Barry Petersen On "The Courage Of The Very Few Who Speak Out" In China

(CBS/AP)

Writes Spencer:

…he was summoned to his local police station to be ticked off about his "oppositionism" and told no good would come of it. On his way back home, he was whacked from behind, and left unconscious in a ditch.

Now he is in hospital, paralysed from the waist down, having suffered a fractured vertebra in his neck. Visitors are not being allowed in to see him, so the information comes via his family.

This is a pretty chilling incident for reporters. We are often intruding into sensitive areas, and deciding how to treat our interviewees is a very difficult one. He is not the first to be beaten up for talking to the press. Others have been jailed, sometimes for substantial terms.

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Violence is no stranger for Chinese dissidents. The sad thing is that the Chinese authorities can define dissidents in the broadest possible way, including even gentle people who feel the need to simply speak out.

In America, we are accustomed to having police watched over by journalists reporting on their activities and courts judging what they did. In China, the police face none of this.

It makes them a force unto their own. And, worse, it is a force that is not always on the side of right or even the government. The police can be on the side (and on the payroll) of the local city boss. Police can then be used to quell dissidents who talk too much or farmers who protest when their land is simply taken.

Occasionally, these incidents surface usually in the foreign press. Less often, there may be some retribution from the central government in Beijing. Let's say...VERY less often.

In the U.S., we see clear lines of authority. Police usually work for the local city, the highway patrol for the state, the army for the federal government.

Overseeing them are local, state and federal courts. And what these courts say becomes the law.

China has some of these institutions, but with little or no real power. The idea of a court telling a high official what to do is not part of China's way of law. Indeed...it usually works the other way around. So recourse to courts is often no recourse at all.

This is made worse by what even China's top leaders admit is a major problem: corruption. In a country where, suddenly, there is money to be made the police can be a hand-maiden to corrupt officials.

If a foreign company is willing to pay a few million dollars for a factory site where a few powerless farmers raise rice, the farmers are dead out of luck. And in some cases, the farmers do end up dead.

If a foreign journalist is involved, he can be intimidated by being detained or questioned, and by having his Chinese staff face the real wrath of police. Most of us who work in China do not fear so much for ourselves as for our Chinese co-workers. They can't get on a plane and leave, they can't go to an embassy and ask for help. We have options, they do not.

China's top leaders want this to change. They realize the need for rule of law - real rule of law administered by courts and police. What they do not know is how to make this happen. They can issue decrees, but in the provinces local leaders decide what they will obey and, sometimes, decide they will not.

So don't count on this changing anytime soon. It frustrates China's top leaders, but serves the local bosses who get what they want, and have the police close by to make sure it happens their way.

All the more reason to honor the courage of the very few who speak out. And who pay the price.