Vox Pop in China

Many people claim to know what the Chinese people think.

IN THE DEBATE over Tibet and the Olympic torch, a great deal has been said and written about what the Chinese people believe. Pundits inform us that the Chinese people want their government to crack down harder on Tibetan protesters. The delicate -- and, apparently, fairly uniform -- views of the Chinese people are cited as arguments against boycotts or other actions that might hurt the Chinese people's feelings. "It's also an issue of the Chinese people, who are very invested in the Olympics, who see it as a coming of age for China," national security adviser Stephen Hadley told the program "Fox News Sunday," explaining why world leaders shouldn't stay away from the opening ceremonies.

Well, maybe so. But since so much policy is built on the views of the Chinese people, it's worth asking: How do we know what they think? It's hard enough to gauge national sentiment on complex topics in societies where people feel no compunction about expressing their views. In nations where freely expressing views can and often does land people in prison, it's quite a bit harder.

There's a lot more personal freedom in China today than in the bad old days of Mao Zedong, and in private conversations, Chinese people may express opinions that diverge from the party line. But the Communist Party, which maintains a monopoly of power, makes clear that certain views can't be publicly expressed. Many thousands of security agents spend their days and nights monitoring e-mail and Internet communications and blocking Web sites that challenge party orthodoxy. The Web sites also police themselves to stay in business, quickly removing from chat rooms any comments that challenge Beijing on sensitive topics. People who insist on being contrary -- people such as Hu Jia, 34, whose letter on human rights and the Olympics we published a few days ago -- find themselves hurled into the Chinese gulag after cursory, closed trials.

The greatest purported authority on what the Chinese people believe, of course, is the Communist Party itself. Just yesterday, for example, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman issued a "demand" to the "few" U.S. senators who are promoting a resolution in support of peaceful dialogue between China and the Dalai Lama: They should "abandon prejudice and immediately stop wrongful remarks and deeds that hurt the Chinese people's feeling." Never mind that the resolution was unanimously approved by the full Senate; if she and her employers are so sure of the Chinese people's feelings, why not allow them to speak out -- or more radically, to vote for their leaders? We think any U.S. senator receiving such a demand might be entitled to respond: Who elected you?