While our policy is to only post about the New Youth 4 case or issues directly related to it, exceptions will be made when we feel it will help people to better understand the power structure in China.

It’s easy to look at China and see a country ruled by a strong, centralized government controlled by the Communist party. While in one sense this is a descriptive statement, it really only has coherence in regards to China’s foreign policy. Domestically, local governments have as much, if not more power than Beijing, and many local companies with connections to key government officials have more power than local governments. A recent article by the New York Times business correspondent David Barboza is illuminating:

AS an American journalist based in China, I knew there was a good chance that at some point I’d be detained for pursuing a story. I just never thought I’d be held hostage by a toy factory.

That’s what happened last Monday, when for nine hours I was held, along with a translator and a photographer, by the suppliers of the popular Thomas & Friends toy rail sets.

“You’ve intruded on our property,” one factory boss shouted at me. “Tell me, what exactly is the purpose of this visit?” When I answered that I had come to meet the maker of a toy that had recently been recalled in the United States because it contained lead paint, he suggested I was really a commercial spy intent on stealing the secrets to the factory’s toy manufacturing process.

“How do I know you’re really from The New York Times?” he said. “Anyone can fake a name card.”

Thus began our interrogation, which was followed by hours of negotiations, the partial closing of the factory complex and the arrival of several police cars, a handful of helmet-wearing security officers and some government officials, all trying to free an American journalist and his colleagues from a toy factory.

Factory bosses, I would discover, can overrule the police, and Chinese government officials are not as powerful as you might suspect in a country addicted to foreign investment.

Now, it becomes obvious that local factory bosses are in fact a de facto branch of the local government (or perhaps the other way around). Journalists who try to investigate local power abuses are threatened more from local officials than they are from Beijing. While the New Youth 4 ran afoul of the government in China’s capital, scores of other would-be reformers and journalists require protection from city and provincial governments.

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