Many of us here at China Beat have been following very closely the story on the recent uprisings in Tibet and neighboring provinces. These are the sources we’ve been reading; if you have other recommendations for solid reporting and commentary on this developing situation, please post them in the comments section.
1. James Miles (Beijing bureau chief for the Economist and the author of The Legacy of Tiananmen: China in Disarray, on China in the aftermath of 1989) is apparently the only Western journalist who is or was in Lhasa. He's published good reports like this one on the Economist's website and in the Times (London).
2. An NPR report in which they interview Miles and also Luisa Lim, NPR’s Shanghai correspondent.
3. Here's a good news round-up (to which China Beat’s Jeremiah Jenne has contributed).
4. For those curious about the cyberchatter the situation is generating, check out China Digital Times’ coverage. For translations into English of Chinese web chatter about Tibet, go to the Global Voices Online coverage here.
5. For those who would like to learn a little more about Tibet, here's a list of seven things Westerners often get wrong about Tibet by Donald S. Lopez, Jr., author of Prisoners of Shangrila.
3/15/2008
Blogging from the China Book Festivals
(A posting by guest contributor Catherine Sampson.)
For the past week, all over China, writers have been bumping into each other at hotel check-ins, or at breakfast, in taxi queues. They have waved/hugged/air kissed, and asked: “Are you doing Beijing? Sha
nghai? Suzhou? Chengdu? Hong Kong….?” (In terms of one-upmanship a simple ‘yes’ to each can’t be beaten.)
Who’d have thought it? Book festivals – originally the cultural preserve of western cities – are popping up in several of China’s big urban centers. With one major difference, of course – they are run and largely attended by a rapidly growing population of expatriates. Much of the content is China-related – even those of us who have China in front of our eyes are always eager for more information, and different ways of interpreting what we see.
I started at the Bookworm in Beijing, where I live, then flew down to Hong Kong, and now, if it’s Thursday, I must be in Shanghai.(No Suzhou or Chengdu for me, I hang my head in shame.)
In Beijing, I was delighted to take part in an event with Qiu Xiaolong, now based in the US, whose atmospheric crime books are set in Shanghai, where he was born. He uses crime fiction to write about Chinese society, and his Inspector Chen is a gentle and poetic man who struggles to do the right thing in a politically complex world. Qiu described with great good humor how, when translated into Chinese, his mainland publisher finds it necessary to excise all mention of Shanghai, and instead to set the stories in a fictional city despite the fact that the descriptions in the book could be of nowhere else.
In Hong Kong, I met another of my literary heroes, US-based Yan Geling, whose book
The Uninvited (The Banquet Bug in the US) is a wonderfully funny satire. It tells the story of an unemployed man who discovers that if he poses as a journalist he can not only gorge himself at fabulous banquets, he can also support himself with the cash he is given in the red packets he takes away from press conferences. The trouble begins when people who believe he is a real journalist approach him to ask him to write about their very real grievances. Yan Geling has the same dry sense of humor in person that she has on the page, and spends much of her time in Beijing researching her stories.
I particularly enjoyed arriving in Hong Kong and plugging in my high-speed internet access line. The first thing I did was to visit the China Beat site for the first time. For the first time because… now, this is where I have a problem… according to a recent blog I read on China Beat, I should not be defining China by the use of negatives. Indeed it shows my arrogance to do so. Oh dear! My problem is that I simply cannot access China Beat in Beijing. I’m not meaning to look at this in a negative way, but every time I try to access China Beat my screen goes blank.
I couldn’t help thinking, this week, that I know lots of Chinese people who would welcome the chance to gather (without fear) and listen to Chinese writers speak in Chinese, about the books they had written (also without fear) in Chinese on all sorts of topics, including Chinese politics and recent history.
This week, at China’s various book festivals, there will be launches for the English-language editions of Jiang Rong’s Wolf Totem. Winner of the Asian Man Booker prize, a huge bestseller in China itself, Wolf Totem and its author walk a political tightrope. Because of his political background, Jiang Rong uses a false name. It doesn’t fool the authorities, of course (indeed, he’s allowed himself to be photographed) but the pen name allows them to look the other way. It is, after all, a story about wolves. It may have a political message, but it is not an overt polemic, it doesn’t name names or cite numbers. Still, so far Jiang Rong hasn’t dared to accept his many invitations to speak about his book abroad because he is afraid he may not be allowed to come back.
nghai? Suzhou? Chengdu? Hong Kong….?” (In terms of one-upmanship a simple ‘yes’ to each can’t be beaten.)Who’d have thought it? Book festivals – originally the cultural preserve of western cities – are popping up in several of China’s big urban centers. With one major difference, of course – they are run and largely attended by a rapidly growing population of expatriates. Much of the content is China-related – even those of us who have China in front of our eyes are always eager for more information, and different ways of interpreting what we see.
I started at the Bookworm in Beijing, where I live, then flew down to Hong Kong, and now, if it’s Thursday, I must be in Shanghai.(No Suzhou or Chengdu for me, I hang my head in shame.)
In Beijing, I was delighted to take part in an event with Qiu Xiaolong, now based in the US, whose atmospheric crime books are set in Shanghai, where he was born. He uses crime fiction to write about Chinese society, and his Inspector Chen is a gentle and poetic man who struggles to do the right thing in a politically complex world. Qiu described with great good humor how, when translated into Chinese, his mainland publisher finds it necessary to excise all mention of Shanghai, and instead to set the stories in a fictional city despite the fact that the descriptions in the book could be of nowhere else.
In Hong Kong, I met another of my literary heroes, US-based Yan Geling, whose book
The Uninvited (The Banquet Bug in the US) is a wonderfully funny satire. It tells the story of an unemployed man who discovers that if he poses as a journalist he can not only gorge himself at fabulous banquets, he can also support himself with the cash he is given in the red packets he takes away from press conferences. The trouble begins when people who believe he is a real journalist approach him to ask him to write about their very real grievances. Yan Geling has the same dry sense of humor in person that she has on the page, and spends much of her time in Beijing researching her stories.I particularly enjoyed arriving in Hong Kong and plugging in my high-speed internet access line. The first thing I did was to visit the China Beat site for the first time. For the first time because… now, this is where I have a problem… according to a recent blog I read on China Beat, I should not be defining China by the use of negatives. Indeed it shows my arrogance to do so. Oh dear! My problem is that I simply cannot access China Beat in Beijing. I’m not meaning to look at this in a negative way, but every time I try to access China Beat my screen goes blank.
I couldn’t help thinking, this week, that I know lots of Chinese people who would welcome the chance to gather (without fear) and listen to Chinese writers speak in Chinese, about the books they had written (also without fear) in Chinese on all sorts of topics, including Chinese politics and recent history.
This week, at China’s various book festivals, there will be launches for the English-language editions of Jiang Rong’s Wolf Totem. Winner of the Asian Man Booker prize, a huge bestseller in China itself, Wolf Totem and its author walk a political tightrope. Because of his political background, Jiang Rong uses a false name. It doesn’t fool the authorities, of course (indeed, he’s allowed himself to be photographed) but the pen name allows them to look the other way. It is, after all, a story about wolves. It may have a political message, but it is not an overt polemic, it doesn’t name names or cite numbers. Still, so far Jiang Rong hasn’t dared to accept his many invitations to speak about his book abroad because he is afraid he may not be allowed to come back.
3/13/2008
I Know, It’s Only Rock’n’Roll (But They Don’t Like It)
(Posted by China Beat on behalf of Jeff Wasserstrom)
This posting about the politics of pop concerts in Shanghai is mostly about an American duo (Jan and Dean), whose hits included “Surf City,” and the hard-to-categorize Icelandic songstress Bjork, who last week made headlines and drew the ire of the Chines
e state by saying the words “Tibet, Tibet” after performing a song called “Declare Independence" (on the heels of which, there was apparent tinkering with Harry Connick Jr.'s song list at a recent performance). It still seemed right, though, to give the piece a title adapted from a song by a famous British band. Why? Because the Rolling Stones, like Bjork and Jan and Dean back in 1986, made headlines when they played Shanghai. And because the band’s lead singer, Mick Jagger, made the funniest statement I’ve ever come across regarding the often singularly unfunny topic of censorship in the PRC. When told before the group’s 2006 concert that the authorities forbid them from playing “Brown Sugar” and several other sexually suggestive songs, at a concert that Jagger knew would probably be attended largely by Western men, accompanied by either Western of Chinese women, his comment (made with his famous tongue firmly in cheek) was: "I'm pleased that the Ministry of Culture is protecting the morals of the expat bankers and their girlfriends that are going to be coming.”
So what, you may be wondering, could efforts to pre-censor the Rolling Stones (not a new thing for them to deal with, since Ed Sullivan had made them change the lyrics of “Let’s Spend the Night Together” to “L
et’s Spend Some Time Together” almost four decades earlier) and the outrage that came in the wake of Bjork’s reference to Tibet (from official spokesmen and also from some Chinese fans) have to do with Jan and Dean? Well, as far as I know, none of the songs on that surf band’s play list was deemed unacceptable when they performed in Shanghai, back when I was doing dissertation research in the city (though, alas, I didn’t make it to their concert). Nor did they make any statements before, between or after they played that caused a stir. Still, as I’ve noted elsewhere before, their concert, too, involved efforts by authority figures to limit freedom of expression—in that case by Chinese members of the audience that came to hear the music. According to reports that quickly made the rounds at Shanghai campuses, when some of these fans, students from Tongji University, eager to be part of the history-making first rock concert held in their city, got up to dance in the aisles, security guards told them to sit back down—and in a few cases, pushed them around a bit.
It is widely known, among China specialists at least, that rock music played a significant role in the Tiananmen protests of 1989. Wu’er Kaixi and other student leaders of the time cited Cui Jian (who would seventeen years later join the Stones onstage in 2006 for the Shanghai renditions of their song “Wild Horses,” by the way) and other performers as having influenced and inspired them, while Hou Dejian’s “Children of the Dragon” was a popular anthem at Tiananmen Square—where the song’s author, who had moved from Taiwan to the mainland, joined the protesting crowds. What has sometimes been forgotten is that anger at
the way students were treated at the Jan and Dean concert played a role in the 1986 Shanghai demonstrations that, while smaller and more short-lived and far less dramatic than the ones to follow in 1989, helped pave the way for the Tiananmen movement.
What are the lessons to be drawn by this brief look back at rock music’s role in Chinese political struggles and cultural upsurges of the late twentieth century—a history that has been documented in insightful and detailed ways by the likes of Geremie Barmé, Linda Jaivin, Andrew Jones, and Andreas Steen? It might suggest that the authorities are right to worry about what happens during pop concerts. I would argue, though, that the line running from Jan and Dean to Bjork suggests something a bit different. Namely, that China’s rulers want their country to be one in which world-class events take place routinely in the cities of their country, but also want those same urban centers to be kept free from unexpected forms of expression. They want to be able to bring to China performers who gained fame partly through defying expectations—before her concert, in an article prophetically titled “Bjork’s Shanghai Surprise,” one officially sponsored China-based English language website enthused about the Icelandic star as someone known for her capacity to “surprise the public and the media with her new artistic directions, her quirky sense of fashion and her controversial attitudes” —and then have them eschew doing anything “quirky” or “controversial” while in the PRC. (Presumably an over-the-top fashion statement, such as the much-talked-about swan dress she wore to the 2001 Academy Awards would have been okay.)
A desire to control the script of public performances is not unique to China, with Ed Sullivan’s call for Jagger to tone down one of his lyrics and the flap over Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” during a recent Super Bowl half-time show being just two American cases in point. Still, it is hard to have things both ways, to convince international observers that your cities now offer the same things that London and New York do and to persuade students within your own country that they can be part of global youth culture without venturing abroad, and yet keep the occasional unexpected thing from happening in public. This is worth keeping in mind as the Olympics near, for individual Games are often remembered for surprising things that happened during them. And it might actually be better for China if the 2008 Olympics were remembered for some small, embarrassing surprises—a few moments like that which came during Bjork’s performance in Shanghai—than for being such a tightly controlled mega-event that it was drained of excitement. A mega-event so stripped of spontaneity that felt off somehow, like, well, a rock concert where everybody in the audience sat quietly in their seats.
This posting about the politics of pop concerts in Shanghai is mostly about an American duo (Jan and Dean), whose hits included “Surf City,” and the hard-to-categorize Icelandic songstress Bjork, who last week made headlines and drew the ire of the Chines
e state by saying the words “Tibet, Tibet” after performing a song called “Declare Independence" (on the heels of which, there was apparent tinkering with Harry Connick Jr.'s song list at a recent performance). It still seemed right, though, to give the piece a title adapted from a song by a famous British band. Why? Because the Rolling Stones, like Bjork and Jan and Dean back in 1986, made headlines when they played Shanghai. And because the band’s lead singer, Mick Jagger, made the funniest statement I’ve ever come across regarding the often singularly unfunny topic of censorship in the PRC. When told before the group’s 2006 concert that the authorities forbid them from playing “Brown Sugar” and several other sexually suggestive songs, at a concert that Jagger knew would probably be attended largely by Western men, accompanied by either Western of Chinese women, his comment (made with his famous tongue firmly in cheek) was: "I'm pleased that the Ministry of Culture is protecting the morals of the expat bankers and their girlfriends that are going to be coming.” So what, you may be wondering, could efforts to pre-censor the Rolling Stones (not a new thing for them to deal with, since Ed Sullivan had made them change the lyrics of “Let’s Spend the Night Together” to “L
et’s Spend Some Time Together” almost four decades earlier) and the outrage that came in the wake of Bjork’s reference to Tibet (from official spokesmen and also from some Chinese fans) have to do with Jan and Dean? Well, as far as I know, none of the songs on that surf band’s play list was deemed unacceptable when they performed in Shanghai, back when I was doing dissertation research in the city (though, alas, I didn’t make it to their concert). Nor did they make any statements before, between or after they played that caused a stir. Still, as I’ve noted elsewhere before, their concert, too, involved efforts by authority figures to limit freedom of expression—in that case by Chinese members of the audience that came to hear the music. According to reports that quickly made the rounds at Shanghai campuses, when some of these fans, students from Tongji University, eager to be part of the history-making first rock concert held in their city, got up to dance in the aisles, security guards told them to sit back down—and in a few cases, pushed them around a bit. It is widely known, among China specialists at least, that rock music played a significant role in the Tiananmen protests of 1989. Wu’er Kaixi and other student leaders of the time cited Cui Jian (who would seventeen years later join the Stones onstage in 2006 for the Shanghai renditions of their song “Wild Horses,” by the way) and other performers as having influenced and inspired them, while Hou Dejian’s “Children of the Dragon” was a popular anthem at Tiananmen Square—where the song’s author, who had moved from Taiwan to the mainland, joined the protesting crowds. What has sometimes been forgotten is that anger at
the way students were treated at the Jan and Dean concert played a role in the 1986 Shanghai demonstrations that, while smaller and more short-lived and far less dramatic than the ones to follow in 1989, helped pave the way for the Tiananmen movement. What are the lessons to be drawn by this brief look back at rock music’s role in Chinese political struggles and cultural upsurges of the late twentieth century—a history that has been documented in insightful and detailed ways by the likes of Geremie Barmé, Linda Jaivin, Andrew Jones, and Andreas Steen? It might suggest that the authorities are right to worry about what happens during pop concerts. I would argue, though, that the line running from Jan and Dean to Bjork suggests something a bit different. Namely, that China’s rulers want their country to be one in which world-class events take place routinely in the cities of their country, but also want those same urban centers to be kept free from unexpected forms of expression. They want to be able to bring to China performers who gained fame partly through defying expectations—before her concert, in an article prophetically titled “Bjork’s Shanghai Surprise,” one officially sponsored China-based English language website enthused about the Icelandic star as someone known for her capacity to “surprise the public and the media with her new artistic directions, her quirky sense of fashion and her controversial attitudes” —and then have them eschew doing anything “quirky” or “controversial” while in the PRC. (Presumably an over-the-top fashion statement, such as the much-talked-about swan dress she wore to the 2001 Academy Awards would have been okay.)
A desire to control the script of public performances is not unique to China, with Ed Sullivan’s call for Jagger to tone down one of his lyrics and the flap over Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” during a recent Super Bowl half-time show being just two American cases in point. Still, it is hard to have things both ways, to convince international observers that your cities now offer the same things that London and New York do and to persuade students within your own country that they can be part of global youth culture without venturing abroad, and yet keep the occasional unexpected thing from happening in public. This is worth keeping in mind as the Olympics near, for individual Games are often remembered for surprising things that happened during them. And it might actually be better for China if the 2008 Olympics were remembered for some small, embarrassing surprises—a few moments like that which came during Bjork’s performance in Shanghai—than for being such a tightly controlled mega-event that it was drained of excitement. A mega-event so stripped of spontaneity that felt off somehow, like, well, a rock concert where everybody in the audience sat quietly in their seats.
3/07/2008
Making (Up) History
A few weeks ago, Kate Merkel-Hess posted a list here at China Beat of her nominations for five Chinese historical events that should get more attention. In response, Charles Hayford has written a piece at Frog In a Well about five historical events that didn't happen. Hayford's piece not only proposes a few likely turns of history that didn't happen, but also debunks a few popular historical assumptions that never were.
This Day: March 8, International Women's Day
In the wake of World War I, a spirit of international cooperation emerged. Its manifestations, such as the founding of the League of Nations, confirmed the late-nineteenth century notion that participation in the global community required national identity (in place of the local identities that historians have shown were most important in empires; rarely did regular people identify themselves as imperial subjects but rather by village or region). Educated elites in China expressed devotion to this new internationalism by reiterating to their countrymen the importance of awareness of international events, as well as by domesticating international holidays such as Arbor Day.[i] In this clever turn, Chinese, as others did around the world, seized the themes and celebrations of nascent globalism and used them to show that their citizens, too, were national subjects aware of their civic duties and national identities, not just provincial rubes who cared little for the events beyond their own villages.
These “international” holidays took local meanings and bore the weight of local politics. Borne out of socialist and labor movements in the United States, International Women’s Day (celebrated on March 8) is one of these events, though its path into China was less League of Nations and more Lenin: the first celebrations of International Women’s Day in China were sponsored by the CCP, after Lenin established it as an official Communist holiday in 1922.[ii] In the mid-1940s, both the GMD and the CCP sponsored their own Women’s Day celebrations; at the GMD event, speakers emphasized the need for women to effect change through traditional roles, while the CCP speaker advocated active participation by women on behalf of democracy and liberation.[iii] Only a few years earlier, in 1942, Ding Ling published her famous essay, “Thoughts on March 8,” which called out Communist leaders for focusing criticism on women rather than the social context that determined their choices.
Though largely adopted to the official calendar only in currently or formerly socialist countries, IWD also remains an integral celebration of the international calendar (for more, for instance, on the celebration in Russia, see Choi Chatterjee’s Celebrating Women). The United Nations and NGOs use the day to raise awareness about issues facing women around the world from HIV/AIDS to violence against women. This video posted by Sexy Beijing last year explores some of the meanings of Women’s Day in China.
[i] The first celebration of Arbor Day in China actually occurred a few years earlier, in 1914, under the rule of Yuan Shikai. At the urging of American protestant missionary-turned-agricultural reformer Joseph Bailie, the day was scheduled on Qing Ming, to combat Bailie’s observations that Chinese were denuding trees on the way to their ancestor’s graves in order to, per tradition, stick willow branches into the grave mounds. For more, see Randall Stross, The Stubborn Earth (1986), pp. 82-83. Arbor Day is now celebrated in China on March 12, to commemorate the death of Sun Yat-sen.
[ii] Temma Kaplan, “On the Socialist Origins of International Women's Day,” Feminist Studies 11.1 (Spring 1985): 163-171, p. 170.
[iii] See Jeff Wasserstrom, Student Protests in Twentieth-Century China (1991), p. 250-253.
These “international” holidays took local meanings and bore the weight of local politics. Borne out of socialist and labor movements in the United States, International Women’s Day (celebrated on March 8) is one of these events, though its path into China was less League of Nations and more Lenin: the first celebrations of International Women’s Day in China were sponsored by the CCP, after Lenin established it as an official Communist holiday in 1922.[ii] In the mid-1940s, both the GMD and the CCP sponsored their own Women’s Day celebrations; at the GMD event, speakers emphasized the need for women to effect change through traditional roles, while the CCP speaker advocated active participation by women on behalf of democracy and liberation.[iii] Only a few years earlier, in 1942, Ding Ling published her famous essay, “Thoughts on March 8,” which called out Communist leaders for focusing criticism on women rather than the social context that determined their choices.
Though largely adopted to the official calendar only in currently or formerly socialist countries, IWD also remains an integral celebration of the international calendar (for more, for instance, on the celebration in Russia, see Choi Chatterjee’s Celebrating Women). The United Nations and NGOs use the day to raise awareness about issues facing women around the world from HIV/AIDS to violence against women. This video posted by Sexy Beijing last year explores some of the meanings of Women’s Day in China.
[i] The first celebration of Arbor Day in China actually occurred a few years earlier, in 1914, under the rule of Yuan Shikai. At the urging of American protestant missionary-turned-agricultural reformer Joseph Bailie, the day was scheduled on Qing Ming, to combat Bailie’s observations that Chinese were denuding trees on the way to their ancestor’s graves in order to, per tradition, stick willow branches into the grave mounds. For more, see Randall Stross, The Stubborn Earth (1986), pp. 82-83. Arbor Day is now celebrated in China on March 12, to commemorate the death of Sun Yat-sen.
[ii] Temma Kaplan, “On the Socialist Origins of International Women's Day,” Feminist Studies 11.1 (Spring 1985): 163-171, p. 170.
[iii] See Jeff Wasserstrom, Student Protests in Twentieth-Century China (1991), p. 250-253.
3/06/2008
Democracy or Bust: Why our Knowledge about What the Chinese Lack is Really No Knowledge at All
(Posted by China Beat on behalf of David Porter)
An NPR report yesterday on the opening of a new session of the National People's Congress in Beijing began with a disparaging comment to the effect that China is still a long way from democracy. As a statement of fact, this is no doubt both true and lamentable. As an attempt to convey useful knowledge to American listeners about China's current situation, however, it seems to me nearly useless. Like many such statements, it is based on an implicit comparison between the Chinese political system and Western-style democracy. And like many such implicit comparisons, it falls victim to a particularly seductive and misleading form of comparative fallacy.
Any time we set out to compare two things, we need to identify and describe the differences and similarities between their corresponding parts. There's no problem if we are comparing two equally familiar and equally distant objects by applying a neutral, objective standard of
comparison. If I assert that granny apples have a green skin and sour flavor, while fuji apples have a golden skin and sweet flavor, I am unlikely to raise many hackles. If I claim that the average American's diet is relatively high in saturated fat and low in fiber, which the average Chinese diet is the reverse, I'm again on reasonably solid ground. As soon as we allow one of the two objects under study to represent, implicitly or explicitly, a normative standard of comparison, we're much more likely to produce skewed results. Imagine how a Washington apple would appear to a provincial Floridean who had encountered only naval oranges: as an abnormally hard orange with a dark smooth surface, lacking in internal sections and a readily peelable skin.
The vast majority of Western attempts to describe China, alas, have more than a little in common with our Floridian's account of an apple. We are inescapably products of our culture and so thoroughly identify with certain of its norms and values that we are strongly predisposed to take these elements as normative standards when attempting to identify or describe instances of cultural difference. We might well be entirely correct in the perception of difference. The trouble is that this predisposition warps the experience of difference so that all we finally see is the absence of qualities we take for granted in ourselves.
Consider, for a moment, some of the major themes that have dominated US news coverage of China over the past year or two. Stories about poisoned toothpaste and lead paint-coated children's toys point out that China lacks effective oversight of product safety. Articles about the brown skies of Beijing and the algae-green lakes of Jiangsu make clear that the country lacks effective environmental regulation. And reports concerning the arrest and harassment of outspoken dissidents, lawyers, and journalists remind us, yet again, that the Chinese still lack freedom of speech and other basic political rights.
The common rhetorical thread running through all of these news stories is the notion of a Chinese lack or absence: the Chinese fail to measure up, in each case, to one normative Western standard or another. Once one becomes aware of this pattern, it turns up everywhere. The Chinese, we learn from reporters and commentators, lack intellectual property rights, worker protection laws, legal transparency, government accountability, journalistic freedom, and judicial independence. From 20th-century historians, linguists, and comparative philosophers we learn of deeper, structural deficiencies: the Chinese, in many recent accounts, lack a tradition of innovation, abstract reasoning, hypothetical thought, taxonomic classification, a sense of public virtue, respect for personal freedom, declinable verbs, and so on. If you type the phrase "the Chinese lack" into Google, you can come up with 2354 more examples. The Chinese would seem to be lacking in so many essential qualities, in fact, that it seems something of a wonder that they can sustain a functional society at all.
The problem with such formulations is not that they are factually "false," though some of them certainly are. It is true, after all, that Washington apples "lack" a readily peelable skin and internal sections, that declinable verbs are not a feature of the Chinese language, and that the discourse of individual rights has not been a dominant current in Chinese political thought over the past several centuries. The problem, rather, is that negative assertions make for utterly inadequate descriptions.
Imagine that I want to tell you about a creature I saw on a recent trip, but that all I can remember about it is that it didn't have a trunk, tusks, floppy ears, teath, legs, toenails, or deeply textured skin. You might surmise, correctly, that the creature I'd seen was not an elephant, but you'd be hard pressed to conjure up a satisfactory mental picture from my account. My account is an entirely true and accurate description of a whale, but it doesn't get us very far in understanding what a whale is. A knowledge of China consisting largely of a series of negations-no human rights, no free press, no environmental protection, no effective regulation, no public manners, no democracy-is really no knowledge at all.
What this kind of surrogate knowledge does provide, however, is a wonderfully flattering self-conception for those making the comparison. For if China lacks all these good things, the implication is that "we" possess them, and presumably always have. What American, on reading yet another New York Times article on Chinese human rights violations, doesn't feel a certain pleasing rush of indignant self-righteousness? Perhaps Americans are justified in feeling pride in a constitution that succeeds in protecting most citizens' rights most of the time. To the extent, however, that we allow the "knowledge" of Chinese lacks to reinforce our appreciation for our own ways of doing things, we develop a compelling interest in seeking out and perpetuating such negative claims about China, which often, on closer examination, turn out to be useless and misleading. We run the very real risk of being led astray, in our well-intentioned pursuit of cross-cultural understanding, by the very conditions of that pursuit.
An NPR report yesterday on the opening of a new session of the National People's Congress in Beijing began with a disparaging comment to the effect that China is still a long way from democracy. As a statement of fact, this is no doubt both true and lamentable. As an attempt to convey useful knowledge to American listeners about China's current situation, however, it seems to me nearly useless. Like many such statements, it is based on an implicit comparison between the Chinese political system and Western-style democracy. And like many such implicit comparisons, it falls victim to a particularly seductive and misleading form of comparative fallacy.
Any time we set out to compare two things, we need to identify and describe the differences and similarities between their corresponding parts. There's no problem if we are comparing two equally familiar and equally distant objects by applying a neutral, objective standard of
comparison. If I assert that granny apples have a green skin and sour flavor, while fuji apples have a golden skin and sweet flavor, I am unlikely to raise many hackles. If I claim that the average American's diet is relatively high in saturated fat and low in fiber, which the average Chinese diet is the reverse, I'm again on reasonably solid ground. As soon as we allow one of the two objects under study to represent, implicitly or explicitly, a normative standard of comparison, we're much more likely to produce skewed results. Imagine how a Washington apple would appear to a provincial Floridean who had encountered only naval oranges: as an abnormally hard orange with a dark smooth surface, lacking in internal sections and a readily peelable skin.
The vast majority of Western attempts to describe China, alas, have more than a little in common with our Floridian's account of an apple. We are inescapably products of our culture and so thoroughly identify with certain of its norms and values that we are strongly predisposed to take these elements as normative standards when attempting to identify or describe instances of cultural difference. We might well be entirely correct in the perception of difference. The trouble is that this predisposition warps the experience of difference so that all we finally see is the absence of qualities we take for granted in ourselves.
Consider, for a moment, some of the major themes that have dominated US news coverage of China over the past year or two. Stories about poisoned toothpaste and lead paint-coated children's toys point out that China lacks effective oversight of product safety. Articles about the brown skies of Beijing and the algae-green lakes of Jiangsu make clear that the country lacks effective environmental regulation. And reports concerning the arrest and harassment of outspoken dissidents, lawyers, and journalists remind us, yet again, that the Chinese still lack freedom of speech and other basic political rights.
The common rhetorical thread running through all of these news stories is the notion of a Chinese lack or absence: the Chinese fail to measure up, in each case, to one normative Western standard or another. Once one becomes aware of this pattern, it turns up everywhere. The Chinese, we learn from reporters and commentators, lack intellectual property rights, worker protection laws, legal transparency, government accountability, journalistic freedom, and judicial independence. From 20th-century historians, linguists, and comparative philosophers we learn of deeper, structural deficiencies: the Chinese, in many recent accounts, lack a tradition of innovation, abstract reasoning, hypothetical thought, taxonomic classification, a sense of public virtue, respect for personal freedom, declinable verbs, and so on. If you type the phrase "the Chinese lack" into Google, you can come up with 2354 more examples. The Chinese would seem to be lacking in so many essential qualities, in fact, that it seems something of a wonder that they can sustain a functional society at all.
The problem with such formulations is not that they are factually "false," though some of them certainly are. It is true, after all, that Washington apples "lack" a readily peelable skin and internal sections, that declinable verbs are not a feature of the Chinese language, and that the discourse of individual rights has not been a dominant current in Chinese political thought over the past several centuries. The problem, rather, is that negative assertions make for utterly inadequate descriptions.
Imagine that I want to tell you about a creature I saw on a recent trip, but that all I can remember about it is that it didn't have a trunk, tusks, floppy ears, teath, legs, toenails, or deeply textured skin. You might surmise, correctly, that the creature I'd seen was not an elephant, but you'd be hard pressed to conjure up a satisfactory mental picture from my account. My account is an entirely true and accurate description of a whale, but it doesn't get us very far in understanding what a whale is. A knowledge of China consisting largely of a series of negations-no human rights, no free press, no environmental protection, no effective regulation, no public manners, no democracy-is really no knowledge at all.
What this kind of surrogate knowledge does provide, however, is a wonderfully flattering self-conception for those making the comparison. For if China lacks all these good things, the implication is that "we" possess them, and presumably always have. What American, on reading yet another New York Times article on Chinese human rights violations, doesn't feel a certain pleasing rush of indignant self-righteousness? Perhaps Americans are justified in feeling pride in a constitution that succeeds in protecting most citizens' rights most of the time. To the extent, however, that we allow the "knowledge" of Chinese lacks to reinforce our appreciation for our own ways of doing things, we develop a compelling interest in seeking out and perpetuating such negative claims about China, which often, on closer examination, turn out to be useless and misleading. We run the very real risk of being led astray, in our well-intentioned pursuit of cross-cultural understanding, by the very conditions of that pursuit.
3/04/2008
Tuesday Taelspin: From the Beijing Airport to the Palace of Milk
In preparation for the Olympics,
If you do find yourself passing through an airport in the PRC mind your in-flight reading material, as journalist Tim Johnson of China Rises found out when the customs agents at the
Controlling books at an airport is one thing, managing a famously eccentric pop star is another. Songstress Björk has caused quite a stir following her performance in Shanghai over the weekend. During the closing bars of her song “Declare Independence,” the quirky Icelandic singer shouted “
With thoughts of independence movements on my mind, I enjoyed Dave's piece at The Mutant Palm about Chinese media coverage of anti-terrorism operations in Xinjiang. The very definition of a must-read.
You don’t have to be counted as a possible Islamic separatist to run afoul of the PSB. Prolific blogger Josh at Cup of Cha nearly found himself officially labeled “dissatisfied with
Finally, we’re all eagerly awaiting the publication of Eric Abrahamson’s new book
3/02/2008
Trauma and Memory – 228 in Taiwan Today
This past Thursday, Taiwan commemorated the 61st anniversary of the February 28 Incident (hereafter referred to as 228), an uprising against KMT authoritarian rule initially sparked by the beating of a female vendor in Taipei for selling untaxed cigarettes. During the ensuing military crackdown, tens of thousands of Taiwan's elite were arrested, tortured, and murdered, with the violence lasting into the spring of 1947 and helping usher in the era known as the White Terror (白色恐怖).
The untold suffering of 228 has led to decades of division in Taiwan society, because while the conflict's victims included both Taiwanese and Mainlanders, the KMT brought the full brunt of state violence to persecute innocent men and women. 228 remained taboo for decades under Chiang Kai-shek's dictatorial rule (discussed in my previous blogpost), with the first scholars to lecture on this subject writing their wills before heading off to class. It took until 1995 for then KMT President Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) to offer the first official apology, with the Legislative Yuan making 228 an official holiday in 1998.
Regrettably, the commemoration of 228 is increasingly turning into a formality. This year's anniversary in particular has been highly politicized, as it comes amid a tightly-fought presidential race featuring Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) of the ruling DPP and Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) of the KMT. Thousands of DPP supporters marched through the streets of Taipei starting at 2:28 p.m. before proceeding to an evening rally, in part in hopes of rekindling the spirit of the of the Hand in-Hand Safeguard Taiwan Rally (手牽手護台灣活動), which attracted over two million participants back in 2004. Ma, who is leading Hsieh by at least 10 points in opinion polls, attended a 228 concert in tribute to the victims. In a concerted drive to appeal to the 70% non-Mainlander element of Taiwan's 23 million people, Ma often prefers to use Taiwanese instead of his native Mandarin when offering apologies for the past. His years of effort have moved some family members of the victims to take part in KMT-sponsored events, and if he does win the election such support may be a key factor.
However, for many people the KMT art of apology still seems to be little more than mere lip service. One reason why some people might feel skeptical is that the KMT has co-opted a significant number of Taiwanese local factions, including some with close ties to the victims. For example, pan-blue local officials in the Kinmen (Jinmen 金門) County Government and Taya (Daya 大雅) Township Office in Taichung (Taizhong 台中) County chose to ignore government regulations that the flag be flown at half mast nationwide, with Taya's mayor publicly expressing his dissatisfaction with the DPP government's decision to deemphasize holidays such as Retrocession Day while choosing to focus on 228 instead.
Apologies aside, much remains to be done before the trauma of 228 can be fully healed. Taiwanese scholars like Hsu Hsueh-chi and Lai Tse-han have done path-breaking research, while Stephen E. Phillips has published an important book-length study. In addition, institutions like the 228 Memorial Foundation and Taipei 228 Memorial Museum are working to shed new light on the past. Another interesting development is that some Chinese historians (including a sizeable number of Mainlanders) who had never previously shown any interest in Taiwan history are now starting to publish their own interpretations of 228. However, many critical files housed in government and KMT party archives still lie beyond the reach of critical scholarly research.
During a visit to a 228 victim's family, Hsieh urged that both he and Ma promise to fully open all relevant files collected by the National Security Bureau (國家安全局), the Taiwan Garrison Command (台灣警備總司令部; now under the Ministry of Defense), and the Investigation Bureau (調查局; now under the Ministry of Justice). One hopeful sign was that Ma pledged to build a national 228 Memorial Hall and continue promoting research on the tragedy, and that he placed the blame squarely on his own party. However, in response to complaints over the KMT's continued blocking of the budget for the Statute for the Handling of and Compensation for the 228 Incident (二二八事件處理及補償條例) in the Legislative Yuan, Ma chose to criticize the Cabinet for listing the budget under the Ministry of Education instead of the Ministry of the Interior. Inasmuch as the KMT now holds a commanding majority (discussed in my first blogpost), it remains to be seen how much progress will actually take place.
In the midst of all this politicking, perhaps the greatest tragedy is that many victims' families (Taiwanese and Mainlander alike) still have no idea of why their loved ones perished or where their remains lie. Many people believe in the need to establish an independent and impartial "truth and reconciliation commission" with the authority to investigate unjust martial law verdicts and unsolved state political crimes, in order to achieve the long-term goal of transitional justice and genuine reconciliation. However, others fear that a truth commission seems hopeless now, as one side of Taiwan's polarized political spectrum might automatically reject any rulings considered favorable to the other. And, even if a truth commission proved viable, the fact remains that virtually no material in local school curriculums performs the vital function of educating Taiwan's youth about 228.
All of this casts a shadow over the way in which 228 will be remembered in the future. At a memorial service held at the Taipei 228 Memorial Peace Park, President Chen Shui-bian 陳水扁 said, "If we cannot face the past, we cannot construct the future." Or, as Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel so eloquently stated during his 1986 Peace Prize acceptance speech, "...if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices." It seems particularly noteworthy that the 228 Memorial Foundation set the theme of this year's official commemorations as "Taiwan Stands Up", urging people to overcome the tensions wrought by 228 and five decades of authoritarian rule by rallying to the defense of Taiwan's hard-won democracy. However, Taiwan's democratic triumphs will surely lose their luster if politicians continue to use the past in the service of the present, and the next generation proves apathetic about this dark side of their nations history.
(Note: My thoughts on 228 benefitted from reading editorials in the Taipei Times and Taiwan News Online. Thanks also to Kevin Chang (Chang Ku-ming 張谷銘) for his advice and inspiration.)
The untold suffering of 228 has led to decades of division in Taiwan society, because while the conflict's victims included both Taiwanese and Mainlanders, the KMT brought the full brunt of state violence to persecute innocent men and women. 228 remained taboo for decades under Chiang Kai-shek's dictatorial rule (discussed in my previous blogpost), with the first scholars to lecture on this subject writing their wills before heading off to class. It took until 1995 for then KMT President Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) to offer the first official apology, with the Legislative Yuan making 228 an official holiday in 1998.
Regrettably, the commemoration of 228 is increasingly turning into a formality. This year's anniversary in particular has been highly politicized, as it comes amid a tightly-fought presidential race featuring Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) of the ruling DPP and Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) of the KMT. Thousands of DPP supporters marched through the streets of Taipei starting at 2:28 p.m. before proceeding to an evening rally, in part in hopes of rekindling the spirit of the of the Hand in-Hand Safeguard Taiwan Rally (手牽手護台灣活動), which attracted over two million participants back in 2004. Ma, who is leading Hsieh by at least 10 points in opinion polls, attended a 228 concert in tribute to the victims. In a concerted drive to appeal to the 70% non-Mainlander element of Taiwan's 23 million people, Ma often prefers to use Taiwanese instead of his native Mandarin when offering apologies for the past. His years of effort have moved some family members of the victims to take part in KMT-sponsored events, and if he does win the election such support may be a key factor.
However, for many people the KMT art of apology still seems to be little more than mere lip service. One reason why some people might feel skeptical is that the KMT has co-opted a significant number of Taiwanese local factions, including some with close ties to the victims. For example, pan-blue local officials in the Kinmen (Jinmen 金門) County Government and Taya (Daya 大雅) Township Office in Taichung (Taizhong 台中) County chose to ignore government regulations that the flag be flown at half mast nationwide, with Taya's mayor publicly expressing his dissatisfaction with the DPP government's decision to deemphasize holidays such as Retrocession Day while choosing to focus on 228 instead.
Apologies aside, much remains to be done before the trauma of 228 can be fully healed. Taiwanese scholars like Hsu Hsueh-chi and Lai Tse-han have done path-breaking research, while Stephen E. Phillips has published an important book-length study. In addition, institutions like the 228 Memorial Foundation and Taipei 228 Memorial Museum are working to shed new light on the past. Another interesting development is that some Chinese historians (including a sizeable number of Mainlanders) who had never previously shown any interest in Taiwan history are now starting to publish their own interpretations of 228. However, many critical files housed in government and KMT party archives still lie beyond the reach of critical scholarly research.
During a visit to a 228 victim's family, Hsieh urged that both he and Ma promise to fully open all relevant files collected by the National Security Bureau (國家安全局), the Taiwan Garrison Command (台灣警備總司令部; now under the Ministry of Defense), and the Investigation Bureau (調查局; now under the Ministry of Justice). One hopeful sign was that Ma pledged to build a national 228 Memorial Hall and continue promoting research on the tragedy, and that he placed the blame squarely on his own party. However, in response to complaints over the KMT's continued blocking of the budget for the Statute for the Handling of and Compensation for the 228 Incident (二二八事件處理及補償條例) in the Legislative Yuan, Ma chose to criticize the Cabinet for listing the budget under the Ministry of Education instead of the Ministry of the Interior. Inasmuch as the KMT now holds a commanding majority (discussed in my first blogpost), it remains to be seen how much progress will actually take place.
In the midst of all this politicking, perhaps the greatest tragedy is that many victims' families (Taiwanese and Mainlander alike) still have no idea of why their loved ones perished or where their remains lie. Many people believe in the need to establish an independent and impartial "truth and reconciliation commission" with the authority to investigate unjust martial law verdicts and unsolved state political crimes, in order to achieve the long-term goal of transitional justice and genuine reconciliation. However, others fear that a truth commission seems hopeless now, as one side of Taiwan's polarized political spectrum might automatically reject any rulings considered favorable to the other. And, even if a truth commission proved viable, the fact remains that virtually no material in local school curriculums performs the vital function of educating Taiwan's youth about 228.
All of this casts a shadow over the way in which 228 will be remembered in the future. At a memorial service held at the Taipei 228 Memorial Peace Park, President Chen Shui-bian 陳水扁 said, "If we cannot face the past, we cannot construct the future." Or, as Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel so eloquently stated during his 1986 Peace Prize acceptance speech, "...if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices." It seems particularly noteworthy that the 228 Memorial Foundation set the theme of this year's official commemorations as "Taiwan Stands Up", urging people to overcome the tensions wrought by 228 and five decades of authoritarian rule by rallying to the defense of Taiwan's hard-won democracy. However, Taiwan's democratic triumphs will surely lose their luster if politicians continue to use the past in the service of the present, and the next generation proves apathetic about this dark side of their nations history.
(Note: My thoughts on 228 benefitted from reading editorials in the Taipei Times and Taiwan News Online. Thanks also to Kevin Chang (Chang Ku-ming 張谷銘) for his advice and inspiration.)
2/26/2008
Benjamin Read on homeowners' protests in Shanghai
A lot has been written about a rise in the number of protests in China – particularly mass demonstrations and those by farmers and villagers who face government land seizures. (Historian Charles Hayford wrote an interesting essay about the terminology journalists use to describe different classes of people in China.)
But protests from the middle class in China are also garnering increased attention from the American press. The latest protest, a January “stroll” by homeowners in Shanghai who disagreed with an extension of the city’s famous Maglev train, have been described as “the strongest sign yet of rising resentment among China’s fast-growing middle class” (The New York Times) and “a quiet middle-class battle against government officials” (Washington Post). The South China Morning Post reported today (subscription required) that some residents say they've applied to hold a "legal protest" against the Maglev expansion this weekend.
Benjamin L. Read (right), from the Department of Political Science at the University of Iowa, has been researching grassroots organizing with a particular focus since 1999 on homeowners movements in China. In a Q&A over email with The China Beat, Read puts the Shanghai protests in context.
AS: Your research has been on organizations in East Asia, including what you call "Civil Society Organizations." Can you tell me a bit more about your research and what kinds of civil society organizations you've studied?
BR: By "civil society organization," I mean groups or associations of people that have substantial autonomy from the state. In other words, those that are not controlled by the government or otherwise dependent on it. Civil society is a term that goes back centuries in Western philosophy, and its definition has evolved over time. There have been extensive debates over whether civil society groups existed in different parts of Chinese history, whether Confucian thought contains ideas related to the notion of civil society, and more generally how relevant it is to China at all.
So it's a somewhat controversial concept. But it has become a term used around the world by social scientists and activists and others to capture the common-sense idea that citizens getting together in self-organizing groups are able to communicate, deliberate and act politically in distinctive ways. You can do things in groups that you can't do alone. Whether we use the term civil society or some other term, this kind of activity is taking place in China to some extent and I think it's worth studying.
Civil society organizations contrast with other kinds of organizations, for instance those that are managed or fostered by the state. My research in China started off looking at Residents Committees (jumin weiyuanhui, or RCs), the official, government-organized groups that go back at least to the 1950s and are found in most urban neighborhoods. This general type of local organization, closely linked to the state, is prevalent not just in China but in most parts of East and Southeast Asia, and I find them intensely interesting in their own way. But in the course of studying the RCs in 1999 and 2000, I came across some of the early homeowner organizations, called yezhu weiyuanhui or yeweihui, and I started writing about them as well.
AS: How strong do you think organizations that are not run by the state are in China? What kinds of things can they accomplish and whom do they serve most often?
BR: The homeowner groups in China's new private housing estates (xiaoqu) are a complicated mosaic. Some of them can be seen as a manifestation of civil society, while others are something else. For instance, a lot of them are not actually controlled by the homeowners themselves but instead are dominated by the property developers and their management companies. Sometimes the homeowners themselves become factionalized and get bogged down in internal conflict, so that there's no functioning organization. In some places the government has blocked the formation of a formal yeweihui, although there can be informal activity regardless. In other neighborhoods, the homeowner group functions well, holding regular meetings and elections and representing the residents' interests much as, say, a healthy condo association might in the United States.
AS: The Washington Post report on the January protests against extending the Maglev train in Shanghai highlights the role of a residential organization. The Post did not explicitly call these residents a housing association, but is this kind of civil society organization you are referring to?
BR: It’s clear that homeowners in the new, private neighborhoods I talked about above played a central role in these demonstrations. One thing that’s not immediately obvious from Chinese or Western sources is to what extent the homeowner organizations (yeweihui) themselves or their leaders encouraged members to participate in the protests. Concerns about noise and harmful radiation from the maglev trains seem to have galvanized large numbers of people who might not previously have been involved in the homeowner movement.
Regardless, it is clear that the protests drew on infrastructure that is very much a part of that movement, notably the new neighborhoods’ web-based bulletin boards. Some of the posts from the first weeks of January have now been removed from these forums, some are still there. But they carried a flurry of posts and discussion, and this was a key part of how information about the maglev line extension plan came to the attention of homeowners who stood to be affected by it, and how they encouraged each other to turn out for the rally in downtown Shanghai on January 12. Moreover, residents in some neighborhoods hung large protest banners from their windows, which is a tactic you often see in the homeowners’ struggles against exploitative property developers and management companies. And according to reports in the livelier parts of the Chinese media like Southern Metropolis (Nanfang Dushibao) and Beijing News (Xin Jing Bao), residents of some of the neighborhoods organized representatives to talk to government officials about the plans.
AS: One of The China Beat's founders, Jeff Wasserstrom, writes that the Shanghai protests were about practical demands.
BR: Wasserstrom’s essay makes the point that the Shanghai protests look like a form of NIMBY-ism (Not In My Back Yard). People’s motivation seems to be based, at least in the first instance, on property rights rather than more inclusive notions like human rights or civil rights. So they don’t look as idealistic as some protests in the past did. But as he suggests, the line between local or self-regarding motivations and broader, society-wide claims can be a fine one. Commentators in China have hailed these euphemistically termed “walks” as a healthy form of public expression, and I think we can agree without reservation.
The reasons that NIMBY protests have a negative connotation are first, that such movements may thwart the creation of necessary public infrastructure, and second, that unwanted institutions may be dumped into communities that are less wealthy or vocal. But in this case, with regard to the first point, protesters question the need to extend the train line at all. The second point is potentially valid, but in my view it is far outweighed by the desirability of subjecting government to forceful public input. If Chinese homeowners help bring about checks and balances on state decisions previously hidden behind closed doors, then more power to them.
AS: What kinds of trends do you see among property owners in China?
BR: To the extent that these Shanghai protests were fueled by homeowners, it constitutes a new departure in that the great majority of the time when homeowners undertake collective action it’s one neighborhood at a time and inward-focused, not about public policy. Usually the spur to action will be something like high management fees, control over neighborhood assets or shoddy construction. To the extent that homeowners contact and lobby the government in these cases, they are trying to win support from the authorities against the developers, not protesting against something the government is doing. The maglev extension plan is unusual in that it’s something the government is directly responsible for, affecting a large number of neighborhoods (one report said nearly 40) in the same way all at once.
So I think we should guard against reading too much into this event. Howard W. French, in his New York Times story makes a rather bold claim that the protests are “the strongest sign yet of rising resentment among China’s fast-growing middle class over a lack of say in decision making.” Social classes rarely act in unified ways politically, and it’s questionable at best whether the middle class in China is generally characterized by resentment.
Still, I agree that we’re looking at an important form of political action that deserves our attention. It was undertaken by people who now have resources (money, education, communication tools like cell phones, the internet and video cameras) that were missing or less prevalent in earlier parts of PRC history. When they buy expensive homes in these new housing developments it gives them a strong interest in protecting that investment -- British Thatcherites and U.S. “ownership society” advocates would nod their heads at this.
But I think homeowners are also motivated by a sense that when they acquire their piece of what we might call the “Chinese dream,” there’s an implicit social contract going with it. The system in China now encourages people to devote their energy to getting ahead in the new economy, and once they “make it” by acquiring a nice, modern home, once of the ultimate markers of success, they feel entitled to certain things: fair treatment in matters concerning their home, veto power over unreasonable arrangements, some control over the neighborhood environment, peace and quiet, privacy, and freedom from certain kinds of impositions. This sense of being entitled to things beyond what’s specified on the property deed is a big part of what underlies the homeowner movement more generally.
But protests from the middle class in China are also garnering increased attention from the American press. The latest protest, a January “stroll” by homeowners in Shanghai who disagreed with an extension of the city’s famous Maglev train, have been described as “the strongest sign yet of rising resentment among China’s fast-growing middle class” (The New York Times) and “a quiet middle-class battle against government officials” (Washington Post). The South China Morning Post reported today (subscription required) that some residents say they've applied to hold a "legal protest" against the Maglev expansion this weekend.
Benjamin L. Read (right), from the Department of Political Science at the University of Iowa, has been researching grassroots organizing with a particular focus since 1999 on homeowners movements in China. In a Q&A over email with The China Beat, Read puts the Shanghai protests in context.AS: Your research has been on organizations in East Asia, including what you call "Civil Society Organizations." Can you tell me a bit more about your research and what kinds of civil society organizations you've studied?
BR: By "civil society organization," I mean groups or associations of people that have substantial autonomy from the state. In other words, those that are not controlled by the government or otherwise dependent on it. Civil society is a term that goes back centuries in Western philosophy, and its definition has evolved over time. There have been extensive debates over whether civil society groups existed in different parts of Chinese history, whether Confucian thought contains ideas related to the notion of civil society, and more generally how relevant it is to China at all.
So it's a somewhat controversial concept. But it has become a term used around the world by social scientists and activists and others to capture the common-sense idea that citizens getting together in self-organizing groups are able to communicate, deliberate and act politically in distinctive ways. You can do things in groups that you can't do alone. Whether we use the term civil society or some other term, this kind of activity is taking place in China to some extent and I think it's worth studying.
Civil society organizations contrast with other kinds of organizations, for instance those that are managed or fostered by the state. My research in China started off looking at Residents Committees (jumin weiyuanhui, or RCs), the official, government-organized groups that go back at least to the 1950s and are found in most urban neighborhoods. This general type of local organization, closely linked to the state, is prevalent not just in China but in most parts of East and Southeast Asia, and I find them intensely interesting in their own way. But in the course of studying the RCs in 1999 and 2000, I came across some of the early homeowner organizations, called yezhu weiyuanhui or yeweihui, and I started writing about them as well.
AS: How strong do you think organizations that are not run by the state are in China? What kinds of things can they accomplish and whom do they serve most often?
BR: The homeowner groups in China's new private housing estates (xiaoqu) are a complicated mosaic. Some of them can be seen as a manifestation of civil society, while others are something else. For instance, a lot of them are not actually controlled by the homeowners themselves but instead are dominated by the property developers and their management companies. Sometimes the homeowners themselves become factionalized and get bogged down in internal conflict, so that there's no functioning organization. In some places the government has blocked the formation of a formal yeweihui, although there can be informal activity regardless. In other neighborhoods, the homeowner group functions well, holding regular meetings and elections and representing the residents' interests much as, say, a healthy condo association might in the United States.
AS: The Washington Post report on the January protests against extending the Maglev train in Shanghai highlights the role of a residential organization. The Post did not explicitly call these residents a housing association, but is this kind of civil society organization you are referring to?
BR: It’s clear that homeowners in the new, private neighborhoods I talked about above played a central role in these demonstrations. One thing that’s not immediately obvious from Chinese or Western sources is to what extent the homeowner organizations (yeweihui) themselves or their leaders encouraged members to participate in the protests. Concerns about noise and harmful radiation from the maglev trains seem to have galvanized large numbers of people who might not previously have been involved in the homeowner movement.
Regardless, it is clear that the protests drew on infrastructure that is very much a part of that movement, notably the new neighborhoods’ web-based bulletin boards. Some of the posts from the first weeks of January have now been removed from these forums, some are still there. But they carried a flurry of posts and discussion, and this was a key part of how information about the maglev line extension plan came to the attention of homeowners who stood to be affected by it, and how they encouraged each other to turn out for the rally in downtown Shanghai on January 12. Moreover, residents in some neighborhoods hung large protest banners from their windows, which is a tactic you often see in the homeowners’ struggles against exploitative property developers and management companies. And according to reports in the livelier parts of the Chinese media like Southern Metropolis (Nanfang Dushibao) and Beijing News (Xin Jing Bao), residents of some of the neighborhoods organized representatives to talk to government officials about the plans.
AS: One of The China Beat's founders, Jeff Wasserstrom, writes that the Shanghai protests were about practical demands.
BR: Wasserstrom’s essay makes the point that the Shanghai protests look like a form of NIMBY-ism (Not In My Back Yard). People’s motivation seems to be based, at least in the first instance, on property rights rather than more inclusive notions like human rights or civil rights. So they don’t look as idealistic as some protests in the past did. But as he suggests, the line between local or self-regarding motivations and broader, society-wide claims can be a fine one. Commentators in China have hailed these euphemistically termed “walks” as a healthy form of public expression, and I think we can agree without reservation.
The reasons that NIMBY protests have a negative connotation are first, that such movements may thwart the creation of necessary public infrastructure, and second, that unwanted institutions may be dumped into communities that are less wealthy or vocal. But in this case, with regard to the first point, protesters question the need to extend the train line at all. The second point is potentially valid, but in my view it is far outweighed by the desirability of subjecting government to forceful public input. If Chinese homeowners help bring about checks and balances on state decisions previously hidden behind closed doors, then more power to them.
AS: What kinds of trends do you see among property owners in China?
BR: To the extent that these Shanghai protests were fueled by homeowners, it constitutes a new departure in that the great majority of the time when homeowners undertake collective action it’s one neighborhood at a time and inward-focused, not about public policy. Usually the spur to action will be something like high management fees, control over neighborhood assets or shoddy construction. To the extent that homeowners contact and lobby the government in these cases, they are trying to win support from the authorities against the developers, not protesting against something the government is doing. The maglev extension plan is unusual in that it’s something the government is directly responsible for, affecting a large number of neighborhoods (one report said nearly 40) in the same way all at once.
So I think we should guard against reading too much into this event. Howard W. French, in his New York Times story makes a rather bold claim that the protests are “the strongest sign yet of rising resentment among China’s fast-growing middle class over a lack of say in decision making.” Social classes rarely act in unified ways politically, and it’s questionable at best whether the middle class in China is generally characterized by resentment.
Still, I agree that we’re looking at an important form of political action that deserves our attention. It was undertaken by people who now have resources (money, education, communication tools like cell phones, the internet and video cameras) that were missing or less prevalent in earlier parts of PRC history. When they buy expensive homes in these new housing developments it gives them a strong interest in protecting that investment -- British Thatcherites and U.S. “ownership society” advocates would nod their heads at this.
But I think homeowners are also motivated by a sense that when they acquire their piece of what we might call the “Chinese dream,” there’s an implicit social contract going with it. The system in China now encourages people to devote their energy to getting ahead in the new economy, and once they “make it” by acquiring a nice, modern home, once of the ultimate markers of success, they feel entitled to certain things: fair treatment in matters concerning their home, veto power over unreasonable arrangements, some control over the neighborhood environment, peace and quiet, privacy, and freedom from certain kinds of impositions. This sense of being entitled to things beyond what’s specified on the property deed is a big part of what underlies the homeowner movement more generally.
In Case You Missed It: Vermeer’s Hat
(Posted by the China Beat on behalf of David Porter)
Have you ever suspected that all this recent talk about China and globalization might be just a little belated? China historian Timothy Brook, author of the award-winning Confusions of Pleasure, reminds us in a new book that global commercial and cultural exchanges were already profoundly shaping the lives and world views of Europeans 350 years ago.
Vermeer’s Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World (Bloomsbury, 2007) offers an eye-opening and eminently readable account of how the ever-expanding circulation of goods and people from several continents began flattening the world several centuries before NAFTA and Wal-mart.
The story begins in Delft, where Brook happened to fall off his bike on a youthful cycling journey across the Low Countries. The discovery of Vermeer’s gravestone in the city’s Old Church led to an enduring fascination with the painter’s works, five of which serve in this book as the starting points for adventurous journeys of a different kind.
Brook begins each of his main chapters with a close reading of a well-known Vermeer masterpiece. As we peer with him ever more deeply into the frame, we find ourselves transported well beyond Delft’s Schie Canal and the North Sea to Spain, Acapulco, Lake Champlain, Manila, Korea, Japan, and of course China. Details in the paintings—a river barge, a porcelain dish, a felt hat—lead us to the gripping tales of pitched battles and piracy, captivity and conversion, riots and massacres concealed beneath the cozy bourgeois scenes depicted on the canvas.
The reader is regularly and usefully reminded that in Vermeer’s age and for centuries preceeding it, China, not Europe, was in many ways the center of the world. But just as important, we are reminded that cultures at the two ends of the Eurasian continent actually had a great deal in common. Later orientalist rhetoric about the inscrutible Chinese and inexorable differences between East and West notwithstanding, the lives and values of elites from prosperous commercial cities in seventeenth-century Holland and China reveal remarkable parallels, from worries about plague epidemics to concerns about the effects of rapidly spreading luxury, from a delight in tobacco and porcelain to an insatiable lust for silver. Vermeer’s paintings and Brook’s archival discoveries reveal the seventeenth century to be an intricately interconnected world, and one in which translation and transculturation played a crucial role in the creation of meanings both within and beyond the picture frame.
Have you ever suspected that all this recent talk about China and globalization might be just a little belated? China historian Timothy Brook, author of the award-winning Confusions of Pleasure, reminds us in a new book that global commercial and cultural exchanges were already profoundly shaping the lives and world views of Europeans 350 years ago.
Vermeer’s Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World (Bloomsbury, 2007) offers an eye-opening and eminently readable account of how the ever-expanding circulation of goods and people from several continents began flattening the world several centuries before NAFTA and Wal-mart.
The story begins in Delft, where Brook happened to fall off his bike on a youthful cycling journey across the Low Countries. The discovery of Vermeer’s gravestone in the city’s Old Church led to an enduring fascination with the painter’s works, five of which serve in this book as the starting points for adventurous journeys of a different kind.
Brook begins each of his main chapters with a close reading of a well-known Vermeer masterpiece. As we peer with him ever more deeply into the frame, we find ourselves transported well beyond Delft’s Schie Canal and the North Sea to Spain, Acapulco, Lake Champlain, Manila, Korea, Japan, and of course China. Details in the paintings—a river barge, a porcelain dish, a felt hat—lead us to the gripping tales of pitched battles and piracy, captivity and conversion, riots and massacres concealed beneath the cozy bourgeois scenes depicted on the canvas.
The reader is regularly and usefully reminded that in Vermeer’s age and for centuries preceeding it, China, not Europe, was in many ways the center of the world. But just as important, we are reminded that cultures at the two ends of the Eurasian continent actually had a great deal in common. Later orientalist rhetoric about the inscrutible Chinese and inexorable differences between East and West notwithstanding, the lives and values of elites from prosperous commercial cities in seventeenth-century Holland and China reveal remarkable parallels, from worries about plague epidemics to concerns about the effects of rapidly spreading luxury, from a delight in tobacco and porcelain to an insatiable lust for silver. Vermeer’s paintings and Brook’s archival discoveries reveal the seventeenth century to be an intricately interconnected world, and one in which translation and transculturation played a crucial role in the creation of meanings both within and beyond the picture frame.
2/25/2008
Prejudice Made Plausible? Foreign criticism and Chinese sensitivity
Living in Beijing as I do, it's not uncommon to be asked about my feelings on the Olympics. Chinese friends, family, colleagues, and even complete and total strangers (for reasons passing understanding) seem interested in hearing my opinion.
But I've learned the hard way that my perspective per se is not what is actually being sought, but rather confirmation of what The People's Daily and CCTV assure all Chinese is the only possible correct answer: Yes, the Olympics are going to be a huge success and will demonstrate to the world that China is becoming a modern, developed nation. Deviations from that line are not always received well and sometimes elicit outright hostility, which leaves me to wonder: Why is that? Why does concern about the Olympics, criticism of Chinese government policies, or even a news story about the effect of air pollution on athletes, provoke such a visceral response from many Chinese?
Obviously no one set of reasons can cover the gamut of reactions, everybody perceives issues in different ways, but in perusing the comments section of China blogs and the threads on Chinese BBSs, I sense three main themes: the close integration of state/nation/party in both PRC ideology and the minds of the Chinese people; genuine pride at China's rise in the world and a belief that many countries in "the West" seek to undermine China's development to satisfy their own selfish strategic goals; and finally, a barely smoldering resentment born out of a history of foreign imperialism in China.
In the United States, there is a tradition--fragile though it may be at times--that says criticism of government policies is not only a right, but in fact is the responsibility of a concerned citizen. Painting in the broadest possible strokes, the founding fathers established a system whereby the state and the nation were separate entities, one under the supervision of the other. This separation means that one can accuse the government of wrongdoing without necessarily implicating the nation or its people. Sure, I might get annoyed a bit whenever non-American friends denounce the United States for the invasion of Iraq or whatever, but at the end of the day it doesn't affect me all that much: I know it's a policy of my government that's being criticized, one which I also oppose, and generally speaking they aren't attacking me personally or the American people as a whole.
In China, on the other hand, the demands of 20th-century state building, first under the KMT and later by the CCP, fused the ideas of nation and state (and later nation, state, and party) into an inseparable ideology which was then disseminated through propaganda and education to the people.* To criticize one is to attack the whole. Political culture in the PRC has no place for a loyal opposition, never mind the dictum, tenuously attributed to Thomas Jefferson, linking dissent and patriotism. As a result, publicly questioning the government in China is a crime for which the perpetrator risks arrest as a 'threat to social stability and state security.' Foreigners who do so are counterattacked as China-bashers; those Chinese who speak out against their own government in the foreign press are pilloried on electronic bulletin boards as hanjian, traitors to their race, an epithet to which Chinese nationals working for foreign media organizations are also frequently subjected.
Moreover, this response carries with it the implicit--and occasionally explicit--tag that those who criticize China are simply jealous and/or fearful of China's rise.
The Chinese are justifiably proud of how far their country has advanced in the last 25 years, and today's China is a testament to the spirit of its people, who through their hard work and entrepreneurial drive have launched an era of unprecedented economic growth and development. At the same time, old ideas die hard.
Social Darwinism was first introduced to China through the writings and translations of Yan Fu and Liang Qichao in the late-19th century, at a time when the rapacious demands of the imperialist powers threatened to carve up China (as the oft-quoted trope goes) like a melon. It is little wonder then that early 20th-century intellectuals and state builders looked out into the world and saw nothing but power politics and a global struggle for national survival. After the founding of the PRC, this concept of a Darwinian international order diffused throughout society as CCP propaganda stressed the need to strengthen the state so that China would never again be bullied by foreign powers. Early production campaigns called on the people to overtake Britain and catch up with the United States. Competition was the name of the game. The antagonism and paranoia of this Cold War propaganda reinforced lessons learned during a long 19th century, and many Chinese came to believe that the world was indeed out to "get China" and geopolitics was a zero-sum game. It's a perception that lingers to this day.
What is a bit unusual however is the assumption by many people here that all Americans think this way too: that every single person in the US is fixated and frightened by China's rise, and it is this fear that drives the negative media reporting on China's environment, food safety problems, human rights abuses, etc. Part of this reaction can be attributed to the "CCTV-effect." In China, the media is a tool for political control, and many Chinese--especially those who have limited international experience--have trouble believing that the foreign media could operate any differently.
Adding to this, the Chinese media is fond of parroting government officials who label the United States as human rights hypocrites, citing the usual suspects (slavery, imperialism, policy toward indigenous peoples) as well as tossing out a few new ones (waterboarding, the invasion of Iraq). Whether one feels this is a valid defense or not, the salient point is that many in China accept the government line as unequivocal proof that foreign critics cannot be trusted.
Now, I can't speak for everybody, but in conversations in Beijing with foreign journalists, activists, bloggers, researchers, businesspeople and teachers, the general consensus is that few, if any, have a problem with China's development or truly fear China's rise, certainly not in the way that nationalist rags like The Global Times would suggest. Generally speaking, we believe that criticism of the government is based on the notion that certain reforms would make the lives of the Chinese people more secure, prosperous, and free. Surely this is not "bashing China," rather it's expressing enthusiasm for our hosts' good fortune and concern for our friends, the Chinese people. Right?
Wrong, apparently. For you see, China has a long history of foreign do-gooders stepping on her soil and offering suggestions. (Who could forget Columbia professor Frank Goodnow's helpful hint to Yuan Shikai in 1915 that what the Republic needed most was an emperor?) Missionaries, traders, academics, officials, and writers came to China in droves during the age of imperialism, all with ideas on how to fix China and make the lives of the Chinese better. The problem was of course that no matter how well-intentioned a notion, no matter how sound or rational it might have been, any idea becomes a hard fit when it arrives shoehorned between military occupations and adventures in gunboat diplomacy.
This left its mark on how foreign ideas were perceived and deployed in Chinese society. The challenge in the early-2oth century to reconcile Chinese tradition and foreign ideas has been a recurring theme in the literature on modern Chinese intellectual history. That struggle to define modernity, to understand how to be both fully modern and fully Chinese, and how to achieve a sense of equivalency with the West, was left unresolved at the time of the CCP takeover in 1949. Marxism purported to be the answer to this dilemma, but as Marxism loses its intellectual currency in today's China A-Go-Go, old questions and nagging insecurities start to reemerge.
At the same time, the legacies of imperialism are reinforced in many ways, not the least of which is through the 'patriotic education' that's a key part of the elementary and secondary curriculum in the PRC. Nobody needs to be reminded of the intimate link in China between history, politics, and education. The CCP itself never stops telling the people that it was the Party who was responsible for driving out the foreign imperialists and ending the 'century of humiliation' that began with the Opium War in 1840. As such, the story of imperalism is not only an important aspect of China's recent history, but also a fundamental building block of the CCP's political legitimacy.
Given that historical context, the politics of education, and the effectiveness of CCP propaganda, it is easy to understand why many Chinese have a hard time believing that foreigners who criticize the Chinese government might actually be doing so in the interests of the Chinese people. At best, it's seen as a kind of misguided paternalism, at worst, a wolf-in-sheep's-clothing attack on Chinese sovereignty. The issue becomes murkier still when the issue is "Chineseness" itself, as in the case of Tibet, Taiwan, and Xinjiang.
The notion of 'face' obviously deserves to be a part of this discussion, but at the same time it's a bit of an intellectual cul-de-sac. It's not that I consider face to be unimportant, but I do feel non-Chinese are too quick to dismiss an inability to handle criticism as some sort of inherent quirk of Chinese culture. Nobody would deny that 'face' is a crucial factor in business, diplomacy, and even daily life here, but there is more to the Chinese response beyond the somewhat simplistic and essentialist explanation of 'saving face.'
China's development has been something to behold, but there are challenges still unresolved: staggering environmental problems, a widening gap between the haves and have-nots, and endemic corruption that flourishes in a political culture where the media is censored, non-governmental organizations are proscribed, public speech is still tightly controlled, and where the priority of judges and the courts is maintaining 'harmony' at the expense of petitioners' requests to avail themselves of their legal rights. The CCP and the Chinese government have done a thorough job of spreading a message that is equal parts Lenin, Louis XIV, and Ronald Reagan: The party represents the people because apres mois, le deluge and, by the way, it's morning again in China and you are better off now than you were four years ago. It's an interesting mash-up of political philosophies, but one that has to a large extent become internalized by the Chinese people, especially the urban elite who have benefited the most from the recent economic boom. Regardless of class however, the idea that the nation's interests exist independent of the state and party is, for most people, inconceivable.
Foreigners should be allowed to criticize the Chinese government when such criticism is warranted, and I don't waive my right to speak out against injustice just because I wasn't born in the country where that injustice is occurring. But at the same time, I shouldn't be surprised when my criticism sometimes meets resistance and resentment. Sincere engagement with the Chinese people can only come about when the roots of that resistance are acknowledged, and met with equivalent understanding and sensitivity. In this way a true dialogue can begin with people talking to--rather than at--each other.
-------------
* For further reading and a more in-depth treatment of this issue, see John Fitzgerald, Awakening China: Politics, Culture, and Class in Nationalist China. (Stanford Univ. Press, 1998)
But I've learned the hard way that my perspective per se is not what is actually being sought, but rather confirmation of what The People's Daily and CCTV assure all Chinese is the only possible correct answer: Yes, the Olympics are going to be a huge success and will demonstrate to the world that China is becoming a modern, developed nation. Deviations from that line are not always received well and sometimes elicit outright hostility, which leaves me to wonder: Why is that? Why does concern about the Olympics, criticism of Chinese government policies, or even a news story about the effect of air pollution on athletes, provoke such a visceral response from many Chinese?
Obviously no one set of reasons can cover the gamut of reactions, everybody perceives issues in different ways, but in perusing the comments section of China blogs and the threads on Chinese BBSs, I sense three main themes: the close integration of state/nation/party in both PRC ideology and the minds of the Chinese people; genuine pride at China's rise in the world and a belief that many countries in "the West" seek to undermine China's development to satisfy their own selfish strategic goals; and finally, a barely smoldering resentment born out of a history of foreign imperialism in China.
In the United States, there is a tradition--fragile though it may be at times--that says criticism of government policies is not only a right, but in fact is the responsibility of a concerned citizen. Painting in the broadest possible strokes, the founding fathers established a system whereby the state and the nation were separate entities, one under the supervision of the other. This separation means that one can accuse the government of wrongdoing without necessarily implicating the nation or its people. Sure, I might get annoyed a bit whenever non-American friends denounce the United States for the invasion of Iraq or whatever, but at the end of the day it doesn't affect me all that much: I know it's a policy of my government that's being criticized, one which I also oppose, and generally speaking they aren't attacking me personally or the American people as a whole.
In China, on the other hand, the demands of 20th-century state building, first under the KMT and later by the CCP, fused the ideas of nation and state (and later nation, state, and party) into an inseparable ideology which was then disseminated through propaganda and education to the people.* To criticize one is to attack the whole. Political culture in the PRC has no place for a loyal opposition, never mind the dictum, tenuously attributed to Thomas Jefferson, linking dissent and patriotism. As a result, publicly questioning the government in China is a crime for which the perpetrator risks arrest as a 'threat to social stability and state security.' Foreigners who do so are counterattacked as China-bashers; those Chinese who speak out against their own government in the foreign press are pilloried on electronic bulletin boards as hanjian, traitors to their race, an epithet to which Chinese nationals working for foreign media organizations are also frequently subjected.
Moreover, this response carries with it the implicit--and occasionally explicit--tag that those who criticize China are simply jealous and/or fearful of China's rise.
The Chinese are justifiably proud of how far their country has advanced in the last 25 years, and today's China is a testament to the spirit of its people, who through their hard work and entrepreneurial drive have launched an era of unprecedented economic growth and development. At the same time, old ideas die hard.
Social Darwinism was first introduced to China through the writings and translations of Yan Fu and Liang Qichao in the late-19th century, at a time when the rapacious demands of the imperialist powers threatened to carve up China (as the oft-quoted trope goes) like a melon. It is little wonder then that early 20th-century intellectuals and state builders looked out into the world and saw nothing but power politics and a global struggle for national survival. After the founding of the PRC, this concept of a Darwinian international order diffused throughout society as CCP propaganda stressed the need to strengthen the state so that China would never again be bullied by foreign powers. Early production campaigns called on the people to overtake Britain and catch up with the United States. Competition was the name of the game. The antagonism and paranoia of this Cold War propaganda reinforced lessons learned during a long 19th century, and many Chinese came to believe that the world was indeed out to "get China" and geopolitics was a zero-sum game. It's a perception that lingers to this day.
What is a bit unusual however is the assumption by many people here that all Americans think this way too: that every single person in the US is fixated and frightened by China's rise, and it is this fear that drives the negative media reporting on China's environment, food safety problems, human rights abuses, etc. Part of this reaction can be attributed to the "CCTV-effect." In China, the media is a tool for political control, and many Chinese--especially those who have limited international experience--have trouble believing that the foreign media could operate any differently.
Adding to this, the Chinese media is fond of parroting government officials who label the United States as human rights hypocrites, citing the usual suspects (slavery, imperialism, policy toward indigenous peoples) as well as tossing out a few new ones (waterboarding, the invasion of Iraq). Whether one feels this is a valid defense or not, the salient point is that many in China accept the government line as unequivocal proof that foreign critics cannot be trusted.
Now, I can't speak for everybody, but in conversations in Beijing with foreign journalists, activists, bloggers, researchers, businesspeople and teachers, the general consensus is that few, if any, have a problem with China's development or truly fear China's rise, certainly not in the way that nationalist rags like The Global Times would suggest. Generally speaking, we believe that criticism of the government is based on the notion that certain reforms would make the lives of the Chinese people more secure, prosperous, and free. Surely this is not "bashing China," rather it's expressing enthusiasm for our hosts' good fortune and concern for our friends, the Chinese people. Right?
Wrong, apparently. For you see, China has a long history of foreign do-gooders stepping on her soil and offering suggestions. (Who could forget Columbia professor Frank Goodnow's helpful hint to Yuan Shikai in 1915 that what the Republic needed most was an emperor?) Missionaries, traders, academics, officials, and writers came to China in droves during the age of imperialism, all with ideas on how to fix China and make the lives of the Chinese better. The problem was of course that no matter how well-intentioned a notion, no matter how sound or rational it might have been, any idea becomes a hard fit when it arrives shoehorned between military occupations and adventures in gunboat diplomacy.
This left its mark on how foreign ideas were perceived and deployed in Chinese society. The challenge in the early-2oth century to reconcile Chinese tradition and foreign ideas has been a recurring theme in the literature on modern Chinese intellectual history. That struggle to define modernity, to understand how to be both fully modern and fully Chinese, and how to achieve a sense of equivalency with the West, was left unresolved at the time of the CCP takeover in 1949. Marxism purported to be the answer to this dilemma, but as Marxism loses its intellectual currency in today's China A-Go-Go, old questions and nagging insecurities start to reemerge.
At the same time, the legacies of imperialism are reinforced in many ways, not the least of which is through the 'patriotic education' that's a key part of the elementary and secondary curriculum in the PRC. Nobody needs to be reminded of the intimate link in China between history, politics, and education. The CCP itself never stops telling the people that it was the Party who was responsible for driving out the foreign imperialists and ending the 'century of humiliation' that began with the Opium War in 1840. As such, the story of imperalism is not only an important aspect of China's recent history, but also a fundamental building block of the CCP's political legitimacy.
Given that historical context, the politics of education, and the effectiveness of CCP propaganda, it is easy to understand why many Chinese have a hard time believing that foreigners who criticize the Chinese government might actually be doing so in the interests of the Chinese people. At best, it's seen as a kind of misguided paternalism, at worst, a wolf-in-sheep's-clothing attack on Chinese sovereignty. The issue becomes murkier still when the issue is "Chineseness" itself, as in the case of Tibet, Taiwan, and Xinjiang.
The notion of 'face' obviously deserves to be a part of this discussion, but at the same time it's a bit of an intellectual cul-de-sac. It's not that I consider face to be unimportant, but I do feel non-Chinese are too quick to dismiss an inability to handle criticism as some sort of inherent quirk of Chinese culture. Nobody would deny that 'face' is a crucial factor in business, diplomacy, and even daily life here, but there is more to the Chinese response beyond the somewhat simplistic and essentialist explanation of 'saving face.'
China's development has been something to behold, but there are challenges still unresolved: staggering environmental problems, a widening gap between the haves and have-nots, and endemic corruption that flourishes in a political culture where the media is censored, non-governmental organizations are proscribed, public speech is still tightly controlled, and where the priority of judges and the courts is maintaining 'harmony' at the expense of petitioners' requests to avail themselves of their legal rights. The CCP and the Chinese government have done a thorough job of spreading a message that is equal parts Lenin, Louis XIV, and Ronald Reagan: The party represents the people because apres mois, le deluge and, by the way, it's morning again in China and you are better off now than you were four years ago. It's an interesting mash-up of political philosophies, but one that has to a large extent become internalized by the Chinese people, especially the urban elite who have benefited the most from the recent economic boom. Regardless of class however, the idea that the nation's interests exist independent of the state and party is, for most people, inconceivable.
Foreigners should be allowed to criticize the Chinese government when such criticism is warranted, and I don't waive my right to speak out against injustice just because I wasn't born in the country where that injustice is occurring. But at the same time, I shouldn't be surprised when my criticism sometimes meets resistance and resentment. Sincere engagement with the Chinese people can only come about when the roots of that resistance are acknowledged, and met with equivalent understanding and sensitivity. In this way a true dialogue can begin with people talking to--rather than at--each other.
-------------
* For further reading and a more in-depth treatment of this issue, see John Fitzgerald, Awakening China: Politics, Culture, and Class in Nationalist China. (Stanford Univ. Press, 1998)
China on My Mind: Ian Hacking on the 1989 Demonstrations
In their coverage of the 1989 student demonstrations, foreign and domestic media focused almost exclusively on the demonstrations in Beijing. However, sympathetic students and workers protested and marched across China in May and June 1989, and there has been little coverage or scholarship written about the shape and scope of those events. In the spring and early summer of 1989, professor and philosopher Ian Hacking was teaching in Wuhan and Lanzhou. In this installation of the audio feature, "China on My Mind," China Beat contributor Tom Mullaney chats with Hacking about what he saw during this critical moment in Chinese history. (Users who have trouble with the interface can follow this link directly to the audio file at imeem.)
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