Charter 08: Five Links

The biggest China news story of the moment is the issuance of Charter 08, a declaration that was created to mark the 60th anniversary of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights and is inspired in part by "Charter 77," the famous Czech group, and the arrest and detention of some of its signatories. Here are five things to read to help put the document into context, or learn more about those being help because of it.

1) Charter 08 itself, translated into English by Perry Link, can be found here.


2) A sophisticated exploration of the events of 1989 by Charter 08 signer Liu Xiaobo, who both was part of an important Tiananmen Square hunger strike then and remains active as a critical intellectual in China, can be found here and an English language translation of one of his more recent pieces (on press censorship) can be found here.


3) Li Datong, another Charter 08 signer, has been regularly writing insightful pieces for openDemocracy, such as this recent one on the need for greater government accountability in China.


4) For background on Charter 08 signer Ding Zilin, see this piece that China Beat's Susan Jakes did when she was working for Time Magazine.


5) A fascinating online collection of documents about Charter 77 can be found here.

From Iron Girls to Oriental Beauties

By Hongmei Li

In a piece I did for the Huffington Post on women and the Olympics, I provided a brief overview of the history of ideas about feminine beauty in China and their links to concepts of modernity. This post supplements it by looking at the shift in representations of women from celebrating iron girls to extolling Oriental beauties over the course of the still relatively short history of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

During the three decades that followed the 1949 founding of the PRC, one goal promoted in official discourse was that of erasing gender differences and promoting gender sameness.  This was linked to achieving a broader agenda: the elimination of class and socioeconomic differences.  The underlying assumption was that women and men had the same fundamental responsibility: serving collective units, above the nation.  The following are typical images of Chinese women during this period.

As you can see, women were dressed in the same androgynous way as men and they were portrayed as enthusiastically engaged in building a Socialist nation. Eroticism had no place in the official discourse. High-achieving “iron girls” (smiling soldiers, peasants and workers engaged in military, agricultural and production labor) were praised in the official discourse. These girls were said to be provided with a vast platform of sky and earth on which to achieve great things (guang kuo tiandi, da you suo wei).

Typical Images of Iron Girls during the Culture Revolution




In the last three decades, however, the image of Chinese women has dramatically shifted and women’s bodies have been closely associated with pleasure and the rise of consumer culture. In the 1980s, feminized women were said to represent progress and the iron girls were ridiculed. Numerous books and magazines have begun to stress “nu ren wei,” which can be literally translated as the taste of womanliness and that stresses gender differences and femininity. There has been an explosion of feminine and erotic images of women in Chinese TV programs, magazines, billboards and other media outlets. To be good looking is now often considered something that is important to becoming happy and achieving success in a career. Here are some images of two well-known Chinese actresses Zhang Ziyi and Gong Li, which clearly link women with consumer culture and fetishize particular parts of the female body.



Images of Zhang Ziyi and Gong Li as Symbols of Beautiful Consumer Culture


In Chinese gender discourse, one of the often heard issues is the production of the Oriental beauty in China, which can be clearly seen in the Beijing Olympic medal presenters. Approximately 380 Chinese women were selected to be Beijing Olympic medal ceremony presenters as medal tray carriers, flower presenters, and attendants for guests, officials and athletes: they must be aged between 18 and 25, with height between 5”6 and 5”10. And they must have a “regular appearance with standard proportion.” It was also reported that there were guiding criteria regarding applicants’ sizes of waists, breasts, and hips (sanwei). In their heavy training schedules, they were required to carry themselves and walk in a particular way so that they could represent the oriental beauty to the world. Chops were also used to produce the perfect smile, which was defined as the exposure of six to eight upper teeth.

An Image of Chinese Medal Presenters in a Training Session

The medal presenters for the Olympics aim to represent Chinese women as reserved, submissive and traditional in the finest sense. Ironically, these women are somehow similar to women waitresses and stewardesses. Often times, in job ads for waitresses and stewardesses, there are requirements about an applicant’s height and regular appearance (五官端正). Once selected, they are often trained for their smiles and postures.

While discriminatory hiring practices existed in the US, but they become subtler now. Employers often declare that no individuals will be discriminated against based on gender, race, nationality, or sexual orientations. In China, however, such discriminatory employing practices seem to be officially endorsed and become more explicit. Indeed, it was reported in 2004 female applicants for civil servants in Hunan Province were required to have balanced breasts, which caused a public outcry. While economic reforms give some women more opportunities in their career development, they also expand gender inequalities. Ironically, China could claim the most progressive gender policy in the past, its current gender discriminations in social, political, economic and cultural arenas mean that women are put in a worse situation than before. A common Chinese saying that summarizes an effort in vain states, “several decades’ hardship only leads to the pre-1949 China overnight” (辛辛苦苦几十年, 一夜回到解放前). Efforts need to be made in order to prevent such a retreat from happening.

Dead Man Talking

China is reducing death sentences but problems remain

By Zhang Lijia

On July 1 this year, a masked man named Yang Jia forced his way into the Zhabei police bureau in Shanghai, armed with a knife. In a killing rampage, he left six policemen dead and four injured. Last Wednesday, the 28-year-old unemployed man from Beijing was executed by lethal injection after the Supreme People’s Court decided to uphold the death sentence.

There was little surprise for the fate of a cop-murderer in a country where more people are thought to be killed by the capital punishment than the rest of the world combined. Yet the accused seems to have become an unlikely hero. At the second hearing hundreds gathered outside a Shanghai court, some holding signs that read “Long live the hero with a knife!”

In October 2007, Yang was questioned by a policeman in Zhabei district for riding an unregistered bike and was later detained for six hours. Claiming to have been beaten and mistreated by the police, he filed multiple complaints, demanding a formal apology and 10,000 yuan compensation for psychological damage.

Ever since the bloody July day, the Yang Jia saga has weighed on the Internet. Now his execution has sparked more discussions. One man wrote that the whole Yang Jia fiasco was an insult to the Chinese people. Another blogger urged people to mourn him for three days by not eating meat. Yang’s humiliation at the hands of policemen and his effort in seeking justice resonated with a public sick of the security force abusing its power and easily getting away with it.

The death penalty has always been used by the Chinese Communists as a harsh tool to maintain social security and political order and to curb crime. Partly because top Chinese leaders feel uncomfortable with the accusation that China applies capital punishment too readily, partly because the international community has pressured China persistently, reforming capital punishment has been made a priority within the Party-run judiciary system. There’s been heated debate among academics as to how to reform. One of the suggestions is precisely to restrict the power of police, to the displeasure of hard-liners.

“Ever since January 2007 when the Supreme Court took back the sole authority in reviewing the death penalty, I have noticed a substantial decrease in issuing death sentences, especially cases of immediate execution,” said professor Chen Weidong, a top expert on death penalty from Renmin University. “Killing fewer and killing with extreme caution is also the guidance from central government.”

The precise number of executions is a state secret in China. Amnesty International reported that last year 1,860 were given death sentences and at least 470 were executed, a remarkable reduction from 2006’s 1010, or 2005’s 1770, but still 80 percent of the world total, though the real numbers are believed much higher.

Despite progress, there’s still widespread fear that death sentences are passed without proper procedure and innocent people are convicted.

“There will always be problems when cases are handled with this behind-the-curtains judiciary style,” said human rights lawyer Li Jinsong in Beijing. Li, a tiny, soft-spoken man, explained that he became outraged as he followed the unfolding drama: Yang’s mother inexplicably “disappeared.” Yet Xie Youming, one of two lawyers appointed by the court as Yang’s defense lawyer and also a counsel for Zhabei district government, a potential conflict of interest, was able to contact her.

“Yang killed people, which should be condemned. But he deserved a fair trial,” Li said. A well-known lawyer and a winner of the French government’s “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity” award, he managed to persuade Yang’s father to retain him. Li went to Shanghai several times but failed to meet Yang Jia on the ground that Yang had made statement that he would only accept lawyers appointed by his mother. In the company’s website, Li has written a detailed account of his involvement and raised many questions: Why did the court try to cover up Yang’s real motives of crime? Did Yang have adequate legal presentation?

Li’s biggest question is Yang’s mental state. The lawyer was present at the second trial. (the first trial was closed) When asked if he regretted what he did, Yang replied flatly: “No!”

“See, Yang didn’t even try to rouse any sympathy,” Li said. “He struck me as mentally unsound.” But the evaluation of his mental competence was performed by a research institute under the Department of Justice, which lacks the judicial testimony qualifications required according to Chinese law.

There was another bizarre twist. Four months after her “disappearance,” Yang Jia’s mother Wang Jinmei was recently found at Ankang Mental Hospital in Beijing, Southern Metropolis News reported. No one seems to have any access to her. Li suspects that she was detained by Beijing authority in cooperation with Shanghai police because she is the only person who knows the whole story of Yang’s dealings with the police in the lead up to his brutal killing.

“The real problem with China's legal system is that it's under the Communist party's control,” said Danny Gittings, an academic who specializes in the Chinese legal system at the University of Hong Kong. “The procuratorate, public security and judiciary are separate organizations but all under the control of the same arm of the Party – the political-legal committees which exist at every level of the state. And there's still no sign of any willingness to address the fundamental problem – the lack of a legal system independent from the state.”

Yang Jia’s case also shows how little protecting mechanism there is for the convicted murderer in a legal system built for conviction.

Zhu Zhanping, a lawyer from Xian, strongly advocates for the abolishment of capital punishment altogether, and as soon as possible. “It’s too easy to convict an innocent person to death and too difficult to overturn once the verdict is passed,” he said.

In 2001, Zhu tried to defend another defendant facing death. Dong Wei was a young migrant who got into a fight at a cinema with a man who insulted his girlfriend. In his self-defense, Zhu believed, Dong accidentally killed that man. “Dong probably over-reacted a little but absolutely didn’t deserve to die.” Zhu discovered that the sole evidence the judge relied on was full of contradictions. Shortly before Dong’s scheduled execution, Zhu, in desperation, rushed to Beijing to turn to the Supreme Court’s for help – an unprecedented act. Having agreed there were too many unanswered questions, the Court ordered to halt the execution. But only for 130 days. In the end, the provincial Higher Court upheld the original verdict.

“Being a Chinese, I was brought up with the belief: to replace a teeth with a teeth and to repay blood with blood. After witnesssing the pain endured by Dong and his family, I changed my mind. No human should put another human to die. It won’t achieve anything.” Zhu has been writing articles advocating his belief. The vast majority of Chinese support capital punishment, not a surprising fact for a cultural tradition that places less importance on individual life than does the Western ‘humanist’ tradition.

In recent years, there have been a lot of reports of innocent people being sentenced to death. In one case, a farmer was given the death sentence for killing his mentally disturbed wife, who then after eleven years, returned home. Luckily, the farmer had not been executed yet.

Professor Chen Weidong doesn’t think it is the time to abolish capital punishment yet. “China is going through drastic social and economic changes, which has led to rising crimes, including violent and serious crimes. And there’s no religious or moral obligations. To abolish it now, the crime rate will soar and it may cause social instability.” What the experts are trying to do, Chen said, is to reduce the number of offences punishable by death, to reduce the number of death sentences, and to set up detailed and precise guidance for when a death sentence can be issued.

Currently China uses capital punishment for 68 crimes, including non-violent crimes such as tax evasion, drug trafficking and panda-poaching. Two days after Yang Jia’s execution, another high-profiled defendant, medical scientist Wo Weihan, was executed as well, triggering worldwide condemnation. Wo’s family wasn’t even given the opportunity to say goodbye.

Professor Chen, who has been following Yang Jia’s case, believes the overall handling was more or less fair.

The claim pains Yang Jia’s father, Yang Fusheng. “The trail wasn’t fair! I sort of expected this might happen but I still found it hard to accept,” he said in a telephone interview in Beijing. He doesn’t wish to meet any journalist, fearing being monitored. He described his son as quiet and law-abiding, living with his mother since the couple’s divorce. He said he will follow his son’s path – fighting for justice but without violence, and trying to bring every one of those who wronged his son to court. He previously tried to sue one of the court appointed lawyers.

“Now my only child is dead. I hope that people can learn lessons from it and improve the rule of law in China,” said Yang Fusheng.

Global Shanghai News

Regular readers of this blog may think it is a bit redundant for me to do a "Self-promotion Saturday" post about Global Shanghai, 1850-2010: A History in Fragments, since I've managed to slip references to and images of the cover of my new book onto the site already in recent a piece about the 1980s and one about the Beijing Forum, cell phones, and a Chinese Obama joke.

Still, when you've worked on a publication as long as I labored on this one (even though it is a short, it took well over a decade to get from first inspiration and initial research to actually having the first copies in hand this week), the actual appearance of the artifact is something you want to mark. (The book should be available for purchase in Britain now, ready for sale in other parts of the world early in the new year.)

I also couldn't resist the opportunity to mention the first review it has received, a very positive one in That's Shanghai, which not only has just the kinds of adjectives authors love to find applied to their books but is written with verve to boot. And who wouldn't like getting five out of five thumbs up?

In addition, just in case there are any China Beat readers who don't also regularly check out the Danwei site as well, this post gives me a chance to pass on the word that I have a new piece up there linked to the book. It's the first of a two-part essay called "A Brief History of Shanghai's Future" (the sequel will follow soon). It isn't an excerpt per se, but it draws from material in Global Shanghai and should give readers a pretty good sense of what the book is like.

Other pieces that tie-in with the book will be published elsewhere on the web. I'll flag them in future posts. I'll also use those posts as an opportunity to give some background on the book (like why a historian like me has a year still to come in its title) and mention places I'll be giving book-related talks. So stay tuned.

Epicurean China: A Book Report

By Kate Merkel-Hess

Browsing the new book shelf of the local public library this week, I noticed not one but a whole selection of books that delve into the regional cuisines of China. Just last summer, Nina and Tim Zagat wrote an op-ed for The New York Times titled, “Eating Beyond Sichuan,” in which they called for greater diversity in the Chinese cuisine dished up around the U.S.—something more akin to the taste bud thrills anyone visiting or living in China experiences on a daily basis. There are intimations of Chinese cuisine diversity to come—such as the much-hailed developments in areas populated by large numbers of Chinese immigrants like Flushing in recent years. Whether or not these developments will eventually influence those MSG-laden, heavily sauced “Great Wall”s and “Chinatown”s scattered throughout the U.S. is yet to be seen. In the meantime, perhaps Chinese cuisine books will spread the word.

The first in my stack of library finds was The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food, by Times writer Jennifer 8. Lee. Beginning her book with an anecdote about a statistically improbable number of lottery winners who had chosen their numbers from a fortune cookie (a treat unknown in China), Lee explores both her own relationship to Chinese food (as the child of Taiwanese immigrants ) and that of people around the world, including some of those Powerball winners. Through the series of interconnected essays that make up the book, Lee investigates the origins of General Tso and his chicken, the stories of Chinese immigrants running far-flung U.S. restaurants, and the origins of Chinese take-out, among other topics. Pegged on a charming anecdote, Lee’s book also relays heartbreaking tales about some of the Chinese immigrants who staff restaurants across the country—emphasizing the social and economic ties that connect Fujian to New York City to little towns in Georgia or South Dakota.

In the past few years, memorably-named British chef Fuchsia Dunlop published several Chinese cookbooks (Land of Plenty: A Treasury of Authentic Sichuan Cooking and Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook: Recipes from Hunan Province). Having picked up her skills in a Sichuan cooking school, Dunlop pushed the notion that Westerners needed to be more familiar with China’s diverse cuisines (as in this NPR interview). This summer, she published Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A sweet-sour memoir of eating in China. Dunlop’s story of her own love affair with Chinese cookery is also a story of being an outsider in China (the sweet-sour of the title), and her descriptions of that experience will ring true for anyone who has lived in China for any extended period (as she writes about her decision never to use MSG in her food: “My classmates regarded this as eccentric, but then they regarded everything I did as eccentric. Not using MSG was just the kind of thing you’d expect from a green-eyed alien like me”). Recipes accompany each chapter, but useful knowledge about Chinese cuisine is also scattered throughout Dunlop’s narrative.

The last book I picked up at the library, The Seventh Daughter: My Culinary Journey from Beijing to San Francisco by Cecilia Chiang, looks more like a “food book” than the previous two. With a foreword by Alice Waters and illustrated with the sorts of luscious pictures some refer to as “food porn,” this is the most practical of the three books if one is actually interested in cooking Chinese food (and not just thinking about and salivating over it). As she explains in the book, Chiang arrived in San Francisco for a short trip in 1960 (her husband was an ROC diplomat in Tokyo) and ended up staying to open a northern Chinese restaurant called The Mandarin (which finally closed its Ghirardelli Square location several years ago). The recipes for old standbys (like yuxiang qiezi and basi xiangjiao) are mixed in with stories about Chiang’s life in China and after. As with many coffee table cookbooks, the name-dropping is insistent (as in “Chuck Williams, one of my oldest and dearest friends and the founder of Williams-Sonoma, loves this dish…”), but if you are in the right mood, this book is pleasurable light reading. And while I haven’t tried any of the recipes, there are a number of staple dishes listed, with short lists of ingredients and only a few steps apiece.

There are certain to be more books of this sort as American familiarity with China’s varied cuisines grows. In the meantime, these have enough mentions of star anise, shaoxing wine, and chili peppers to spark serious bouts of food-in-China nostalgia.

Early Critics of Deng Xiaoping—A 1978 Flashback

By Jeff Wasserstrom

Americans associate bottom-up challenges to Deng Xiaoping with images of the massive 1989 protests. But those demonstrations were not the first acts of dissent Deng had to deal with by any means. More than a decade earlier, right after his Reform era began, came the “Democracy Wall Movement”—named for a Beijing area where critics started putting up posters (some of which warned of Deng becoming a dictator) in 1978. The term “democracy wall” had been used for comparable spaces back in the 1940s (when Chiang Kai-shek’s authoritarianism was being attacked) and again during 1957’s “Hundred Flowers” campaign. The 1957 precedent is particularly relevant because Deng responded to criticism in the late 1970s much as Mao Zedong had some twenty years earlier, first welcoming it as a healthy form of expression, then cracking down.

The Democracy Wall Movement of 1978-79 was not a single, coherent, organized struggle with a clear agenda but rather a constellation of activities by groups inspired by varied ideas. When remembered in the West, it tends to be simplified: treated as a liberal democratic project, even though the language of many posters was infused with Marxist concepts and ideals. There is more to keep in mind about Democracy Wall than the name of the unusually liberal Wei Jingsheng, who gained fame through crafting a powerful manifesto, “The Fifth Modernization,” which said Deng’s call for “Four Modernizations” (of agriculture, industry, education, science and technology, and education) left something out: democracy.

Today, however, focusing on Wei makes sense, since his famous poster went up exactly 30 years ago. Interestingly, Wei didn’t present democracy (the “fifth modernization”) as an abstract good but as a pragmatic necessity. Without it, he wrote, great obstacles would block China’s material development. The fact that this year’s first protests were the anti-Maglev “strolls” underlines the gulf separating 1978 from 2008. 

There’s certainly a connecting thread tying Wei's poster of thirty years ago to middle-class demonstrations like the Shanghai ones that started brewing eleven months back: a desire for more transparent and responsive government officials.  But to worry about the damaging impact of a form of state-of-the-art technology is very different from talking about a lack of democracy holding back China’s material progress.

Whose Peoples’ Games?

Ethnic Identity and the 2008 Beijing Olympics



By James Leibold

With the self-professed slogans of the Green Olympics, High-tech Olympics and the People’s Olympics, the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG) should have anticipated criticism. It left nothing to chance in hosting the world’s athletes and spectators—gleaming stadia, smiling faces and blue skies: all as ordered. But as many Western observers noted, BOCOG forgot to invite the Chinese people—with security guards, CCTV cameras and robot-like volunteers ensuring little spontaneity or popular emotion at the so-called People’s Games.

In the wake of the unprecedented media coverage of China’s global “coming out party,” few have paused to consider who and what were on display at Beijing 2008. In the pomp and pageantry of the most expensive Olympic Games in history, whose image did the organizers project before the world’s probing gaze? In promoting the Olympic Games and Olympic Movement, BOCOG promised to “organize diversified cultural and educational programs to cater to the needs of the people,” while encouraging “the widest participation of the people in the preparation of the Games” in order to “increase the cohesion and pride of the Chinese nation.” But a closer look at the preparations and staging of the Games reveals deep strains in the very fabric of the Chinese nation, not only the fraying threads of class, place, and gender, which have been often commented on, but also of ethnicity.

It has become commonplace in academic literature to speak about the “inchoate,” “incoherent,” and “amorphous” nature of Chinese nationalism, what John Fitzgerald termed a “nationless state,” a fractured and divided people forcefully held together by an autocratic state structure. Unlike Europe, state and nation building in modern China occurred alongside one another, with an increasingly powerful state elite experimenting with different formulae for the nation: who was to be included, in what proportions, and under what terms. Here the ethnic composition of the nation-state proved particularly problematic. China is home to both a single, dominant Han majority—whose over one billion people are beset by numerous linguistic, cultural, class, and place divisions—and scores of small and highly scattered minorities living along the state’s massive frontier regions.

In the making/baking of the nation-cake, we can identify at least three distinct, yet overlapping, recipes in the Chinese cupboard over the last century or so. What I will term: 1) Leninist-style multiculturalism; 2) Han racism; and 3) Confucian ecumenism. It is important to note that each of these recipes explicitly excludes the possibility of ethnic separatism and transnational ties. The nature and size of the baker’s bowl was never really in question; rather the modern Chinese state and its elites inherited the Qing geobody and set about constructing the nation from within its boundaries. Yet while the contours of the nation-cake were largely fixed, its ingredients were open for debate. In what follows, I seek to tease out some of these unresolved tensions, and explore how they were reflected on the stage and behind the scenes of China’s Olympic moment.

Leninist-style multiculturalism
As a Leninist party-state, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) sought initially to solve the “national question” in accordance with the “scientific laws” of historical materialism. Material progress was viewed as a linear path; but not all peoples were thought to progress at the same rate, leaving the problem of “backward and feudal national minorities” for the state to resolve. Lenin’s solution, as outlined in the 1903 program of the Russian Communist Party, was “the right of self-determination for all nations comprising the State”; that is, the strategic recognition and protection of individual nationalities’ interests within a multi-ethnic state structure.



While Mao and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) were quick to rule out the possibility of territorial succession for China’s minorities, they followed the Soviet Union in creating a complex system of cultural, economic, and political autonomy to protect the independent development of each nationality free from ethnic chauvinism. In the PRC today, Leninist-style multiculturalism includes an intricate series of affirmative action policies aimed at preserving the cultures and identities of each of the state’s fifty-five officially recognized national minorities.



In this spirit, 42 of China’s 639 Olympic athletes in 2008 were non-Han competitors who managed to win 6 of China’s 100 medals. And while not all Chinese nationalities competed at Beijing, a colourful caricature of this ethnic mosaic was ceremonially paraded across the Bird’s Nest stadium at the start of the Opening Ceremony. Despite the tightly controlled nature of minority participation in the Games, the official policy of multiculturalism required a degree of visibility and active participation from the minorities, including thousands of torch bearers (including 22 Tibetan mountaineers on the slopes of Qomolangma), ethnic singing and dancing at Olympic events, and extensive media coverage of the 9th National Minority Nationalities Traditional Sports Games held in Guangzhou in November 2007. Foreign visitors were also encouraged to visit the recently completed “Chinese Ethnic Culture Park,” a 50-hectare “anthropological museum” located just south of the Olympic Green where visitors could experience real, live “ethnic gatherings,” and learn more about the “behaviour, genius, liability, aesthetics and cultural essence” of the minorities while wandering through the individual “ethnic villages” that have been authentically preserved by the Chinese state.

Han racism
While Leninist-style multiculturalism does create genuine spaces for minority agency, it also engenders resentment and racial hatred. As Frank Dikötter has demonstrated, racism has deep roots in China. Driven by a strand of cultural xenophobia that labelled non-sedentary neighbours “barbarians” and sought their exclusion from Chinese political life, Han racism was perhaps most clearly articulated in opposition to the Manchu rulers of the Qing dynasty, where Han revolutionaries like 18 year-old Zou Rong called for the “annihilation the five million and more of the furry and horned Manchu race, cleansing ourselves of 260 years of harsh and unremitting pain, so that the soil of the Chinese subcontinent is made immaculate, and the descendants of the Yellow Emperor will all become Washingtons.”

Following the collapse of the Qing, this sort of racial vilification was swept under the rug of the new Republic and its idealized “Union of Five Races” (Han, Manchu, Mongol, Tibetan, and Hui), and was later attacked as “Han chauvinism” by the CCP. But the party-state has struggled to completely stamp it out. If anything, the collapse of ideology and the rise of new communication technologies in China have provided alternative platforms for its articulation.



In its moderate form, Han racism identifies the Han people as the cultural and racial backbone of the nation, mandating the Han man’s burden of civilising the “backward” and “feudal” minorities. In its more virulent articulation, Han racism advocates the forced assimilation or extermination of all non-Han peoples in China, an ideology that one online blogger termed “Chinazi” (China + Nazi = Chinazi) in admiration of Nazi-style racism while calling for the preservation of superior Han blood from barbarian contamination.



This sort of chauvinism is largely hidden and subconscious. Take for example, the use of Han actors to portray the minority children at the opening ceremony. Facing criticism from the foreign media, BOCOG vice-president Wang Wei dismissed the incident as “not worth mentioning” and “completely normal” in Chinese tradition. But few Chinese would have missed the powerful symbolism of a red-dressed Han girl singing the emotive “Ode to the Motherland” (gechang zuguo) from an elevated stage as the colourful “native” children paraded before her and the all-Han BOCOG officials before saluting the motherland’s flag. It would seem that the Han man’s burden was nearly fulfilled; but not all bloggers were happy. Several complained about the Han girl’s Western style dress and the Manchu derived “horse jacket” (magua) and “riding gown” (qipao) that other Han performers were wearing. These foreign styles, it was claimed, diluted the traditional essence of Chinese (zhonghua) culture embodied in the long silk robes of Han clothing (hanfu).

Yet, outside the carefully controlled public arena, one finds more explicit expressions of Han racism. Following the March 14th riots in Lhasa, which killed 18 and injured over 500 mostly Han migrants, racist diatribes inundated popular Chinese blogs before being removed by censors. When discussing the vitriolic Song dynasty war song, “Defend the Han Homeland” (hanjia jiangtu) on Han Minzu BBS, a retired Beijing solider asserted that “national unity and fusion can only be achieved through struggle and not compromise,” and “because we Han give them preferential treatment, some national minorities now think they are naturally superior to the Han and discriminate against us, even to the extent of disrespecting our people’s history, customs, habits and traditional clothing.” Others used much less subtle language.

Confucian ecumenism
Throughout the long sweep of its history, racial exclusionism has been a distinct yet largely heterodox tradition. During times of strength and unity, the Chinese state stressed the ability of its culture to literally absorb neighbouring “barbarians” through a peaceful process of laihua (come and be transformed), incorporating them into the Confucian datong (great community) or tianxia (all under heaven). More recently, the colonial extension of the Chinese state has pushed its institutions and people into the furthest corners of the geobody, ensuring that few regions are not actively guarded over by Han soldiers, bureaucrats, teachers, or entrepreneurs. The demographic and political weight of the Han community has led some intellectuals to begin to question the official policy of multiculturalism, calling for a revival of what they see as an ethnically neutral Confucian ecumenism.

Take for example, the US-educated Chair of Sociology at Peking University, Professor Ma Rong, who speaks with the authority of the Han state despite his Hui ethnicity. In a recent article, he called for the “de-politicization” of ethnic relations in China, which requires a departure from European-style liberalism and Soviet-style multiculturalism and a return to a traditional “culture-centred” approach to diversity that is fundamental to his reading of Confucianism. Rather than promoting ethnic integration, Ma Rong argues that the “institutionalization of ethnic groups” under Mao Zedong promoted ethnic stratification and tension. In response to Western criticism, China should “learn from their ancestors and their experience for thousands of years in guiding ethnic relations,” and return to the bedrock of Confucian “culturalism,” where culture rather than ethnicity serves as the key marker of civilisation and public policy focuses on promoting a universal culture and identity through acculturation rather than the protection of individual minority rights and benefits.



Confucianism and its idealized “harmonious society” were a dominant theme at the Opening Ceremony. Despite the brief nod to multiculturalism, it was Confucius in the form of 2008 Fou drummers who welcomed guests with the opening lines of the Analects. They were followed by 3000 Confucian disciples and the repeated creation of the Chinese character for “peace” (he) as organizers sought to convey Chinese culture and its people as an ancient and outwardly looking civilisation. Riding a wave of renewed interest in Confucianism and the establishment of thousands of international institutes bearing his name, many Chinese hope that Confucius will one day rival Socrates’ influence on global thought.

Confucian ecumenism and its ethnic double blind were perhaps best symbolized by the Ceremony’s two leading (genuine) minority performers: the 15th century Hui Muslim admiral Zheng He and the Zhuang nationality gymnast Li Ning. While the Great Wall made only a fleeting appearance, the Silk Route and the “Maritime Silk Route” of Zheng He’s famous sea voyages took centre stage. As an armada of blue-robed performers swung massive wooden oars across the stadium floor, foreign television commentators waxed lyrical about the seven treasure fleets of this “Chinese Columbus,” who spread Chinese culture and goods as far as Africa and possibly beyond. The day started with the lighting of the Olympic torch next to a bust of Peking Man at Zhoukoudian and ended when the Olympic cauldron was set ablaze by Li Ning. Failing to mention his ethnicity, the People’s Daily described him as a “Chinese gymnastic champion” and “national hero” who won 6 medals at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games and then went onto become a millionaire entrepreneur in Reform era China. In representing both the traditional and modern faces of China, these two “Chinese” figures signified the great coalescing force of Confucianism and its ability to fuse different peoples into a powerful, cohesive whole.

Final words: But whose?
It’s too early in my research to draw any definitive conclusions. But I find it hard to imagine the CCP abandoning its official position on multiculturalism anytime soon. Like other multiethnic societies, outbursts of racist vitriol are inevitable in China, a troubling reflection of the growing social dislocation and atomization in this rapidly transforming society. The Internet provides new spaces (dark corners) for its expression; but the State and its intricate security apparatuses maintain a vigilante watch over any “irrational expressions of patriotism.”



In contrast, there appears to be great sympathy for a new approach to ethnic relations among the Han elite, and here Confucian ecumenism seems to offer a distinct alternative, or at the very least a new indigenous grammar. But shifting rhetoric is easy; transforming institutions is not. Dismantling the complex structures of Leninist-style multiculturalism would require bold action. Not only are the state’s basic institutions—government, education, media, police, and military—organized to reflect and respect the individual diversity of China’s 56 nationalities, but, perhaps more importantly, any attempt to unwind these institutions would meet with harsh criticism from the West and the withdrawal of the validation that China seems to crave.

In seeking the moral high-ground on controversial issues such as Tibet and Xinjiang, China still feels compelled to argue its case in the language of the West: be it the Hegalian “politics of recognition” or the Nietzschean “war on terror.” Confucius might have welcomed the world to Beijing, but Count Jacques Rogge sent them home.

Dr James Leibold is a Senior Lecturer in Politics and Asian Studies at La Trobe University and author of Reconfiguring Chinese Nationalism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). A copy of the text with references is available from the author at j.leibold@latrobe.edu.au.

A Soulful Memoir of 1980s China

I think that no matter when I read it, I would have been impressed by Lijia Zhang’s “Socialism is Great!” A Worker’s Memoir of the New China. There is simply a lot to like about any book that is well crafted, unsparingly honest, and alternately poignant and amusing. And these adjectives all apply to Zhang’s tale.

One sign of the care the author takes is that she neatly bookends the part of her life story she gives up with a pair of very different sorts of acts of rebellion. Readers first meet the narrator as she chafes at the idea of leaving school at seventeen to take-over her mother’s job at a Nanjing missile factory—to no avail, as she has no option in the end but to accept this post and the “iron rice bowl” that comes with it. And one of the final images of Zhang we get is of her marching with other workers from her plant in a demonstration held to show support for the student-led occupation of Tiananmen Square.

In between, we learn about her early crushes. We are told about her first serious love affairs—made complicated, in part, by a China where young couples without access to private indoor spaces still met in parks, even though they could be arrested if discovered in compromising positions and unable to show a marriage license. We root for her as she struggles to gain respect from co-workers and continue her education (in English among other subjects) after her formal schooling is cut short. And we find out about the ways that her views of her mother and grandmother change over time.

I’d been looking forward to acquiring the book ever since hearing the author describe it when I happened to meet her in Shanghai a year-and-a-half ago. And reading reviews of the book, perusing interviews with Zhang, and checking out excerpts from the memoir on the web had increased my interest in getting hold of it. I’m glad, though, that I didn’t end up with a copy until mid-way through my most recent trip to China, when the author passed one on to me at a Beijing dinner we both attended. This is because it turned out to be just the right book to read on the plane ride home, for three different reasons. Though as I said, I would have liked the book whenever I read it, it was especially welcome to have in my hands just then.

The first reason the plane ride home was such a good time to read it has to do with its length. It proved just long enough for me to start it on the Shanghai to San Francisco leg of my journey, then finish it off during my layover in Northern California and short flight down to Orange County. I’m always grateful for reading material that can hold my interest on long journeys, and Zhang’s memoir did just that—a good reason for airport bookstores on either side of the Pacific to stock it for China-bound travelers and Americans returning from the PRC alike. I kept turning the pages not because I expected revelations about the Tiananmen protests or any of the other “big events” of the 1980s (it doesn’t offer those), but rather because of the compelling window it offered onto how one strong-willed individual lived through a complex period, when new opportunities were opening up yet old constraints remained in place.

The second reason reading it on the trip home seemed so appropriate was because, on the way to China, one of the books that had helped me pass the time was Xujun Eberlein’s Apologies Forthcoming: Stories. That collection of stories—many moving, all demonstrating Erberlein’s knack for effective quick character sketches and skill at bringing natural and social settings to life via a minimum of carefully chosen details—deals with the Cultural Revolution and its immediate aftermath. Since Zhang started working at the missile factory just a bit later than that, reading the two books at opposite ends of my travels made them feel like a pair of linked texts.

Then there’s a final reason that the trip home seemed so fitting a time to read Socialism is Great! This has to do with the special meaning that the period covered in the book—what I sometimes refer to as China “Post-Mao/Pre-McDonald’s” years—has for me. The era was distinctive in that it was so unclear where the PRC was heading; it was a time of far less ideological rigidity than what came before and much more egalitarianism than what would come later. And it was a time that I had on my mind when I flew out of the Pudong airport, as has often been the case when ending recent trips to China—despite or rather because of how much the country has changed since the days when Shanghai’s tallest buildings dated from the early 1900s, when no Beijing resident had a cell phone, and bicycles vastly outnumbered cars in every Chinese metropolis.

That era between the Little Red Book and the Big Mac has a powerful meaning for me partly because it was then that I first spent time in China, living in Shanghai and traveling to various cities from August 1986 until July 1987 (while doing dissertation research) and then going back briefly in the fall of 1988 (to attend the conference from which the book Shanghai Sojourners emerged). There are always things that remind me of that period when I go back, due to the old friends I see that I met back then, the foods I eat that I first ate during my initial trips to China, and so on. But I’m often struck by how few efforts to commemorate the 1980s can be found in public places.

It is not just that there are no monuments commemorating the Tiananmen protests or the June 4th Massacre, though that is part of what makes me feel that my first stay in China took place in its missing decade. Adding to this sense is that it is so easy now to run into self-conscious reminders of many other periods.

Confucian temples have been spruced up. In Shanghai, there are the insistent evocations of the city circa 1930, including bars and cafés that cater to and rev up nostalgia for those good old, bad old days. While some parts of the Maoist era are swept under the rug (the Great Leap Forward famine) or simply ignored (the early 1950s), there are theme eateries devoted to the Cultural Revolution. There are also still statues of the Great Helmsman on some campuses, the Chairman’s portrait still looks down on Tiananmen Square, and Mao memorabilia is offered for sale in many locales—sometimes stocked in stalls right beside playing cards with the visages of Emperors and Empresses on the face cards and Olympic souvenirs that conjure up the pre-1949 and post-1989 eras. And, of course, displays devoted to the anti-imperialist, anti-Warlord, and anti-Nationalist struggles of the late 1800s and early-to-mid 1900s still fill museums and dot the urban landscape, with the frieze shown on the cover of my new book just one of the many to be found in Shanghai alone.

What the built environment (and, to be honest, the nostalgia-driven tourist industry, too) lacks for me are sites that invite us to revisit the 1980s. Yes, there are occasional buildings that date from that era that have been left relatively untouched by time (though you sometimes need to squint at them to keep a skyscraper out of view, especially in Shanghai). But there are no plaques, no special 1980s theme places to drink or dine, and no statues that serve to remind passersby of that era.

This means that, for me, the perfect thing to have in my hand as I fly home from China is a book that portrays those missing years. This time, Lijia Zhang’s engaging memoir fit the bill perfectly.

Zhao Ziyang's Legacy and 6/4 Memories

As we prepare to mark the 30th anniversary of one turning point in the history of Chinese dissent (the appearance of Wei Jingsheng's "Fifth Modernization" poster on December 5, 1978, the subject of a post we'll run later this week), a debate on another major turning point (the 1989 protests and June 4th Massacre) may be re-emerging within China ahead of its 30th anniversary.

One of the earliest reports (in English) that the Ministry of Culture had sought the resignation of the editor of the well-regarded magazine Yanhuang Chunqiu over its recent cover story praising purged leader Zhao Ziyang was on Time’s China Blog. There, Simon Elegant mentioned the incident, which has slowly gained momentum over the past few weeks.

On November 16, Under the Jacaranda Tree provided more details about the situation:

The article in question is a cover story about Zhao Ziyang 赵紫阳. This is the first positive account of Zhao to appear in any PRC publications since he was removed from leadership in 1989. The article was penned by Sun Zhen 孙振, the retired chief of Xinhua’s Sichuan branch. Sun served under Zhao during the Cultural Revolution. The article, which reaffirmed the popularity of Zhao among Sichuan peasants, was seen as a direct challenge to the official verdict of Zhao and of his mistakes in handling the Tiananmen Square incident.

Yanhuang Chunqiu is often seen as critical of the present CCP leadership. The Journal was inaugurated in 1991 under the patronage of senior party officials sympathetic to Hu Yaobang 胡耀邦. The editorial team headed by Du Daozheng 杜导正 openly advocates a gradual transition to liberal democracy, and has been critical of the government’s lack of tolerance of voices of dissident, as well as its inability to curb widespread corruption throughout the country. The Journal has a loyal readership among party veterans and intellectuals. With a circulation of over 80,000 copies, the Journal is financially independent and is believed to have received no government funding or commercial sponsorship.

On November 18, the Sydney Morning Herald reported:

An official from the Ministry of Culture visited the editor-in-chief of the magazine Yanhuang Chunqiu - Annals Of The Yellow Emperor - at his home on Friday, seeking his resignation.

The official told Du Daozheng that a retired leader had taken offence at the magazine's favourable treatment of Mr Zhao, whose name has been taboo in the Chinese media for 19 years. It is understood the instructions were conveyed via a member of the Politburo, the Communist Party's inner sanctum.

But Mr Du, 85, has been a feisty stalwart of the Communist Party since 1937, and his publication enjoys protection from many progressive senior party officials.

"He said, "Old Du, you're getting old. Are you thinking about … " Mr Du told the Herald yesterday. "He never directly said change the editor … but his meaning was extremely clear.

"I said the government's official retirement age doesn't apply to non-government enterprises like us; if I work until I'm 120 that's got nothing to with you."

Last week the story was picked up in various places, including China Media Project which, in addition to reprinting the entire piece in full (in Chinese), also placed the piece in context, explaining to readers why it was sensitive:

News surfaced this month that the journal has come under attack from an unspecified senior official after running a lengthy article in September that praised former premier Zhao Ziyang (赵紫阳) for his progressive leadership in Sichuan in the 1970s, before he was ousted amid the unrest that followed democracy demonstrations in Beijing in 1989.

The Zhao Ziyang piece is the first full-length article on the former top leader since democracy protests were violently suppressed on June 4, 1989.

Asia Times Online provided more information about Du Daozheng in a recent piece:

By raising his age as an issue, Du said, authorities are hoping to weaken the editorial line of his magazine. The offending article on Zhao was just the latest example of the kind of writing loathed by the conservative forces in the party, he said.

"This is the ninth time that we have encountered [pressure] in our 17 years," Du said in a phone interview. "Now they have found an opportunity to target us, but they can't say it directly."

"Their aim is to change the direction of the publication," he said. Du said he had resisted pressure to step down. "In our 17 years, the state has never given us a penny … the magazine is not a state publication and there is no law on retirement age," he said, adding that four out of six of its editors are under the age of 60.

Moreover, he said he represented the voices of more than 100 party luminaries and authors. "They told me: Comrade Du, you do not have the right to make a decision yourself because you were chosen by us," he said.

Du said the magazine’s editorial policy would not waver, even if more interference came along. "If they want to fight, let the fight go on ... it is a contest of strength," he said. "It is like a game of chess, it’s interesting to watch what the next step is."

Now, the story has gone to the next level. As Du told reporters last month, the cover story in this month’s issue of Yanhuang Chunqiu is by Hu Qili, who was purged after 1989, and praises Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang. As reported by John Garnaut:

Hu Qili's new essay, ostensibly about the process of education reform in the 1980s, names Mr Zhao four times and Mr Hu three times.

"Frankly speaking, several major leaders at that time showed outstanding personal qualities, capability, wisdom and courage," writes Hu Qili. "But they always took themselves as ordinary members of the leaders' collective, sincerely and whole-heartedly studying and listening to different opinions, especially opposing opinions. People were encouraged to speak freely, or even confront each other face to face.

"Of course, such a situation was maintained by personal charm and character, self possession and statesmanship. However, this hasn't yet become institutionalised. It is worthy of earnest study."

Observers believe Yanhuang Chunqiu and its influential supporters are pushing the party to confront the legacy of 1989 ahead of the 20th anniversary on June 4.

Catch that Pepsi Spirit: Photo Update

When Micki McCoy and Kelly Hammond sent China Beat the interview they conducted about Hammond's participation in an international Pepsi commercial shoot in Xinjiang, we had a tough time tracking down images or videos. Though we still haven't seen the commercial in full (let us know if you find it online), Hammond did recently send this photo of a "Mexican Uyghur" taken during filming. If that doesn't make any sense to you, take a look at the original interview's discussion of the issues of nationalism, ethnicity, and commercialism that the Pepsi shoot raised for Hammond.

Web Portals to Taiwan's Past

One of the blessings of the Internet Age is the availability of valuable information about the past, in this case Taiwanese history. This post introduces a few English and Chinese websites that I have found most interesting/useful. The list is hardly meant to be exhaustive, and people should feel free to recommend other sites that would benefit all those interested in this topic.

1. The Gerald Warner Taiwan Image Collection -- Put together by Paul Barclay at Lafayette College, this website contains 340 photographs and postcards gathered by Warner from 1937 to 1941 during and after his tenure as U.S. Consul in Taiwan. Barclay rightly reminds us that many of these images were produced for commercial purposes during a period of colonial hegemony. Nonetheless, they provide precious insights on how Taiwan's diverse culture was shaped by Chinese, Austronesian, Japanese, and Western influences. The collection covers a wide range of subjects, including flora, fauna, material culture, religion, and Aboriginal life. Users will also benefit from its Supporting Material section (especially the weblinks), as well as its extensive Bibliography. An additional 1,000 images are due to be posted early next year.

A related web source is Barclay's translation of Kondō "The Barbarian" Katsusaburō 近藤勝三郎's travelogue/memoir, which is now appearing on Michael Turton's blog. Kondō was a Japanese merchant and official who married into Aboriginal lineages in the Puli 埔里 area (in today's Nantou 南投 County), thereby gaining first-hand knowledge of key players in the Wushe 霧社 (Musha) Rebellion of 1930. This gripping account of Kondō's life was published as a serialized version of 29 installments in the Taiwan nichinichi shinpō 臺灣日日新報 (Taiwan Daily News) between December 20, 1930 and February 15, 1931.

2. Formosa Index -- This website, the result of years of dedicated research by Douglas Fix at Reed College, contains an impressive body of largely Western accounts of Taiwan and its people, most of which were published in books and journals during the nineteenth century. Complete versions of travelogues, reports, ethnographies, and general surveys can be found in the Texts section of the website, which also contains useful biographies and annotated bibliographies. The Images section allows visitors to view numerous illustrations about Taiwan's landscapes, people, and material culture, while the island's geographical and ethnological features can be readily appreciated by checking out the Maps section.

3. Yang-Grevot Collection of Taiwan Aboriginal Art -- Those interested in Taiwan's Aboriginal cultures might wish to start their inquiries at this website. In addition to a detailed catalogue of well-annotated images, this site also features plenty of links to museums, other collections, and relevant research, as well as bibliographies in English, French, and Chinese.

4. The Takao Club -- This website, established by a non-profit organization based in southern Taiwan, provides a comprehensive vista of this area's history and culture. Some of its most fascinating sections include biographies of renowned rebels like Lin Shao-mao 林少貓 (1865-1902) and Mona Rudao 莫那魯道 (1882-1930), as well as colorful descriptions of camphor, opium, and betel nuts (including betel nut beauties!).

5. Taiwan History Institute, Academia Sinca -- THE essential starting point for anyone wishing to undertake Chinese-language research, this website proves especially valuable for its Academic Resources (研究資源) section, which has links to the Taiwan Collectanea (臺灣文獻叢刊資料庫) and Governer-General's Office (臺灣總督府檔案) electronic databases. This site is also noteworthy for its remarkable collection of digitalized images (圖像資料庫).

6. Taiwan Historica -- This organization's website contains electronic databases for key government documents from the Japanese colonial and early postwar eras.

7. Taiwan History and Culture in Time and Space -- Representing the fruits of a pioneering interdisciplinary research effort, this website allows users to better appreciate the spatial aspects of Taiwanese history. While requiring some effort to master its various hi-tech features, great rewards await those with the patience to learn how to use its numerous maps, some of which can be downloaded and modified for one's own research purposes. This website also contains maps from my own research project on the Ta-pa-ni 噍吧哖 Incident, the details of which may be found on a Chinese-language website that my research assistant and I have prepared.

China in 2008: Pre-Orders Now Available

The weekend after Thanksgiving is the beginning of the Christmas shopping season, but if you'd like to avoid the crush at the malls, China in 2008 now has its own webpage, where you can order a copy for all those hard-to-gift friends (especially if they don't mind it arriving in March--the release date for the book...).