Oct
31
Property Rights Helping Along Gay Life in China? Other Freedoms Can’t Be Far Behind
Filed Under China, Personal Freedom | 1 Comment
On his blog, Tom Palmer from the Cato Institute points to an essay from the China Daily on the difficulty of being gay in China. From the essay:
Last November, government agencies published a report that put the number of gay men in China who are “of a sexually active age” at 5-10 million. Scientists say this is the low end of the estimate. They figure that there are around 30-40 million homosexual men and women in total.
In 1997, China’s Criminal Law decriminalized sodomy. In 2001, homosexuality was removed from the list of mental disorders by health authorities.
But the changing law does not necessarily change public perception. Most gay people interviewed for this story agree that the single biggest source of pressure and stigma comes from their own families. “My employer doesn’t care about my private life, and the neighbourhood grandma is not nosy any more. But there’s no way I can get past my own mum and dad,” said Lu Youni, a Guangzhou high school teacher.
While a sypathetic piece, it does not quite tell the whole story. As Palmer notes on his blog, “It’s discreetly not mentioned, but the situation is infinitely preferable to the public executions to which gay people were sentenced in the old days. What’s missing from an otherwise interesting story is any explanation of why things have been changing in China.” Palmer then recounts a story:
My friend Zhou Xiao (those of us who have difficulty pronouncing Chinese names call her “Kate”) told me in Shanghai in 1997 that she was convinced that “China will never go communist again.” I asked her why she was so sure and she announced that she (and her very patient husband) had already been in Shanghai for a week doing field research on on changing public attitudes in China and they had found that “Shanghai is just full of gay bars. And when the gay bars come in, they’re never going back to socialism!” In her discussions with customers, she said that she asked what had accounted for the change (that was before the laws were amended to eliminate criminal penalites for sexual contact among members of the same gender) and she said that the response was that the big step had been privatization of housing. Under socialism, housing was rationed and allocated by the state. Married couples were eligible to be allocated flats; unmarried people were not. So gay people (who had not been forced into phony marriages) had to live with their parents or in worker dormitories and couldn’t create households together. When housing was privatized, however, “landlords didn’t care if you were purple and had horns, if you were willing to pay.” A little bit of the profit motive swept away a great deal of irrationality, cruelty, and oppression.
A fairly cheery story of the property rights necessary for China to at least partially un-shackle its economy from the misery of communism leading in turn to more personal freedom.
Hat tip to Ilya Somin at The Volokh Conspiracy for pointing the way to Palmer’s ineresting post.
Oct
30
“Subverting Freedom in Macau” from today’s Wall Street Journal Asia :
It’s been five years since pro-Beijing elements in Hong Kong tried — and failed — to curtail free speech in the former British colony. Now Macau Chief Executive Edmund Ho says it’s his “sacred duty” to try to do the same thing in his territory. The legislation he’s proposing represents the most serious threat to freedoms since Macau’s 1999 handover from Portugal to China.
Mr. Ho’s government proposed last week to enact enabling legislation on Article 23 of the territory’s miniconstitution, the Basic Law. As with Hong Kong’s Basic Law, Article 23 was inserted into the law by Beijing after the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy uprising. It says Macau’s government “shall enact laws, on its own, to prohibit any act of treason, secession, sedition, subversion against the Central People’s Government, or theft of state secrets.”
Under Mr. Ho’s proposed national security legislation, offenders could be jailed for up to 30 years for such crimes. Trials on some offenses would not be public. At a press conference last week, Mr. Ho said “chanting a few slogans, writing a few articles criticizing the central government or the Macau government . . . won’t be regulated by this proposed law.” But Beijing uses such laws to quell dissent and there’s no guarantee that Macau would not do the same.
In addition, the proposed law would remove protection for whistleblowers exposing government corruption — a problem in a territory dominated by the gambling industry and with an entrenched mafia and a self-censoring press. Hong Kongers have questioned whether they would be subject to the law if they visited Macau.
Oct
29
Kopel on Taiwanese trade with China: “Poisoned Milk and the Poisoning of Democracy”
Filed Under China, Taiwan | Leave a Comment
My Independence Institute colleague, Dave Kopel, has published a new paper concerning Taiwan’s trade policies with China and Taiwanese sovereignty. Here is David’s post on the paper from the excellent legal blog, The Volokh Conspiracy:
Last Friday, I presented a paper at a symposium at the University of Chicago’s International House. The paper was part of a symposium on “Taiwan’s New Approach: Opportunities and Challenges for President Ma Ying-jeou’s Government.” The paper is titled Poisoned Milk and the Poisoning of Democracy: Some Cautions about China Trade and Taiwan Sovereignty. It argues that Taiwan should make national security the foremost consideration in trade policy with China. This would support liberalization of Chinese tourism and Chinese students being allowed to study in Taiwan, the better to win the hearts and minds of the Chinese people. The paper suggests that–for purposes of human rights, and to sow the seeds for long-term political reform in China–new Taiwanese foreign direct investment in China be required to go to businesses which allow Chinese workers to elect a workers council. Taiwan should energetically develop its trade with India, as an alternative to China; should further restrict Chinese food imports; and should get rid of trade negotiators who have business interests in China. Allowing economic integration with China without regard for national security could, the paper suggests, lead to the destruction Taiwan’s sovereignty, independence, and freedom.
Powered by FireStats