Marxist Mash-ups

Danwei.org recently called attention to plans being made in Beijing to stage a musical based on Karl Marx's major tome, Das Kapital, and the Guardian also ran a piece about this effort to create an unlikely mash-up of Vegas style entertainment, a Broadway song and dance extravaganza, and a closely argued (and very long) work of political economy. These reports (as well as Jeremiah Jenne's earlier review on this site of a film about Mao that makes use of unexpected visual techniques) set us thinking about other kinds of unlikely textual or visual mash-ups with either a Chinese or Marxist dimension to them, and here's the top five list (with some links that definitely provide some levity for those in a Frivolous Friday sort of mood) that emerged from those musings:

1) As Danwei's original post mentioned, there's been a popular manga out in Japan based on Marx's work. You can see a story about this and one sample illustration from it here, but it is worth noting that long before the Marx manga, there were the illustrated "for beginners" books by the cartoonist Ruiz, who had a field day with Mao's thought as well as Karl's life, times, and ideas..

2) Even better (if you like cartoons that move) is the Marx mash-up to end all Marx mash-ups, the video called "Manifestoons," which uses images taken from classic works of animation to illustrate the points made in "The Communist Manifesto."

3) Not quite in this same category, but still worth a mention, is the report by the Financial Times' Geoff Dyer that the Dalai Lama's speeches have "been played on the dance-floors of London nightclubs." Alas, there's no video of said dance hall performances provided by the FT, though the pop culture hungry will find a nifty color caricature drawing of the Tibetan spiritual leader provided at the start of the piece, as well as an unexpected but illuminating juxtaposition of celebrities in a comment by Pankaj Mishra, who is quoted as saying that the Dalai Lama "seems as ubiquitous as Britney Spears" these days.

4) The Olympics Opening Ceremony wasn't exactly a mash-up, but we did get to hear songs from the Chinese Revolution mixed in with tunes of more recent vintage and more bourgeois lineage, with a quote from Confucius thrown in, so surely it can get a nod here. And the critique by one Chinese blogger, mentioned on this site in piece we ran by Geremie R. Barmé, that the show was supposed to be like a "banquet" but ended up merely like "hot-pot" is much the kind of thing that would be said about a mash-up gone astray.

5) Last but far, far from least, there's the one-of-a-kind, won't even bother trying to explain it (just click to watch it) Monty Python sketch that brought together Marx, Mao and Che (among others) to participate in a quiz show that touches upon such crucial texts of classical revolutionary theory as...the songs of Jerry Lee Lewis.

French Tibet

By Pierre Fuller

Visiting family last summer I was surprised to spot the amount of red, blue and gold fabric – yes, Tibetan flags – flying from the roofs of village homes in the French Alps, something of a solidarity I guess with high altitude brethren at the other end of the Eurasian expanse. A little of Tibet in France. After the Olympic torch events of last year, why not. But then that did not prepare me for reporter Edward Cody’s piece on France in today’s Washington Post.

“French Workers Return to Streets in Protest” predictably reported that a million-plus French were pounding pavement to shake Sarkozy out of his cautious, unsympathetic leadership in the face of jobs hemorrhaging around the country. No surprises there. Then:

“Despite the rancor on their banners, most marchers seemed cheerful in the spring weather as they marched and shouted anti-capitalist slogans. They moved past the house where Gustave Flaubert, author of "Madame Bovary," lived in the 19th century; they walked by the Kunga Tibetan restaurant, from where three Tibetans peered out at a raucous phenomenon that their countrymen left behind under Chinese rule were unlikely to witness any time soon; and they spilled into the Place de la Bastille, where street protesters kicked off the French Revolution in 1789 by tearing open a royal prison tower.”

Wow. Non sequitur extraordinaire. Where did that come from? I tried to follow the train of thought: Reference French literary giant. Reference launch of French Revolution. Reference China’s stranglehold on Tibet. Huh? Talk about conditioned synapses. Maybe predict that workers in the world’s third largest economy – China – might not be commanding the streets in protest “any time soon.” But Tibet?

I guess all (mental) roads these days do lead to Lhasa.

Thoughts on China Underground--A Book I Didn't Want to Like (But Did)

To Tweet or Not to Tweet?

That’s not necessarily the question, but it's one I’ve been pondering for a while.

On the one hand, I’m loath to add another new form of communication to my life. After all, blogging is only something I’ve been doing for a bit over a year.

On the other hand, as I argue in a commentary about blogs that I’m hoping will be published in the next couple of months (in paper format—as it is aimed at people still skeptical about online writing), things change so fast in the digital world that we need to reckon time like dog years these days, which means it’s already been about a decade since I embraced the blogging life. In addition, Rebecca MacKinnon and Jeremy Goldkorn, two of the people whose views on such matters I value most highly, have just made good cases for giving Twitter its due.

I learned of Rebecca’s views via that most old-fashioned of communication formats, a face-to-face conversation (admittedly illustrated by show and tell on her laptop) we had at the Foreign Correspondents Club in Hong Kong earlier this week before taking the stage together for a public dialogue on blogs (more about that in a later post perhaps). She described the way that (as a reader) "tweets" by others can help her get a sense of what’s happening on the ground in China, while (as a writer) her twittering can assist others who strive to stay up to date on various things (even where and when events she's involved in like our Literary Festival gig are taking place).

I learned of Jeremy’s take in a more high-tech way: by reading his website (one that I keep up with via an RSS feed, a wonderfully useful method for staying abreast of Danwei or for that matter China Beat, which as many but not all people reading this know isn’t hard to set up at all via Google Reader). He claimed Twitter was perfect for haiku-like mini-reviews of “really bad books,” using this tweet to illustrate his point: “Just finished ‘The Black Swan’ by Nassim Nicholas Talib. What an unpleasant man the author is.”

Well, surely Twitter could be just as useful for comparable reviews of “really good books,” which could be praised via shorthand references that you assumed people who followed your “tweets” would get (even if others might find them hopelessly elliptical or enigmatic). If that is the case, it would have been nice to have been a fully hooked up wannabe member of the Twitterati yesterday. I’d have composed this tweet on the plane en route home from Hong Kong and sent it out immediately upon arriving in San Francisco: “Just finished ‘China Underground’ by Zachary Mexico. Think Zhu Wen meets Warren Zevon, dark, funny, different, compulsively enjoyable, informative read.”

Well, I haven’t made the jump to Twitter, but I do want to get my take on China Underground out there right away—if for no other reason than to encourage CB readers lucky enough to be in Shanghai for the final weekend of the city’s International Literary Festival (that I had a great time being part of at its midpoint) to go hear Mexico tell some of his wild true-life tales. So, I’ll do so via the once-new but now so-last-month format of a blog post. I will have more to say about my brief though event-packed time in Shanghai and Hong Kong (a 7 day stretch during which I gave 7 talks and did 5 interviews, including one with a roomful of Chinese journalists asking questions about Global Shanghai and my thoughts about the 2010 Expo). I might also, later on, give some details about how I ended up with China Underground (and very suitably Zhu Wen’s I Love Dollars) as my post-Shanghai reading material (and what I read when heading to Shanghai). For the moment, however, I’ll just say a bit more about Zachary Mexico’s book.

I want to stress that, as the title of this post indicates, I liked it in spite of myself. I certainly didn’t want to be swept away by it. I actually was kind of hoping I’d hate it, so that I could have the fun of writing a harsh review of something for a change (after turning out a string of positive takes on books by journalists lately for periodicals such as Newsweek and Foreign Policy). So even though Paul French of the invaluable Access Asia website raved about it to me ("it's really special"), I began the book skeptically, especially after reading an “Introduction” that talked of the author’s admiration of Peter Hessler (an excellent writer to have as a model but a very hard one to emulate successfully) and a back cover that told me one chapter by the young American looking at “the diverse characters and subcultures” of today’s China would be an interview with a prostitute (something that is hardly a breakthrough given that comparable interviews show up in lots of recent books by Westerners as well as Sang Ye’s wonderful China Candid).

[Full disclosure: in a funny way, the fact that French had plugged the book to me gave me an added reason to hope I wouldn't like it. We've become friends, but Paul's lately been chiding me in online comments, generally in the nicest possible way of course, about my or my fellow China Beatniks being insufficiently cynical about some things and people he thinks deserve to be looked at through less rosy lenses, from the upcoming Shanghai World Expo to Emily Hahn. So I thought it might be particularly enjoyable to write a caustic review of China Underground that took him to task as its champion for being insufficiently cynical himself.]

Yet, by the time I finished the opening chapter (“The Peasant Who Likes to Take Pictures”) on the flight from Shanghai to Hong Kong, I found myself frustratingly enthralled. And when I reached Chapter 6 (“The Uighur Jimi Hendrix”) early in course of the flight to the States a couple of days later, I stopped fighting the book and gave in to its many charms. It is not without flaws (occasional small bits of repetition, some references to Chinese history that are smart but a bit too broad-brush for my tastes, etc.), but there’s no question that Mexico is a brash and compelling new voice in English language writing on China, and that his first book takes us into some of the many worlds within worlds that make up the PRC today (including that of people hooked on role playing games and that of Wuhan's distinctive punk scene) that other books in English just don't.

Reviewers in the U.S. will surely liken his approach to that of New Journalists like Hunter S. Thompson, thanks in part to the role that sex, drugs and rock-and-roll play in his often hallucinatory true-life stories (some of the very things that brought the late “Lawyers, Guns, and Money” songwriter Warren Zevon’s creations as well as those of Tom Waits to mind as I read the book), but the way it complements and resonates with the work of certain mostly post-Cultural Revolution or even post-Tiananmen generation Chinese authors and film-makers (not just the aforementioned Zhu Wen and Sang Ye but also Jia Zhangke, who gets alluded to in passing in the book, and Mian Mian, who gets thanked in it) is even more important.

If I Twittered, maybe I'd have actually done an early tweet saying something like "Reading 'China Underground,' at Paul French's suggestion, expecting to be underwhelmed," in which case I'd have to have added a final clause to the tweet I described above, not just noting the book's Warren Zevon-meets-Zhu Wen punch but also saying simply: "Hate to admit it; Paul was right."

Around the Web

We like to keep tabs on the contributors who write for us, and some of them have been publishing some interesting pieces lately. Here's a quick reader of five excerpts from China Beatniks.

1. At Inside-Out China, Xujun Eberlein has translated an essay (in two parts) by Sun Liping, professor of sociology at Tsinghua University. The essay has been making the rounds on the Chinese Internet. A selection:

In recent years, signs of societal breakdown have become more apparent. The core problem is the loss of control over power. During the past 30 years of reform, despite the establishment of a basic framework for a market economy, power remains the backbone of our society. Because societal breakdown first appears as the loss of control over power, corruption is but the surface manifestation. By loss of control over power I mean that power becomes a force unconstrained not only externally, but also internally. Before this, although it lacked external constraints, internal constraints had been relatively effective. The power base is weakening; several years ago we had already heard the saying "commands don’t reach outside of Zhongnanhai [the headquarters of the CCP and China’s Central Government]." Local power and sector power have become unconstrained from above and unmonitored from below, at the same time lacking any check or balance from the left or right. This is to say, state power is fragmented, and officials are unable to work responsibly. To preserve their positions they don't balk at sacrificing system benefits (not to mention societal interest). With this background, corruption has gotten beyond control and become untreatable.

2. Earlier this month, Jeff Wasserstrom analyzed the legacy of the Beijing Games, six months later at History News Network (HNN):

The Chinese government had varied international goals vis-à-vis the Games. Three key ones were to present the PRC as the following things: modern, not to be feared, and a place that ethnic Chinese living in different countries can identify with—however they once felt about Mao or now feel about the Chairman’s successors.

The Games and subsequent global commentary point to the need for a mixed assessment of this three-pronged effort. The venues and spectacles definitely left many viewers around the world with a powerful sense that Beijing definitely can do modern. The event was less successful at creating a sense that this is not a source of concern—as it was not only “South Park” characters who found nightmarish some parts of the “One World, One Dream” Olympics, and many things happened before and during the Games (acts of censorship and repression, for example) that reinforced negative ideas about the PRC as a highly controlled, oppressive state.

3. Amy Hanser, professor of sociology at the University of British Columbia, gave a talk at UCLA in January titled "Service Encounters: Class, Gender, and the Market for Social Distinction in Urban China" and the podcast is now available online. Though Hanser's writing has never appeared at the blog, she contributed a piece to China in 2008 and Maura Elizabeth Cunningham reviewed Hanser's book, Service Encounters, in July 2008.

4. Last July, we interviewed Pallavi Aiyar about her book Smoke and Mirrors: An Experience of China. Last month, she published a piece at Asia Times Online on crises in Sino-Indian trade relations:

On the Indian side, there is a widening trade deficit, worry over the composition of exports and concern at the inability of Indian companies with Chinese operations to break into the domestic Chinese market.

The Chinese complain that India is holding back on a proposed regional trade agreement and that Chinese companies have on occasion been prevented from investing in India on the grounds that they pose a security threat.

Both sides also complain of insufficient knowledge of the business practices and the regulatory framework of the other country. Cultural discomfort involving language and food habits form an additional barrier - despite being neighbors, the two countries appear culturally more comfortable doing business with the West than with each other.

5. David Flumenbaum hasn't ever published anything at China Beat, but he is our contact at Huffington Post and so we keep an eye on his occasional writings on China there. A few weeks ago, Flumenbaum wrote a column about the censorship and mistranslation of the Oscars in Asia:

Instead of simply omitting Penn's acceptance speech, as they did for Dustin Lance Black, China's censors decided to mistranslate Penn's words so that his speech appeared to make no mention of gays. According to the China blog Black and White Cat, CCTV subtitled Penn's line, "You commie, homo-loving sons of guns," with "你们可真够宽容的." The rough translation of these characters is, "You really are so generous." So, to non-English-speaking Chinese viewers reading the subtitles, Penn never uttered the word "commie" or "homo," or Mao forbid, a sentence incorporating both.

6. Sky Canaves has also never written anything for China Beat, but she does link to us frequently at the WSJ China Journal. So we were pleased to learn more about her in Danwei's recent interview.

What are your areas of interest in China reporting, and what do you hope to achieve in 2009?

The pressing social issues that are often cited as the top concerns among Chinese people — employment, health care, education, corruption — and how these are being addressed by the government and the people, along with the impacts of the economic downturn on various groups — the rising middle class, young people who have only known the boom years and the elderly who lack a safety net.

This year I’ll continue my work on the blog, expanding its China coverage in collaboration with the rest of the WSJ’s China reporting team. On a personal note, I’m looking forward to a long overdue return visit to Nanjing, where I lived ten years ago, and seeing how much it has changed since.

Chinese Intellectuals and the Problem of Xinjiang, Part 2

Wang Lixiong and progressive democracy

This essay continues the discussion of Wang Lixiong's work begun in Part I, which ran at China Beat on March 9, 2009.

By Sebastian Veg

Having analyzed the issues of colonialism, cultural rights of Uyghur populations, and the question of a Han nationalist revival, Wang Lixiong concludes the book by three “letters” to his Uyghur friend Mokhtar, in which he reframes the discussion on Xinjiang within his more general ideas on political reform in China. His reluctance to consider Xinjiang as “different” from other regions in China (while he is less reluctant to do so in the case of Tibet) is not unproblematic; nonetheless his voice is important because he is a critical intellectual “on the edge” who has visibly not entirely renounced influencing the debate in Beijing policy circles.

Wang Lixiong has some deep-set doubts, both about the practicality of independence as a goal for Xinjiang (due to the presence of a large Han population and their control of resources), and about what he calls “large-scale democracy”. In another text, he expresses his agreement with a draft Constitution prepared by a group of dissidents (Yan Jiaqi and others), under which Tibet would receive a high degree of autonomy and the possibility to determine its own status after 25 years, while Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia would only be granted the status of autonomy through a two-thirds vote in the National People’s Congress.[1]

While Wang insists that he doesn’t mind one way or the other whether Xinjiang becomes independent, he emphasises alternatives to independence: the guarantee of genuine religious freedom, and the possibility of controlling labour migration by a work permit system that would apply to “cultural protection zones” (including Tibet), and which would serve to prevent desertification, degradation of the environment, and growing water shortages (p. 439). For Wang, democratisation in China, as opposed to a higher degree of autonomy, might be prone to nationalist manipulation and internal fracturing. He therefore calls for an embrace of the Dalai Lama’s “Middle Way” of a high degree of autonomy within the framework of a federal China, going so far as to propose that the Dalai Lama become the chairman of a provisional government.

Nonetheless, his three “letters to Mokhtar” reveal some of the contradictions underpinning his thoughts on political reform in China. The first letter, devoted to terrorism, is very much in the apocalyptic mode of his science-fiction novel Yellow Peril. In his second letter, he insists on Chinese nationalism. For Wang, China did not experience the nation-state model before 1911, and at that time its first formulation included Xinjiang and Tibet in Sun Yat-sen’s “Republic of five races” (Han, Man/Manchu, Meng/Mongolian, Hui/Muslim, Zang/Tibetan). He adds that nationalism has always been an essential part of CCP ideology, and now the only portion remaining. For these two reasons he believes that democratisation would not necessarily solve the nationality question (p. 444).

Whereas the Soviet constitution, no matter how misused, originally foresaw regional autonomy on paper by virtue of its federal nature, Wang asserts that no similar provision exists in the PRC Constitution, and that as a result, if China began unravelling, there would be no framework to stop the process from spreading to Guangdong or Shanghai. Conversely, he worries about an independent Xinjiang continuing to break down along ethnic lines into myriad autonomous micro-states, underlining that Uyghurs represent a majority of the population in only about one third of the territory concentrated in Southern Xinjiang, where there is no oil and resources. He wonders about the rights of the Hui (although one could easily object that there are Dungan populations in most of Central Asia), and highlights that Tibet, by contrast, is practically a mono-ethnic area. This is somewhat troubling, as in his articles on Tibet Wang argues against the viability of Tibetan independence, despite its ethnic homogeneity, on the grounds that the small Han elite controls the most productive sectors of the economy and the most dynamic groups in Tibetan society (“Zhuceng dijin zhi”, art. cit.).

Wang’s assertion about the lack of a legal framework is not quite true: China’s Law on Regional Ethnic Autonomy (Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo Minzu quyu zizhifa), revised in 2001 and largely disseminated though a 2003 State Council White Paper on the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), could provide a legal framework for autonomy (though not for secession, like the Soviet constitution), even though it clearly remains a political fiction at the present time (as was the Soviet constitution).[2] More largely, within the context of the international conventions ratified even by the present Chinese government, as well as other international declarations, a stable body of norms regarding minority rights and rights for indigenous populations would be available to guarantee either substantial autonomy for Uyghurs within China, or for Han within an independent Xinjiang. In this respect, Wang Lixiong seems to remain captive to conventional views in China that describe international covenants as instruments of power play: he describes them as merely a pretext for American or Western intervention in Xinjiang aimed at destabilising China, and quotes the theory of “precedence of human rights over sovereignty” or renquan gaoyu zhuquan.

His third letter deals with his system of proposed “progressive democracy” (dijin minzhu) and the implicit critique of liberal democracy it contains. Wang calls the latter “forum democracy” (guangchang minzhu, p. 457), and believes it can only exacerbate interethnic tensions, which will be fanned by the elite, a phenomenon not unknown in “mature democracies” (he cites support for the Iraq war). “Large-scale democracy” (daguimo minzhu) will polarise political debate and lead straight to fascism (p. 460), as opinion leaders in Xinjiang will want to settle scores with China, the media will pour oil on the fire to make money, and the “masses,” who love heroes and lofty speeches, will follow populists and opportunists.

Nonetheless, he sees democracy as the key to resolving ethnic conflicts, the problem being not democracy itself but “large-scale democracy.” Therefore, Wang goes over old ground by proposing a system of indirect elections, based on natural villages, in which votes would take place by household, each household selecting one representative (one wonders how women would fare in this system of representation), thereby allowing for direct deliberative democracy by consensus. The elected representative automatically becomes a voter on the higher level, and so on, preserving the direct and participatory nature of democracy (p. 464). In fact, this blueprint clearly reveals Wang Lixiong’s misgivings about representation and vote by majority. He favours consensus over voting, pointing out that all elections are problematic, even in the United States (the 2000 presidential election inevitably comes up), not to mention in a Tibetan village in which a majority of inhabitants are illiterate.

Although he writes that in this system policy decisions on various levels should not interfere, he gives no guiding principle, not even a philosophical one, to explain how responsibility should be divided. The implicit assumption is, in fact, that voters are not qualified to deal with any matters beyond their immediate experience, and that the only decisions taken on each level are those that directly affect the life of the constituency. “Regarding larger matters that go beyond the borders of their immediate experience, it is very difficult for the masses to gain a correct grasp” (p. 466). This is a highly elitist system, the most worrying aspect of which is that it relies on the spontaneous generation of a social elite to foster democracy, rather than on an institutionalised system of checks and balances. Although Wang insists that this system will ensure that China does not break apart by guaranteeing both autonomy and cohesion (p. 468), one cannot help but wonder whether China and Xinjiang would not be better served at the outset by a full implementation of China’s own Autonomy Law, to be completed by other guarantees of the rights of minorities as set out in international laws and norms. Interestingly enough, while he is so wary of representative democracy, Wang Lixiong entirely trusts his own electoral system to guarantee individual and collective rights by its intrinsic mechanisms rather than by formalised norms (p. 469).

For these reasons, although Wang Lixiong has gone further than most Chinese intellectuals in exploring the rights and claims of ethnic minorities and how they fit into the political problems of China as a whole, this book remains somewhat disappointing. It is true that he paints a sympathetic portrait of “ordinary Uyghurs,” far removed from the usual clichés of official discourse, exoticism, or commonly repeated slurs -- an important accomplishment that may act as bridge towards even-minded ordinary Han Chinese citizens. But just as he portrayed Tibetans as prone to blindly following Maoism as a new religion during the Cultural Revolution, smashing their own temples and Buddhas, and then blindly reviling Mao when he proved not to have been a god after his death,[3] his view of Uyghur intellectuals as influenced by terrorism and Islam seems excessively culturalist in relation to modern, secular Xinjiang. His analyses of several issues appear uninformed. Leaving aside academic research, he is weak on government policy; a close reading of Hu Jintao’s readily available 2005 speech to the State Commission on Ethnic Affairs could have yielded important insights: one of Hu’s central tenets is that any form of increased autonomy remain subordinate to the “three inseparables.”[4]

Nonetheless, Wang’s openness to dialogue and public discussion of his ideas, without any taboos or prerequisites, is an important step towards weaving the concerns of Uyghurs or Tibetans into the debate on the democratisation of China -- taking into account, of course, that the present book cannot be published on the mainland. In this capacity, as also demonstrated by his March 2008 initiative on Tibet, Wang Lixiong is one of the closest examples of a public intellectual in China. In this context, his writings also demonstrate that, despite what the Chinese government publicly states, there is no consensus in China over the fact that no price is too high to ensure that the CCP remains the dominant force in Xinjiang or Tibet. His ideas may even trickle, gradually and windingly, to the corridors of power. Wang Lixiong opposes independence for both Xinjiang and Tibet, but his willingness to discuss practical measures such as migration restrictions or enhanced religious freedom also serves as a reminder that Chinese intellectuals are not necessarily Han nationalists.

Part 2 of 2.
The full text of this review essay is published in China Perspectives, no. 2008/4. The author is a researcher at the French Centre for Research on Contemporary China.

[1] Wang Lixiong, “Zhuceng dijin zhi yu minzhu zhi: Jiejue Xizang wenti de fangfa bijiao” (A Successive Multilevel Electoral System vs. a Representative Democratic System: Relative advantages for resolving the Tibet Question ), http://www.boxun.com/hero/wanglx/6_1.shtml (19 September 2008).
[2] The Autonomy Law is available on http://www.gov.cn/test/2005-07/29/content_18338.htm. See also: Information Office of the State Council, “History and Development of Xinjiang,” May 2003, http://news.xinhuanet.com/zhengfu/2003-06/12/content_916306.htm.
[3] This is the object of the debate between Wang Lixiong and Tsering Shakyar. See Wang Lixiong, “Reflections on Tibet,” art. cit., and the rebuttal: Tsering Shakyar, “Blood in the Snow,” New Left Review, no. 15, May-June 2002. The gist of Tsering Shakyar’s argument is that Mao-worship in Tibet was no more blind than elsewhere in China, and that traditional Tibetan society remained dynamic and changing despite its religious characteristics. Woeser also documents the importance of the Mao-cult among Tibetans in Shajie: Forbidden Memory: Tibet during the Cultural Revolution (Taipei, Dakuai wenhua, 2007).
[4] The “three inseparables” (sange libukai) are: the Han cannot be separated from minorities, the minorities cannot be separated from the Han, and the minorities cannot be separated one from another. See: “Hu Jintao zai Zhongyang minzu gongzuo huiyi shang de jianghua” [Hu Jintao’s Speech at the Central Nationalities Working Committee], May 27, 2005, http://politics.people.com.cn/GB/1024/3423605.html (12 August 2008).

Dutch Treats

One of the most exciting developments in the field of Taiwan history has been a steady stream of publications that shed new light on the island's development when it was being colonized by the Spanish and the Dutch. Notable achievements include Chinese translations of Dutch and Spanish sources by Chiang Shu-sheng 江樹生 and Lee Yu-chung 李毓中, a volume of collected essays by Chen Kuo-tung 陳國棟, and an in-depth study of Spanish rule by Jose Eugenio Borao (鮑曉鷗). This scholarship represents the fruits of unstinting efforts by Leiden scholars like Leonard Blussé, as well as venerable Taiwanese academics like Ts'ao Yung-ho 曹永和 and Wang Shih-ch'ing 王世慶, who have trained next generation of students. It is also reflects the dedication of pioneers in the field of Taiwan history like John Shepherd. Of equal importance has been the utilization of new primary source materials, especially the Dutch East India Company archives.

Two recent books have made noteworthy contributions to our understanding of this important phase of Taiwanese history. The first, How Taiwan Became Chinese by Tonio Andrade, was originally published electronically as part of the Gutenberg-e project, with a Chinese version having been released as well. This book is particularly noteworthy for its analytical framework, and in particular the concept "co-colonization", which stresses that Taiwan might best be viewed as one of East Asia's many "hybrid colonies", where both the Chinese and the Dutch worked to enhance the island's economic growth.

Andrade also explores Taiwan's early colonial development in the context of modern East Asian history, including the extent to which the Dutch competed with the Japanese for control of the lucrative silk-for-silver trade, as well as how the victory of Koxinga (Zheng Chenggong 鄭成功; 1624-1662) over the Dutch represented the potential for the establishment of a Chinese maritime state. Another striking example involves Andrade's portrayal of 16th and 17th century China as a global "silver sink" sucking in the precious metal from all over the world, thereby affecting the economic development of Europe, which might be of interest to those concerned with China's impact on world energy prices.

Other interesting topics covered in this book include the role of smallpox, with Andrade noting that while Old World diseases proved devastating to the American Indians, this was not necessarily the case for East Asia's indigenous peoples, many of who had already been exposed to Eurasian pathogens. The ritual facets of Dutch colonial rule receive full treatment in Chapter 9, which examines an annual ceremony known as the landdag, a symbolically charged event during which the Dutch governor of Taiwan held an audience for aboriginal elders and bestowed them with staves symbolizing their authority.

The second book, The Colonial 'Civilizing Process' in Dutch Formosa, 1624-1662, is by Chiu Hsin-hui 邱馨慧, one of Blussé's former students who is currently teaching at National Tsing-hua University). Published by Brill in 2008 as part of the TANAP Monographs on the History of Asian-European Interaction, this work documents the expansion of Dutch hegemony over Taiwan not only in terms of political power and economic exploitation, but also the role of Christian missionaries. At the same time, however, Chiu also places great emphasis on Taiwanese agency by focusing on the history of local populations during the colonial encounter, thereby placing Taiwan in the broader context of Austronesian history.

One moving example of the tragic aspects of Dutch colonial rule involves the massacre and subsequent forced migration of Lamey (小琉球) islanders, who hid in caves to escape the invaders only to be (literally) smoked out. One contemporary source estimates that of 1,200 inhabitants, 405 died in the caves while the rest were shipped off to Taiwan and Batavia. Some Lamey boys managed to climb the ladder of colonial success and become Dutch East India Company servants, with a few even making the long journey to the Netherlands.

Chiu also presents fascinating data on intermarriages between Lameyan women and European men, as well as an informed discussion of the "culture shock" that accompanied the imposition of a European legal system (particularly in terms of public punishments). There is also a detailed examination of the religious aspects of Dutch colonialism, and not just Christian proselytizing but also Sirayan religious traditions, including tables listing indigenous deities and festivals. This book is also graced with a useful glossary, as well as maps that neatly delineate the spatial characteristics of Dutch rule.

Will China Put the "Eco" Back in "Economy"?

This piece originally appeared at Treehugger on March 13, 2009.

By Alex Pasternack

It was the recession that Chinese leaders partially credited for helping the country reach its Five Year Plan pollution goals for the first time in 2008. Meanwhile, energy consumption has been on the decline (though it rose for the first time in three months in February), along with the demand for Chinese goods.

But to put people back to work and maintain its golden number of 8 percent growth, China will pour $586 billion into the economy. In the process, it may also pour a lot of concrete, a lot of coal into its engines, and a lot of smoke back into the air.

Much of the reason for China's dirtier stimulus is clear: the country is still developing, and still depends largely on dirty industry and manufacturing for growth. It's aiming to be more like developed countries, which rely more heavily on cleaner service sectors, like banking or retail. But on the way there, it's still dirty. And China's leaders don't seem to be showing much interest in making that path -- and its end result, for that matter -- much cleaner right now.

A message released during the ongoing annual session of the National People’s Congress (NPC), said, according to Xinhua, that ”saving energy and protecting environment is a big government agenda, though keeping a ’steady and relatively fast’ economic growth is a paramount task amid the global economic crisis.”

That sounds like a pretty blunt dashing of the hopes of environmental groups like the old Beijing NGO Friends of Nature, which sent a letter to the NPC this week urging a clean stimulus.

"In order to guarantee good, fast economic development, a few high-pollution, high-energy-consumption, high-risk projects should not be snuck into" the government's investment goals, said the letter. "Use the 4 trillion yuan investment to pioneer a green, low-carbon economy. Don't sacrifice the long-term objectives of conserving energy and reducing emissions for the sake of protecting high energy-consuming industries that have no future."

"Future" isn't exactly something the Party is thinking about. Forbes' Gady Epstein doesn't parse words in describing the government's relationship with sustainable growth: "Despite a dramatically increased awareness in Beijing of the need to protect the environment, the Communist Party's brand of scorched-earth capitalism still prioritizes economic growth over all else."

As a result, mandatory environmental reviews of many large projects will now be completed twice as quickly while some approvals will be managed by very low and understaffed levels of government.

And even if an industrial project meets environmental regulations, incorporating or turning on clean technology is not going to be a priority for factory or power plant owners if it means added costs. And though the Ministry of Environmental Protection continues to work on improving local oversight of industrial compliance, progress is slow going. The mountains are still high and the emperor is still far away.

Green Projects
Still, the government isn't about to let its green gains slip away in the face of a recession. Many leaders recognize the opportunity China has to clean up its development in a way that the US and Europe did not have the chance or foresight to do. It's partly a matter of playing a role in the global environment befitting a rising superpower. As an op-ed in China Daily urged this week, "developing a low-carbon economic is a must as China continues to industrialize, not only for the nation's energy security, but also as part of an urgent international responsibility to address global climate change." Hillary Clinton, who began talking about a US-China climate deal in February, could have written that.

The government also knows that in the long term, cleaning up environmental problems is costly, and in the short term, environmental problems lead to social unrest -- the feared stick that ultimately spurs the Communist Party's every move.

To wit: the 4 trillion yuan stimulus package includes a 210 billion yuan (US$30 billion) investment in environmental protection and energy conservation.

But this sum is a reduction of nearly 40% from the original sum allocated to environmental protection and efficiency in an early draft of the package of RMB350 billion (US$50 billion).

And as the ever astute Charlie McElwee observes, 210 billion yuan, or 24 billion Euros, is 50 percent of the green investment recommended by a new McKinsey report “China’s Green Revolution.” The study concludes that “from now until 2030, up to 150 billion to 200 billion euros on average would be needed in additional investment each year to effectively deploy the green technologies needed to achieve the substantial improvements.” In the early years, 2011-2015, only 35 billion Euros would be needed. "Nobody said this was going to be cheap," says McElwee.

To combat a deeper global recession alongside climate change, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has recently urged the United States to build a "green New Deal" as a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, while the International Energy Agency has called for a "Clean Energy New Deal," which would require about $9.6 trillion in energy efficiency and cleaner power generation during the next two decades.

A report from the London School of Economics' Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment says that climate change mitigation should be an essential part of stimulus money, and may need as much as $400 billion of extra public spending on "green" energy and development projects worldwide over the next year.

"Installing infrastructure that 'locks in' high greenhouse gas emissions for many years to come will increase the difficulties of reducing emissions in the future and blunt the incentives for technological improvement and innovation," concludes the report.

GDP fall could mean carbon fall
Before the stimulus package, China's slowed economy emits less carbon than developed economies going through a recession. Again, that's because its economy relies much more on dirtier enterprises than does the West, so the marginal environmental gains are greater in China.

"Overall, the same fall in GDP in China will have more than twice the impact on emissions as an equal fall in the United States," Samah Elsayed, an analyst at World Resources Institute, a D.C.-based think tank, told Greenwire.

For instance, Elsayed found that the United Kingdom's emissions stayed relatively constant during the previous four decades, even as its GDP more than tripled. Not surprising since in 2005, industry accounted for only 27 percent of GDP in Europe, compared to the service sector's portion of 70 percent, according to the World Resources Institute.

In China, industrial operations accounted for about half of China's GDP, and the service sector accounted for about 40 percent. In the United States that year, industry made up only a quarter of GDP, while the service sector accounted for 76 percent.

Green stimulus?
To reach its green goals -- cutting energy consumption 20 percent per unit of GDP by 2010 while reducing sulfur dioxide and other air pollutants 10 percent -- each province in China must cut its energy production by 4 percent per unit of GDP annually, compared with 2005.

China needn't necessarily pony up more money for environmental protection. It need only be careful about the money it's pouring into the economy is being spent.

For instance, write the NRDC's Barbara Finamore and Alex Wang at China Dialogue, "China could develop criteria to ensure that the 280 billion yuan (US$41 billion) proposed for housing projects is spent only on green buildings that save water and energy and are located using smart growth principles."

Or, the 1.8 trillion yuan (US$263 billion) proposed for transportation and the power grid could be focused on building up the country's fledgling intra-city public transit systems and high speed rail lines rather than on highways, and could build transmission lines that are near areas of abundant renewable energy resources.

But what energy China chooses to invest in is key as well. For instance, the bulk of the 580 billion yuan ($85 billion) to be invested in expanding the country's slowed energy industry in 2009 will go towards coal-fired generation, with nuclear and wind-powered generating capacity making up a smaller percentage.

Social Unrest, and Shortness of Breath
The major reason that will be given for an un-green stimulus in China however is all of those unemployed workers. In the West, dissatisfaction means politicians get voted out of office. In China, it could mean something worse.

But with cooperation from overseas, and the right leadership (where's China's Van Jones?) the country could implement a green jobs program that leverages clean technology to put people to work. In the US, the NRDC estimates some 1.5 million green jobs could be created. By sharing ideas, governments around the world could implement green jobs in an efficient manner, and even coordinate their efforts to match green companies in one country with those in another.

As long as the specter of social anger related to economic woes is greater than that related to environmental complaints, the government is going to focus on the economy.

But citizens' anger isn't so easily divided between economy and ecology, between money and well-being or health. The two issues are interrelated, and as China edges towards greater prosperity, the need for clean growth will become even greater too. The government can either get a head start now, or play catch up like the rest of us, huffing and puffing as it races forward.

China in 2008 Available

Our forthcoming volume is no longer forthcoming--as of today, it is available for purchase. While dedicated China Beat readers may find some of the content familiar, about one-third of it is brand-new (and other pieces have been expanded). For those who want to learn more about the volume before purchasing it, we direct you to a few excerpts and discussions of the book:

An excerpt from the Introduction, by Kate Merkel-Hess

A complete table of contents

An excerpt from the Afterword, by Ken Pomeranz

A flyer about the book from publisher Rowman & Littlefield

Discussion about the book from contributor Jeremiah Jenne, at his blog Jottings from the Granite Studio

The right target for a boycott?

By Daniel A. Bell

Shortly after the Olympic torch’s troubled passage through Paris last April, Chinese nationalists organized a campaign to boycott the French supermarket Carrefour. The chain store is perhaps the most visible symbol of French life in China, with 135 outlets in the country's major cities. Thousands of nationalists were mobilized outside Carrefour outlets and many customers were afraid to shop there.

But the boycott was completely irrational. Carrefour China had nothing to do with pro-Tibetan protests in France and even the disabled athlete Jin Jing who was targeted by protesters in France spoke out against the boycott. Over 90 percent of Carrefour China’s employees are Chinese and they were the first to be hit by the boycott. Fortunately, it fizzled out without any major damage.

The general principle is that boycotts only make sense if they target the company that is partly, if not mainly, responsible for the immoral deed identified by protesters. And now, there’s a much better case to boycott a French company. Pierre Berge, personal and business partner of Yves Saint Laurent, put on sale two eighteenth century bronze heads that were looted by British and French forces from the imperial gardens of the Summer Palace outside Beijing in 1860. The site is still rubble and it is a bitter reminder of China’s humiliation at the hands of imperial powers.

The Chinese government had requested their return and a group of Chinese lawyers tried to block the auction but a French court allowed the sale to proceed. Pierre Berge had the chutzpah to claim that the Chinese government could have the looted goods if it would “observe human rights and give liberty to the Tibetan people and welcome the Dalai Lama.” One might imagine the reaction to a collector who says he will return goods looted by the Nazis only if Israel pulls out of the occupied territories.

As it happens, the sale went ahead and the heads were bought by a Chinese collector and auctioneer, Cai Mingchao. With equal chutzpah – and this time, more justified chutzpah – Mr. Cai said that he won’t pay the money on moral grounds. The outcome of this fascinating case remains unclear, but what’s clear is that Pierre Berge and Yves Saint Laurent are responsible for this mess and they should pay the price.

In 1861, the great French writer Victor Hugo wrote, "I hope that a day will come when France, delivered and cleansed, will return this booty to despoiled China." It's never too late to fulfill this hope. What anti-imperialists everywhere can do is boycott Yves Saint Laurent products until they deliver the looted goods back to their rightful Chinese owners. So, yes, there is a case for boycotting Yves Saint Laurent. But it should be a targeted and non-violent boycott, not a general attack on innocent French people and companies.

This piece appeared in Chinese on March 10 as "中国人该抵制谁" in 环球时报. Daniel A. Bell is a professor of philosophy at Tsinghua University and the author, most recently, of China's New Confucianism.

Self-Promotion Saturday: Upcoming Events

A few reminders about upcoming events involving China Beat contributors.

Shanghai
Jeff Wasserstrom will be speaking about his new book, Global Shanghai, 1850-2010, at the Shanghai International Literary Festival tomorrow, March 15 at 4 p.m. City Weekend has been "live blogging" from the festival, so even those who don't attend can read transcripts from readings. Some highlights for Sinophiles: Stella Dong and James Fallows and Graham Earnshaw.

Hong Kong

Wasserstrom will also be presenting at the Man Hong Kong International Literary Festival on Tuesday, March 17 at 4 p.m. (at University of Hong Kong).

Charlottesville, VA
Susan Brownell and Kate Merkel-Hess will be on a panel at the Virginia Festival of the Book in Charlottesville on Friday, March 20 at 10 a.m. Brownell will be speaking about her recent book, Beijing's Games: What the Olympics Mean to China. Merkel-Hess will be speaking about the soon-to-be-released (on March 16) China in 2008 (to which Brownell also contributed).

Quiz Winners and a New Quiz

We received many correct answers to last week’s Frivolous Friday quiz. For the prize of a copy of China's Brave New World--And Other Tales for Global Times, Jeff Wasserstrom asked readers to guess which two people he had in mind to answer this question: “If you could bring back to life, for a day, two people you've written about who are now dead, and ask them questions about what Shanghai was like then, who would they be and what would you ask them?”

The clues were:

1) Both people were cosmopolitan women who spent time in both China and the United States.

2) Though only one was an American, each went to college in the U.S., attending in each case schools that had "W"s at the start of one part of the institution's name.

3) One had a husband who studied in Hong Kong and then was later detained in London, while the other had a husband who was imprisoned in Hong Kong and then later taught in London.

4) One was played on screen by Maggie Cheung.

5) One had a husband whose name began with the letters "Cha," while the other had a father whose name began with those same letters.

The correct answers were Emily Hahn and Song Qingling. We thought we might get more than one correct answer, so as a tie-breaker, Jeff added these subjective questions:

1) What's a question that it would be particularly interesting to have these two people discuss (if they were brought back to life)?

2) Can you think of a pair of people you think would be more interesting to quiz about Shanghai's past than the two Jeff had in mind?

3) Which actress should play the member of the pair Jeff is thinking of who, as far as we know, has not yet had a movie made of her life (but probably should have one made of it someday)?

The judging was incredibly tough, as all respondents had interesting answers to these questions. We have selected this response as our winner:

1. I would be interested in hearing Hahn and Song discuss Hahn's portrayal of Song in her book The Soong Sisters. As a secondary topic, it would be great if both women discussed Sterling Seagrave's book The Soong Dynasty.

2. The two people I would love to ask about Shanghai's history would be Du Yuesheng and Sterling Fessenden.

3. The historical actress who could best portray Hahn's combination of wit, feminism, and glamour would be Myrna Loy—I could just imagine Loy with Mr. Mills on her arm at some swank gathering. If I had to choose a living actress to play Hahn, although Loy would be my first choice, it would probably be Jennifer Jason Leigh (think Hudsucker Proxy).

The winning answer was submitted by Lane J. Harris, and he will be receiving his award in the mail shortly.

Evan Osnos sent us a note (though he excluded himself from the competition due to “unfair interest in the subject”) nominating his choice for actress in a movie of Emily Hahn’s life: “Hahn must be played by Naomi Watts, because Watts starred in the remake of King Kong, so she has experience working alongside monkeys, as did Hahn, e.g. gibbons.” (For instance, see Hahn’s book Eve and the Apes.)

Other proposals for the actress nominated to play Hahn included Meryl Streep (Out of Africa, redux? She received three nominations), Katharine Hepburn, Cate Blanchett, and Maggie Gyllenhaal.

We also wanted to share a few “honorable mentions” from respondents with you.

“Most Substantive Question” for Song and Hahn:
How real where the newfound freedoms for women in China at the time? (Submitted by Nick Wang.)

“Most Original Pairing of Those to Bring Back to Life” (with bonus points for one being fictional!):
Kyo Gisors, Malraux's invented organizer of the 1927 rising against Chiang Kaishek in Man's Fate, and Eugene Chen, the Trinidad-born journalist and secretary of Sun Yat-sen. (Submitted by Donald Sutton.)

“Most Touchingly Uxorious” (and describing the person who Jeff would certainly also see get the role in real life if the film were to be made—Myrna Loy, alas, being dead, and Naomi Watts having gotten to make her Shanghai film already):
(To #3): My wife. (Submitted by Robert Bickers.)

“For Giving Jeff Second Thoughts” about the pair he would choose to bring back to life (as seeing what Emily Hahn and the cosmopolitan Communist activist Pan Hannian made of one another is a fascinating notion):
Pan Hannian / H. Shippe (Moses Grzyb /Asiaticus) (Submitted by Thomas Kampen)

Because we (and you too, based on your answers), had such fun with this, we thought we’d do it again. Please send your answers to China Beat Editor Kate Merkel-Hess at kate@uci.edu. The winner of this quiz will receive a copy of the forthcoming China in 2008, signed by as many of the book’s contributors as make it to the Association for Asian Studies meeting in Chicago, as well as Kate Merkel-Hess and Ken Pomeranz (who won’t be making the trip).

Please send answers to these questions:

1. The Prettiest (photo of China you can find on the web—send link or the photo itself, but please include link to where you found it so we can credit appropriately)

2. The Wittiest (title of a China book, article or blog post)

3. And the Grittiest (your choice for best muckraking journalist who worked the China beat, past or present)

No one is exempt (meaning, we encourage those who have submitted before to do so again!) We’ll announce the winner next week.

Can China Go High-Tech When Exports Slump?

By Yu Zhou

As the financial Tsunami batter China’s exporting hubs, everyone is wondering how well China can weather the storm in the next couple of years, but a more important question is how China’s economy will emerge after the crisis. As a result of extensive research, I argue that there have been sustained forces pushing China’s industry to more innovative fields with a stronger orientation to the domestic market. The crisis will only strengthen the shift in a more dramatic manner.

This conclusion is based on my research in Beijing’s Zhongguancun, a region dedicated to innovative industry and domestic market. I started to do research in Beijing’s Zhongguancun in 2000, at a time when few foreigners had ever heard of the place. But most Chinese had, due to the hype from the official media that Zhongguancun was going to become China’s Silicon Valley. Yet, knowledgeable Chinese knew that Silicon Valley had grown up around such technology giants as Intel, HP, or Google. Zhongguancun, in contrast, seemed to be a collection of gigantic electronic markets and untold numbers of venders parading pirated CDs. They are very skeptical of this government claim.

Undaunted, I continued to collect information and interview all sorts of companies in Zhongguancun, private, foreign-owned, state-owned, returnees owned, and I found that there indeed was more to Zhongguancun than meets the eyes. I had grown up in this region in the 1980s and witnessed its first transformation from a quiet suburb of universities and research institutes to a bustling high-tech commercial center. By 2000, it was gathering energy again with the internet boom. My fascination and research in this region lasted for six years and resulted in a book: The Inside Story of China’s High-Tech Industry: Making Silicon Valley in Beijing. Today, Zhongguancun is still far from Silicon Valley, but it has put its name on the international map. A number of companies started there have gained international attention, such as Lenovo and Baidu, and venture capitalists from California flood into China’s most promising land for innovative business today.

In my book, I challenge the prevailing view that foreign multinational corporations (MNCs) and export are the driving forces for technological progress in China. I argue that indigenous companies are likely to be the future technological leaders in China. The most successful of them have taken advantage of their understanding of the Chinese market with their access to competitive, reliable, and high-quality component suppliers—the same suppliers for MNCs in exports. The synergy between China’s massive export facilities and rapid growing domestic market allowed Chinese companies to make special designs, pricing and marketing methods that worked best within China to beat foreign brands competition. This is the common story of Lenovo, Huawei and many other successful Chinese high-tech companies.

More significantly, the growth of Zhongguancun is not marked by the emergence of a few strong firms, but by succeeding generations of them. The first wave was the spin-offs from universities and research institutes in the mid 1980s. These were primitive commercial companies with extremely limited international contact. But they managed to take over the lead of China’s high-tech commercial development from state-owned sectors, and firmly set China in the global technological mainstream. The second generation was computer hardware manufacturing firms such as Lenovo, which was able to establish its domestic leadership amid strong foreign competition in the mid 1990s. These were followed by internet startups in the late 1990s to 2000s, which to this day dominate China’s internet market in every category.

The current wave is much more diverse, including multimedia firms, chip design, software export and other more technically sophisticated companies, often started up by overseas returnees with overseas venture capital. Each generation has gained more technical, management and capital competence, and each followed more closely the tidal waves of the Chinese market and global technological trends. Zhongguancun’s development is a fascinating story, with many colorful characters and successions of generations over a brief period and, though my book is academic in nature, I have attempted to capture this lively story with ethnographic details that heighten the book’s readability.

For those who would like to learn more, I summarize below some of the conclusions from my book:

1. Foreign multinational firms (MNCs) have limits in bringing technological transformation in China. Chinese firms have a competitive edge in their home market.
We often assume that if a large multinational company, say HP or Google, are successful in America and elsewhere, then they should also be successful in China. If they are not, we blame the Chinese government for creating an unlevel playing field between Chinese and foreign firms. But the reality is that China is a vast, regionally fragmented, rapidly evolving and largely low-income market. It is challenging for MNCs to reach beyond China’s affluent core. In contrast, Chinese domestic firms understand their home court better and have greater commitment and flexibility. They are also learning fast from MNCs in China. While they certainly are not on the cutting-edge, they have been extraordinarily effective in bringing new technology to the Chinese market at an affordable price. Their learning ability should not be underestimated.

2. The key constraint for Chinese companies to produce cutting-edge innovation is the Chinese market, but this will change.
Many believe that the lack of innovation by Chinese companies has to do with their low R&D capacity. This is only partly true. It is worthwhile to remember that almost all Chinese technological companies were built after the mid 1980s—which is when China’s technological industry began. Most have emerged only in the 1990s. The short history set them apart from existing business powerhouses in Japan, South Korea, and even India.

But beyond the inexperience and capital and technical gap, the key constraint for Chinese companies to innovate is the Chinese market. Michael Porter in his book The Competitiveness Advantage of Nations argues that it is the quality of the domestic market that is critical for national competitiveness. A technologically sophisticated market pushes innovation by forcing companies to constantly upgrade their products. Yet Chinese consumers value low-price and lack experiences with many products. This means that most have yet to attach the same importance to the quality, design, and newness of products that consumers in advanced economies do. This provides little incentive and reward for cutting-edge innovation by domestic companies.

It is not surprising, indeed it should be expected, that most Chinese companies concentrate on following the MNCs’ lead in making products cheaper and better suited to Chinese customers rather than blazing their own paths. But as the market evolves with sustained higher income and more sophisticated consumer tastes, one can bet that Chinese companies will evolve with it by offering more innovative products.

3. The competition between Chinese indigenous firms and MNCs is not a zero sum game.
Observers inside and outside China tend to view the competition between MNCs and domestic firms as one side trying to eat the other’s lunch. But the prevailing pattern is actually a relationship of collaboration. Virtually no Chinese products are made without MNCs’ components. This is true for hardware and software. China’s most popular enterprise management software by UFIDA, a domestic company, has an Oracle database in it. As domestic companies cultivate and expand the market, MNCs have an enlarged consumer base for their products.

MNCs also learned from local firms’ marketing expertise to enhance their market performance. For example, when Nokia and Motorola suffered setbacks from Chinese cell phone manufactures in 2002-04, they managed to regain the high-end of the market by adjusting marketing strategies in part modeled after local competitors. Overall, the increasing involvement of MNCs in China in the past twenty years has been accompanied by, and indeed dependent upon the growing competence of Chinese local companies.

Some Chinese critics lament the lack of innovation in China and they imagine that if only Chinese scientists put their minds to innovation with ample state funding, innovation would take place. The truth is that given globalization and the lagging state of China, domestic companies cannot generate new technology unless they work with MNCs. Only MNCs can demonstrate how technology, marketing, and human resources are managed in the modern world. They provide Chinese companies with the knowledge of rules and skills the Chinese market has yet to provide. The technological dynamics displayed by returnee-founded enterprises nowadays exemplify how indispensible the international linkages are for cutting-edge innovation in China.

4. The critical role of the Chinese state is not to lead technological change, but to be an honest and responsible collaborating partner with other technological agents.
Analysts tracking Chinese technological changes often regard the Chinese state as the decisive actor. Outside China, China’s success in economic development is frequently credited to the Chinese state policies, and Chinese failure in creating frontier technology breakthroughs is also blamed on its authoritarian system. Within China, some Chinese scholars believe that China has become too dependent on Western technology and China’s private sector is incapable of moving into long-term R&D, so they advocate a more direct role for the state. It is not uncommon to hear Chinese officials referring to China’s success in producing nuclear bombs and a satellite in the 1960s as a model for technological breakthroughs. Unfortunately, this argument shows little understanding of the difference between military and civilian technology, or of the reality of the global marketplace in which Chinese companies must operate. A nuclear bomb does not have to stand the test of open global competition; a computer chip does. China’s state-directed satellite and technology research prior to the mid-1980s had a very poor record in responding to market needs. Given the intensity of globalization today, a state-centered approach to R & D would be counterproductive, if not simply unfeasible.

This is not to deny that the role of the state is instrumental. In China, as in other developing countries, the question is never whether the state should play a role in technological development, but how. Zhongguancun’s experience shows us the state’s crucial roles are not in being leaders, but in collaborating effectively with other technological agents and learning to reform regional institutions under changed circumstances. The accomplishments of China’s Silicon Valley thus far cannot be attributed primarily to the Chinese government.

Domestic companies and MNCs alike have spent considerable energy pushing the state to change its resource allocation, ease its restrictions, and alter its regulations. Over the years, the Chinese state has largely been responsive and tolerant of the various experiments in the region, setbacks notwithstanding. But the state has not gone far enough. In the long run, genuine innovation can only come from freedom of thought, experimentation, collective effort, and frequent exchanges with advanced technological parties and marketplaces. All that will require the Chinese government to continue to collaborate with—rather than supervise or direct—other parties. Only then can a fairer and more open institutional structure for fostering innovation can be built.

China’s path into high-tech will not be easy, but one should never underestimate the capacity of Chinese enterprises in learning and competing in their domestic market, which will eventually move them toward a more innovative trajectory.

Yu Zhou teaches geography at Vassar College.