I just have a few responses to that question.
First, as a matter of conceptualization, I really do think, with the greatest respect to all concerned, that comparing today to the days of Mao is not a very helpful comparison. Life today in China is so different from life under the Maoist regime that a comparison is just not very helpful.
A more useful way of comparing it is by looking at stages over the past three decades. If we look at human rights conditions, even in the mid- and late eighties, prior to the Tiananmen crisis, if we look at human rights conditions in the mid-nineties, for example, after Deng Xiaoping's visit to the south, and if we look at human rights conditions today, it is fair to say that there are many areas where human rights conditions have actually deteriorated. And I think religion is one of them.
It is true that many people are participating in religious faith in China, but China's policy, grounded in the constitution and in national regulations on control of religion, and so on, makes it very clear that although people are entitled to freedom of religious belief, they are not entitled to freedom of action to act on that belief.
There is a large question as to whether that's consistent with the international standards. But that also means the state is paying a lot of attention to the behaviour of religious adherence. I'm not only talking about the outlawing of so-called cults like the Falun Gong; I'm really talking about the underground Christian churches. I'm talking about Islam and the domination of the teaching of Islam in Xinjiang, and also the control over Tibetan Buddhism, not only in Tibet but also in Inner Mongolia.
It is important to recognize that there are some bumps in this road. It's important to recognize that the government is very apprehensive about and hostile to competing organizations, whether they be religious, economic, or civil. So I think the religious issue has to be looked at in more context.
In terms of media, I think it is absolutely the case that there is more media freedom in China now than has been the case in the past, and that's largely due to work by media participants to push the envelope, if you will.
Another area is the increase in pluralism in politics. If we look at debates within the National People's Congress, even debates within the party system, there is increased pluralism, and that is increasingly tolerated. Within the party, the effort to install institutions of inter-party democracy and to actually pass laws and regulations that govern the rights of party members to freedom in inter-party debates is another very important step.
Lastly, I would say there is the growth of legal institutions. I would underscore the point I made with regard to the recent Human Rights Watch report on China's repression of lawyers; that is the fact that lawyers are now as important as they are. They just passed a new lawyers' law, trying to increase state control on lawyers. That can be seen as an indication that the lawyer community in China is trying to be more and more assertive about rights, about the rule of law, and so on, and to a very large extent, that is permitted.
The last thing I would say is that there are the so-called areas where debate is not really permitted. Taiwan, Tibet, and Tiananmen are three that come to mind. But the scope for free debate and discussion and expression in China outside of those issues is increasingly broad. So I do think there have been major improvements over the last three decades, but there are also areas of concern, as there will be for the foreseeable future. The issue is, how do you balance the two?