If you've ever been to China, you know that they're obsessed with having the largest this or the oldest that. This often results in strange titles. Tiananmen Square is the largest city-center public square in the world. Xinghai Square in Dalian is the largest non-city-center square in Asia. The giant TV screen outside my office building is Asia's largest skyscreen (whatever that means).
Today, China edged out Cuba for another superlative: most journalists in prison with a total of 28 (story here). Cuba wins for most journalists in jail per capita (24 in jail with a total population of only 11 million!), but they will soon be freed because Barack is letting Hyman Roth go to Havana to build casinos.
I don't know the names of all of these reporters but one of them, Shi Tao, is in jail thanks in part to Yahoo! In 2004 Shi Tao sent an email containing a directive regualting reports on the 15th Anniversary of Tiananmen Square. The directive, which came down from a high level in the government, said that no one would be allowed to mention the event and that the human rights activists who returned to commemorate the anniversary were to be ignored. The police asked Yahoo! to help, and being a good American, freedom-loving company, they gave them access to Shi Tao's account. Shi Tao has now spent five years in prison and won't be released until 2014. (The Chinese police must not have realized that that is the 25th anniversary of June 4th.)
In other news, Pirate Bay has been found guilty (surprised?). I am completely unaffected. Now Google China, another one of those red, white, and blue internet companies, lets you download music for free just like on Baidu (the largest search engine in China).
Also, in reference to my post yesterday, tommorrow is Earth Day and there is a cool environment conference that has attracted many big names like Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, and Kenneth Lieberthal, Brookings's China environment guy. Anyone in Beijing should try to make it there, although you'll need a press pass or some other invite from an attending company.
I co-wrote this article last week. The final article was in Chinese so hopefully sounded prettier and not so choppy.
Rising Power
“Today, 2 April 2009,” declared the Observer’s Timothy Garton Ash on the opening day of the G-20 summit in London, “may yet be marked as the day on which, through the catalyst of a global economic crisis, China definitively emerged as a 21st-century world power.”Garton Ash was not alone in seeing China as a world power. The Wall Street Journal contended that, “China sent a strong signal with its active role in last week's summit of the Group of 20 industrialized and developing economies: The country's leaders intend to play a greater part in shaping the global economy.” Even the seating arrangement at the G-20 revealed China’s new position in the world: Hu Jintao was right next to the summit's host, Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of the UK.
Months before the G-20 confirmed China’s new international standing, Zbigniew Brzezinzski, former US Secretary of State, proposed the formation of a G2—a group of the US and China that would be the major global decision-making body for the 21st Century.With some economists predicting that China will overtake a crumbling Japan in 2012 as the world’s second-largest economy, it is probable that this bilateral relationship will be the most important one for the next several decades at least.
Not Quite There Yet
But despite its new-found economic status, China is still not a major player in many global issues, and it is not valued in its own neighborhood, East and Southeast Asia.A recent study by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs indicated that despite growing public support, China still falls behind Japan and the US in terms of political, economic and cultural appeal among six East and Southeast Asian nations.According to David Shambaugh, a Chinese politics expert at George Washington University in DC, “[China] has no global military reach, its soft power is limited, and its diplomatic reach, while now global, is still limited in areas such as the Middle East and Latin America.”
More unsettling were the results of a recent University of Maryland and BBC Globescan poll of mainly Western countries’ attitudes toward China.Only 39% of the people polled in all 21 countries thought that China’s influence on the world was positive.(The US only had a 40% positive rating, Japan had 57% and Russia 30%.) This perception is mainly the result of misunderstandings about issues like Tibet and the Chinese government’s control of society, and a general fear of an unknown, rising power.Many other people in countries like Japan or Germany may resent being replaced as economic leaders.
For the most part, this perception problem is simply that—a problem with the way others see China and not necessarily a problem with China itself.But if China does not make attempts to bolster its image, especially in Western countries (where it received the lowest support) upon which its export industry relies heavily, dealings with these countries will become strained.The unpopularity of the Bush administration, due to the president's cavalier attitude on issues like Iraq and the Kyoto Accords, sapped America’s soft power and many leaders who sided with Bush have since been voted out of office.China could avoid Bush’s mistakes this year.
Progress on Pollution?
Ten years after the Kyoto accords failed at achieving a global consensus on environmental protection, many view the Copenhagen Conference this December as the last chance to stop global warming. “After eight years of U.S. inaction on climate change,” wrote the Guardian, “American leadership offers the only hope of success.”The Guardian is not alone in its desperate-sounding anticipation of Copenhagen.Dozens of magazines and newspapers and governments are also pinning their hopes on the new Obama administration.
But are they looking on the wrong side of the Pacific?Two years ago, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times wrote that without the cooperation of China and India, carbon emission-reduction efforts in the service-based economies of the West would be meaningless.In fact, those harmed by China’s pollution most are China’s people.The World Bank has estimated that 750,000 people, or 2.5 times the number of Chinese people who were murdered in the Rape of Nanjing, died from pollution-related causes in 2007.
China has already begun taking bold steps in reducing carbon and green-house gas emissions. China’s 11th Five Year Plan, from 2005 to 2010, has set a target of creating five gigawatts (GW) of wind generation capacity – meaning 28% growth annually. One of the world’s most extensive solar-lighting initiatives is currently being carried out in China’s remote western provinces where access to electricity is limited and people normally use coal, the dirtiest source of energy.The government has also implemented more strict emissions regulations on cars than the United States.Cities like Shanghai, where it’s incredibly expensive to buy a license-plate, don’t have as much car-related pollution as Los Angeles.
The private sector, with the help of government investment and subsidies, is also making massive contributions to environmental improvement throughout the country.Dalian East Energy Company invented technology that not only reduces pollution from cement factories; it can convert the excess pollution into energy, further reducing the consumption of coal.In Changsha, Broad Air-conditioning, a multi-billion dollar company, has pioneered technology that cools the indoors without releasing the ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons that traditional units spew.And just last fall, Warren Buffet showed his faith in the future of a green China by investing over 200 million dollars in BYD, a Chinese company that is producing fully battery-powered cars.Buyers of the car will be rewarded with an 8,800 USD government-paid subsidy. (The final price tag is still a cost-prohibitively high 22,000 USD.)
With these progressive initiatives, the government has shown the Chinese people that it is confronting pollution problems head-on.This December by leading the charge in Copenhagen, China has a unique opportunity to show this commitment to environmental protection to the world and, at the same time, to move beyond the moniker, ‘the world’s factory,’ and become one of the major players in the entire international system.
Today is the twentieth anniversary of the death of Hu Yaobang, purged general secretary of the CPC. Hu Yaobang left the ranks of the communist leadership in 1987 blamed for student protests that Deng Xiaoping feared could lead to the undoing of the Party's power. After the Party put on what many people viewed as a unfittingly small state funeral, students filled up Tiananmen Square to show their respect for a great leader. They didn't leave until June 4th when tanks and soldiers drove them out.
This year has already seen dozens of stories (here, here and here, among others) from the Western media on the danger this anniversary might pose, but I would be very surprised if anything happens. The students who protested twenty years ago lived in a much poorer, much more restricted China. There was no internet. College graduates were forced to accept government-assigned jobs. Students lived 12 to a room in horrible conditions and ate barely edible food three meals a day. The party, after raising hundreds of millions out of poverty and allowing more personal freedoms, now enjoys much more support from students and population at large. Even those elements that are pushing for more freedom probably would not risk incurring the Party's wrath by demonstrating on this occasion. Many people remain ignorant about the event and a large number of those who are aware believe that the government did what it had to in order to maintain national stability.
There are millions of people with legitimate grievances against the government, but it will take a seismic event, not just the echoes of one, to spur them to the level of civil disobedience that the students reached twenty years ago.
I normally stay away from talking about human rights in China but this story has too many gems to pass up.
According to Xinhua, the Chinese government has released its first ever Human Rights Action Plan. A senior Chinese official, Wang Chen, praised this achievement yesterday in a speech that began, "The human rights conditions are at the best in the history of China." Obviously, these conditions are so good that the government had to issue a 50-page report on how to make them better. Wang said 'practicability and feasibility constituted the most distinctive features of the action plan.' Note for non-Chinese speakers: In Chinese, the word "feasible" refers to things that can be done without pissing too many important people off.
Here are some of the higlights of the report:
One of the most truthful statements I've ever seen in a CPC-issued report: "China has a long road ahead in its efforts to improve its human rights situation." Of course, this is just giving them an excuse to zheteng.
"Through varied and vivid activities after class, students will receive education in human rights from first-hand experiences." Here is a potential first-hand experience: "Hello students. This afternoon, we're going to play the Abu Ghraib game instead playing badminton. Take off all your clothes and make a human pyramid right now!" Free Cold Stone for the one who posts best idea for a first-hand human rights learning experience.
"China will take an active part in international cooperation in an effort to create an environment favorable for human existence and sustainable development and build a resource-conserving and environment-friendly society to guarantee the public's environmental rights." According to the Beijing government, the Air Pollution Index yesterday was 75, or unhealthy. According to an unofficial report that includes smaller, less visible particles that actually cause respiratory maladies, it was 139, or unsafe for sensitive groups. LA occasionally posts an API over 50. Good luck on this one Human Rights Action Plan Team.
"Respecting [last year's Sichuan] earthquake victims. Registering the names of people who died or disappeared in the earthquake and made [sic] them known to the public." So far two people have been scouring the disaster zone compiling names of the dead. One of them, Tan Zuoren, is in jail for "subverting state security" and the other, Ai Weiwei, has had his blog blatantly censored. Ai is still free because he's one of the most famous artists in the country, and his arrest would attract too much attention.
If you're really bored and in for a laugh at the party's expense, flip through the report, there are many more classic lines throughout the whole thing.
Note: The quotations are from an official translation. My English is not that bad.
"Metaphors are dangerous. Love begins with a metaphor." -Milan Kundera
I did not fall in love with Amy Tan when I came across this metaphor yesterday in an article in last year's China issue from National Geographic:
"I viewed it with the awe of a child who has just seen a fairy-tale place jump out of a book."
According to Orwell, a metaphor is supposed to add depth to our understanding of a person's feelings, to "assist thoughts by evoking a visual image." This can also be done by comparing the person's experience or feelings to a situation that would have resonance with most readers. How many people have seen a fairy-tale place jump out of a book?
Yesterday, I was reading a powerful and concise short story by Stuart Dybek, Flames. To describe standing in line to wait for a lice inspection in grade school, Dybek produced this simile: "It felt like a cross between an air-raid drill and going to Confession." You don't have to have experienced either of those things to immediately know that Dybek's talking about a situation characterized by nervousness, fear, slight guilt, embarrassment, a little humiliation and ultimately a feeling of not wanting to be doing what one is doing.
Dybek elicited four or five feelings while Amy Tan just left me wondering what a child feels like when an imaginary world suddenly springs to life. I haven't read anything else by Amy Tan, although after reading this article, I'm not inclined to seek her fiction out. If her other works are not riddled with similarly impotent metaphors, I'd be interested to know.
There are over ten thousand buses in circulation in Beijing and the surrounding suburbs. Each bus is equipped with at least two flat-screen televisions, which amounts to at least ten million rmb for the whole system's TVs if they paid Haier the absurdly cheap price of 100 rmb/TV (1/5 of retail for the approximately three-year old model). I often wonder why a bus whose windows are so shoddy that they let the rain in even when fully closed needs a flat screen TV.
My first answer is propaganda. Force bored commuters to watch state-run CCTV (China Central Television) news every day and eventually they'll buy the party line. But today's broadcast didn't seem to uphold that position. First, there was traffic news telling you where to avoid jams. This is incredibly useful when you're on a bus with a predetermined route from which it will not deviate. Then there was a story about an American 20-something who started a bakery in a hutong. (His Chinese was very good.) The story failed to give the location of his shop. Then there was another human interest[1] story about a 97-year old Australian who jumped from an airplane. Fascinating.
I figured out the point of Bus TV: show tons of bad news stories that are lacking any detail or fact that could be useful or important so that when a real news story happens people will be so anesthetized they won't notice that it has an effect on them. Okay, this theory is far-fetched and the biggest problem is that it's too ingenious. The people at the propaganda department are some of the dumbest people in the government. They couldn't have come up with this.
And then another story took me back to my original theory: propaganda. The broadcaster, whose movie-preview voice gave an ominous tone to the whole thing, went through every Obama cabinet member's salary and the income they receive from outside the government. First, I would like to point out that the 200gs most of these people make from the taxpayers is pennies compared to the seven figures they could be making in the private sector. Most Chinese don't know this, of course, and it's downright shocking that these high-level government officials get paid the big bucks from outside sources in addition to their government salary during a major recession.
What should really blow Chinese people's minds, however, is the source of the story's information. Uncle Sam makes publicly available all the details of each of his employee's income.[2] When Uncle Wen (Jiabao) was giving his first online chat with netizens earlier this year, outrage over government officials' wealth compelled him to say, “We need to promote transparency of government affairs and also need to make public officials’ assets.” China ranks 80th worldwide in transparency and one of the top three countries where you are expected to bribe someone when doing business. Every other week, zealous netizens reveal some corrupt official who's been getting rich off bribes.
So what exactly was the point of showing how much money the American government officials make? Does CCTV actually think that Chinese people aren't aware of how much money influences politics here? Are they trying to convince people that America is more corrupt than China? Earlier this year, the CCTV-owned Mandarin hotel building went up in flames, to the delight of many Chinese. Perhaps it was because they were sick of the unavoidable media outlet treating them like ignorant little children.
[1] If 'human interest' means 'human beings would be actually interested in watching this story,' I suppose this doesn't qualify. [2] If he didn't, the New York Times would.
Ancestor worship is a tradition that goes back to pre-recorded history in China. Confucianism's emphasis on filial piety also probably encouraged this practice. Feasts for the ancestors are often laid out in one's home and on special holidays like Qingming Festival (which is this weekend) people will go to cemeteries and saomu (扫墓), or sweep their ancestors graves. I've been told that actual sweeping is no longer involved and most people just leave flowers on the gravestone.
After decades of attacking traditional culture as bourgeois and reviling it a source of weakness for the Chinese nation, the Communist Party decided to make Qingming an official holiday last year. I know people who flew home as far as Henan and Hubei to saomu. The past couple of nights, my alley has been filled with people burning paper money for their ancestors to use in the afterlife. For people like me who often think traditional Chinese culture died sometime between the late 60s and mid-70s, this is evidence to the contrary. Mao tried to get rid of Confucius and other bad traditional elements, but did not succeed.
The ancestors must be smiling down on us, because the past three days have been the nicest of the year. I'm going outside to celebrate.
This was first written as an email to a friend that I decided to edit and post.
什么叫外地人呢？
看它的汉字结构应该能看明白:“外”是外边的意思，“地”指的是地方，所以意思就是从外地来的人。但说到外地人的含义，就没那么简单了。我发现外地人是贬义词。你问一个北京人，“中国人为什么随地吐痰呢？”他们会这样说：“这是因为外地人素质不高。”这不是事实（北京人也会吐痰），而是一种歧视外地人的说法。但这是什么样的歧视呢？我原来想是某种地理歧视。住在北京的上海人虽然算是来自外地的，但是不会被鄙视为外地人。所以我觉得这可不是一种地理歧视。一说“外地人”这个词，北京人就会立刻联想到农民工、服务员那样的人，而不会想到在一家百强公司工作的河南人。外地人这个词所带来的歧视味道好像跟地理、地方没啥关系。 那么,跟什么有关系呢？中国人能分人素质高低。我们美国人没有这种分别，这不是因为我们都有素质，而是因为我们觉得人的素质不好评价，素质高低分起来不容易。素质一般情况下指人们的文化水平，他们所接受过的教育。（其实受教育程度不非要和素质成正比，现实中也有高学历的人做出低素质的事情的例子。）博士的素质非常高，小学没毕业的人素质非常低。所以北京人歧视外地人的原因是因为北京人认为他们的素质低。
Many Beijingers refer to some people as waidiren. Literally, this means someone from a place outside of Beijing. But what it actually means is a bit more complicated. If you ask a Beijinger, "Why do Chinese people spit all over the place," he'll probably answer you: "It's not people from Beijing, it's waidiren. They're not quality people." My neighbor blames most of the bathroom problems we've been having lately on the waidiren who are building a house nearby. If you're talking about someone from Shanghai, the wealthiest city in China, with a Beijinger, they're probably not thinking of that person the same way they think of waidiren, despite the fact that a person from Shanghai is obviously from out of town. When a Beijing thinks of waidiren, migrant workers and waiters at low-end restaurants immediately come to mind. The word waidiren, as it is used commonly in Beijing, does not refer to all people from outside Beijing.
Then how can we tell who is a waidiren? It seems that the term actually refers to the person's level of education. Educated people who make money and work at big companies are generally not thought of as waidiren. The discrimination contained in the term waidiren is therefore socioeconomic, since education is a privilege of the middle class, rather than simply geographic. Discrimination of any sort is obviously somewhat upsetting, but class based discrimination in a communist country is even more disconcerting.
"In a class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class." -Mao Zedong
The brands haven't faded even as New China celebrates its sixtieth anniversary.
Recently I've been interested in Qigong, a therapeutic form of exercise that has been practiced (like everything else here) for 5000 years. Rather than simply saying "exercise is good for your health," and leave it at that, the practitioners of qigong delve deeper with their physiological theory. And this is where yinyang comes in.
Like most people, I have only a vague notion of yinyang, and it comes mainly from obscure references in Kung Fu (Season 1 is incredible). A book my friend gave me on qigong goes into yin and yang, their relationship and how that effects the body.
It is difficult to define what yin and yang are, so I'll give a few examples of what things are classified as yin and yang respectively. Night, rain, the cold, and not moving are yin while day, clear skies, heat, and activity are all yang.
I used to think that the relation between yin and yang was one of opposites with the yang being all good things and the yin being bad, but heat is obviously not good. In fact, the yin and the yang are supposed to be always balanced. Their relationship has four natures:
1) Antagonism or Opposition （对立）-This is characterized by yin and yang constraining and struggling with each other. 2) Interdependence （依存）-Without yin there would be no yang and vice versa. 3) Waxing and waning （消长）-As the amount of yin exceeds equilibrium quantity, yang will reduce to compensate. 4) Transformation （转化）-Under certain conditions, yang can become yin. This is different from (3) because it is not accompanied by automatic counterbalancing. Transformation normally results in illness.
Understanding whether one's illness is caused by excess yang or too little yin determines how to treat it. Finally I've figured out why Chinese people always tell me to avoid spicy food when I have a certain type of sickness, called shanghuo上火. Spicy food is yang-natured and when you shanghuo you already have too much yang, so should avoid eating anything that would make the imbalance more severe.
Qigong provides a means of exercise that keeps the body in balance as long as it is practiced properly. Qigong is still widely practiced and I see about thirty or so 60+ year olds doing it every morning in Huangchenggen Park. There are no statistics to back me up, but I think that activities like qigong and taiji contribute to Chinese people's longevity. (Although the average life expectancy puts China behind 102 countries. Macau, HK and Singapore are at the top, however.)
You can check back with me in 60 years to see if I'm right, provided I keep it up.
