CHINA: Public Opinion on INTERNET Puts Pressure on Communist Party Leaders

"This (internet) platform has really changed the situation in China, because everybody can write something. They just log on to Sina.com and read all kinds of newspapers. And the fascinating thing for them is, they get to leave their comments" Guo Liang, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

Read Here article by JIM YARDLEY in New York Times, "Chinese Go Online in Search of Justice Against Elite Class"

Read Here article by Julie Chao in Atlanta Journal "Internet rages over China's 'BMW incident' "

Read Here article by Tim Luard on BBC News

Read here article by Philip P. Pan of Washington Post "The Unquiet Death of a Chinese Peasant "

In China, they called it the "BMW case". It became a national news issue.

On October 16 last year, Ms Su Xiuwen with her sister as a passenger parked her metallic-silver BMW along a crowded market street in the city of Harbin. Passing by Ms Su's BMW was a tractor driven by a farmer, with his wife on board, pulling a trailer with a load of onions. The tractor knocked the side of the BMW. The farmer and the wife came down and apologised.

According to reports by passers-by, Ms Su and her sister got out of the car , both cursed and hit the farmer and his wife. Then they got back into the BMW, drove into the crowd that had gathered, and killed the wife of the farmer and injured several others.

The case went to the local court. The judge ruled that it was simply a minor traffic offence, "accidental traffic disturbance" , and gave Ms Su a 2-year suspended sentence.

The judge's ruling raised an uproar. Newspapers, TV and the internet began covering the issue, dubbed "The BMW Case"

The protest against the decision began as a trickle in China's internet chat rooms. Over the next fews weeks and months, it snowballed into a national obssession, eventually picked up by major newspapers and television.

The internet chat rooms were flooded with emails. Sina.com, the country's most popular Web site, reported 200,000 emails on the case.

The uproar peaked when rumors went round in the internet chat rooms that the BMW driver's husband was related to some high provincial officials.

The case became a "rich versus poor" and an example of corruption at high places.

Alarmed by the public response on the internet chat rooms which overflowed into the mainstream newspapers and television , the Communist Party leaders asked that the case be reopened. In addition, the Govt also clamped down on further debate by telling the official media to drop the subject. Internet chat rooms were also shut down.

Philip P. Pan reports :

"The government's reaction highlights the challenge the Internet poses for China's authoritarian political system as well as the Web's growing influence on decision-making by the party. Last month, China's highest court ordered the execution of an alleged gangster after a similar outcry on the Internet against a decision to grant him a reprieve based on evidence he had confessed under torture. Several months earlier, outrage on the Internet over the death of a college student in police custody led the party to abolish a regulation allowing police to detain people without proper identification.

Chinese legal scholars say the public scrutiny could force judges to think twice before accepting bribes or showing favoritism to those with power, but it might also encourage the party to ignore evidence and intervene in judicial decisions to satisfy the whims of the public."

Tim Luard reports:

"Beijing resident Liang Yen says she is glad the government is finally taking notice of public opinion.

"It is encouraging at least that we can talk about these things these days online, and the reopening of the case shows that the government is listening," she told the BBC World Service programme East Asia Today.

The internet has become the most effective way of expressing ideas and feelings in China and is now starting to influence decision-making at the top level, according to Liu Junning, a political scientist in Beijing.

Jim Yardley reports:

"Guo Liang, a scholar with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences who studies the role of the Internet in Chinese society, said the case was the latest example of the Net's growing influence. He said Internet protests of a beating death last year that involved police officers helped prompt a change in national detention laws. The Net also became a primary source of information during the initial SARS outbreak.

Mr. Guo noted that while most Internet users are China's urban elite, he recently finished a study showing that poorer, more rural residents are increasingly online, renting time at Internet cafes for as little as 12 cents an hour. "

Comments by local Chinese:

Yang Xiaohuai, a defense lawyer in Beijing, said the basic problem was the lack of an independent judiciary, which undermines trust in the legal system. "In China, there is a phenomenon," he said. "Power is greater than the law, money is greater than the law and connections are greater than the law."

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