A Few Thoughts on Yang Rui
On May 16th, the Chinese television personality Yang Rui wrote the following message on his Weibo account (links via Charlie Custer):
The Ministry of Public Security is getting rid of foreign trash right now, arresting foreign scum and protecting innocent Chinese girls from them; but in order to do that, we need to focus on Sanlitun and Wudaokou, and target those who frequent the areas and its event organizers. Foreigners who can't find a job in their home country come to China and get involved in illegal business activities such as human trafficking and espionage; they also like to distribute lies which discredit China to persuade locals to move abroad. A lot of them look for Chinese women to live with as a disguise to further their espionage efforts. They pretend to be tourists traveling around the country while actually helping Japan and Korea make maps and collect GPS data for military purposes. We need to take action, first kick that crazy foreign journalist from Al Jazeera out of the country and close their Beijing office, and then shut everybody up, all the members of the foreign press who demonize China.
Yang's comments, while inflammatory and exaggerated, are unremarkable. Many Chinese people would probably agree with him, and the practice of media personalities demonizing foreign nationals is hardly exclusive to China. (Lou Dobbs, anyone?). Plus Yang, for all of his pretenses as an urbane, sophisticated journalist (check out this embarrassingly fawning profile of Yang by Philip J. Cunningham) has always been a reliable spokesman for Chinese conventional wisdom. Anyone who has seen an episode of "Dialogue" knows the drill: Yang harangues his foreign guests with an artfully packaged version of the Party line. (Here is James Fallows, himself a former guest on the show, with a version of this story). The whole charade becomes tedious after awhile and as a result, I have met very few foreigners in China who take "Dialogue" seriously at all.
So why would Yang Rui's statement be a big deal? The answer relates to something international relations geeks refer to as "soft power". CCTV News, the station that airs "Dialogue", represents part of China's strategy to sell itself to the outside world. China is keen to show that it can produce an international television network that can compete with CNN, BBC, and al Jazeera. The network would have a Chinese-centric viewpoint, of course, and would counter-act what China perceives to be negative and inaccurate coverage of the country in the "Western" media. But for that to work, it would have to maintain professional standards. By offending the audience that CCTV News purportedly seeks, Yang Rui undermined this goal and, by extension, China's attempt to build its "soft power".
The question though is this: is China capable of producing a television network as good as al Jazeera or BBC? This isn't a question of resources, of which China has plenty, but rather of limitations within the Communist system. Television networks gain respect through their editorial independence, but no network owned by China can be independent simply because it would remain subservient to the Propaganda Department. No amount of journalistic talent can change that equation.
The Yang Rui incident also provides a glimpse into how micro-blogging has changed how the media operates in the country. In a previous era, Yang's impolitic remarks would never have seen the light of day due to editorial constraints. With Weibo, though, Yang can simply take a deep breath and hit "publish" and make his ideas accessible to his more than 800,000 followers. The Yang Rui incident, thus, neatly illustrates how social media has thrown a wrench into message discipline in China. This lesson- rather than that of "soft power" may be what we take from this incident in the end.
Chen Guangcheng Update
Well, well. It isn't every day that a blog post becomes obsolete as soon as it's published, but Wednesday was no ordinary day. Let's consider the latest development in the Chen Guangcheng saga:
Liu Weimin stated that should Mr. Chen wish to study abroad, as more than 300,000 Chinese students do, he “can apply through normal channels to the relevant departments in accordance with the law, just like any other Chinese citizen".
On the surface, this represents a deft political compromise after 48 hours of chaotic bungling on both sides. But to me this solution raises more questions than answers. First, where is Chen going to stay while waiting for his application to study abroad be processed? Will he return to his compound in Shandong Province, which remains surrounded by several dozen local thugs? Will he be allowed to live freely elsewhere, say, in Beijing or Tianjin (the city previously handpicked to be Chen's destination)?
Also, the Chinese government would be under no obligation to accept Chen's application, would it? Many Chinese students who apply to study abroad are rejected, so couldn't Beijing simply say that Chen didn't meet the requirements? The US would not have the diplomatic ability to ensure Chen's safety and safe passage out of the country once he has been released back into Chinese hands. Won't Chen just go back into a precarious state of limbo, as before?
One thing worth keeping in mind is this: the Chinese public is not necessarily on Chen's side. State media coverage in the country is emphasizing the usual "U.S. meddling in Chinese affairs" canard, and few ordinary people know or care much about Chen's particular grievances. The Party understands that it faces little risk in public backlash in detaining Chen indefinitely, and that over time foreign interest in Chen's welfare will surely decrease. Time is on Beijing's side.
The U.S. was motivated to resolve the Chen crisis as quickly as possible due to the looming China-U.S. Strategic and Economic Dialogues summit . As a result, American diplomats were too eager to accede to Chen's wishes to release him, leading to the standoff at the hospital. Now I wonder whether they're making a similar error in trusting China's permission for Chen to apply to study abroad. In any event, I don't think the Clinton State Department has handled this Chen case well at all.
More information, without a doubt, is forthcoming.
UPDATE: Chen Guangcheng has arrived safely in the United States, and will apparently be studying at NYU here in New York City. I'm happy to be proven wrong, in this case.
China, the US Embassy, and the Rule of Law
For the second time in less than three months, a prominent Chinese citizen has sought protection at a U.S. diplomatic facility inside the country. To say that this is unusual would be an understatement; the last high-profile Chinese defections to the United States occurred nearly 23 years ago following the Tiananmen Square massacre.
It is tempting to view Wang Lijun and Chen Guangcheng's actions through a traditional Cold War lens. For one, Americans are fond of the belief that all the world's citizens would move to our country if they had the chance. China is no less brutal a police state than it was in 1989, and in many respects the political climate has become less liberal in recent years. Could Wang and Chen's flight reflect a traditional desire for political asylum?
Not likely. Wang, for one, was no dissident. As Bo Xilai's consigliere (first in Dalian and later, most prominently, in Chongqing) Wang helped re-introduce Maoist-era policies as well as heavier State involvement in the economy. He also assisted Bo in cracking down on Chongqing's notorious criminal gangs, a process which involved no small amount of skulduggery. Wang's personal political beliefs and feelings toward the United States are unknown, but in practice he is about the furthest thing from a Western-style liberal as you can get in Chinese politics.
Chen Guangcheng, on the other hand, does fit the classic mold of a Chinese dissident. A self-taught lawyer and blind from birth, he rose to prominence through his persistent criticism of China's draconian rural forced sterilization policy, eventually leading to his virtual house arrest. Yet after his miraculous escape and appearance at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing last week, Chen repeatedly insisted that he had no desire to leave China. He now apparently has been released from the embassy and is being treated at a Beijing hospital.
What do these two incidents tell us? First, both Wang and Chen sought protection at American diplomatic facilities because they reasoned - with much justification- that they were among the safest places in the country. One wonders what might have happened had either man approached a different consulate or embassy, such as one belonging to a regional power like Japan or India. Perhaps nothing- but it's certainly important for symbolic reasons that Wang and Chen chose the U.S.
The second lesson drawn from these incidents is that the rule of law remains decidedly absent in China. Throughout Hu Jintao's decade in office, the Communist Party has explicitly promoted the rule of law in Chinese society, a move interpreted by some observers that China was moving toward political liberalization. But then, you have speeches like the one given by Politburo Standing Committee member Zhou Yongkang, asserting the truism that the government exists to serve the Party, not the other way around.
It bears repeating that there's little reason to take the Communist Party at its word when it trumpets concepts like democracy and the rule of law. However, the appearance of two prominent Chinese nationals in American diplomatic facilities is a major embarrassment for the Chinese government, whose international reputation is one of corporate competence. The Bo Xilai and Chen Guangcheng cases are unlikely to spur political reform in the short run, but they are an indication that more challenging times may lie ahead for the Party.
Columbia and Elitism
Last Thursday, my classmates and I at the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) at Columbia received an e-mail from an associate dean informing us that the school had selected Tara Sonenshine as the featured speaker at our graduation ceremony next month.
Needless to say, the news disappointed a large number of SIPA students, including me. After writing a couple of snarky posts about the choice on Facebook, I was asked to write a short op-ed expressing my disappointment for Communique, a SIPA student publication. Several other students chimed in with their own views of the subject, both in agreement with and in opposition to my own.
The reaction to the piece, both in-person and in the comments beneath the Communique post, was decidedly mixed. Several students approached me at school and thanked me for expressing something close to their views on the subject. Other people disagreed, at times strongly.
The substance of the criticism was varied, but fell into four general categories. First, some of the students felt that Sonenshine was more than acceptable as a speaker and were excited by the selection. Others felt that the question of the speaker was irrelevant and unworthy of debate. Still others worried that raising a stink over the graduation speaker was beneath the dignity of SIPA students and would embarrass both the speaker and the school.
But the vast majority of the negative comments took issue with our attitude, accusing myself and the other op-ed contributors of being elitist and entitled. Here's a sample:
"What a bunch of spoiled brats"
"I was disgusted by the stark tone of entitlement"
"The sense of entitlement and elitism is troubling"
"In general, it seems SIPA cares a lot more about branding and getting big names to teach here with less concern about substance and quality of content"
Taken out of context, my remarks were elitist and entitled. I wrote that because SIPA is affiliated with an Ivy League institution, and is located in New York City, the school administrators should have had the clout to attract a much bigger "name" as our speaker. Understandably, a few of my classmates feel I'm arguing that we deserve a celebrity speaker because of where we go to school. Or that I think we're special and we're better than non-Ivy League students and so we should have someone more noteworthy than a mere Undersecretary of State like Tara Sonenshine.
Alas, this misses the point entirely. The point is this: a large part of the value of our degree depends on the school maintaining its elite status and prestige. Graduate schools across America cost a lot of money, but few are quite as expensive as SIPA, where tuition plus living expenses come out to around $70,000 per year. Needless to say, all SIPA students could have received a perfectly adequate Master's in International Affairs at a number of institutions for a small fraction of the cost.
People choose to go to SIPA in large part because it is elite. SIPA students take justifiable pride in being admitted to a school that rejects the vast majority of its applicants. We know that our degree confers immediate respectability and credibility upon us regardless of our other accomplishments. When I told people in China that I went to UC San Diego- a highly-ranked university with an excellent reputation- few had even heard of it. But this past summer, when I mentioned that I was a student at Columbia University, the nod of recognition was universal. I'd be lying if I said it didn't make me feel proud. That may seem tangential to my education- and it is, in a sense- but it's one of the main reasons why SIPA can justify charging so much in tuition.
So to those who accused me of elitism, consider me guilty as charged. Elitism is what attracted me to SIPA in the first place, and it is what I'm paying for above all else. I understand the inclination to recoil from the word due to it having a negative connotation, but I think a lot of my classmates are being disingenuous when they say that they don't care about "name" and "prestige". They might not, but they sure as hell should.
As far as having a sense of entitlement is concerned, again, consider me guilty as charged. Consider this analogy: you and your significant other save up for a year to go on a very nice vacation in France. You select a five-star resort that gets rave reviews and willingly pay full price for your room. Once you arrive at the resort, you discover that the restaurant only serves cheap diner food.
Now, I personally like eating cheap diner food, and in many cases prefer it to fancy French cuisine. In no way would eating grilled cheese sandwiches and drinking milkshakes diminish my intrinsic enjoyment of the vacation. But I would feel that I wasn't getting my money's worth, and that I had deserved more considering the amount that I paid. I'd be willing to bet that most people would agree, and would be less inclined to stay at that resort in the future. Few I suspect would chide me for having a sense of entitlement.
To me, the situation at SIPA is similar. I personally don't care all that much about who speaks at graduation, and I have no reason to think that Tara Sonenshine will in any way be inadequate. Most likely, I'll be hoping that her speech will be brief enough for us to wrap up the ceremony and get on with the inevitable after-party. But still, the choice of Sonenshine- and not someone with more stature or celebrity- does strike me as inadequate on the part of the administration.
SIPA's prestige depends on large part on its cache as a school where presidents and statesmen are born, even if none of us ever reach such heights. The value of our degree depends in part on the school maintaining its reputation as a home to world-class scholars, visiting officials, and high-profile guests. As much as we'd like to think otherwise, that sort of thing matters- a lot. And given the amount that we have riding on this degree, I don't think it's in any way unreasonable to expect the administration to keep this in mind when selecting a graduation speaker.
The Bloomberg Fantasy
David Weigel at Slate rightly needles Thomas Friedman after the New York Times columnist called for New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to throw his hat into the presidential election ring. The long and the short of it is this: Friedman thinks that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are up to the challenge of making the necessary long-term infrastructure investments that the United States needs to win the future. Bloomberg is up for the challenge. Therefore he should shake up the race by entering.
Though contractual obligations (or some old-fashioned Times initiative) precludes him from stating his partisan preferences, Friedman is basically a Democrat. Yet here he makes the classic mistake of ignoring the role of feasibility in calling for political outcomes. I think it's safe to assume that President Obama supports increased government investment into infrastructure. In fact, it's more than safe- Obama said it himself! In a perfect world, where his administration could implement its policies free of obstruction, I'm sure Obama would have earmarked funds for the very railway line that Friedman so heartily complains about. Yet the reality of the US political system means he can't, so instead he seeks compromise.
Bloomberg is a sensible guy who would probably make a fairly competent president. But his ability to speak in favor of initiatives like infrastructure investment is because he's the mayor of New York City rather than the president of the United States. Most New Yorkers like infrastructure, because they depend on it. Ditto public transportation. A Mayor Obama, shooting hoops at Gracie Mansion, would undoubtedly feel far bolder to express his preferences for these policies than he does while ensconced in the White House during an election year.
In light of this situation, you could make a point that the entire U.S. political system is broken, and I wouldn't even disagree with you that much. But liberals have to get used to the fact that the mayor of overwhelmingly liberal New York will almost always seem more appealing than the president of the United States.
Visa Run
The Wall Street Journal reports on one of the more venerable activities a foreigner undertakes in China: the visa run! The piece quotes an unnamed 29-year old Californian in Southwest China, someone I know who happens to be an occasional commenter on this very blog:
One 29-year-old Californian who teaches social studies in southwestern China has taken 10-hour bus rides to the Laotian border and eight-hour trips to Vietnam for visa runs. Laid-back Laos is a snap, he says, but re-entering China from Vietnam can be a hassle.
Some visa runners have had their China guidebooks confiscated if the books have maps that mark Taiwan as a separate country rather than a province of China, he says. And during one crossing, a border guard grilled him about what college he attended. "Harvard," he answered. Is Harvard's president male or female, he says the guard demanded to know.
The teacher says he guessed male but the border guard knew better. Drew Faust had become Harvard's first female president. He explained he was thinking of the years he went to college, an answer that earned him entry back into China.
Left unstated: the Californian and the border guard then engaged in a 20-minute discussion of Lawrence Summers' comments about why fewer women study science and math.
(If I were asked who the current president of Columbia is I would be able to respond instantly, if only because he spams us with annoying e-mails all the time.)
When I moved to China any foreigner could pick up a 1-year business visa at a Hong Kong travel agency for a reasonable fee and no questions asked. Then, with the Olympics approaching in 2008, China tightened its visa rules so that those wishing to get a business visa had to prove that they, you know, did actual business.
Not surprisingly, the laowai barfly population of Kunming thinned considerably after that.
Even though I endured a lot of hassles in getting visas in the last year or so I lived in China, I have little sympathy for foreigners who whine about how The Man isn't allowing them to live freely in their adopted country. After all, the Chinese regularly encounter far greater difficulties obtaining visas for the U.S. The process, which involves interviews and copious paperwork- is capricious and unfair, and even marriage to an American cannot guarantee a U.S. visa for a Chinese citizen.
The Perils of Cultural Translation
An attempt to translate Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" to Chinese audiences has apparently met with little success:
To watch an American classic on a Chinese stage is a study in cross-culturalism. And, in thecase of Death of a Salesman, the comparison extends to economics, living standards andlifestyles. When Arthur Miller's masterpiece first came to China in 1983, the Chinese audiencehad never heard of "installment payments" or "life insurance". Nor had they seen a travelingsalesman in at least 33 years. The idea that an ordinary citizen could own an automobile musthave struck them as out of this world. As a matter of fact, that production, which ran for morethan 50 shows to wide acclaim, was less about the American dream and its failings than aboutclass struggle. Or, so it was perceived. Even in the eyes of the most informed at that time, theplay could only have been construed as the underclass suffering from the oppression of theruling class, an interpretation shaped by three decades of political indoctrination.
I don't know how Chinese audiences of the era made do with the fact that the Lomans own ahouse and a car. I figure it must have been downplayed or ignored.
When The Grapes of Wrath, the 1940 American movie about the truly downtrodden, applied forscreening in the Soviet Union, the censors loved the theme of class struggle but struggled withthe inconvenient detail that the American farmer in the film owns a truck, a priceless assettotally out of reach of ordinary Soviet citizens of the time. So, the film was banned.
Last week, one of my professors recounted a story of how he saw the Vietnam War film Coming Home at a cinema in Prague in the early 1980s. American films were usually not allowed behind the Iron Curtain, but Coming Home was permitted due to its portrayal of imperialist humiliation. Anyway, the Czech audience regarded the film quietly until seeing a scene filmed in an American supermarket, at which point they emitted an audible, sustained gasp. None had seen a shop with so much stuff before.
In Defense of Being Plugged-In (Even on Vacation)
Even by the standards of our hyper-digital world, I consider myself to be very "plugged-in". I wake up each morning to the sound of NPR's "Morning Edition" and reach for my iPad to read the day's news bulletins in my in-box. I subscribe to a newspaper, a few magazines, and a dozen-odd news briefs; and I am of course constantly on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
So when I announced that I'd be going to Costa Rica for vacation, a couple of friends gently suggested that I step away from the Internet. Well, perhaps not so gently. After I posted a photo of the view from our vacation house, a friend told me to "get off f-ing Facebook". Happily, I chose not to comply.
For a lot of people, Facebook represents a quotidian distraction and something of a necessary evil- they hate using it, but they're afraid of what they would miss if they didn't have it. People often worry about being overexposed in our digital age, afraid that constant use of digital stimuli might rob them of their humanity in some small way. One of my favorite new expressions in recent years is "going off the grid", meaning to unplug, tune out, and drop out of sight. Given the persistent ubiquity of electronic devices in our daily lives, I'd bet that the phrase will stick with us for some time.
As a junkie, I confess that I find the idea of going off-grid to be deeply unappetizing. This doesn't mean that I use the Internet at the exclusion of other activities; to the contrary, I spent many happy hours of my vacation on the beach or traipsing through town. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't appreciate being able to read the news from the comfort of my ocean-view bedroom, or checking up on Facebook while lying blissfully by the pool.
Some might accuse me of being unable to let go of my daily life. To that, I'd counter that I did no schoolwork whatsoever through the duration of my trip, successfully taking a detour of my daily responsibilities. Reading the news, checking Facebook, and scanning articles don't count as work. They're things I do for pleasure, and would be a key part of any vacation that I undertake.
I've said it before, but it's worth repeating: we're living in a golden age of information. To be able to enjoy it unmolested by work, school, and other responsibilities- in a beautiful setting, no less- is this blogger's idea of a fine vacation.
Update
Last week I escaped the last throes of the (admittedly very mild) New York winter and flew to Costa Rica for a much-needed beach-side vacation. I did follow the news just enough to track the Bo Xilai affair, about which I'll have more to say later.
In the meantime, let me state that Costa Rica is a very nice country and one that struck me, perhaps unjustifably, as a Yunnan on the sea. I now have half a mind to fly back with a bitchin' mountain bike and do a tour of all of Central America. But first- two more months of grad school to do. Onward!
Mitt’s Wealth Gaffes
E.J Dionne thinks that Mitt Romney's frequent foot-in-mouth statements about wealth, when combined with his highly regressive economic policies, paint the portrait of a man who only wants to serve the rich. Not to defend the repugnant Romney, but I'm not willing to concede that this is true.
Romney's economic policy is designed to serve the rich for the sole reason that he is a national politician in the Republican Party. It isn't like Santorum- whose roots are more working class- is any more progressive. He isn't. To a man, each of the GOP candidates has designed his economic platform to appeal to the party's base.
Romney's gaffes, on the other hand, are due to him being rich his whole life and to being a lousy politician. He lacks George W. Bush's gift for coming across as an ordinary Joe and looks like a blue-blooded aristocrat from central casting. While Bush had his story of overcoming a drinking problem and several failed business ventures, Romney's life has been smooth sailing from birth. As a result he's had trouble connecting with ordinary Republicans.