Debating the Summer Palace

While scholars, like James Hevia in English Lessons, have revised historical views of the impacts of Western imperialism in China during the nineteenth century, China’s government is arguing for a revision of its own. Earlier this week, the New York Times reported that the Chinese government has been pressing for relics stolen from the Summer Palace—about to go up for auction at Christie’s—be returned to China:

The two Qing dynasty bronze animal heads, one depicting a rabbit and the other a rat, are believed to have been part of a set comprising 12 animals from the Chinese zodiac that were created for the imperial gardens during the reign of Emperor Qianlong in the 18th century.

China views the relics as a significant part of its cultural heritage and a symbol of how Western powers encroached on the country during the Opium Wars. The relics were displayed as fountainheads at the Old Summer Palace, known in Chinese as Yuanmingyuan, until it was destroyed and sacked by British and French forces in 1860.

At a press briefing in Beijing last week, a spokeswoman for China’s Foreign Ministry said the two bronzes should be returned to China because they had been taken by “invaders.” And a group of Chinese lawyers says it plans to file a lawsuit this week in Paris seeking to halt or disrupt the sale. But Christie’s says the sale is legal and plans to go ahead with the auction on Monday through Wednesday in Paris, where the two bronze items could fetch as much as $10 million to $13 million apiece.

The Edge of the American West (a group blog) provided a little historical context (hat tip: Danwei):

In both Tianjin and Beijing, there was extensive looting in the summer of 1900. As one American Marine remembered:

“Soldiers of all nations joined the orgy…Men of the allies staggered through the streets, arms and backs piled high with silks and furs, and brocades, with gold and silver and jewels.”

A brisk trade in looted goods broke out, with open air markets buying and selling goods.

This sometimes led to particularly odd moments. American troops began to sport interesting clothing combinations after the capture of Beijing. As one officer remembered:

‘Not a man was completely clad in American uniform. As they lined up for inspection, some of them wore blue or rose Chinese trousers, others mandarin coats, and almost all of them were shod in Chinese silk boots.’

For reflections on the debates surrounding Yuanmingyuan, see this feature at China Heritage Quarterly from 2006, including a piece by Geremie Barme:

In the early 1990s, the Western Pavilions became a site used by state and party leaders to recall the humiliations of the past and to celebrate the regnant nation (and it featured prominently in the 1997 return of Hong Kong to mainland control). In 1993-1994, the government proposed using foreign capital to construct a miniature replica of the Yuanming Yuan on the site of the original, and draft plans and initial archaeological surveys were made. This plan focused on three areas in the southwest section of the site—the Garden of Aquatic Plants (Zaoyuan), the Thirteen Locales (Shisansuo) and the Mountain and River Retreat (Shangao Shuichang). To comply with state regulations on cultural relics protection, Beijing Municipality commissioned archaeologists from the Beijing Cultural Relics Institute to survey and excavate the sites and prepare a draft plan. Shortly thereafter, an area of more than 4,600 sq m at Zaoyuan was excavated between September and December 1994. The entire building complex in the southwest corner of the garden was uncovered. Although all the buildings had been levelled, the outline of the stone paths and ponds could still be seen at the time of the survey.

The Beijing government's proposal to launch incursive reconstruction project in the garden, however, resulted in a public outcry and the proposal was scrapped. However, the idea was floated again in 1998 at the Beijing Municipal Political Consultative Conference, and in May 1999 the Beijing government authorised the Beijing City Planning Authority to draw up a draft plan for the Yuanming Yuan site. The debate spread in the mass media after the historian Wang Daocheng and Chen Liqun voiced their opposition, and the novelist Cong Weixi published a rebuttal in Beijing Evening News (Beijing wanbao).[3] Fuelled by enthusiasm for Beijing's 2008 Olympic bid, the plan was, however, eventually approved in August 2000. Authorities on ancient architecture and the environment were quick to denounce it again. The contretemps about whether the park be preserved as it was, partially restored, partially rebuilt or fully restored raged in the print media for some months, and every time a new incident involving the gardens occurs the familiar battle lines are redrawn and the debate unfolds anew.

The site has spawned other debates, including this one last year over plans for a Summer Palace theme park:

The Hengdian Group, a private company, initiated in 2006 the project to create a reconstructed version of this fabulous park, which was historically known as the "Garden of Gardens" for its luxurious palaces, mansions and décor that utilized both Western and Eastern architectural styles. Their plan would create an exact replica of the undamaged park at its original size. It is scheduled to be completed in 2013. The firm estimates that the investment will cost 20 billion yuan (US$2.78 billion)…

However, the plan has met with mixed public response. About 63 percent of the netizens surveyed were against the project, among whom 9 percent believed that it represented a lucrative business venture and would cause destruction; 23 percent felt that the project would promote traditional Chinese culture, according to a poll…

"It will be a multi-functional theme park and it will bring new growth to the local economy, especially regarding tourism," Xu explained.

But, according to Xu, a specialized committee will be established overseas to collect missing cultural relics, thus making the project a public welfare undertaking.

He said that any reclaimed cultural treasures would be returned to the government after they had been duplicated.

Charles Hayford wrote a piece for Asia Media a few years ago that discusses the continued resonance of 1860 in China today:

Professor Yuan's article begins by observing that after the Cultural Revolution people explained their violent excesses by bitterly commenting "we grew up drinking wolf's milk." But in looking through middle school history texts, Yuan was stunned to find "our youth are still drinking wolf's milk!" The textbooks' treatment of key nineteenth century incidents make his point. The authors present the Taiping rebels and the Boxers as patriotic and heroic precursors of revolution. The crimes of the British in the Second Opium War (1858-1860), such as the burning of the Summer Palace in 1860, are correctly characterized, he says, but the texts fail to hold the Qing government responsible for its own obstinate and criminal acts, which are simply described as patriotic. Yuan concludes that these views are not in the true spirit of China's revolution but represent the "poisonous residue of the vulgarization of revolution."

Punks at Kinko's

By Pierre Fuller

Microfilm is deadly. Deadly for the eyes, the brain and, as I recently learned here on a research jaunt to Beijing, the stomach. So when a CD booklet on the bar of a Haidian district livehouse caught my weary eye I thought I’d found a good wall ornament for the apartment and a better image to set my evenings eyes on. The only problem was the insert – a black & white sketch of a mass of punks tossing Molotovs at a grinning Mao – wasn’t big enough. I was thinking poster size, so I took it to the first place that came to mind: my local Beijing Kinko’s.

The attendant lifted the thing to her face and, yes, things got uncomfortable. There was no mistaking the message on the graphic’s palace backdrop to the Chairman: fanzui xiangfa, pohuai (criminals minds, destroy). And I felt a bit awkward walking in as an American with this suggestive graphic, so I made sure the staff took in the CD cover: two hands, a bloodied hatchet and the head of George W. Bush. These rockers were clearly out for everyone.


The manager and attendant conferred in mutters while a third staffer busied himself with the printed album lyrics, half rendered in English. (E.g. “Kill your Television. We sit back passively as OUR culture is commoditized and force-fed back to us. We have nothing to talk about except TV’s imaginary lives that are safe and sanitized, while the real hours of our own lives are sold away as advertising space to corporations. Our lives become the commodity as the things we buy, the words we speak and the way we live all become reflections of what we watch. Smash your TV and live YOUR life!”; or “We destroy the red dream… The dream turned into a nightmare without end. Now it’s time to destroy this dream gone stale. Smash it up and find a new way!”)

The answer was in the negative. “Political” was the word, and the attendant directed me to the list of rules that Kinko’s (a.k.a. FedEx Office) had posted by the copiers.

I bought this up the street, I said, could it really be illegal?

Again, “political” was the word, and, I suppose, I could’ve been shooed out the door. Instead I got profuse apologies and the suggestion that I take it to a smaller shop in the area where waving cash might get someone to bend the rules. But I didn’t get around to it.

Weeks later I pulled the offending item out of my bag. This time I was in Irvine, California. It too has the convenience of a neighborhood Kinko’s.

Did you make this? asked the woman behind the counter.

I went with honesty: No, I bought it in a bar in Beijing.

You’ll need a release letter from the artist, she said.

A letter? I said. From Chinese punks?

The irony, of course, was lost on her. Legality? Property? She had to read the stuff she was holding. But then there was no chance that that would happen. She was one of two or so staffers. The Beijing branch was crawling with some twelve.

How about I copy it myself, I asked.

She wouldn’t have any of it. Poohed away by this haughty, middle-aged woman like a petty thief, I realized I’d been stumped by the respective power and property obsessions of two reigning systems. But at least the Beijing branch had offered an apology and a back-up plan.

Back to Beijing, and the first candidate I could think of: a photo shop at one of the Peking University gates. I figured I’d print and break the image up in quadrants; for some reason I thought it’d look better up on the wall that way. The young woman didn’t bat an eye when she brought my image up on her PC. I confirmed that I wanted each quadrant at 6 by 8 (cun, or inches; photos here, I learned, are measured American-style). It was smaller than I’d planned, but the price was right and I had them in hand the next day.

Now I’m working on the frame. I’m thinking I'll go safe with black.

Readings Around the Net

1. Rebecca MacKinnon has a great new article at First Monday (“peer-reviewed journal on the internet”) called “China’s Censorship 2.0: How Companies Censor Bloggers.” It is required reading for all those tracking China’s web developments.

2. David Flumenbaum has produced a great reader that tracks the developments of and reactions to the CCTV fire in Beijing. It includes videos and excerpts from news reports.

3. If you haven’t yet read chinaSMACK, you can catch a clever recap of their 2008 postings here.

A week ago, we ran Lauri Paltemaa’s reflection on democracy movements and anniversaries in China this year. Here’s a mini-primer of related (Charter 08 and anniversaries) news.

1. For another take on the possible coming problems for the CCP this year, see Willy Lam’s commentary at the Asia Times (hat tip: CDT)

2. China Digital Times has continued to track Charter 08 news, as in this piece from last week. Two weeks ago, CDT ran a translation of a commentary on Hu Jintao’s poor leadership, and how it might contribute to unrest in 2009.

3. Xujun Eberlein also recently summarized the Charter 08 events at her blog (and the comments section is very interesting too).

4. For more on the “rumbles” of further unrest from a few weeks ago, see “China’s rural teachers join rumble of unrest” (Reuters, at International Herald Tribune), “China police take away citizens airing grievances” (AP), and “Workers protest as Italian sofa maker folds in China” (AFP).

5. And for a typically thoughtful preview of the challenges that confront Hu and Wen in the coming year, see Kerry Brown’s “China’s giant struggle” at openDemocracy.

The JAS for Free: REVOLUTION!

Last spring, we reported from the annual AAS meeting on President Elizabeth Perry's inspiring address ("Reclaiming the Chinese Revolution"). For a short period of time, the address is available for free PDF download and we strongly encourage you to grab a copy while you can. [Link will take you to the issue and from there you can select the format in which you wish to view Perry's piece.]

The address begins:

REVOLUTIONS ARE UNPOPULAR THESE days, among Western politicians and scholars alike.We put our faith in liberal institutions such as markets and courts of law, looking to “democratic transitions” rather than to social revolutions as the path toward political progress. The view of revolution as a nasty and needless mistake was evident twenty years ago when celebrations surrounding the bicentennial of the French Revolution evoked debate and discomfort both inside and outside France. Then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, after leaving Paris on Bastille Day 1989, tapped into the prevailing sentiment when she presented President François Mitterrand with a handsome edition of Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, and smugly instructed the French president to read Dickens to learn why the French Revolution had been completely unnecessary...

Indeed, I imagine it is fair to say that many members of our association were initially drawn to the Asian field because we once held a favorable view of the Chinese revolution. Forty years ago, in the spring of 1968, the Association for Asian Studies convened its annual meeting in Philadelphia. That occasion was marked by a subgathering of Asianists who opposed the war in Vietnam, out of which was born the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars (CCAS). The many budding young Asianists who soon joined the CCAS, myself included, were generally united in the conviction that the war in Vietnam represented an epochal clash between a dynamic Asian revolutionary upsurge, stirred by the example of Mao’s China, on the one hand, and a destructive American imperialism, bolstered by the work of some prominent members of the Asian studies establishment, on the other.

But that was then...

The availabilty of the address is part of an effort on the part of the AAS's journal, the Journal of Asian Studies, to increase the association's reach. For another free article (again, available for limited time), see "State, Sovereignty, and the People: A Comparison of the 'Rule of Law' in China and India" by Jonathan K. Ocko and David Gilmartin (Feb. 2009).

A Year of Telling Tales

"Tales from Taiwan" also celebrated its first birthday recently. Since our inaugural posting on January 14, 2008, Peter Zarrow, Jennifer Liu, Yong Chen, and I have been contributing pieces about various aspects of Taiwanese culture. In terms of readership, here is a bit of numerology provided courtesy of the China Beat's web wizards:

The general page for "Tales" received 1,297 views as of February 5, totaling approximately 500 fewer than the tenth-most viewed post for the China Beat (Five Sites for Lesson Plans and Teaching Materials on China; 1,775 views).

Our Taiwan top five reads as follows:

1. The KMT Backstroke = 453 views
2. The Great Diversion = 372 views
3. Wild Strawberries = 267 views
4. Where Do We Go From Here? = 236 views
5. Trauma and Memory: 228 in Taiwan Today = 217 views

(Note: The category "views" simply records the number of readers who clicked a particular story; our wizardry does not extend to divining how many perused the story on the China Beat's main page when it was first posted).

A few posts attracted considerable discussion, some of it heated:

1. State of Siege = 16 comments
2. Wild Strawberries = 10 comments
3. The KMT Backstroke + The Return of the Two Nationalisms = 6 comments (tie)
4. Taiwan Top Five = 5 comments
5. 2008 Retrospective: Olympics in Taiwan + Trauma and Memory: 228 in Taiwan Today = 4 comments (tie)

It is a bit disappointing that the pieces about Taiwanese culture (movies, sports, festivals, etc.) seem to have attracted less attention than those about politics. However, "Tales" will continue to address both of these topics, while also devoting some space to the plight of Taiwan's underprivileged.

Bill Powell (1919-2008)

Stephen MacKinnon is a Professor of History at Arizona State University whose most recent book (reviewed by Nicole Barnes on China Beat last August) is Wuhan 1938. He has an abiding interest, as this post shows, in the history of Western journalists in China--an interest that led to publication of earlier books such as Agnes Smedley. He sent us this piece from India, but our PRC-based readers might like to know that they can catch him live at the Shanghai International Literary Festival on March 22, where he will give a talk at M on the Bund on “Intrigue and Romance the 1930s--Agnes Smedley's Shanghai.”

Bill Powell (John W. Powell) died suddenly on December 15 at the age of 89. Obituaries (New York Times, 12/17/08) focused on the sedition trial of the 1950s in which Bill, wife Sylvia, and Julian Schuman were pilloried for repeating in the Shanghai English language weekly, China Weekly Review, the charge that U.S. forces used germ warfare in the Korean War. The story of their defense is a remarkable one of personal courage and tenacity – and of course it should be addressed. The ordeal made McCarthy hysteria martyrs of the Powells.

But there is another, more Chinese story to tell about Bill Powell. Bill was a central figure, one of the few who survived into the twenty-first century, among a group of young men and women from the West (mostly American) who reported on the China theatre during World War II. In the face of censorship, language barriers (the country was a check-board of regional dialects), and the horrors of daily bombing raids, Powell and others dug for stories and then found various means to get their stories out and in print. Their reports marked the most extensive news coverage at that point of a non-Western country in the Western press. Bill’s comrades included John Hersey, Teddy White, Harold Isaacs, AT Steele, Til and Peggy Durdin, Jack Belden, Anna L. Jacoby, Stewart Alsop, Mac Fisher, Chris Rand, Graham Peck, Agnes Smedley, Edgar Snow, and Freda Utley.

What Bill lacked in age and experience was made up by the connections of his father in Shanghai (where Bill was born). By the mid-1920s, J.B. Powell – originally from Hannibal, Missouri – was a legend in the Chinese coast English language publishing world. He was editor and eventually publisher of the China Weekly Review, the most widely read and quoted publication (often in the Chinese language press) of its kind in China. By the 1930s , the editorial stance of the Review was virulently anti-Japanese. In December, 1941, J.B. was arrested in Shanghai and badly tortured by the Japanese occupation forces.

Fresh out of college, Bill was 22 years old when he returned to China as a war correspondent. When Bill arrived in Chongqing shortly after Pearl Harbor, he knew only that his father was in a concentration camp. Bill was assigned first to Chongqing, which he found stifling. As soon as possible he volunteered to go to Guilin as an officer in the Office of War Information as well as a stringer for Christian Science Monitor, Chicago Daily News and other publications. His father’s connections gave Bill access at the highest level to Chinese government officials, both Communist and Nationalist (remember China was nominally fighting at this point as a “united” front). These included figures like Chiang Kaishek and the Madame, H.H. Kong, T.V. Song on the Nationalist side and Zhou Enlai and Gong Peng on the Communist side. On the American side, he was part of the press corps covering the tumultuous relationship between Generals Vinegar Joe Stilwell (Army) and Claire Chennault (Air Force) as well as the shenanigans of the Navy Intelligence chief Milton (Mary) Miles.

The high point of his war reporting years, Bill told me, were his years in Guilin (in mountainous Guangxi province, northwest of Canton). He was there from 1942 until the city fell to the Japanese in 1944. Besides being more picturesque than Chongqing (as it still is), Guilin was much freer politically and culturally – free of Chiang Kaishek’s secret police or juntong led by the infamous Daili. A group of different Generals, not Chiang Kaishek, had controlled the province as an independent power base since the 1920s. The most important of these in Bill’s time were Generals Bai Chongxi and Li Jishen. Annual celebrations of General Bai’s mother’s birthday was the biggest holiday of the year. Thus from Guilin Bill got stories out, about dramatic rescues of downed U.S. plane crews, for example. He was able to report with less censorship and in a more balanced way on the battlefield developments and political rivalries going on around him. Bill also thought that the partnership between the U.S. and Chinese allies worked better in Guilin, with a lot going on beneath the surface. Guilin was a center of intrigue between British, American, and Chinese intelligence operatives – in all sorts of ways. For example, Ho Chi Minh surfaced in Guilin, soliciting and winning support from the O.S.S., after a bad spell in a Chiang Kaishek prison (in Chongqing). There were collisions between British and U.S. intelligence about how to best conduct clandestine operations in Burma, and so forth.

At another level, Guilin was exciting because it enjoyed a flowering as a sort of wartime cultural center, attracting prominent Chinese artists, writers, and poets. General Bai bankrolled the major daily paper, Aobei ribao, whose editorial board had strong communist leanings. There were even important western cultural figures passing through, including Hemingway. Bill remembered being amused by Robert Payne, the poet and translator, who was married at the time to the daughter of a Beijing aristocrat, wandering around Guilin with long hair, sandals, and a rope holding up his pants – to Bill anticipating the beat generation he saw in San Francisco in the 1950s.

In 1944 Bill was one of the last out of Guilin before the arrival of the Japanese as part of the Ichigo offensive. He covered the tragic torching of the city before the Japanese advance which included the U.S. forces blowing up the state of the art hospital they had just opened.

Bill never forgot the Guilin (and Chongqing) years. They represented one of the high points of his life (another being his marriage to Sylvia in Shanghai and honeymoon in Lichang in 1947). Bill met Sylvia through Madame Sun Yatsen (Song Qingling). Of course his assumption of the editorship of the Weekly Review after the war (followed by the death of his father in 1947 in New York) was a milestone as well. As editors, Bill and Sylvia had the ideal catbird seat from which to view the Chinese civil war. By 1947 Bill saw the Communists as China’s best hope for the future and the Review’s reporting ran in that direction. (Ironic, because J.B. Powell had been a strong supporter of Chiang Kaishek and founder of the China Lobby in the U.S.).

It is important to remember Bill’s role as a war correspondent and put it on an par with the later life experiences. He was the last of a generation of Western journalist-adventurers for whom China during the war became a romantic, courageous, revolutionary place. Their reporting broke with older styles of “treaty port” journalism because they attempted to report empathically on conditions as a whole in China. It was this generation who inaugurated a new era of much more varied and penetrating Western reporting on the Chinese situation and later on all of Asia– a legacy that still casts a shadow today.

Readers may also be interested in China Reporting: An Oral History of American Journalism in the 1930s and 1940s by Stephen MacKinnon and An American Editor in Early Revolutionary China by Neil O'Brien.

Clinton Plans Visit to China

In just a week, Hilary Clinton will be in China for her first visit as U.S. Secretary of State. What will inform the visit? Here are a few readings that discuss it…

1. Surprise! Many China watchers were caught short by the news that Clinton is headed to China for a visit. The tour has been put together at the last moment, with an as-yet unclear agenda, as discussed by Ian Johnson at WSJ…

2. For an updated analysis of Clinton’s likely goals during her Asia stops, see FEER’s report. One highlight from their analysis of the China visit:

The final stop in China will combine personal and policy tests for Secretary Clinton. Personal, because she has long been critical of China for human rights abuses and trade issues, and Beijing has been trying to puzzle her out. Policy, because President Obama has set high goals for additional cooperation with China, beyond what President Bush achieved.

3. On Friday, Clinton gave a speech at the Asia Society that indicated the direction her visit might take:

Secretary Clinton also said she will "press the case" for greater energy efficiency and clean energy, stating that climate change also has implications on global health care and economy.

4. Clinton has made several high-profile visits to China already. Here is a report on her 1995 visit during the U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women.

5. In case you’d like a day-by-day accounting of the Clinton 1998 visit to China (really perhaps more than most of us need to know), here is that detailed account.

6. As some will remember, China was a punching bag for Clinton and Obama during the primaries. If you need a refresher, check out this story from AFP.

7. Back in January 2008, Sufei of Sexy Beijing pondered how she should make a decision between Obama and Clinton…revealing Clinton’s widespread familiarity and popularity on the streets of Beijing.

For Book Lovers and China Enthusiasts…

Tis the season of book festivals, at least around here. A number of China Beat contributors will be speaking at events in the coming months. Here is a list of readings to add to your calendars:

1. The Man Hong Kong International Literary Festival. Scroll through their program to find panels with Xujun Eberlein (Saturday, March 14, 10 a.m., and again on Sunday, March 15, 3 p.m.) and Jeffrey Wasserstrom (Monday, March 16, 4 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. and Tuesday, March 17, 7:30 p.m.), as well as many other commentators and analysts (like Rebecca MacKinnon) and writers (like Zhu Wen) whose publications have been mentioned or linked to on China Beat.

2. The Shanghai International Literary Festival. Jeffrey Wasserstrom will be speaking Sunday, March 15, 4 p.m. Scroll through to find more friends of the blog on the program, including Stephen MacKinnon, Graham Earnshaw, and James Fallows. (Those interested in past visitors can scroll through the archives of Shanghai City Weekend's Book Club, which down near the bottom of the page has podcasts from the 2008 event available for downloading.)

3. Virginia Festival of the Book. Susan Brownell and Kate Merkel-Hess will be speaking at a panel on “Portraits of Contemporary China,” Friday, March 20, 10 a.m.

China in the U.S. Annual Threat Assessment

News agencies have been reporting widely on the content of the U.S. intelligence community's annual threat assessment, delivered Thursday by Dennis Blair (director of U.S. national intelligence) and peppered with language that hearkens back to the Bush era (of a whole four weeks ago, but, still, anyone else tired of references to the U.S. as the "Homeland"?). News stories have focused on the primacy given to the economic crisis in the report and the analysis of threats in the Middle East and what the report calls an "arc of instabilty" from South Asia through the Middle East. However, the report also contains several pages on China specifically (pp. 22-23), as well as mentions of China's impact in Africa (pp. 34-5), its role in cyber attacks (p. 39), and Chinese environmental security (p. 45).

The full report is available at the website of the Director of National Intelligence. Below are excerpts of the included material on China.

From the section on China:

We judge China’s international behavior is driven by a combination of domestic priorities, primarily maintaining economic prosperity and domestic stability, and a longstanding ambition to see China play the role of a great power in East Asia and globally. Chinese leaders view preserving domestic stability as one of their most important internal security challenges. Their greatest concerns are separatist unrest and the possibility that local protests could merge into a coordinated national movement demanding fundamental political reforms or an end to Party rule. Security forces move quickly and sometimes forcefully to end demonstrations. The March 2008 protests in Tibet highlighted the danger of separatist unrest and prompted Beijing to deploy paramilitary and military assets to end the demonstrations.

These same domestic priorities are central to Chinese foreign policy. China’s desire to secure access to the markets, commodities, and energy supplies needed to sustain domestic economic growth significantly influences its foreign engagement. Chinese diplomacy seeks to maintain favorable relations with other major powers, particularly the US, which Beijing perceives as vital to China’s economic success and to achieving its other strategic objectives. But Beijing is also seeking to build its global image and influence in order to advance its broader interests and to resist what it perceives as external challenges to those interests or to China’s security and territorial integrity.

Taiwan as an area of tension in US-China relations has substantially relaxed since the 2008 election of Ma Ying-jeou. The new Taiwanese President inaugurated in May has resumed dialogue with Beijing after a nine-year hiatus, and leaders on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are now cautiously optimistic that a new period of less confrontational relations has begun. Many outstanding challenges remain, however, and the two sides eventually will need to confront issues such as Taiwan’s participation in international organizations. Beijing has not renounced the use of force against the island, and China’s leaders see maintaining the goal of unification as vital to regime legitimacy.

On the modernization of the PLA:

Preparations for a possible Taiwan conflict continue to drive the modernization goals of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and the Chinese defense-industrial complex. It will likely remain the primary factor as long as the Taiwan situation is unresolved. At the same time, we judge that China over the past several years has begun a substantially new phase in its military development by beginning to articulate roles and missions for the PLA that go well beyond China’s immediate territorial interests.

• For example, China’s leaders may decide to contribute combat forces to peacekeeping operations, in addition to expanding the current level of command and logistic support.

• China’s national security interests are broadening. This will likely lead China to attempt to develop at least a limited naval power projection capability extending beyond the South China Sea. This already has been reflected in Beijing’s decision in December to participate in anti-piracy operations off the coast of Somalia.

Missile Capability. China continues to develop and field conventional theater-range ballistic and cruise missile capabilities that can reach US forces and regional bases throughout the Western Pacific and Asia, including Guam. China also is developing conventionally armed short- and medium-range ballistic missiles with terminally guided maneuverable warheads that could be used to attack US naval forces and airbases. In addition, counter-command, control, and sensor systems, to include communications satellite jammers, are among Beijing’s highest military priorities.
Counterspace Systems. China continues to pursue a long-term program to develop a capability to disrupt and damage critical foreign space systems. Counterspace systems, including antisatellite (ASAT) weapons, also rank among the country’s highest military priorities.
Nuclear Capability. On the nuclear side, we judge Beijing seeks to modernize China’s strategic forces in order to address concerns about the survivability of those systems in the face of foreign, particularly US, advances in strategic reconnaissance, precision strike, and missile defenses. We assess China’s nuclear capabilities will increase over the next ten years.

And on Africa:

China’s presence has grown substantially over the past decade. Total bilateral trade between China and the continent has increased from less than $4 billion in 1995 to $100 billion in 2008, but the EU and US still remain far larger economic partners for the region. China’s objectives are to secure access to African markets and natural resources, isolate Taiwan, and enhance its international stature, all of which it has made progress on. Nevertheless, China’s role has generated local resentment as Chinese firms are seen as undercutting African competitors in securing commercial contracts and falling short of standard local labor practices. Moreover, there is little discernible evidence of Chinese investments being used to incorporate Africa into the industrial “global value production chains” that are becoming the hallmark of integrative trade and FDI flows, especially in manufacturing in other regions of the world.

On cyber attacks:

We assess that a number of nations, including Russia and China, have the technical capabilities to target and disrupt elements of the US information infrastructure and for intelligence collection. Nation states and criminals target our government and private sector information networks to gain competitive advantage in the commercial sector.

On the environment:

China’s high incidence of chronic disease stemming in great part from heavy tobacco use threatens to slow economic growth by incapacitating workers and incurring heavy health-care costs. The health effects of environmental degradation are an increasing source of discontent in China.

Obama Recommendations: VI

Paul French is the Shanghai-based author of Carl Crow, a Tough Old China Hand and keeps the blog China Rhyming, as well as acting as publishing and marketing director at Access Asia. French's next book, Through the Looking Glass: China's Foreign Journalists from the Opium Wars to Mao, will be published June 1 by Hong Kong University Press.

Obama claims to be a break with the past by which, in a very American way of defining the past, he seems to mean the last few years. Instructive as some recent China books may be, perhaps the President would care to go back a bit further and consider the opinions of some older Americans and one Brit with plenty of China experience.

The revival of American extraterritoriality (extrality) in Iraq does not appear to have spurred much interest in historians to go back and look at previous examples of the practise. But in pre-revolution Shanghai, Americans were at the forefront of the debate and history has a tendency to echo. So he might benefit from ploughing through the great American journalist in Shanghai Thomas Fairfax Millard’s The End of Extraterritoriality in China (1931). Millard’s book influenced a whole gang of Americans in Shanghai to oppose extrality – China Weekly Review editor JB Powell did and he was drummed out of the right wing American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai (some things never change!) for his position. A more recent examination of the failings of America’s attempts at extrality in China, Ellen P. Scully’s Bargaining With the State from Afar: American Citizenship in Treaty Port China 1844-1942 (2001), might also prove useful.

Obama is about to get bombarded by a thousand and one industry lobby groups and the US-China Business Council about how he must adopt a “trade first” policy towards China as there are millions to be made over there. Hopefully the expensive suits and lavish PowerPoints won’t faze him. To help, he might like to read Carl Crow’s 1937 classic 400 Million Customers: The Experiences – Some Happy, Some Sad of an American in China, and What They Taught Him. It should at least remind the Commander-in-Chief that there’s very little new under the sun – in 1937 Crow could confidently write - “China is a market of long receivables, rigid markets, structural inefficiency, impossible logistics and relentless brazen copying and substitution of imported goods with fakes” and conclude that a lot of those PowerPoint projections may not come to pass now as they didn’t back then – “No matter what you may be selling, your business in China should be enormous, if the Chinese who should buy your goods would only do so.”

The President is presumably a rather busy chap at the moment and doesn’t have much time for reading so there’s no need to overburden him. Perhaps the most instructive read to prepare him for the “experts” that will inundate him is a book that might or might not have ever existed – Tony Keswick’s Everything I Know About China which has become an old Shanghai legend. Keswick was the taipan of Jardine Matheson in Shanghai up until WW2. He rarely gave interviews and when he did would sit opposite the eager journalist with a coffee table between them upon which was a leather-bound and beautifully embossed copy of Everything I Know About China. Half way through the interview he would excuse himself from the room, go next door and peep through a spy hole in the wall to watch the journalist, knowing they wouldn’t be able to resist opening the book for a peek. Inside were 200 completely empty pages. You get the point hopefully?

China’s Water Woes: Past, Present, and Future

The Chinese droughts have just begun to move onto the front pages of the world's newspapers, but the droughts are just the latest sign of much more dire warnings of water woes in China. Some China experts are talking about this (see, for instance, today's event at the Wilson Center on "Temperatures Rising: Climate Change, Water, and the Himalayas"), but, in China Beat fashion, we're hoping to encourage many more people to do a little more reading and talking about it too, so we invited Ken Pomeranz to reflect on the present news and suggest a few further readings for those who are interested.

By Ken Pomeranz

Water is back in the China-related news lately – and that’s almost always a bad sign. Most recently, we have had stories about the grinding North China drought; this may be the worst since the late 50s drought that exacerbated the Great Leap Forward famine. A bit earlier, we had the report of credible (though unproven) research suggesting that last May’s catastrophic Sichuan earthquake may have been triggered by pressure from the water stored behind Zipingpu Dam. (See here for an early report, and then the slightly later piece, with more about the key Chinese scientist involved, by Evan Osnos of the New Yorker). Late in January, Jiang Gaoming of the Chinese Academy of Sciences released a sobering piece (China Dialogue, January 22, 2009) about how accelerating the construction of dams in China’s Southwest – part of the P.R.C.’s ambitious stimulus package to fight the global recession – is worsening the already considerable environmental and social risks involved, with some projects beginning before any Environmental Impact Assessments have been completed. Such a confluence of events is enough to make a historian think back…to about six weeks ago.

When the China Beat crew decided to put together our book China in 2008, I drew what you could consider either the long or the short straw, depending on your tastes: light editorial duties in return for writing an “end of the year wrap-up” piece to go at the end of the book. (Most of the copy had to go to the press by November 1, and a book with the sub-title “10 months out of a year of great significance” somehow didn’t seem right.) And as the last days of the year ticked off and I tried to figure out what things about 2008 to emphasize, water kept winding up at the center. Here’s an excerpt:

“The Olympics briefly focused attention on China’s serious air pollution problems…But China’s water woes are at least equally pressing, and it may be easier to see what effects they will have. Two little-noted news items from near the end of the year may illuminate that – after we review some background.

Water has always been a problem in China, and effective control of it has been associated with both personal heroism and legitimate sovereignty for as far back as our records go…. But water scarcity is probably an even greater problem than excesses, especially in the modern period. Surface and near-surface water per capita in China today is roughly ¼ of the global average, and worse yet, it is distributed very unevenly. The North and Northwest, with over half the country’s arable land, have about 7 percent of its surface water; the North China Plain, in particular, has 10 to12 percent of the per capita supply for the country as a whole, or less than 3 percent of the global average. China also has unusually violent seasonal fluctuations in water supply; both rainfall and river levels change much more over the course of the year than in either Europe or North America. While the most famous of China’s roughly 85,000 dams are associated with hydro-power (about which more in a minute), a great many exist mostly to store water during the peak flow of rivers for use at other times of year.

The People’s Republic has made enormous efforts to address these problems – and achieved impressive short-term successes that are now extremely vulnerable. Irrigated acreage has more than tripled since 1950, with the vast majority of those gains coming in the North and Northwest; this has turned the notorious “land of famine” of the 1850-1950 period into a crucial grain surplus area, and contributed mightily to improving per capita food supplies for a national population that has more than doubled. Much of that, however, has come through the massive use of deep wells bringing up underground water far faster than it can be replaced; and a great deal of water is wasted, especially in agriculture, where costs to farmers are kept artificially low. (Chinese agriculture is not necessarily more wasteful in this regard than agriculture in many other places – and certainly the deviations from market prices are no worse than in the supposedly market-driven United States – but its limited supplies make waste a much more immediate problem.) Water tables are now dropping rapidly in much of North China, and water shortages are a frequent fact of life for most urban residents. (Beijing suffers fewer water shortages, but only because it can commandeer the water resources of a large surrounding rural area included in the municipality.) Various technologies that would reduce water waste exist, but most are expensive. More realistic pricing of irrigation water would help – but probably at the price of driving millions of marginal farmers to the wall, and greatly accelerating the already rapid rush of people to the cities. Consequently, adoption of both of these palliatives is likely to remain slow.

Instead, the state has chosen a massive three-pronged effort to move water from South to North China – by far the biggest construction project in history, if it is completed. Part of the Eastern section began operating this year, and the Central section is also underway (though the December 31 Wall Street Journal reported a delay due to environmental concerns). The big story in the long run, however is the Western line, which will tap the enormous water resources of China’s far Southwest – Tibet alone has over 30 percent of China’s fresh water supply, most of it coming from the annual run-off of some water from Himalayan glaciers. (This is an aspect of the Tibet question one rarely hears about, but rest assured that all the engineers in China’s leadership, including Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, are very much aware of it. Tibetans, meanwhile, not only see a precious resource going elsewhere when their water is tapped: they regard many of the lakes and rivers to be dammed as sacred.) The engineering challenges in this mountainous region are enormous, but so are the potential rewards, both in water supply and in hydropower – the electricity water can generate is directly proportional to how far it falls into the turbines, and the Yangzi, for instance, completes 90 percent of its drop to the sea before it even enters China proper. The risks, as our two stories make clear, are social and political as well as environmental…

Call the two news stories the “double glacier shock.” On December 9, Asia Times Online reported that China was planning to go ahead with a major hydroelectric dam and water diversion scheme on the great bend of the Yarlong Tsangpo River in Tibet. The hydro project is planned to generate 40,000 megawatts – almost twice as much as Three Gorges. But the water which this dam would impound and turn northwards currently flows south into Assam to form the Brahmaputra, which in turn joins the Ganges to form the world’s largest river delta, supplying much of the water to a basin with over 300 million inhabitants. While South Asians have worried for some time that China might divert this river, the Chinese government had denied any such intentions, reportedly doing so again when Hu Jintao visited New Delhi in 2006. But when Indian Prime Minister Singh raised the issue again during his January, 2008 visit to Beijing, the tone had changed, with Wen Jiabao supposedly replying that water scarcity is a threat to the “very survival of the Chinese nation,” and providing no assurances. And so it is – not only for China, but for its neighbors. Most of Asia’s major rivers – the Yellow, the Yangzi, the Mekong, Salween, Irrawaddy, Brahmaputra, Ganges, Sutlej, and Indus – draw on the glaciers of the Himalayas, and all of these except the Ganges have their source on the Chinese side of the border. Forty-seven percent of the world’s people, from Karachi to Tianjin, draw on those rivers.

In short the possible damage to China’s neighbors from this approach to its water and energy needs is staggeringly large – and the potential to raise political tensions is commensurate. Previous water diversion projects affecting the source of the Mekong have already drawn protests from Vietnam (and from environmental groups), and a project on the Nu River (which becomes the Salween in Thailand and Burma) was suspended in 2004. But this project has vastly larger implications for both Chinese and foreigners. If, as some people think, the twenty-first century will be the century of conflicts over water, Tibet may well be ground zero.

Of course, China is hardly the only country that has ever appropriated water (not to mention other resources) that others see as theirs; I am writing in Southern California, made much more livable by denying Mexico Colorado River water it is theoretically guaranteed by treaty. And there is also something to be said, environmentally, for anything that provides China with lots of electricity and isn’t coal…

But that’s where the second glacier shock of 2008 comes in – news that this crucial water source is disappearing faster than anyone had previously realized. A report published in Geophysical Research Letters on November 22 noted that recent samples taken from Himalayan glaciers were missing two markers that are usually easy to find, reflecting open air nuclear tests in 1951-2 and 1962-3. The reason: the glacier apparently had lost any ice built up since the mid-1940s…And since the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that the Himalayan highlands will warm at about twice the average global rate over the next century, there is every reason to think the situation will get worse. One estimate has 1/3 of the Himalayan glaciers disappearing by 2050, and 2/3 by 2100. If that scenario is right, then even if all the engineering challenges of South-North water diversion can be solved, and even if China undertakes and gets away with taking water away from hundreds of millions of people in South and Southeast Asia, the resulting fix might not last very long…”

Strangely, these stories have attracted very little press coverage. There is, however, an excellent video at the Asia Society website. And there is a fair amount of stuff that’s worth reading about China’s water problems in general. If you are interested in learning more, here are a few things I would recommend:

1. James Nickum has a nice, short, summary of the South-North water transfer project available online. His December 1998 essay in China Quarterly, “Is China Living on the Water Margin?” (#156, 880-898) seems to me to have held up very nicely for a 10-year old overview of this rapidly changing set of problems (and as regular readers of this blog know, we give extra points for punning titles).

2. Another useful overview from several years ago (more technical than Nickum’s) is Olli Varis and Pertti Vakkilainen “China’s 8 challenges to water resources management in the first quarter of the 21st Century,” Geomorphology 41:2/3 pp. 93-104 (November 15, 2001). If you’re at a place where you can access the web version (i.e., a library with a subscription), you’ll find lots of useful further links to click on. (Here is one link for those with a subscription through ScienceDirect.)

3. Elizabeth Economy’s The River Runs Black seems to me to overstate the problems at some times (and since I don’t have a sanguine view, that should give an idea how, umm, black, her take is), but it’s a very good introduction to some of the relevant policy-making agencies and processes.

4. Dai Qing’s various essays on Three Gorges and other hydro projects are very useful, as is the collection Mega-Project (which included both official and unofficial views of the project).

5. Probe International often has good material, as does the International Rivers project.

6. And since plugging oneself is OK on a blog, I have a long-ish essay on the history of Chinese water management in a forthcoming collection of essays on environmental history: Burke, Edmund III, and Kenneth Pomeranz, editors The Environment and World History (UC Press, forthcoming March, 2009).

Happy 牛Year!

By Christopher C. Heselton

On January 25, 2009, Lunar New Year’s Eve, millions of Chinese watched Zhao Benshan’s comedic stylings on the Spring Festival Gala, but for many, when they turned to check the inbox of their cell phone, they found it full of dozens of unread text messages. No, they weren’t advertising cut-rate travel packages to the latest tourist paradise – for the most part at least. They were messages from friends, family, significant-others, co-workers, and acquaintances congratulating the recipient on the “Happy 牛Year!” (a play upon “niu,” the Chinese word for ox or cow, sounding similar to the English word “new,” of course).

Eating dumplings, setting off fireworks, watching the Spring Festival Gala on CCTV, and now – wait, what’s this? – sending a hoard of text messages on your cell phone? That’s right: sending text message greetings to close ones on Chinese New Year has rapidly become the new New Year’s thing to do. In fact, text message greetings have become a tradition for nearly every Chinese holiday and special occasion: Mid-Autumn festival, Western New Year (now celebrated with great fanfare in China, though still not nearly as much as the other one), even birthdays. Of course, this trend is mostly among young and middle-aged cell users. It has yet to be a popular venue of “new year obeisance” (拜年) with those over forty. Between January 25 and January 31, Chinese users sent a mind-boggling 18 billion text messages according to the three largest telecom companies in China. Over half of those messages were sent on January 25 (Chinese New Year’s Eve) as many sat down watching the Spring Festival Gala. To put it in context, that’s fourteen messages for every Chinese citizen, averaging thirty messages sent from each cell phone and representing one in every forty text messages sent in a year!

These holiday messages are often full of word-plays and poetic rhymes ranging from the witty to the cheesy, the hilarious to the innocuous, the inane to the heart felt. They often involve the Chinese zodiac animal of the year and perhaps national themes; last year, many of these messages made references to the Olympics, such as ones that played off the fact that the characters for Olympics also mean “mysterious luck.”

This year, as expected, the prevalent theme is the ox (牛). One typical rhythmic message I received read:

The ox’s twisted horn always faces forward; the ox’s big round eyes look at the pieces of fortune; the ox’s heavy body is healthy and strong; the ox’s tail sweeps clear to welcome in happiness; the ox’s thunderous call beckons spring’s return; the ox’s hooves stamp intentions into shape. Wish this Year of the Ox to be more prosperous. The flourishing ox carries forth prosperity to fill the heavens. Great luck in year of the ox!

牛角弯弯总向前,牛眼圆圆看福篇,牛身重重身体健,牛尾扫扫尽欢颜，牛声震震唤春归，牛 蹄踩踩心意圆。祝愿牛年多财气，旺牛载运福满天。牛年大吉！

Others made humorous word plays off the word “ox.” One such message I received used a vulgar Chinese expression, “the cow’s vagina” (牛屄), which is roughly equivalent to English terms such as “awesome” or “bad ass”:

I wish for your endeavors to be like an ox/awesome! Your work like an ox/awesome! Your home like an ox/awesome! Your health like an ox/awesome! Your wealth like an ox/awesome! Your fortune like an ox/awesome! Yourself like an ox/awesome! Your entire family like an ox/awesome! Your year of the ox like an ox/awesome! Every year like an ox/awesome! Everything all like an ox/awesome!

祝您事业牛!工作牛！家庭牛！身体牛！财运牛！福气牛！个人牛！全家牛！牛年牛，年年 牛!一切皆牛!

Another used black humor to make light of the recent tainted milk scandal by claiming to deliver me several bovine products, including “a milk cow to send you no health” (奶牛为你送不康). The message continued on to say that they sent me “a Red Bull to make your work prosper” (红牛让你事业旺), a reference to the energy drink, and “a cow herder looking to the length of your love-life” (牛郎望你爱情长) – a reference to the ancient Chinese myth of cow herder boy and weaver girl, a pair of, literally, star-crossed lovers.

If all this is news to you, these messages may seem a quaint, creative, or an ingenious incorporation of new technology into the marking of an age-old holiday, but for many these messages are something else – an enormous annoyance! Many people receive thirty, sixty, even ninety messages in a single night, with each requiring a response out of appreciation or mere propriety. The messages also, with rare exceptions, lack sincerity. Most of the ones I received were copied from the Internet, and this is routine. Many are pulled off the web and sent indiscriminately to everyone in a person’s cell phone book. Some people do resist this trend by single-handedly – or should I say “single-thumb-edly”? – writing personalized messages to each friend, but this can take an hour or so, hence the common use of shortcuts.) The idea is a nice enough one, to show that you are thinking of someone fondly during the holiday season although you may not be able to pay a “new year obeisance”; however, the likelihood that one is simply receiving a mass-produced greeting may mean that few bother to actually read what comes onto their screen.

Despite the irritating ring of the cell phone during Chinese New Year, the trend has been ever more popular with the number of text messages increasing at least 50 percent every year, and this year, according to The Northeast News Net, 85 percent. So, although many may be looking to watch this year’s skit by Zhao Benshan, it’s more likely they’ll be spending that time sending text messages to everyone they know, thus furthering their own holiday anguish.