Will he be remembered as one of China’s worst leaders ever? Some think so.

After nearly a year in which planning for the succession has been upset by an extraordinary string of scandals, the leaders and elders have finally agreed on Nov. 8 as the date to begin the 18th Party Congress, the climax of just the second peaceful transfer of power in China’s Communist era. Much of the back-and-forth over the succession, which officials have kept behind a curtain of secrecy, has involved horse-trading over leadership positions between a faction led by President Hu Jintao and one loyal to his predecessor, Jiang Zemin.

In recent negotiations, Mr. Jiang and his allies, who include Xi Jinping, the designated heir to Mr. Hu, appear to have had the upper hand, several political insiders said. Mr. Jiang’s attendance at a concert on Sept. 22 was interpreted by some as a signal that he was still a force in the game of imperial politics.

One blow to Mr. Hu this summer was the quiet unfolding of a scandal involving a powerful politician, Ling Jihua, who is Mr. Hu’s fixer. Now another stress point is becoming evident: Mr. Hu appears on the defensive over his legacy because of growing criticism that policies enacted during his decade-long tenure were responsible for the excessive growth of the security forces and also stalled an overhaul of the Chinese economy that is needed to maintain its dynamism.

“Right now, I think Hu feels very worried because a lot of people both inside and outside the party have been criticizing him,” said a party intellectual with ties to the leadership. “Some say he’s the worst leader China has had since 1949. Conflicts in society have intensified; monopolistic and antimarket tendencies in the economy seem to have intensified; and there’s been no real progress on reform.”

He has my vote. I’ll never forget the optimism I felt when he took power, right at the time when the government, probably against its will, came totally clean on SARS and seemed to be ushering in a new spirit of openness. How disappointed we all were just a few months later when Internet censorship became more aggressive than ever and the promises of reform melted away. He had the bad luck to suffer a series of catastrophes over the past few months that drowned out all other news about China, and the name Bo Xilai will always be pinned to his own. A sad end to what began as a hopeful new period of reform, but I can’t say he doesn’t deserve it.

I was struck by the hubris and aggressiveness in this Global Times editorial, which includes a number of veiled threats.

With wider strategic interests to be considered, China has to take a more sophisticated approach in tackling the issue. It needs to deal with Japan and keep an eye on its global strategy simultaneously. For a long time, Japan was more developed than China, and once invaded us, but this is no reason for China to be stuck in an inferiority complex.

For now, China should strive to end Japan’s actual control over the islands. But the majority of China’s resources must be distributed globally. More success in other parts of the world will help China to smash Japan’s illusion of taking over Diaoyu.

Solving the issue will be a long-term struggle, but it is Japan that will suffer more since the country is in decline.

After a century of complicated feelings toward its neighbor, mixing admiration, hatred and misery, it is time for China to rebuild its psychological strength against Japan.

I’m not quite sure what that last sentence means but it doesn’t sound good.

Almost all of the news we’ve been reading and watching about the at-times violent demonstrations against the Japanese in China have focused on China’s perspective, according to this article in Slate (and according to my own perceptions as an avid news junkie). “The Japanese see things rather differently,” the writer remarks, “but it’s not like anyone would know.”

We are so used to reading about what angry Chinese are saying about Japan in BBS threads, it’s refreshing to see a similar analysis of what the Japanese are saying.

First of all, the Japanese don’t see China as a victim. China’s nationalism, as belligerent as it may appear, is rooted in a sense of suffering from a “century of humiliation” that goes back to the First Opium War and the British acquisition of Hong Kong in 1842. What some of the more rabid Chinese don’t appreciate, however, is that the rest of the world — especially Japan — does not see China as the underdog.

One Channel 2 discussion thread showed a map of a “unified” China that includes Japan, painted red. “Today’s China is the world’s most aggressive country,” responded one commenter. Another said, “No matter how you look at it, the imperialist nation is China.” Yet another, “ ‘Down with Japan’s imperialism!’—I don’t want to hear that from some guys who have anachronistic territorial expansion ambitions.” In a separate discussion, a commenter wrote, “the next World War will be China vs. the world.” There were also calls for Japan to develop a stronger military of its own and not be so reliant on the U.S.-Japan security alliance. “As America’s power has gotten weaker, Japan must protect its own country.”

Some threads, she writes, question whether these protests are even about Japan, and might instead be an outlet for Chinese people’s frustration with domestic issues, like the great divide between the rich and the poor.
(more…)

There’s a superb first-hand account of what’s going on outside the Japanese embassy in Beijing.

In the middle of the street there was a partition with police directing people to parade around it in long circles. People had huge Chinese flags and banners saying things like “Fuck little Japan.” What I was most surprised by were the number of Chairman Mao posters floating around. I asked a few people about this and the consensus was “Mao would never let Japan get away with this.”

As the crowds paraded around, they sang patriotic songs, chanted “Little Japan, fuck your mother,” “Chairman Mao 10,000 years,” “China 10,000 years” and most significantly “Communist Party 10,000 years.” (“10,000 years” basically means “Long live…”)

This mass outpouring obviously had official sanction. The police’s presence was to direct the protests rather than try to hamper them in any way.

This so reminds me of the simmering hatred of Japan that surged to the top back in 2005 with all the controversy over the Yasukuni shrine. There, too, the police facilitated the protestors, some officers handing them eggs to throw. They take a more active role in curtailing the demostrations after protestors become too violent, hurling rocks at the embassy. We always knew the Diaoyu islands were a tinder box; now it’s exploded. (more…)

It’s that time of year again when China starts the selection process for its coveted “Confucius Peace Prize.” This time the list includes Bill Gates, former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and a host of Chinese candidates. Let’s hope it’s not a debacle like the first time when they chose someone who didn’t want the prize and then the next year gave it to Vladimir Putin. They have said it’s not intended to counter the Nobel Peace Prize, though it was conceived, or at least announced, shortly after Liu Xiaobo received the award in 2010. The purpose of the award is to celebrate “Confucius thinking” and harmony.

It’s so easy to be like Tom Friedman and get totally dazzled by the Beijing airport and the Shanghai skyline and the fast railway and revamped subway systems and the spirit of irrepressible optimism that seems to pervade both cities. I was dazzled by it too, and still am. I love it there. And this spirit of optimism isn’t limited to just two cities. I felt it in Chengdu and Kunming, in Xi’an and Guangzhou.

But as I’ve mentioned before, for the past year I’ve been editing an executive summary of weekly business, manufacturing and financial news from China, and I’ve been amazed at the intensity and speed of the current slowdown. There is a poignant story in the NYT you should read about a visiting professor in Chongqing that reveals the misery this slowdown, coupled with the ineptitude and corruption of an uncaring government, is inflicting in people we’re not likely to meet or know much about.

I wanted to find out what was on the minds of ordinary people. What did they talk to one another about? So in 2007, with permission of the authorities, I put up billboards featuring images of trees, like the “wish trees” in Daoist, Buddhist and Confucian temples, where people tie notes about their private desires to the branches, hoping that the wind will blow their prayers to heaven. Chongqing residents stuck hundreds of their leaf-shaped notes onto the branches of my “trees.”

Their wishes and worries were candid, heartfelt and startling: people had lost their optimism and were yearning for security and freedom from anxiety. Income is a primary worry for those who have lost their jobs or land. Pensions and social welfare payments are almost nonexistent. People struggle to pay for education. They can’t afford medical treatment; clinics and hospitals require patients to pay cash in advance. A serious illness can spell financial ruin for an entire family.

China’s one-child policy has turned family life from a source of solace to a font of anxiety. Parents now get just one chance for a child to succeed and to support them in their old age. Single children carry an unbearable burden of parental and grandparental expectations. (more…)

Tom Carter has written an excellent review of Behind the Red Door: Sex in China for City Weekend, the first print review. (The lengthy review in Business Insider and Just Recently were Web only.) Here’s the opening:

Among the many misimpressions that Westerners have of China, the idea of sex as some kind of “taboo” topic here seems to be the most common and clichéd. Forgetting for a moment that, owing to a population of 1.3 billion, somebody must be
doing it, what most of us don’t seem to know is that throughout the years China has been a society of extreme sexual openness.

And now, according to Richard Burger’s new book Behind the Red Door: Sex in China, the Chinese are once again in the sweaty clutches of sexual revolution.

Best known for knives-out commentary on The Peking Duck, one of China’s longest-running expat blogs, Burger takes a similar approach in surveying sex among the Chinese, leaving no explicit ivory carving unexamined, no raunchy ancient poetry unrecited, and ahem, no miniskirt unturned.

Please read the whole thing. And if you haven’t “Liked” my Facebook page please feel free to do so.

Amazon is late in shipping the book due to a supply-chain issue. If you’ve ordered the book please be patient — it should ship this coming Thursday. Kindle version is available now.

Kevin Carrico (who I believe is an occasional reader of this blog) has written an opinion piece for the Christian Science Monitor that poses a wonderful counter to the bizarre Daniel Bell-Jiang Qing op-ed op-ed on a “Confucian constitution” that set off a spirited debate in this thread. You remember: the one about a Confucian meritocracy system, in which leaders in at least one “house of authority” would need to be descendants of Confucius. (Every time I think of that I have to wonder if this was a parody, but it’s not).

Carrico counters:

Such ideas are part of a much larger discussion of “Chinese characteristics” in recent decades. Promoted by the state and state-friendly intellectuals, the notion of Chinese characteristics portrays the people of China as so unique, on account of their longstanding cultural traditions, as to be immune to the political and cultural change that has swept the world in recent decades. And while supposedly determining China’s sole proper path for handling any and all issues, these unique characteristics, according to their proponents, remain conveniently unable to be fully grasped by outsiders.

Whether applied domestically or internationally, this is a harmful line of thinking.

The primary political effect of these ideas is to deny the inevitable trend of democratization in recent decades – in Asia, Latin America, Europe, and Arab countries. Ironically, however, the notion of Chinese characteristics appeals to many of those whom it would deceive and ultimately disenfranchise. Internationally, it rationalizes authoritarianism under the guise of cultural sensitivity to a uniquely Chinese way. Domestically, it fulfills a desire for uniqueness and exceptionalism in order to distract citizens from the growing desire for basic political and human rights.

He eviscerates the Bell-Jiang nonsense with a biting wit:

The notion that China’s future must inevitably be found in its past, after all, is not particularly liberating, especially when one considers that this past represents a period prior to accountability in governance and recognition of human rights. Anyone who proposed a similar framework for the future of a western country, or even for such traditionally Confucian – but democratic – neighbors of China as South Korea, Japan, or Taiwan, would not be taken seriously.

Equally restrictive is the quirky proposal that the House of the Nation be populated by direct descendants of Confucius and other sages. One such male-line descendant is Kong Qingdong, a professor at Peking University and a contentious Chinese pop-culture figure. Besides his ancestry, which he never hesitates to cite, Prof. Kong is best known for his outspoken hatred of “traitorous” liberals, his fondness for the North Korean political model, and his recent characterization of the people of Hong Kong as “dogs” and worse. Clearly, cultural sensitivity is not a two-way street.

As “a PhD. candidate in sociocultural anthropology at Cornell University, researching neo-traditionalism, nationalism, and ethnic relations in contemporary China” Carrico has credentials. This opinion piece is a joy to read and a much needed antidote to the op-ed that I still can’t believe the New York Times allowed to grace its pages.

The bottom line is that “the Chinese way” is a fancy way to rationalize keeping China an authoritarian state. Whether that’s good or bad isn’t really the point. But let’s call it what it is.

Or at least that’s what you’d think listening to the Chinese media and their fenqing followers. But is it true? I don’t think so. In the wake of all the evidence, of course, there’s the knee-jerk response about the Yasukuni Shrine and the nutty revisionists in Japan (and they really are nutty), etc. But that doesn’t alter the fact that Japan has apologized many times over for its atrocities and crimes against China and Korea throughout its war of aggression.

This post was inspired by a Facebook post I saw earlier today from a friend of mine. It’s such a strange topic, so radioactive, so capable of eliciting such white-hot rage from seemingly normal people. I know, the horrors were unimaginable. But to say that Japan hasn’t apologized for them is simply false.

China Digital Times lists the words and phrases that will get your Weibo post zapped, at least if it’s written in simplified Chinese.

One of favorites is:

Bureau of Dicking Around (捅鸡局): Netizen nickname for the National Bureau of Statistics.

“Brainwash” makes it to the list as well. Check out the rest of the entries.