The Not-So Princely Princelings
The Singaporean paper Today has an interesting article discussing a growing Maoist revival in China. The man behind the campaign? Princeling Bo Xilai:
In the western municipality of Chongqing, which he heads as Party Secretary, Mr Bo rules with an arsenal of Maoist slogans and propaganda techniques. On special occasions, residents receive "red texts" - Mao quotations sent to mobile phones. The local state television station has replaced all commercials with "red programmes" - soap operas narrating revolutionary history. Civil servants, state company staff and students are called in for the organised singing of "red songs" - hymns glorifying the country's founding father and the party.
This passage is particularly chilling:
Prominent academics have raised the stakes in the debate. Mr Mao Yushi, an economist (no relation to Mao Zedong), demanded in an essay last month that the former leader be demoted from the status of deity and "returned to human form".
His call for an end to hagiography and the revived personality cult drove Maoists into a rage. On Utopia and other conservative forums, Mr Mao is being called a "capitalist running dog". He is subject to taunts of "cow ghost" and "snake spirit", terms used during the darkest days of the cultural revolution to humiliate and demonise people who often ended up tortured or beaten to death. One group has collected 10,000 signatures to support its demand that police go after the economist for alleged subversion and libel.
Brief aside: the Chinese do come up with some silly insults, don't they? I'm not sure how I'd react if someone called me a cow ghost. Yet something tells me this poor economist isn't laughing.
One thing that's worth mentioning is that the Chinese government has never renounced communism. That may seem like a tautology- given the name of the party and all- but when Western analysts breezily write that China is "no longer Communist", it's instructive to remember that the Chinese themselves don't agree.
China and the Weird Holiday Schedule
The New York Times ponders the subject of China's peculiar holiday system (via Imagethief's Twitter feed):
According to a government-mandated holiday schedule that took effect in 2008, workers were given three consecutive days off last week for the Mid-Autumn Festival, but they were required to make up two of those by working the Saturday and Sunday on either end of the holiday.
This give-and-take arrangement is then repeated for the National Day holiday, with employees enjoying seven straight days off — Friday through Oct. 7 — except only three of those are official free days. (The four “gifted days” will be made up over the weekends before and after.)
If you have trouble with the math, you are in good company.
“Seeing the calendar, my first reaction was, ‘This is insane, how am I supposed to remember this?’ ” Zhou Li, a government employee, told The Yangzhou Daily last week. “The arrangement is so complicated, with holidays messed up with weekends, it is impossible to memorize.”
The problem was made worse this year because the Mid-Autumn Festival fell on Sept. 22, within a week of the longer National Day sojourn.
A cheat sheet that has been making the rounds on the Internet sums up the pattern as such, beginning Sept. 18: One day off, three days on, three days off, six days on, seven days off, two days on, one day off.
Anyone want to play Where's Waldo?
The holiday system in China is so opaque that I wouldn't be surprised if teams of Sinologists weren't writing dissertations about what it all means. Here's a basic summary, culled from memory:
Nobody really ever seems to know how long each holiday lasts, or when exactly they are. Nobody knows how many days off they get, and when they will be expected to work. Making any sort of medium-term travel plans, such as airline bookings, is considered unduly risky. When I taught in high schools in China, we often were given a week's notice of upcoming days off. If we complained, the school would say that they themselves had only just found out, and that they had told us immediately.
No subject infuriates people more than the dreaded 'weekend make-up days' policy, in which one has to 'make up' days spent on vacation on preceding and succeeding weekends. The bliss of a few days off quickly wears off when you're hit with 12 consecutive days at work immediately upon return.
On a related note, anyone who has traveled during the so-called 'golden weeks' or during Spring Festival fully understands what a population of 1.3 billion truly means. During Spring Festival, virtually everyone travels home to be with their family and because the vast majority cannot afford to fly this means that the country's trains and buses are jam-packed to a degree unheard of in the West. Think your local airport is bad during the day before Thanksgiving? Look at the photo above. There were 500,000 people at the train station in Guangzhou that day, all trying to get home. That is not a misprint.
Yet in a weird way, the chaos that are holidays in China are part of the country's charm. Being 6 foot 2 and a bit, contorting my body into tiny seats in cramped buses is physically rough, but when everyone else is uncomfortable too there's a shared camaraderie. I've had many great conversations with perfect strangers on buses and trains, and to me the Chinese ability to find humor in the most dire and uncomfortable arrangements is one of their great virtues.
UPDATE: I see Richard has also commented on the piece.
Dignity or Humiliation?
It appears that our fair city of Kunming has received international press attention, though not for its beauty, good weather, or fine food. Nope, Kunming's claim to fame may now be it's dwarf theme park, which since last year has been open to the public. From the New York Times:
Chen Mingjing's entrepreneurial instincts vaulted him from a peasant upbringing to undreamed-of wealth, acquired in ventures ranging from making electric meters to investing in real estate. But when he was 44, the allure of making money for money's sake began to wane. He wanted to run a business that accomplished some good.
And so last September, Mr. Chen did what any socially aware entrepreneur might do: He opened a theme park of dwarfs, charging tourists about $9 a head to watch dozens of dwarfs in pink tutus perform a slapstick version of "Swan Lake" along with other skits.
At first glance this park appears to be a modern-day version of a circus freak show. But Mr. Chen swears that he's actually offering a source of dignity to the vertically challenged by allowing them to live where they can be of normal height.
So it is an act of profitable compassion? Or perverse exploitation? Or both? I report, you decide.
Golf in China
Dan Washburn is a writer I've followed since I arrived in China six years ago. Over the past couple of years Dan has shifted his focus to golf, a burgeoning sport that has attracted a certain amount of controversy in China. To say that few Chinese play golf would be a grand understatement- the percentage of those who could even plausibly afford to play is statistically insignificant- yet golf course development has accelerated rapidly in recent years.
To illustrate just how and why this is happening, check out Dan's piece in the Financial Times, this photo essay in Foreign Policy, and Dan's site.
Anatomy of a Righteous Chinese Nationalist
China Hush has translated a rather long screed in the form of an open letter from an outraged Chinese to President Obama. The letter is interesting not for its unremarkable message but rather because it provides a useful archetype of how a Chinese fenqing, or angry youth, thinks.
Much of the letter consists of a denunciation of the Dalai Lama, whom the author brands as a 'terrorist', followed by the usual declaration of China as a 'peace loving country' somehow unique in the world.
As I've pointed out recently the two concepts mentioned above are interrelated. The Chinese government propagates an image of being a peaceful country so as to distinguish itself from the various foreign powers who carved China up in the 19th and 20th centuries as well as to provide an ex-post-facto justification for why its conquest of Tibet was somehow one of liberation rather than imperialism. In order to pretend that there is no legitimate opposition in Tibet, the Communist Party labels the Dalai Lama as a villain and blames all unrest in the region on his influence.
A caveat, lest you think I'm grouping all Chinese in with this particularly outraged young man. His views are reminiscent of ultra-nationalists and do not correspond to the vast majority of Chinese people. Then again, the fact that over 6,000 others have 'dinged' or supported his post indicates that quite a few people in this country feel similarly.
The Real Tibet
In Foreign Policy Christina Larson provides a useful reminder that Tibet is no 'Shangri-La'. My own experience traveling through Tibetan parts of Yunnan and Sichuan Provinces confirms this; Tibetans aren't the enlightened, beatific race imagined by the region's more fervent supporters.
Yet the Tibetans are, in fact, Tibetan and not Chinese. China likes to tell the world that it alone among the great powers eschews colonial expansion, a narrative that sells well with the patriotic masses. But the simple fact remains is that periodically throughout history, China has established suzerainty over Tibet in order to form a buffer zone with other powers as well as to exploit the region's abundant resources.
More recently, China has invested greatly in Tibet's infrastructure in order to link the region to the rest of the country, both physically and culturally. Likewise, Beijing provides incentives for Han Chinese to migrate to Tibet as a means to dilute the area's demographic makeup and guard against organized rebellion.
China's actions are by no means unprecedented. Great powers have long made incursions into strategically important territories on their periphery. Yet the notion that China is different- exceptional, if you will- because it does not behave as a colonial power is central to the national narrative promulgated by the Communist Party. Such a narrative helps inspire a sense of patriotism among the population, essential in maintaining national unity.
So while it appears on the surface that the Dalai Lama is winning the global public relations battle over Tibet over Beijing, it is important to recognize that China prizes a different battlefield- domestic opinion. As a result, I don't expect editorials in the China Daily railing against the Dalai clique to cease anytime soon.
Sino and American Exceptionalism
One aspect of contemporary Sino-American scholarship largely overlooked is the notion that both China and the United States contain a notion of 'exceptionalism' that largely doesn't exist elsewhere in the world. The most immediate explanation I can think of for why is the enormous size of the two countries as well as their relative insularity from the outside world.
American exceptionalism is best exemplified by universal health care reform. Any rational comparative analysis of health care systems around the world would lead one to conclude that the US system is easily the least effective and the most expensive of any OECD country. The obvious solution would be to look at a model that works better- say, in France- and come up with ways to reform the American system so that it conforms to a higher international standard.
Yet opponents to universal health care in the US, represented neatly in the Republican Party, believe that because the US system is different it must therefore be better. As a result they devote their energy to devising mendacious explanations for why our broken system is in fact superior.
In foreign affairs right-wing Americans find no trouble distinguishing between acts of terror and violence by our political enemies between those of ourselves and allies such as Israel. If we do it, then it isn't bad, because we did it, right?
China for its part is at least well aware that it is a developing country, yet Sinic exceptionalism does exist. One notion shared between both countries is its persistent refusal to accept that they are imperial in nature.
Rather than accept that China annexed and colonized Tibet for strategic reasons, most Chinese I know find it easier to believe that Tibet has 'always been a part of China'. The same logic applies to Xinjiang. Beijing's historical designs for Central Asia are no different than that of the Russians, British, and other participants in the Great Game. Yet for some reason China pretends that that part of the world is intrinsically Chinese regardless of what the indigineous inhabitants say.
Americans are fond of the same fiction. I remember the usually-astute Bill Maher claiming on a talk show that America has never engaged in empire- building. Oh, really? Historians familiar with the late 19th/early 20th century administrations of McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt would likely beg to differ. In contemporary America, there are currently US soldiers stationed on bases throughout the world. As much as we'd like to believe that the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan were strictly for liberalization purposes, imperial strategy dictates otherwise. And from the Monroe Doctrine to Bush-era US skullduggery in Venezuela and Haiti the US has long claimed a certain dominion over the distribution of power in the Americas.
I'm not trying to be cynical for its own purpose but rather point out that nations the size of the US and China- and Russia- are imperial by nature.
Exceptionalism also shines through in politics. In China, the Communist Party is fond of saying that while democracy may be well and good for other countries it doesn't suit China. Chinese and Western apologists for the CCP parrot this line oblivious of how self-serving it is.
Why doesn't exceptionalism exist elsewhere? In Europe, there are so many countries crowded in a small area that insulation is simply untenable. Yet in China and the US our shared sense of exceptionalism can persist given our physical immensity.
I understand that geo-politics are much more complex than this, and that there are a great number of variables at play. But would elements in both China and America realize that both are merely members of the great big nation-state family rather than exceptional elements some progress could be made.
China Mythbusting
James Fallows points to a recent survey by Pew in which a shocking percentage of Americans believe that China is more of an economic superpower than the US. This is of course completely false, as Fallows goes on to explain and then illustrate with a photograph of dormitory conditions at Chinese universities.
I've discussed previously that rural China is as valid- if not more so- a representation of the country as the major urban centers in the east. Why then does this misconception persist?
- China's massive population skews numbers. In gross terms, China's economy is the third largest in the world, ranking between Japan and Germany. In terms of growth per capita, though, China is by any measure a poor country. This Wikipedia page lists GDP per capita figures in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP). Countries ranked near China include Angola, Armenia, and Namibia. Nobody in America thinks of these countries as economic superpowers, do they? And yet in one sense China's economic position is more similar to them than it is to America, Japan, or Germany. There are a lot of wealthy people in China, but that's because there are a lot of people, period.
Woman in Black: A Chinese Internet Tale
On November 16 US President Barack Obama held an American-style town hall meeting with a group of university students in Shanghai. During the event, the camera panned toward a pretty female student dressed stylishly in black who was seated near the president.
Naturally, the identity of this girl elicited the attention of the Chinese internet community, who immediately commenced a 'human flesh search'. Before long, the 'Obama girl' was identified as an MBA candidate named Wang Zifei at Shanghai's Jiaotong University. Like many of her peers she kept a blog in which he discussed her life and posted photographs of herself.
Following an intense period of attention and scrutiny Wang addressed the matter on her blog, stating that she made no special effort to attract attention during Obama's speech and that her celebrity- now international- was entirely accidental. To underscore her humble nature she highlighted a photograph of herself playing with a kangaroo. Just another pretty young Chinese woman lifted to fame, it seemed.
Or does it? Now ESWN presents information that Ms. Wang's sudden celebrity was in fact carefully premeditated. Apparently her boyfriend- a businessman- paid 100,000 RMB to a Beijing-based internet public relations firm to ensure her placement near Obama in order to jumpstart Wang's entertainment career. (link via Shanghaiist)
I'm still unconvinced. The dress Wang wore was flattering but in no way revealing or inappropriate for the occasion. She removed her coat slowly, yes, but she did not look at the camera or make any movements that could possibly be interpreted as seductive. Her denial struck me as more plausible than this incident, for example. It just seems unlikely to me that a public relations firm could have pulled that off.
We'll see how this plays out, I suppose. In the meantime I find it fascinating how quickly determined netizens uncovered her identity and how, if the ESWN-highlighted story is true, how savvy people are these days with using the internet as a self-promotion vehicle.
Thoughts about the Present Decade- And the One Coming
Over the past week or so I've been working on a blog post summarizing the 2000s and wondering what the biggest themes, events, and trends were, both in China and beyond. When I sat down to write it I realized that there was so much to say that a simple blog post here wouldn't do it justice. Perhaps when I have more time around the end of the year I'll give it another stab.
Instead I'd like to think ahead to the 'teens, the 2010s, or whatever we might call the next decade. What sorts of things are likely to happen, both at home and abroad? I've laid out a few thoughts to get the ball rolling.
1. Within the US and the developed world there are three ideas that will gather momentum in the next ten years: acceptance of gay marriage, decriminalization of marijuana, and action on climate change. Part of this prediction is hopeful as I support all three wholeheartedly, but I do think that if the past ten years are any indication these three ideas have gone from being somewhat farfetched to at least plausible.
2. The reading of a daily newspaper will cease as we know it, and by 2020 or earlier all newspapers will be digital. In order to make this model work subscribers will pay for news content and likely other services such as social networking websites, search engines, and even some opinion journals. The next generation of web- web 3.0 if you will-will be figuring out how to pay for it all.
3. Environmental incentives will lead to an increase in high-density living in the US, following current trends in Europe and in East Asia. This will be coupled by increased support for high-speed rail and other initiatives. The golden age for the American automobile will recede even further into the past.
These are merely three- anyone care to add more, or comment on mine?