The EconomistSeptember 14th 2019 China 592 also sometimes enjoyed more leeway to ex-
periment politically, such as in the devel-
opment of ngos and trade unions. Under
China’s current leader, Xi Jinping, those
freedoms have been chipped away. This
has given Guangdong something else in
common with Hong Kong: a shared sense
of the Communist Party’s tightening grip.
But in interviews across the province,
few people express sympathy for Hong
Kong’s protesters. This is partly the result
of the censorship that prevails across Chi-
na. People in Guangdong have legal access
only to a couple of television channels
from Hong Kong: tvband Phoenix, which
are known for their relatively pro-party
stance. When these channels report on the
protests in Hong Kong, censors cut the feed
to avoid any scenes being shown that
might embarrass the mainland authorities.
The government has been trying harder to
stop people using illegally installed satel-
lite dishes that can pick up other channels
from Hong Kong. A few years ago such
dishes were a far more common sight.
Gone are the days when Guangdong’s
media were given freer rein than those
elsewhere in China. In 2013, not long after
Mr Xi took power, hundreds of people gath-
ered outside the headquarters of Southern
Weekend, a newspaper in Guangzhou with
a national reputation for its investigative
reports. They were protesting against the
party’s ban on the publication of an editori-
al calling on China to uphold its constitu-
tion, which notionally enshrines wide-
ranging freedoms. Incensed readers gave
speeches at the gate. One even called for a
competitive multiparty system. But the au-
thorities tightened control over Southern
Weekend. A former journalist there says
that what was once China’s “boldest” news-
paper has been completely tamed.
The province’s leadership has become
tamer, too. In the five years leading up to
Mr Xi’s accession, Guangdong’s party chief
was Wang Yang, a relatively liberal official
who was linked with what admiring aca-
demics in China called the “Guangdong
model”. (Mr Wang is now one of the seven
members of the party’s most powerful or-
gan, the Politburo Standing Committee,
but shows fewer signs of liberal thinking.)
The model included innovations such as
making government budgets public—in
2010 Guangdong became the first province
to do so—and making it easier for ngos to
register. Mr Wang emphasised the need for
“thought emancipation” among officials,
reviving a slogan promoted by Deng and
the then party chief in Guangdong, Xi
Zhongxun (Mr Xi’s father, ironically).
It was on Mr Wang’s watch that thou-
sands of residents of the fishing village of
Wukan, in south-eastern Guangdong, rose
up in 2011 against local officials who had il-
legally sold large tracts of collectively
owned land to developers. The protesters
demanded, and were granted, a free elec-
tion by secret ballot for the village leader-
ship—a rarity in China. The villagers’ ex-
traordinary pluck made headlines around
the world.
Much has changed. Mr Wang was suc-
ceeded in 2012 by a less adventurous offi-
cial. Guangdong’s current party chief, Li Xi,
who took over in 2017, is an ally of Mr Xi and
shows little enthusiasm for reform. Wu-
kan, meanwhile, has long since reverted to
the grip of the local officials whom the vil-
lagers had once defied. The leaders they
elected were turfed out in 2016. Reporters
who visit Wukan risk detention. On a re-
cent, entirely legal, trip, your correspon-
dent and a colleague were interrogated for
hours by plainclothes police.Cutting the shoots
The chill is also evident among ngos. Fu
Changguo, a labour-rights activist in
Shenzhen, was arrested last year for alleg-
edly organising a protest by workers at
Jasic, a tech firm in the city (the authorities
accused him of colluding with a Hong
Kong-based ngo). Dozens of students from
elsewhere in the country were also de-
tained for supporting the strike. In January
the director of Chunfeng Labour Dispute
Service Centre, another labour ngo in
Shenzhen, was arrested for “disturbing so-
cial order”. An employee at the centre says
that last year she had four colleagues. She is
now the only one left—the others have
been “scared off”. A decade ago Shenzhen
had about two dozen such groups. Today,
there are “just a handful”, says one activist.
He says his ngosurvives because of its
“consciously mild approach”.
Guangdong’s many Christians are feel-
ing the impact, too. In the past year numer-
ous house churches (informal congrega-
tions which often meet in people’s homes)have been shut. One of China’s biggest and
best known, Rongguili Church in Guang-
zhou, which had a congregation of several
thousand, was closed last December. A for-
mer pastor at the church says the local gov-
ernment cited “fire-safety regulations”.
The province retains its strong cultural
affinity with Hong Kong. A commentator
from Guangdong with more than 3m fol-
lowers on Weibo, a microblog platform,
said last year that more than 90% of Guang-
dong natives cannot stand to watch even
five minutes of China’s annual televised
Spring Festival gala. He said people pre-
ferred shows from Hong Kong. Lao Zhenyu,
the founder of a popular local news web-
site, writes that when he was at primary
school in Guangzhou in the 1980s, he was
taught in his native Cantonese. Now, he
notes, some schools in the city ban the use
of it even during breaks.
A young native of Guangzhou admits to
feeling “more culturally at home in Hong
Kong than Beijing”. But he says education
in China, which stresses patriotism, has
“completely inoculated us” against even
thinking about siding with Hong Kong’s
protesters. Others are less diplomatic.
Asked about the demonstrators, an old
man strolling outside Jinan University in
Guangzhou huffs, in broken Mandarin,
that the army should “just kill them all”.
In recent years some people in Guang-
dong have come to resent Hong Kongers for
their perceived arrogance, which they say
has grown in tandem with a localist move-
ment in the territory. The localists, includ-
ing some of today’s protesters, resent the
huge influx of mainlanders into Hong
Kong since China took over, many from
Guangdong. An article last month on
gznf.net, the news site founded by Mr Lao,
accused Hong Kongers of harbouring “prej-
udice” towards people from his city.
If Guangdong is resistant to contagion
from Hong Kong, it is likely that the rest of
the country is immune, too. China’s liber-
als have never drawn much inspiration
from the territory’s democratic aspira-
tions. Its politics have not exerted the same
fascination as that of Taiwan, where de-
mocratisation in the 1980s and 1990s of-
fered hope to some observers on the main-
land that the same might happen in China.
The party, however, never takes
chances. The 70th anniversary on October
1st of the founding of the People’s Republic
is fast approaching. Hong Kongers are
widely expected to spoil the occasion by
holding a mass pro-democracy demonstra-
tion that day. Short of unleashing the army
in Hong Kong with a mandate to use ex-
treme force—which the party now seems
reluctant to do—it is hard to see how the
central government can stop it. It can, how-
ever, step up efforts to prevent copycats in
the mainland. The big gate of Guangdong
will be under close watch. 7