Former CCTV celebrity Cui Yongyuan.
During the Communist Party’s two sessions, delegates and members are once again in the media spotlight. U.S. media reported that under the CCP’s oppressive regime, it is rare for those who dare to voice criticism, and that almost all of the delegates and members who have spoken the truth in the past have failed to do so. For example, former CCTV host Cui Yongyuan, who claimed during his last appearance at the two sessions that he had become Bi Fujian.
The Communist Party’s two sessions in 2021, cut short by the Epidemic, will end on March 11. Voice of America reported on March 9 that since the Communist Party’s establishment, harsh political campaigns have frequently stirred mainland society, making it largely difficult to guarantee the constitutional freedom of expression. In recent years in particular, there have been frequent instances of trouble coming out of the mouth and crimes being punished by words.
In this environment, although Beijing holds two sessions of the National People’s Congress every year, it is even more rare for delegates and members to offer criticism. Even when the occasional outspoken person appears, they quickly fade into obscurity.
The report cites the 2014 sessions as an example, when Yu Zhengsheng, then chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), said in his CPPCC report that members should be willing to speak, dare to speak and tell the truth. He insisted on not beating the stick, not holding the hat, and not catching the braid.
The Communist Party’s Global Times then ran an op-ed, writing that CCTV host Cui Yongyuan, then a member of the CPPCC, replied, “That’s a fair point. Do you dare to publish if we dare to speak?”
In March 2017, Cui Yongyuan again proposed at the CPPCC that the Ministry of Agriculture be held accountable for its dereliction of duty in regulating genetically modified foods, but his proposal in question was removed. His former colleagues at CCTV also alerted that they received a ban and were not allowed to report on his proposal.
Cui Yongyuan tweeted that “it’s hard to tell the truth” and said the deletion of his proposal was a discredit to the CPPCC system. He also went online to re-post the deleted proposal so that more people would “know that someone is blocking me from bringing up the health issues of the public.”
On March 3 of the same year, Yu Zhengsheng reiterated in his CPPCC report that he would not wear hats, beat up sticks, or catch pigtails.
Two days later, on March 5, Cui was surrounded by the media as he walked out of the two sessions. A reporter asked: are you still doing media (work)? Cui Yongyuan: “Do not do, (CCTV) opened me up. Not only do not do the media, the first two years of my blocking order, is not allowed to report me, not allowed to report my voice, I am very angry.”
This was the last Time Cui Yongyuan attended the two sessions. At the time, Cui Yongyuan laughed at reporters and said he had now become Bi Fujian.
Bi Fujian was also a CCTV celebrity, and in April 2015, he sang a revolutionary model play while criticizing Mao at a banquet, thereby enlivening the atmosphere of the banquet, but unexpectedly, he was reported and lost his job, and was also restricted from leaving the country.
In December 2018, Cui Yongyuan broke the news on Weibo that the files of the 100 billion mining rights case in Shaanxi were lost in the Supreme Court, which sparked public opinion. The case was later dramatically reversed when the judge who broke the story, Wang Linqing, was arrested, and on May 10, 2019, Cui Yongyuan issued an apology to the authorities to “admit his mistake. At that time, there was news that Cui was banned from leaving the country and was suspected to be under semi house arrest.
In addition to Cui, Luo Fuhe, who served as a three-term deputy to the National People’s Congress, was removed from the list of vice chairmen of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) by the authorities at the two sessions the following year for suggesting the relaxation of Internet control at the 2017 sessions.
In addition, in 2014, James Tien Pei-chun, former chairman of the Hong Kong Liberal Party and a pro-Beijing pro-establishment figure, was removed from his position as a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference for criticizing then Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying.
The cause was that on October 24 of that year, during the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong, Tian Beijun said at a press conference that Hong Kong was about to fall into ungovernability, and he called on Leung to consider resigning on his own. Only five days later, his membership in the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) was revoked on the grounds that he had made public remarks unfavorable to the governance of Hong Kong’s Chief Executive.
Another Hong Kong-based CPPCC member, Liu Mengxiong, who had strongly supported Leung’s candidacy for Hong Kong’s Chief Executive, admitted three years later that he had looked the other way. Liu Mengxiong was disqualified after only one term as a CPPCC member.
Liu Mengxiong said that he would rather be a CPPCC member who advocates for the people for one term than a “clapping machine” for four terms.
In addition, Wang Quanjie, a professor at Yantai University in Shandong Province, proposed to change the property declaration system of officials to a public property disclosure system at the 2005 National People’s Congress, and received support from more than 50 delegates, but he was only a NPC deputy for one term.
Han Deyun, another CCP National People’s Congress deputy and president of the Chongqing Lawyers Association, has proposed legislation for a civil servant property declaration and disclosure system to the NPC almost every year since 2006 during the two sessions.
It was not until March 2014 that the legal deputy, who had stayed in the U.S., posted, “This year, I am sure I will not mention the proposal on officials’ property disclosure. The difficulty of establishing an official property disclosure system is ten times more difficult than what was imagined when the proposal was first made, a hundred times.”
Jiang Hong, a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, said in March of the same year, “I will continue to propose an open system for declaring the property of officials this year.”
However, not only has the proposal for a “sunshine bill” not yet been implemented, but also Xu Zhiyong, a law doctor who served two terms as a deputy to the Beijing Haidian District CPC National People’s Congress, and others have been imprisoned for several years for promoting the “sunshine bill.
Yao, who is also known as a “civil election expert,” ran for the Qianjiang Municipal People’s Congress four times in a row since 1987, until he was elected as an independent candidate in 1998. During his term of office, he pursued the 100 million yuan white slip incident of teachers’ salary in Hubei, and was concerned about the illegal removal of village officials and the impeachment of the director of the Civil Affairs Bureau, which attracted a lot of attention.
Yao also supervised the work of the local government and two chambers (the government, the court, and the supervisory court) and criticized and corrected the illegal and disorderly behavior of unscrupulous officials, but Yao lost in the general election in November 2003. Since then, he has even been violently and repeatedly forced to disappear by the authorities because of his concern for sensitive topics such as human rights and the electoral system.
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