Send Obama to the Countryside
The big news in China these days is the ongoing visit of President Barack Obama, who met with students in Shanghai Monday and with President Hu Jintao in Beijing yesterday. Nothing earth-shattering is expected to happen during Obama's visit and in all likelihood both sides will simply utter the same platitudes that have characterized recent Sino-American relations.
Unsurprisingly, Shanghai and Beijing were chosen as the only two stops on Obama's agenda, and in my recollection not since President Clinton's mid-90s visit to Xi'an has an American president deviated from these two cities on his China journey.
If I could influence Obama's itinerary, I'd schedule him for at least a half-day in one of China's innumerable rural villages. He wouldn't even have to go very far. A short drive from Shanghai into rural Anhui Province would suffice.
In the villages Obama would see how the majority of Chinese people actually live. He could then understand what motivates these villagers, what hopes and dreams they have, or how they perceive the future. I suspect he would come away from such a meeting with a very different perspective on modern China than he has surely taken from meetings with government officials and elite students in Shanghai.
Obama too might be better prepared than most Presidents to empathize with the locals he would meet. Unlike his predecessor, Obama spent several years living outside of the United States. Indonesia in the late 1960s and early 1970s was characterized by a similar degree of income inequality and rural poverty that today defines China.
Americans have a tendency to view China as a major, competitive power and an equal adversary. China sees itself as an ordinary developing country keen to mind its own business. The truth lies somewhere in between.
But by restricting his visit to only the nation's marquee cities I fear Obama might not have gained a very balanced portrait of what this country is really like. With a relationship as vital as the Sino-American one such a skewed perspective may ultimately prove disadvantageous and even dangerous.
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.
Michael Jackson
By the time I started listening to music, roughly 20 years ago, Michael Jackson was already past his prime. He was still a major star and a darling of MTV, but he had already begun his transition from the 'King of Pop' to 'Wacko Jacko'. Within a few years would come the first charges of child molestation. Not long thereafter he seemed to fall off the music radar altogether and became better known for his bizarre antics; the marriage to Lisa Marie Presley, dangling his baby child out of the window, the move to Bahrain.
Plastic surgery so warped his appearance that it became difficult to even look at his face. He looked grotesque and inhuman. His death almost seems a relief as the long lacuna of his career was difficult to bear for his fans who so loved the man's music.
The Michael Jackson his fans choose to remember--the man whose dancing and singing once dazzled the world- died long ago.
Can Iranian Politics Be Useful to China?
Iran is presently holding a presidential campaign, in which the current president finds himself trailing in the polls. Recent accounts indicate that opprobrium between the two camps- those of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his challenger Mir Hussein Moussavi- is high. The two men have been campaigning feverishly across the country, with one holding the support of Iran's large peasantry and the other favored by the country's urban elite.
Of course, the cynic in me must point out that the results of this election will ultimately bear little effect on Iranian policy. The country's Supreme Leader, Ali Khameini, remains firmly in power, just as he has been for the past 20 years. The President, despite claims to the contrary by paranoid elements of the West, wields little actual power.
Nonetheless, I think this demonstration of democracy- no matter how inconsequential- is a good exercise for Iran and an example of the country's vibrant civil society. The practice of having political debates aired in public seldom happens in most authoritarian regimes. I'm not suggesting that full-blown democracy is imminent in Iran. But if it were to happen, a democratic apparatus already exists. This is a good thing.
Could China emulate Iran's political system? The Communist Party has no desire to relinquish control, of course. But China could create an additional layer of government in which this version of democracy is practiced. The CCP Politburo can still vet candidates, hold ultimate power, and pull strings, but I think genuine political debate, difference, and passion would be a good thing for China. Too many intelligent Chinese people I know have told me that the country must unite behind its leadership and not question its wisdom. Maybe a bit of good-old fashioned disagreement would do the country a world of good.
Is China Complicit in The North Korea Journalist Case?
What is China's role in the horrifying story of Laura Ling and Euna Lee, the two US journalists who have been sentenced to 12 years in a hard labor camp for illegally entering North Korean territory?
The journalists insist they were on the Chinese side of the border, something that shouldn't really be a matter of dispute; the border is clearly demarcated by the Tumen River. If their account is true, then North Korean agents kidnapped them in a foreign country, raising questions of why China was unwilling or unable to protect individuals on its side of the border from foreign kidnapping.
How would China react, for instance, if North Korean agents were to capture Chinese citizens operating in Chinese territory? I doubt Beijing would take it well. Likewise, I imagine China would try to avoid a diplomatic mess by allowing citizens of third countries to be removed due to the paranoid whims of the Kim regime.
Most of the accounts I've read take the journalists at their word, believing their claim to have remained firmly on the Chinese side of the border. The North Koreans have been known for this sort of treachery before, after all, kidnapping both Japanese and South Korean nationals at various times over the past sixty years. Yet I have yet to see conclusive proof that Lee and Ling were indeed in China, and believe it to be entirely possible that the two, perhaps accidentally, were trespassing in North Korean territory.
If this latter case is true, then China's role in the affair isn't relevant. I suspect we won't find out; as outraged the US is over this ridiculous incarceration, there's little they can do to free the two journalists at this point. But the case does illustrate the balancing act China finds itself committed to over its relationship with the world's most isolated regime.
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?
Realism and China
The controversy over Chas Freeman, who recently withdrew after being appointed by President Obama as the chairman of the National Intelligence Council, has elicited a number of strong opinions in the blogosphere since his appointment was first announced in mid-February.
For those unaware of Freeman and this particular kerfuffle, a useful time line can be found here.
Essentially, objection to Freeman's appointment rested on two principal issues. One, Freeman enjoyed a cozy relationship with the Saudi government as ex-ambassador and made several comments criticizing Israel. Two, Freeman defended the 1989 government crackdown of students in Beijing.
The journalist who has written most extensively in opposition to Freeman, as far as I can tell, is Jonathan Chait of The New Republic. Two journalists I read who have defended Freeman's appointment are Andrew Sullivan and James Fallows of The Atlantic.
In what he hopes to be his final post about Freeman, Chait wrote this weekend about the diplomat's reaction to 6/4. Within his blog post, Chait quotes an e-mail Freeman wrote discussing the '89 crackdown. An excerpt:
...the truly unforgivable mistake of the Chinese authorities was the failure to intervene on a timely basis to nip the demonstrations in the bud, rather than -- as would have been both wise and efficacious -- to intervene with force when all other measures had failed to restore domestic tranquility to Beijing and other major urban centers in China. In this optic, the Politburo's response to the mob scene at "Tian'anmen" stands as a monument to overly cautious behavior on the part of the leadership, not as an example of rash action.
For myself, I side on this -- if not on numerous other issues -- with Gen. Douglas MacArthur. I do not believe it is acceptable for any country to allow the heart of its national capital to be occupied by dissidents intent on disrupting the normal functions of government, however appealing to foreigners their propaganda may be.
In an earlier piece he wrote for The Washington Post, Chait produces a similar excerpt and notes that "This is the portrait of a mind so deep in the grip of realist ideology that it follows the premises straight through to their reductio ad absurdum" No attempt is made to analyze Freeman's comments; Chait presents them as being so clearly objectionable that any refutation would be self-evident and unnecessary.
Chait does correctly identify Freeman as a realist, and realism does have a tendency to seem heartless to its detractors, just as neo-conservatism seems dangerously naive.
Yet he (Chait) fails to explain why Freeman's particular point of view somehow falls beyond the boundary of reasonable disagreement and into "reductio ad absurdum". I agree that a lot of people, myself included, hold a different opinion of the crackdown than does Freeman. But from my experience living in China, his point of view is hardly cold-blooded and reprehensible. In fact, I'd say a fair number of Chinese people, speaking frankly, would agree with him.
Secondly, I fail to understand why Freeman's realist-inspired foreign policy opinions should somehow disqualify him from the post Obama chose for him. After all, a man in Freeman's intended position would hardly be given carte-blanche authority to devise Sino-American policy. He would have reported to Dennis Blair, Obama's Director of National Intelligence. He would have been beneath, among others, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, National Security Adviser James Jones, and of course, Vice President Joseph Biden and President Obama himself.
Presumably, within such a group, there would be some who would hold alternate interpretations of the crackdown than Freeman. In fact, I imagine Obama chose Freeman in an effort to avoid the sort of group-think that plagued the Bush Administration.
The failed appointment indicates, once again, that on certain issues the range of acceptable opinion remains extremely narrow, a disheartening thought.
Smoked Out
So I guess those non-smoking signs on the Beijing-Tianjin high speed trains are more than just decoration:
A man was given three days in detention for breaking a non-smoking rule on a new high-speed rail line, Chinese state media said, an unusually severe punishment in a country where smoking bans are routinely ignored.
He was caught smoking in the toilet just after the train had left Tianjin for Beijing, triggering an alarm and causing the train to stop, the official Xinhua news agency said on its website (www.xinhuanet.com).
The high-tech line connects the capital with neighboring Tianjinin. It opened in time for this year's Beijing Olympics and features carriages more luxurious than usual in China, including swivel chairs and spacious, plush interiors.
No-smoking signs and rules are generally given short shrift in China and about half of all Chinese men smoke.
"It is strictly forbidden to smoke on the Beijing-Tianjin Express, and they hope everyone respects the rules, travels in a civilized manner and ensures the train's safety and punctuality," Xinhua said.
What I find so funny about this is that the Beijing-Tianjin journey takes less than a half-hour. It's one thing to be caught smoking on a ten-hour journey, but surely the poor guy couldn't wait a half-hour?
Scary Bombing in Kunming
As some of you know, a small bomb detonated inside Salvadors' Coffee House in Kunming on Wednesday, fatally injuring one man. No one else was seriously injured, as the bomb exploded at 10:30am when there were few customers inside. The police have come but thus far a clear explanation of what happened has not emerged.
The injured man was taken to the hospital where he took responsibility both for the Salvadors bomb and the bus attacks that rocked the city in July. Evidently, he had 8,500 RMB in cash on his person and a piece of paper with nine red fingerprints scattered across it, suggesting that others may be involved.
Hopefully more details will emerge later; at the moment, the foreign community remains shaken. Salvadors is an institution here; it was one of the first--if not the first-- wholly foreign-owned food enterprise in Yunnan, and a successful, popular joint for both foreign and Chinese patrons. At lunchtime and in evenings the place is normally quite crowded, as a group of regulars sit outside on sunny days and drink coffee, tea, and beer.
I frequently go to Salvadors; in fact, for about six months I taught three of the waitresses English in exchange for unlimited food and non-alcoholic drinks. The four owners- three Americans and one Japanese- are friends of mine. Even today, with both my residence and work a fair distance away, I make time to go to Salvadors at least twice a week. I always know there will be a friend there to talk to.
Yet what makes this bombing so unnerving is the high probability that foreigners are being targeted. We're a soft target here, as most of us do not blend in with a crowd of Chinese people. Foreigners tend to cluster together and frequent the same locations, usually bars, cafes, and restaurants. Salvadors sits at the corner of two roads that constitute the heart of the foreigner neighborhood, near Yunnan University and Green Lake.
An additional hangout just four or five doors down from Salvadors is The Box, an Italian-owned pub/restaurant that specializes in pizza and gelato. Like Salvadors, The Box is popular among foreigners and has a dedicated crowd of regulars, me included. Last week, three Chinese men armed with crowbars entered the bar and smashed a table where several people were sitting. They then threatened to strike the Italian woman on duty at the time. The police were called but didn't apprehend the men; in fact, they were light-hearted and laughing. When my friend asked one of the policemen for his badge number, he was told to shut up and be careful- he didn't have his passport on his person and could be arrested.*
The next day the men came back and apologized, explaining that a foreigner had been rude to them and they wanted retaliation. They were extremely drunk at the time and regretted it. The policemen failed to show up, though apparently one did write up the incident and cited the men; they will likely be punished for it.
Has Kunming, or China, become unsafe for foreigners? Is there a movement against us, borne out of resentment at our high salaries, our loutish behavior, or our intermingling with the locals?
I've never felt unsafe in China; in fact, I've always felt it's one of the safest countries in the world for a foreigner to live in. Most of the young women I know can walk home at night alone and not feel threatened. Most of the Chinese I've met are friendly, open, and eager to meet us.
What is to be done? Most prudent people would suggest that we avoid certain places or large gatherings. But that would be giving in. Terrorism is only effective if people become frightened and alter their life patterns. The odds of being killed in an act of organized violence remains very small.
Salvadors will be closed for awhile; a month, I've heard. When it re-opens I'm sure some people will be wary. Not me, though- I'll be back for my coffee and burritos in no time.
In any event- Chris is covering this story carefully. Keep an eye on GoKunming.
UPDATE: I have just read a long note from Colin, one of the four owners of Salvadors and the one who was present at the cafe when the bombing occurred. Apparently, DNA from Salvadors matched DNA from the July bus bombing, suggesting that the bomber's confession may be legitimate. In addition, the man had a criminal record and served nine years in prison for assault. Frighteningly, the police believe the 10:30 detonation was an accident and that the bomb had intended to go off during the evening, when there would have been more people. That nobody but the bomber was injured is indeed a miracle.
Reading
Two interesting articles on China from the American media:
1. From the Washington Post, the Chinese government has arrested a dissident for signing a petition calling for political reform.
2. From the New York Times, Chinese exports are down, signaling worry.
The two events might seem unrelated; after all, one is a purely political story while the other is economic. Yet in China, the health and viability of the Chinese Communist Party largely depends on the health and viability of the economy. Something to remember.