According to my translator, Tian:
The two characters are correctly done, “love” and “dream,” but this young lady probably never realized that she got Chinese slang of “wet dream” tattooed on her body….
Hanzi tatoos are fraught with unforeseen perils.
Now, this is one hell of an article (thanks again, Martyn). I have to meet my parents in a few minutes (Father’s Day and all that) so I can’t write a lot about it, but the story speaks for itself. Let me just throw out some highlights.
This city’s soaring glass towers and giant neon signs make it seem like the new mecca of global capitalism. But behind the glitz lie rising inequalities and falling social services that are fueling the rise of China’s New Left.
This is a loose coalition of academics who challenge China’s market reforms with a simple message: China’s failed 20th century experiment with communism cannot be undone in the 21st century by embracing 19th century-style laissez-faire capitalism.
China is “caught between the two extremes of misguided socialism and crony capitalism, and suffering from the worst of both systems,” says Wang Hui, a professor of literature at Beijing’s Tsinghua University. His passionate denunciations of China’s market reforms in Du Shu, a magazine he edits, are partly credited with energizing China’s New Left intellectuals. “We have to find an alternate way. This is the great mission of our generation.”
Such grand visions notwithstanding, the New Left’s adherents don’t offer a coherent set of alternate policies. Some are hard-liners, who say they rue the violence of the Maoist years, but remain enchanted with the sociopolitical initiatives of that period, such as collectivization….
Wang says it’s time for people to understand that China’s problems are the result of “bad policies and bad governance,” not merely fallout from market mechanics.
Cui Zhi Yuan of Tsinghua University, a leading New Left thinker, says the crux of the problem is that “the government is more focused on helping export manufacturers than agriculture and rural welfare,” which affect far more people.
One of the largest expenses in the budget is not education or health care, he says, but tax rebates to exporters. So, the government is returning money to domestic and multinational exporters while cutting welfare programs.
Wang and Cui say that with businesspeople now allowed to join the Communist Party, a government-business cabal is looting wealth that rightly belongs to China’s workers, through the privatization of state-owned enterprises.
They depict reform of these enterprises as a wholly corrupt process, in which politically connected managers, in collusion with local officials and banks, strip enterprises of assets without any accountability, creating a might-is-right culture across the country.
…The degree to which the New Left’s rhetoric meshes with that of the government’s indicates that President Hu Jintao and his team are tacitly supporting the New Left. Part of Hu’s motivation is to discredit previous President Jiang Zemin, who committed the country to his awkwardly named Three Represents theory. Generally dismissed as a euphemism for Reaganesque trickle- down economics, Jiang’s theory, enshrined in China’s Constitution, is widely blamed for the deep inequalities in the country.
A recent confidential study of China’s 20,000 richest people found that only 5 percent had made it on merit, according to a report in the China Rights Forum by Liu Xiaobao. More than 90 percent were related to senior government or Communist Party officials.
Such nepotism and corruption led to more than 50,000 protests across the country in 2003, seven times the number a decade before, according to government reports.
Chen Xin, a professor of sociology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing and a self-described New Lefter, says Hu realizes he must correct the imbalances created during Jiang’s term because although a democracy can balance extremes by throwing out of power a party or a president who’s gone too far, “in a one-party system, the party must have its own self-correcting mechanisms, or else it will lose touch with the people.”
Yet critics of the New Left, such as Professor Shi Yinhong, director of the Center for American Studies at the People’s University in Beijing, say the group has no real alternative to the current global economic system.
What the New Left is saying resonates with me. Jiang is most responsible for today’s wasteland of corruption that fouls so much of the country, resulting in a nation of obscenely rich cowboys riding roughshod over the people. Now, we have this situation in America, too, especially under our current regime, where might (i.e., money) makes right. But we do have controls for reining it in, as we saw when some of the more repellent aspects of the “Patriot Act” were rejected last week. ANd we’re sending the Tyco robber barons to jail where they belong. I think wherever you have capitalism, you’re going to have this situation to some extent; the owner-worker model lies at the heart of capitalism, making it, as they say, the world’s worst economic system except for every other system.
I would be happy to see Hu address this and show that at least in some regards he really is “the great reformer” we hoped for. If the New Left’s strategy and tactics were a bit less amorphous I’d be more optimistic. Right now, it sounds like a lot of ideas without much of an action plan.
I said I wouldn’t editorialize, but I guess it’s compulsive. I’m going to open up a new thread and then take off.
[Before I begin this post, I have a request: A reader last week emailed me a lengthy draft paper by a US professor on Hu Jintao and the democratization of China. I lost the PDF and wanted to use it; could you please resend? Thanks.]
Perhaps the most tired argument I have ever heard is that the Chinese “aren’t ready” for democracy. While I’d agree they aren’t ready for an instant switchover to Western-style democracy, I would say that to argue the Chinese people are incapable of or uninterested in playing an active role in political/economic decisions affecting their lives is a.) untrue and b.) an insult to these people.
Howard French’s new article backs me up. When initiated properly, the democratic process can work in China and it can be embraced by the citizens.
With his smart dress, blow-dried hair and speech peppered with references to Rousseau, Voltaire and Montesquieu, Jiang Zhaohua, the young Communist Party secretary for this prosperous township, bears little resemblance to the usual Chinese politician.
Under his leadership, Jiang’s township of 110,000 people in Zhejiang Province recently embarked on a novel experiment in governance, allowing citizens’ preferences to determine, after detailed consultations over the pros and cons, which major projects would go ahead and how their money would be spent.
“Our original manner was the government deciding everything, only announcing the results afterward to the people,” Jiang said, with a sweep of his arm to suggest official high-handedness. “We never got to know the public’s opinion. It was 20 people sitting in a room who decided everything.”
….Zeguo’s political experiment involved the polling of 257 randomly chosen people, and was conducted in large part on the advice of a Stanford University political scientist, James Fishkin.
After lengthy briefings on a long list of potential municipal projects, the electors showed a preference for environmental works, including sewage treatment plants and public parks.
If unique in form, Zeguo’s experiment takes place against a backdrop of a broad effervescence of democratic ideas bubbling up into local politics all over China. By one estimate, there will be 300,000 village committee elections in China’s 18 provinces this year alone. In many areas, officials are making efforts to involve ordinary citizens in local decision-making.
This isn’t a dreamy or even optimistic article; about half of it is devoted to why this is so hard to do in China, considering the corruption and lack of transparency that taints so many local governments — factors responsible for the explosive demonstrations we’ve seen over the past few weeks in rural villages, where the people are given no say in decisions that affect their daily lives.
But no one can deny that this “effervescence” isn’t a very good thing, and may even be proof of the creeping democracy so many of us are hoping for. It won’t happen fast, and we still can’t say whether it will happen at all.
Still, deep cynicism remains, forged by long years of high-handed official behavior and widespread perceptions of systematic corruption.
In the village of Luoxia, a part of the city of Zeguo, a shopkeeper who received a visitor as he ate lunch behind his counter said, “There’s no need at all for ordinary people to participate in decision-making.
“Those who are capable can’t get elected,” he said. “And those who are incapable buy their positions with money.”
So I’ll remain somewhat cynical for now, but I’ll also be the first to praise the Party if it truly leads to meaningful representation. It’ll be faint praise, I’m afraid, because things should never have descended to this state in the first place.
The next step will be a multi-party system, an idea that, for the moment, remains utterly inconceivable in China.
Martyn, thanks for sending me this link!
You’ll all want to read this book review. The reviewer was obviously blown away by Johnson’s new book, which weaves together three stories with an overarching theme: individual acts of courage and heroism in the face of an unbelievably brutal Chinese dictatorship.
Johnson reveals how he dodged surveillance and protected his sources with encrypted e-mail, journalistic escapades that, inter alia, show how the web of tyranny stretches to the lowliest village.
The risks became deadly in the third case he investigated and for which he rightly won the Pulitzer Prize. It was the death of Chen Zixiu, a grandmother who was beaten to death for her devotion to Falun Gong, a system of meditation practised by a group of the same name. The Chinese government decided that Falun Gong was “an evil cult” and banned it with the full force of repression at its disposal. It was only after Falun Gong staged a peaceful demonstration, of course, that the party discovered its “evil” nature.
Johnson followed the quest by Chen’s daughter, Zhang Xueling, to find out how and why her mother died. She stripped bare the structure of how terror really works in China.
The mighty ones in Beijing were offended. Their local satraps were threatened with demotion and fines. So the police and hired goons were turned loose to restore “stability” through killings and torture. “Instead of creating a modern system to rule China, the government still relied on an ad hoc network of edicts, orders and personal connections,” Johnson writes.
It is a method of rule 2,200 years old. This brilliant, depressing piece of reportage shows that it has reached a dead end yet obstinately refuses to die.
There isn’t much I can add. Read the review to see what the other two heroes went through. Although they suffered mightily, at least they weren’t murdered.
Yikes. So young, and so filled with loathing. (Yes, I know why they hate the Japanese so much. And no, these kids aren’t Chinese.) Have a look.
I’ll let you discover for yourselves what the two S’s are. (Hint: they’re cultural phenomena that frequently catch genteel Westerners off guard during their first trip to China.) A must-read.
This is a guest post from my cyberfriend William Stimson. I don’t necessary agree with everything William proposes; a lot of his suggestions make me say, “Easier said than done!” But it’s certainly worth thinking about — especially the concept that China has a unique oportunity to demonstrate to mankind that its mightiest strength “lies not in tyranny but in freedom.”
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“China Can Be The Big Winner”
by William R. Stimson
How strange China should be undertaking such a huge military buildup, and conducting so much of it behind the scenes, in a clandestine fashion. One wonders who it perceives to be its enemy when the whole world benefits from its new prosperity and success, welcomes it with open arms, scrambles to invest in its big future and wants “in” on its economic miracle. Schoolchildren the world over are learning Mandarin. Everybody knows China is the future. “Nobody is going to attack China,” stammers the U.S. Secretary of Defense Rumsfield, apparently at a loss to understand why it is hurrying so to arm itself.
Across the water from China sits peaceful little Taiwan, with its bustling democracy and free market economy — the major engine of China’s growth. How many other developing countries wish they had a Taiwan off their shore. It would be hard to calculate the extent to which Taiwan benefits China day in and day out. How strange then that following Taiwan’s disastrous earthquake a few years back, China prevented emergency relief from being flown in to Taiwan over Chinese territory. At the height of the SARS episode, China blocked Taiwan’s entry into the World Health Organization. A pandemic bird flu disaster looms in the region. China continues to block Taiwan’s entry. Again and again, Taiwan has said it wants peaceful relations with China. Yet China now has hundreds of missiles aimed at Taiwan. Can anyone doubt that the armada of modern troop ships, submarines and airplanes that China is currently amassing at such a breakneck pace is for use against Taiwan?
Stranger stories every day come out of China, one after another. Recently a Chinese journalist who wrote against corruption in his newspaper and won an award for his probity was beaten and had some fingers hacked off. That writer will never type again. Another Chinese journalist received a long prison sentence, just for sending an e-mail. The Chinese doctor who blew the whistle on SARS was “disappeared” along with his wife for speaking out truthfully about the Tienaman Square massacre. The internet in China is tightly controlled; yet, no sooner did Japan announce it would come to Taiwan’s assistance in the event of a Chinese attack, than an anti-Japanese movement easily organized itself on China’s controlled internet, sent out all the e-mails it wanted and staged riots across China. Chinese police stood idly by as demonstrators smashed Japanese property. What was it all about? The excuse about Japan’s offenses during the war would be more believable if China hadn’t itself committed those same offenses in Tibet. The excuse about the Japanese textbooks would be believable if China’s textbooks didn’t still omit the truth about Tibet and about Tienaman Square. The excuse about the Japanese leader paying homage to an offensive shrine would be believable if Mao’s picture wasn’t still prominently displayed as an object of reverence in Beijing. Japan’s commitment to defend Taiwan was the reason behind China’s temper tantrum.
China has not only probed Japanese waters with its submarines but is insanely probing weaknesses in the defense system of the United States, Taiwan’s chief protector. “We are smarter than you!” Chinese sites brag to the Americans — uncensored on China’s highly censored internet. On 9/11, Chinese sites expressed glee over pictures of the burning towers in New York City — likewise uncensored. Earlier this year, sites all around China likened the visiting American Secretary of State to a “monkey” because of her African ancestry and called her “ugly” and “stupid” — also uncensored. Towards any country standing in the way of its designs on Taiwan, China behaves less like a modern civilized nation, than like a primitive and crude barbarian.
If we look at China’s history, we can see why. Over the last 5,000 years, China has again and again been conquered and ruled by barbarians — barbarians from the outside, and “barbarians” from the inside. Never once has it been conquered and ruled by its own people, like newly democratic Taiwan. This is the real threat Taiwan poses to China — it is free. And so long as it sits there free — prospering, and making China prosper; thriving, and making China thrive; bristling with enterprise, and making China bristle with enterprise — democratic Taiwan shows up the lie of China’s barbarian rule and the lie of Chinese history. China wasn’t made weak by foreign invaders. It was invaded by foreigners because it was made weak by its own corrupt despots. China’s weakness has been its lack of freedom. This is still true today. Where there is freedom people can speak out and put an end to corruption and the abuse of power that tear a country apart at its root.
The huge military buildup underway in China today is not to protect China and the Chinese people from any outside enemy because China has no outside enemy. Its purpose is to protect China’s rulers from the Chinese people. It is poised to strike Taiwan because Taiwan is an embodiment of the pre-eminent danger felt by those rulers — Taiwan is a shining example of Chinese people successfully governing themselves, making their own decisions, being free — and thriving as a result, and making everyone thrive all around them. The very existence of Taiwan’s huge success cries out to China’s tyrants something they are terrified the rest of China might hear — “The people can rule themselves.”
Because of the reason for which it is being carried out, the effect of China’s military build-up will not be to make China strong, but to perpetuate its historic weakness. The same is true for China’s ongoing inquisition against those of its own people honest and courageous enough to openly speak the truth. And the same is true for China’s censorship of the internet, blocking of websites, and suppression of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement. All these policies perpetuate China’s historic weakness. The way to strength is to confront and expose weakness, and then eliminate it. For China to be great, this is the strategy it needs to take. It is time for those who love China, in its military and in its government, to stop covering up China’s weakness and inner corruption and to make China strong instead — by making it free. The only ones who might be hurt by this are those who are doing the damage — China’s real enemies. The corrupt, not the honest, need to be rooted out and put in jail.
China can’t keep wasting precious resources fighting the truth. It needs to get on with the business of the day — which is to throw off the barbarian model, and allow itself, for the first time in its long history, to be conquered finally by its own people. Democracy and freedom alone can release Chinas vast and unfathomable potential. It happened in Taiwan. It can happen in China the same way.
Instead of bullying Taiwan or trying to make a grab for it, China should be doing everything in its power to assist its successful little brother and to follow his proud example. A good first step would be for China to let the people of Taiwan themselves decide their future. Nobody in the whole world is against Taiwan being a part of China, if the Taiwanese people choose that. If China could only bring itself to give the people of Taiwan this choice, then no matter which way the Taiwanese people decide to go, China will come away the big winner — because it will have discovered, finally after 5,000 years, that its strength lies not in tyranny but in freedom.
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William R. Stimson is a writer who lives in Taiwan. More of his writing can be found at www.billstimson.com
A sanctuary from the oppressive heat (it’s 106 in Phoenix!), where readers can discuss life, love, China and the myriad peculiarities of life.
So much for the argument that the Chinese don’t care about this issue. And they same to be totally united with their government in one regard — they all hate Microsoft. So do I.
The post ends with a request from MacKinnon for translators willing to translate some of the Chinese bloggers’ posts into English. Any takers? Please tell her I sent you.
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