warning to liberal-minded officials, in August the Communist party announced strict rules to defend “national cultural security” by limiting foreign involvement in the media market.
This week, Mr Shi, head of the General Administration of Press and Publication, told the Financial Times that Beijing had suspended plans to allow foreign newspapers to print in China because of the role of international media in the colour revolutions.
But for Beijing, the lessons of the colour revolutions reach much further. Academics suggest international media have been only one arm of a broad US campaign to back opposition movements that also involves the Central Intelligence Agency and non-governmental org-anisations.
Concern about the role of overseas-funded non-government organisations, in particular, has quickly permeated many levels of interaction between China, foreign governments and individuals.
Domestic media were ordered not to report on a visit to China in October by George Soros, the hedge-fund billionaire whose Open Society Institute and related foundations have made scores of grants to NGOs in eastern Europe and elsewhere.
Chinese reporters said propaganda officials banned the broadcast of television interviews with Mr Soros and ordered newspapers to ignore his trip. Beijing made an exception for one piece of news about Mr Soros – allowing the media to report that he had increased his shareholding in locally listed Hainan Airlines.
An eight-year effort by the European Union to promote human rights through cash grants to NGOs in China has also run into obstacles over the past month. EU officials have always informally told Chinese counterparts of the identities of recipients before the grants were awarded, in case there were particular sensitivities, and until recently Beijing had raised few objections.
But during the EU-China human rights dialogue late last month, Chinese officials objected to almost every proposed grant, officials familiar with the talks said.
There is little chance that the fears behind such objections will fade soon. The Communist party’s abandonment of any real commitment to Marxism has destroyed the central justification for its monopoly of national political power.
Harsh suppression of dissidents is one sign of the nervousness that results from this lack of ideological legitimacy, as is the party’s determination to control new forms of communication such as mobile telephony and the internet.
For example, internet searches for the Chinese phrase “colour revolution” conducted on the locally based search engine Baidu.com yield no results, while foreign-based search engines find hundreds of thousands of websites featuring the words.
However, in spite of the chill wind blowing at the centre of government, there is no sign that fears of a local colour revolution are changing China’s basic commitment to economic reform and further opening of its economy.
In spite of official suspicions about NGOs, which can still not be legally registered, grassroots organisations using a variety of formal and informal identities are thriving at a local level. International exchanges are booming and, even in the media business, officials are keen to stress that foreigners will not be excluded completely. “If we see kind-hearted and good people wanting to come in, then the more that come, the better,” says the press administration’s Mr Shi.
