The Feet of the Rooster- China and National Day
I caught around a half-hour of China's National Day pagaentry from a small television set in a tiny Dai village somewhere between Baoshan and the Salween River. I only came to the village in order to re-stock on water and mooncakes*, the latter perfectly suited for bicycle energy food.
(Unfortunately I missed the exciting bits; the mini-skirted women marching in lock-step that forced old Comrade Hu Jintao to crack a smile, the display of military might, and the various other processions of attractive people moving gracefully that seems an essential part of any large public event in Asia. I caught only the banal procession of people carrying portraits of leaders past and present as well as giant characters spelling out support for 'Mao Zedong thought' and other such anachronistic slogans that nonetheless remain firmly entrenched in Chinese propaganda. )
The Chinese are fond of saying that their country is shaped like a giant rooster. If this is so, Beijing lies at the rooster's heart, while the coastal cities face farthest forward. In this analogy, the town in which I stopped- scatologically named Pu Ping （铺平) by the way- would be somewhere near the rooster's feet, being dragged along by the rest of its body.
Viewed from outside of China, the pageant seemed designed to reinforce stereotypes Westerners hold of the country. Namely, China is a rising power both economically and militarily and has leapt into modernity at a frightening pace. The China on display in Beijing that day is the China that we're told will soon dominate the world and perhaps threaten our security. This is the China that is supposed to be the bee in our bonnets.
Yet from the perspective of a small town in China's rural hinterland that image of China seemed laughably lopsided. What I saw were tiny villages without running water and scores of poor agricultural workers, many of whom were tawny-skinned and scrawny. Pu Ping is simply one community out of many scattered across China, and the villagers I spoke to were part of the country's 700 million strong peasantry- a population more than double that of the entire United States.
When viewed from the front, the Chinese rooster can appear a menacing animal. From underneath its belly, though, reveals a broader image of the country's full demographic reality.
*Mooncakes are little biscuits traditionally served around the mid-autumn festival in China, which this year fell on the 3rd of October. Their popularity is ordinarily far from universal but after strenuous exercise I gobbled them up unreservedly.
Xinjiang and Twitter
I've long been skeptical about the role of Twitter in fomenting political change. Skeptical until this Xinjiang uprising, that is.
Before the Chinese government blocked the service midday Monday, I read two eyewitness reports, saw several photographs, and read several articles about what had happened. Keep in mind that I follow only about 100 people. The amount of information that I received gave me a more comprehensive picture of what is happening in Xinjiang than any one newspaper article possibly could.
Will anything change in Xinjiang? My guess is no. The Chinese government is masterful in blaming all minority uprising on evil elements from abroad, maintaining with cynical consistency that the vast majority of Uighurs are truly happy with Chinese dominance and only a few 'rotten apples' ruin it for everyone else.
Yet access to so much information, at the very least, improves everyone's bullshit detector.
The Recession in Shenzhen
One of Andrew Sullivan's correspondents today, an English teacher in Shenzhen, wrote the following about how the recession is playing out in China:
...it's surprising how well China's Maoist legacy acts as a safety net inside a capitalist economy. Shenzhen and cities like it, effectively, have half of their population living not as citizens, but as long-term temporary workers. Most of these workers who are getting downsized now will be returning to homes and farms in the countryside because they mostly were not allowed to sell. Most never made permanent residence because the archaic "hukou" household registration system ties delivery of government goods and services to those hometowns. If it works out well, they'll be going back to a rent-free home with decent savings and severance to start their own projects, where their children have free education and increasingly subsidized health-care. As terrible as these policies looked during the boomtimes, they're looking increasingly wise today.
Is this overly optimistic? My instinct says yes. Changing government policies have made the western provinces, where these "long-term temporary workers" come from, more attractive venues for launching a business. But opportunities are still far fewer there than in Guangdong, even with the steep drop in exports.
Any thoughts?
Kunming to Taipei Direct Flight
GoKunming reports today that China Eastern has launched a weekly flight between Kunming and Taipei, capital of Taiwan. As Chris notes in the post, this news would have been absolutely unthinkable only a few years ago. In fact, when I moved to China the big Taiwan Strait news was China's enactment of an "anti-secessionist" law, which plainly stated that any Taiwanese move toward independence would provoke a military response from the mainland.
So how did relations between the two improve?
The biggest reason is Taiwanese politics. The island, unlike the mainland, is a democracy and has two main parties- the Kuomintang (国民党), and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). This year, the Kuomintang won Taiwan's presidential election after several years of DNC rule. Generally, the Kuomintang is the pro-reunification* party while the DPP is the pro-independence party. Naturally, cross-Strait relations have improved since the March elections.
But wait. Didn't the Kuomintang once fight a war against the Chinese Communist Party? How could the two have warm relations today?
In fact, the Kuomintang was the party of Chiang Kai-Shek, the former ruler of nationalist China and enemy of the Communist Mao Zedong. When Mao defeated Chiang in the Chinese civil war, the latter fled to Taiwan and established the "Republic of China" there with the stated intention of re-taking the mainland.
Obviously, that never happened.
What did happen in Taiwan, though, was eventual democratic reforms. Chiang governed as dictator until his death in 1976 (same year that Mao died, incidentally), at which point his son took over. Reforms started about a decade later, and the island held its first democratic elections in 1996, with the Kuomintang taking power. Talk of "taking over the mainland" slowly faded.
But that doesn't answer the question of how the Kuomintang emerged as the pro-reunification party in Taiwan. Before Chiang ever arrived (carrying much of the Chinese treasury and cultural relics with him), there were already a lot of Chinese people living on the island. These people were, by and large, descendants of Chinese people who had immigrated to Taiwan over the previous three centuries. They weren't altogether happy that the Chinese who had just arrived suddenly took power. In Taiwan's sixty-year incarnation as the Republic of China, thus, there has existed a rivalry between the Johnny-come-lately and the we-were-here-first factions.
By and large, the Kuomintang represent the former group, and the opposition parties the latter. The Taiwanese whose ancestors had been on the island for centuries tend to favor reunification less than the Taiwanese whose parents and grandparents were born on the mainland.
So with the pro-reunification crowd in power, increased transport and trade links come as little surprise. Should the Democratic Nationalists win the next elections, though, expect some of these gains to be reversed. Which means that those of us who would like to visit Taiwan without much transit hassle should act quickly. Anyone have 11,000 RMB to spare for the return ticket?
UPDATE: An earlier version of this post incorrectly identified the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) as the Democratic National Party (DNC). Apologies for the error, and thanks to Pfeffer in the comments.
*By "pro-reunification", I should probably clarify that the Kuomintang do not favor immediate reunification, but rather eventual reunification. At the moment the party is happy to preserve the status-quo.
Hu Jia Hurts Whose Feelings?
Hu Jia, an AIDS activist currently imprisoned in China for the crime of subversion, was recently awarded the Sakharov Prize by the European Parliament. The Chinese government was displeased, reverting in their criticism of the award to their usual tropes of "interference in domestic matters" and "hurting the feelings of the Chinese people".
The former critique is misguided (at best) but the latter is just ridiculous. How, exactly, could the feelings of 1.3 billion Chinese be hurt by this award? Hu by all accounts is a patriot in the best sense; he exposes the corruption, malfeasance, and inadequacies of his government. To my knowledge, he has never personally attacked Chinese people, has never resorted to violence, and has never caused the è€ç™¾å§“ any harm.
Descriptions of China as a totalitarian police state are overblown, but the government still demands utter fealty to the policies of the Communist Party. In fact, the concept of "patriotism" in China is still tied to party loyalty, regardless of how the said party governs. Hu Jia doesn't demand the violent overthrow of the government; he merely wants it to operate better. Rather than hurting the feelings of Chinese people, I suspect many who know of him regard him, silently, as something of a hero.
Mao and an Important Milestone
I recently finished reading Jonathan Spence's brisk biography of Mao Zedong, published ten or so years ago. Unlike other biographies, Spence kept his focus narrow; he merely documented Mao's life and eschewed long ruminations on his legacy. Spence also conveys a sense of who Mao was as a person, analyzing his poetry and his personal relationships with family members. The result is an impressive achievement- a biography of a towering figure that barely exceeds 200 pages.
One complaint, though; Spence spends an inordinate amount of time discussing Mao's early years and seemingly sprints through the period in which Mao actually governed China. By the time Mao climbed Tiananmen in 1949 and proclaimed the founding of the People's Republic of China, the book was nearly two-thirds done. Significant events such as the Cultural Revolution are only fleetingly mentioned.
I suspect Spence did this intentionally; much has been written about Mao's years in power, while comparatively little is known about how he got there. Yet the transition between young idealist and bloated dictator wasn't explained as seamlessly as it should have been.
The most interesting part of the book, to me, was a description of how Mao fomented a cult of personality as early as the late 1930s. Then in his mid-forties, Mao was ensconced in a Communist base camp in Yan'an, Shaanxi Province, where he simultaneously fought the Japanese occupation and the rival Nationalists. During these years, Mao studied Marxist dialectic and began elucidating his own interpretations of the doctrine, focusing on the need of rural reform. He wrote extensively and had his men read and study his works. Several of the key players in Chinese history- Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, and Lin Biao- were present with Mao at this stage.
Spence's discussion of the Cultural Revolution did include one interesting nugget. Mao, then in his seventies and increasingly feeble, initially intended the chaotic street scenes to last a mere four months. By the end of 1966, he had lost total control of the situation even as his people marched around chanting his name. In his later years, Mao expressed contrition for the damage done, as well as bitterness toward his fourth and final wife, Jiang Qing, whom China has blamed as the Cultural Revolution mastermind.
For a man of extreme intelligence, energy, and charisma, Mao's understanding of the wider world hardly exceeded that of a typical Hunanese peasant of his time. He traveled twice to the Soviet Union (once to meet Stalin) but otherwise never left China. He studied Russian and English but mastered neither, and during his meetings with foreign leaders he remained totally reliant on his more cosmopolitan advisors. Under Mao, it is easy to see how China slid into autarky, closing itself from the outside world.
The funniest section of the book was an account of Mao meeting Richard Nixon for the first time. The American president awkwardly tried to praise Mao for his lifetime achievements, while the mentally ill and erratic Chinese dictator brushed these encominums aside. In a sense, Mao and Nixon could have had a lot to talk about. Nixon, of course, came from rural California and resented the snobbery of more cosmopolitan Americans. He was intelligent, driven, and ruthless, but later was undone by his paranoia and thirst for power. The same could be said of Mao, born twenty years earlier and in entirely different circumstances.
Speaking of Mao, Tim Johnson notes that the era in which he governed China has now been eclipsed in length by the current era launched by Deng Xiaoping. Later this year marks the 30th anniversary of Deng's rise to power and the subsequent transformation of China.
The Amazing Speed of Change
When I arrived in Kunming 18 months ago, the main artery separating my road from the university was called 一二一大街， an extension of the city's first ring road. The road was quite narrow and traffic flowed in both directions; also, at major intersections, pedestrian crossings often slowed car traffic to a crawl.
To rectify this problem, the city government late last year turned 一二一大街 into a one-way street, diverting southbound traffic to the parallel å¦åºœè·¯. They also constructed two massive pedestrian overpasses (called 天桥, or "sky bridge" in Chinese) to alleviate pedestrian congestion. For a few months, traffic flowed much faster.
Now, perhaps seven months after these changes, traffic is now worse than ever. On days when I take the bus back from work, we come to a complete stop. The driver even turns off the ignition. Passengers become restless. Moods become black.
The only explanation that I can think of is that there has simply been a massive increase in the number of cars on the road.
In 2010, Kunming plans to open its new international airport, located far from the city center. When completed, the airport will be the fourth largest in China (both in terms of passenger traffic and cargo). The current airport will be torn down and redeveloped into a central residential complex, shifting Kunming's effective "downtown" 8 or 9 kilometers southward.
When did the current airport open? 1999. When retired, it will have been in use 11 years. The "old" airport is now the current airport's air traffic control tower. And even though the current airport will be in use for only two more years, the government has still invested massive sums of money into refurbishing and expanding it. That's how many new passengers and flights are happening.
Changes occur in China far faster than they do in fully developed countries, which is why most visitors here are amazed by the constant construction work. In many places, changes occur gradually and are only noticeable many years later. One of the most exciting aspects of living here, to me, is that changes happen right before your eyes.
Happy Birthday, Communist Party!
Both Xinhua and People's Daily lead with encomiums to the Chinese Communist Party, founded on this date in 1921. Here's a snippet of Xinhua's fulsome editorial:
å…«å七年峥嵘å²æœˆï¼Œå…«å七载光辉历程。今天，我们党已æˆé•¿ä¸ºæ‹¥æœ‰7300多万党员ã€åœ¨13亿人å£çš„大国长期执政的大党。八åä¸ƒå¹´çš„é£Žé›¨ç ¥ç ºï¼Œæˆ‘ä»¬å…šæ›´åŠ åšå¼ºä¼Ÿå¤§ï¼Œå…šçš„肌体生机勃å‘；八åä¸ƒå¹´çš„é£Žé™©è€ƒéªŒï¼Œæˆ‘ä»¬å…šæ›´åŠ æˆç†Ÿè‡ªä¿¡ï¼Œå…šçš„äº‹ä¸šæ›´åŠ è¾‰ç…Œã€‚
(in translation)
It has been 87 memorable years, suffused with a brilliant course. Today, our party has grown to include more than 73 million members, a great party governing over a great nation with a population of 1.3 billion. In the 87 years of trials and tribulations, our party has become ever more strong and great, an organism thriving with a new lease on life. In 87 years of hazardous risk, our party has become ever more mature and confident, its cause ever more glorious.
It's easy to poke fun at the Pravda-like nature of the Chinese media, but the resilience of the CCP is surely impressive. How "Communist" it truly is remains open to doubt. If the modern Communist Party were given a name more in line with its governing style, it'd be a Nationalist Party dictatorship attempting to juggle a market economy with a repressive political system. Will the Chinese Communist Party be around for another eighty-seven years? We'll see.
Censorship
Jeremiah writes:
Ah the vicissitudes of a government petrified of information€¦after a brief revival this past week, blogspot is YET AGAIN blocked in Beijing. This time joined by the popular workaround site anonymouse which has, until now it would seem, been a decent way to access blocked sites. Hopefully this is all temporary and somebody will get the nanny a cocktail and a neck massage.
But for the moment can I just address (again) the purple elephant sitting in the corner: societies that block information and are afraid of alternative viewpoints cannot be considered modern and developed€¦and no amount of high rise buildings, synchronized hand claps, Audi A6s, or Olympic games will make it so.
Sorry.
Amen. Blocking blog hosting software only scratches the surface of media censorship in China. I used to read the China Daily until its sycophancy became depressing, and while TV news broadcasts are good for Chinese listening comprehension they don't convey much in the way of useful news. Chinese people brave enough to challenge official government policy on virtually any issue usually end up silenced if not incarcerated.
As Jeremiah writes, the booming economy and increasingly cosmopolitan nature of the country do not mask the fact that China remains a rigid, authoritarian dictatorship that is completely controlled by one unelected political party. Admission of this fact usually elicits feeble excuses, such as that China is somehow "different" and that Chinese people are somehow not ready for participatory democracy or a free press. Some go so far as to say that authoritarian systems "work better", belying the fact that most dictatorships crumble under the weight of their own inefficiency. China's impressive growth has been in spite of its government, not because of it.
Some months ago I read Sam Harris' anti-religion cri de couer "The End of Faith". Drawing on an impressive command of epistemology, Harris argues that some ideas are better than others regardless of context. For instance, he writes that religions that practice "honor killings" are inferior to those that do not, and that atheism (or scientific rationality) ranks higher than religious faith of any kind in the hierarchy of ideas.
Whether or not one agrees with Harris' take, I do believe that his rejection of relativism can be extended into the political sphere. Societies that allow freedom of information, protect individual rights, and limit governmental power are inherently more humane and vibrant than those that do not. I do not mean to endorse a violent overthrow of the Chinese government, but am merely pointing out that despite its glowing facade, China remains, in many ways, a deeply backward country.
A caveat or two: I would totally oppose any effort from the United States, United Nations, or any other country to attack China in order to change its political system. China's sovereignty ought to be respected, just like those in nations whose institutions we may find more admirable.
Aftershocks
The Chinese government's response to the earthquake has been nothing short of remarkable, especially given the country's recent history in dealing with major crises. The transparency and efficacy with which Beijing helped coordinate relief efforts and reassured a grieving nation has truly impressed me. Not long ago, China had a reputation for bungling its disaster responses, from the Tangshan quake to the Yangtzi floods to SARS. Given the scale of the current disaster, I must salute the Communist Party leadership for a job well done.
One interesting development in particular has been the rise of Wen Jiabao, China's avuncular premier. With President Hu unavailable, Wen was dispatched to Sichuan and proved himself an inspirational figure, calling for China's children to persevere in the aftermath of tragedy. Like leaders in other authoritarian regimes, China's top officials are at turns ubiquitious and invisible. Hu and Wen appear regularly in Chinese news broadcasts and on banners, but are still unelected and unaccountable. Seeing Wen walking amongst his people, providing assistance and leadership, struck me as a new development in Chinese politics. The victims of the quake were not Potemkin villagers, carefully arranged to elicit maximum political benefit. These are real Chinese citizens being attended to by their leaders, and I hope the Chinese leadership will deal with future crises accordingly.
Then again, the enormous amount of corruption in the Chinese system cannot be ignored. The New York Times reports that villagers affected by the quake are wondering why so many schools collapsed while government buildings remained upright. If children are the future, shouldn't great effort be extended to protecting their physical safety? To their credit, certain Chinese officials have admitted that construction on schools has been shoddy at times, but that is small comfort to the parents whose children were trapped by fallen buildings.