A CHINESE dissident is risking jail to publish a new book that debunks one of the most potent myths of the ruling Communist Party by saying premier Wen Jiabao’s image as a kindly, caring grandfather is a sham.
The picture of tearful “Grandpa Wen” standing on the rubble in Beichuan after the 2008 earthquake that claimed 80,000 lives, exhorting rescuers to work harder and comforting survivors, did much to shore up support for the Communist Party at the time.
Last week he was standing in the mud of Gansu, doing the same for the victims and rescuers at the site of the disaster in Zhouqu.
Yu Jie, the Beijing-based 36-year-old author of Wen Jiabao: China's Best Actor, said Mr Wen was simply playing a role, acting as a mediator between an authoritarian government and its citizens and trying to hold together the party.
The book also attacks the suggestion that Mr Wen is a progressive figure, or a reformer.
“There is only one objective for all that Wen Jiabao has done since he took the rein, and it is to ‘act’. He knows that this old car – the Chinese Communist Party – is going to fall apart,” Yu writes.
The opinions expressed are not generally openly held in China.
“Even today there are still many people who believe Wen is ‘the people’s good premier’ who can’t act on his plan because of pressure from certain interest groups,” Yu writes in one essay in the book.
His views could cost him his freedom. He was interrogated by state security after news leaked out that he was writing the book, and was told he could end up in jail like his fellow dissident Liu Xiaobo, serving 11 years on subversion charges.
The police said Mr Wen was not a normal citizen; he was the premier, so criticism was not allowed.
Yu is evangelical Christian, and was a best-selling author before his books were banned in China not long after Mr Wen came to power in 2003.
He helped found the Independent PEN Centre in China and has angered authorities by outspokenly advocating religious freedom, including defending the Dalai Lama.
Few understand how Yu has stayed out of jail so long. He once proposed that Mao Zedong’s body be removed from the mausoleum on Tiananmen Square.
The fact he is publishing the book in Hong Kong could offer him some protection, because the Beijing government tends not to interfere in the freedoms enjoyed in the former crown colony, which was returned to China in 1997.
The book is being published by Bao Pu, head of Hong Kong publisher New Century Press, which often publishes politically sensitive and controversial books.
Mr Bao said he had had no unwanted police attention during the publishing process, although he did write in his introduction to the book that the author had been warned.
The book pulls no punches. Yu says the government’s inability to accept criticism from the public was unacceptable.
“Accepting criticisms and scolding from the public is the very first basic skill a ruler needs to have. Without such mental quality, one should not take part in this game.”