Notice to Chinese petitioners: if you fight the law, the law will win.

徐贲：善待底层民情_网易新闻中心 via kwout

These two pictures, from Hunan province, have been making the rounds on the internet because of what it says on the banners: the first one says “谁不依法信访就打击谁” which means “whoever unlawfully petitions the government will be attacked” while the second one says “违法上访，坐牢罚款”, which means “illegal petitions will be result in jail sentences and fines”. There are, evidently, even more. It’s amusing, in a completely depressing way: there’s an inherent contradiction in telling people that there are both legal and illegal ways of having recourse to the law. For example, going to the provincial petition office, or even more sinfully, Beijing—that would be a loss of face for local government, and that’s exactly what operates behind the linguistic facade here—there are “laws”, but calling a spade a spade, they are really “rules” for well-behaved and docile citizens that can be, if necessary, be imposed by state force

Characters painted on walls and banners in prominent places have always been one of the government’s more friendly ways of reminding the people where the lines are. I’m reminded of the one-child policy banners and slogans, where people were told that they would be punished if they had more than one, etc. The not so subtle message, of course, is that the state can use the various and sometimes violent means of keeping the troublemakers and rabble-rousers down.

It makes me pessimistic to even think about it, because the distance between China and true social progress is not measured in what treaties it signs or what “ism” holds power, but in how the state perceives itself vis-a-vis the hoi polloi: as a deferential servant, or as its master. Of course, it’s never completely one or the other, even at its best or most abysmal—but as I am currently reading The Age of Revolution by Eric Hobsbawm, it strikes me the historical struggles of the Europeans, in the 19th c. and beyond—manifested in their (sometimes failed) revolutions, insurrections, and political mass movements—were precisely about this, about carving out this space for the people that the violent arms of the government could not reach. This is the practical, day-to-day meaning of the universalistic conception of rights—it’s our protection against the arbitrary violence that the king, emperor, and state can use against us.