Chinese Translations of the Atlantic's Cover Stories

Translating the Atlantic's cover stories into Chinese is a project that my friends and I started in March, motivated by a feeling of responsibility to help serious journalism reach a broader audience.  In today's internet jungle that can readily swallow (and has swallowed many) uninformed readers, there are time-honored trustworthy publications that stand out by providing people with truth and perspective, and the Atlantic is one of those.

Fortunately, our attempt received support from the Atlantic's editorship led by John Gould, who had the courage and foresight to let us start this experiment.  Since then, our translations have been widely praised by readers; people are saying things like "翻译得真的很好，感觉不到翻译“ （meaning: "the translation is so good it does not feel like a translation"), "非常流畅的译笔" ("very fluent translation "), and "译文像是中文书写的一样" ("the translation is like ​original Chinese writing").

Some of our work, such as the translations of "How to Build Autocracy" and "My Family's Slave​,​" has generated a huge readership, and stayed on top of theatlantic.com's "Popular" list for weeks. We are very encouraged and truly appreciative of the editors, supporting staff, and readers. We have worked hard, and the project has been intellectually rewarding.

Here's the list of our translations so far, in reverse-chronological order:

• July/August:  

How to Deal With North Korea
朝核困局：当今最棘手的问题

• June:

My Family's Slave
洛拉：我家的奴隶

• May

Alec Baldwin Gets Under Trump’s Skin
鲍德温怼特朗普

• April

Why Is Silicon Valley So Awful to Women?

硅谷的女性困境

• March

How to Build an Autocracy

美国：通往独裁之路

Chongqing Police: Before and After Wang Lijun's Downfall (2)

Wang Lijun sounded like such an arbitrary person. One question the Chinese reporter asked was really good. – Xujun

[in translation; continued from the previous post]

Southern Weekend: The Women’s Traffic & Patrol Special Detachment that was set up under Wang Lijun, will it be disbanded?

Chongqing Police Official: The Women’s Traffic & Patrol Special Service Detachment, the idea for the future is to maintain a normal institutional structure, there will be men and women, some women will be diverted to other departments. Let some women comrades join the Traffic & Patrol for nonviolent law enforcement, that's all right, but to set a special women's detachment, we do not quite agree. Especially, the design of a special uniform for them was a serious breach of regulation, something that had never happened in the history of China's public security. Since May 1st of this year, the Women's Traffic & Patrol Detachment has changed the uniform.

SW:  Any results after you made ​​the above adjustments?

Chongqing Police Official: Of course. The police platforms emptied manpower from the stations, and the basic work in public security was very weak, that was why the "3 • 19 gun-robbery" case was not solved for a long time. When solving the Zhou Kehua case, we did not make big noise. In less than four days Zhou Kehua was [found and] shot; police from stations played a direct role in this, and the masses provided important clues, which proves the importance of public security grass-roots work.

SW:  After a series of twists and turns, has the operational capacity of the Chongqing Public Security declined?

Chongqing Police Official: Objectively speaking, in recent years the Chongqing police's  operational capacity has declined somewhat, but it's hard to say how much. There are several reasons: First, the 2010 "institutional reform" made a mess for cadres. Institutional restructuring was originally required by the central government and the city, and the requirement was legitimate. However, Wang Lijun required all 308 division-level cadres and 2544 subdivision-level cadres be dismissed. All had to start over and try regain their positions through competition. Because he did not trust the local cadres, Wang Lijun also required 200 division-level cadres to be transferred in from outside, but we had only a total of over three hundred posts at that level. The complete overturn was to pave the way for outside cadres. At the time, the comrade who was heading the Political Department said that, according to regulations, administration personnel are appointed but not hired, thus they can't be simply dismissed from employment.   Wang Lijun thought about it and said, "Then lets call it 'dismiss from tasks'.". That was how this new term was coined by Wang Lijun. In this way, all human resources were disrupted, a large number of highly skilled cadres effectively became rookies, and needed time to get familiar with their new jobs. Secondly, 11,800 new police were recruited and placed in their posts directly, which caused the poor quality of case-solving in recent years. Now we have decided to start career training for the new police.

SW: I heard that you recently restored posts for some police officials at division and subdivision levels who had failed to regain employment through competition.   Does this mean you let some unqualified officials return to their posts?

Chongqing Police Official: According to the regulations, in institutional reform, the filling of posts should first consider existing qualified cadres, and then use any vacant posts for employment through competition.  But he overturned everything.

When giving examinations, he made ​​it clear one test that must be included was whether police had studied Bo Xilai's and his speeches.  After some struggle, we managed to also include some professional questions. Overall, the quality of cadres who passed the exams was not too bad.

In the end, 159 division level and 968 subdivision level cadres were not used. Most of those were either not allowed to participate in the competition because Wang Lijun put trumped-up charges on them, or they passed the competition but Wang did not like them and did not want to use them. Recently, this group of cadres went through re-examination, and 76 division level cadres and 299 subdivision level cadres were reappointed.  For those who have reached the retirement age, their treatment is retained but they no longer work on key posts. For the few with very low public acceptance and poor performance, we did not reappoint.

1123 police demanded vindication

SW: Recently, we keep hearing that the Chongqing police launched a large scale internal vindication. How many police have been vindicated?

Chongqing Police Official: In May, we set up a special review team headed by a Deputy Chief, to specifically accept and review complaints of police who had been punished. So far we received a total of 1123 police complaints. Because some of the cases involve multiple individuals, the number of police that require review is 2202. So far 1796 have been reviewed; 78% of the original decisions were overturned, 13% retained,  and 9% modified. A number of departmental, division and subdivision police have resumed their duties and received retroactive wages.  So far 133 resumed their leadership positions, including 48 at the division level, and 85 at the subdivision level. Among another 9 cadres at deputy departmental level who had been dismissed, 3 have resumed their positions, and another six are under review.

SW: Why have so many police officers been punished? In what situations have the original decisions been overturned, retained, or modified respectively? With so much revocation, it's tempting to think some problematic police are returning to their posts.

Chongqing Police Official: Let me give you a few examples:

One, in 2010 a middle school student drowned in Yongchuan District. The district police investigated and concluded it was suicide. But the family refused to accept the conclusion, they posted on the internet and  advertised on the streets offering a reward. After Wang Lijun learned about this, he called the district police chief and demanded an immediate arrest of that family. The district chief did not make the arrest, instead he let the family and school negotiate compensation.  Later the family went to petition the Municipal Police Bureau. Wang Lijun got very angry, he called the district chief to his municipal office, scolded him, and requested the family members of the deceased to be sent to labor camp.  The district chief did not follow Wang's instructions.  Soon Wang Lijun removed him from his position and transferred him to the command center to work as a common police for nine months. Only after the new municipal police chief arrived this year, was he able to resume his position. He now serves as the director of the police coordination department.

Two, cadres were indicted for little things. Once, Wang Lijun went to Kaixian County for an inspection, and the county police bureau's reception for his visit did not meet his high standard.  Wang was very unhappy. After he returned, he immediately let his deputy chief Tang Jianhua form a work team to investigate the county police bureau's leadership. In the end, they listed more than 50 counts of crimes and removed most of the county police leaders and a large number of cadres. Another time, Wang Lijun passed by the Discipline Committee's office and saw the toilet window's blinds were broken, he dismissed the entire office. Anywhere he went, even out of Chongqing, he required his office staff to tell hotel staff that, when pouring wine for him, the wine must be substituted with water. Sometimes the hotel staff made a mistake and poured wine instead of water, Wang would get mad and punish a bunch of his office staff.

Cases that have been overturned were mostly this kind of small mistakes, not enough for Party discipline or administrative sanctions. At that time, Wang Lijun used "admonishing talk" for actual punishment to affect police's normal promotion. For example, after one year of service, if the person got an "admonishing talk," he would not get a formal position. After investigation, we revoked the sanction on those comrades.

On the other hand, 13% of the police whose sanctions are maintained did have problems. For example, some police drove a police car to beat up civilians. The director of a police station didn't go to the [crime] site after receiving reports, instead he demanded the off-duty deputy director go; the delay caused the suspect to flee and run over a person. These people, under Wang Lijun or not, must be punished by law. In some cases of over-punishment, charges were reduced after our investigation.

On police vindication, the former secretary of the Politics and Law Committee, Liu Guanglei and the current secretary, Liu Pu, all gave specific instructions and guidance. They requested us to do a good job on ideological work.  The Municipal Commission for Discipline Inspection, the Organizational Department, and the Politics and Law Committee all gave us a lot of support. Currently, Chongqing's police force has gradually stabilized.

SW: Recently, there has been news that the Chongqing police had often used torture to extract confessions, is it true?

Chongqing Police Official: Recently some people were talking about Tieshanping. (Editorial note: According to media reports, a militia training base located on top of  Chongqing's Tieshanping Forest Park had been used as the "outsourced interrogation base" for the "smash black" campaign). Whether there existed torture is under investigation by the People’s Procuratorate. I won't comment on specific cases, but let me make two statements:  first, the police departments must serve their duties to fight against crime and protect the people, any cases violating the criminal law and endangering people's lives and property, the police must handle in accordance with law. Second, any cases handled by Chongqing police, no matter when, no matter what kind, as long as there is a complaint, we will strictly and carefully review according to law, fairly and justly deal according to law.

SW: I feel you now blame Wang Lijun for lots of the problems; Why didn't the Chongqing Police Bureau's Party Committee play its due role of supervision and discipline?

Chongqing Police Official: I'll give you a few more examples. Because a policeman from Wushan County petitioned,  Wang Lijun punished the entire leadership of the county's police bureau. The news was spread on the internet, then a bunch of comrades in the Propaganda Division were punished.  At a Party Committee meeting, a committee member suggested that "We shouldn't overthrow a large number [of cadres]."  Wang pounded the table, "XXX, screw you! Shut up your stinky mouth!"
 
When Woman's Traffic & Patrol Police was established, the uniform they used was not the one regulated by the Ministry of Public Security, but was designed by the order of Wang Lijun. One of the Party Committee Members suggested that the Ministry of Public Security has clear regulation on uniforms, and this [design] resulted in a serious breach of the regulation. Wang Lijun was very angry: "XXX, do you mean only you understand the Ministry's regulations but not me? Only you follow the decision of the Ministry but not me?" The committee member had to say: "I didn't mean that, I was just doing my duty as a deputy." Wang Lijun said, "It's okay to make suggestions, but always think twice before you do."

Wang Lijun publicly claimed at a Party committee meeting: "Let me tell you, I can remove, even arrest, the entire leadership of the Party Committee within a day." At a police General Assembly, Wang Lijun also said publicly: "All of you (in the audience), including those leaders on the stage, I can get within a day."  That sort of thing, first you are unable to change, second you'd do yourself in.

SW: We always say that the current regulations are all very good, then why did those things happen under such a good system?

Chongqing Police Official: This is for individual reasons. Under the same system, why do we perform well now?

SW: Aren't there things worthy of rethinking?

Chongqing Police Official: Power was not restrained, power was abused. The lack of monitoring is what led to some lawless things happening in the Chongqing Municipal Police Bureau.

SW:  Did Wang Lijun have some good aspects?

Chongqing Police Official: Some things seem like his merits. For example, he requested that, if a police officer has a traffic accident, whether it's the police's responsibility or not, he must be detained. Of course some people supported this.  Public support is of course a good thing, but sometimes the law was violated in order to win some people's support, which shouldn't be done.  On the other hand, even though Wang Lijun punished a lot of people, sometimes he would use capable individuals who had offended him. #

(You can read the Chinese text here.)

Chongqing Police: Before and After Wang Lijun's Downfall (1)

For the first time since the downfall of Bo Xilai and Wang Lijun in February-March this year, a high-rank Chongqing police official comments on changes in Chongqing's police force, in an interview with the Chinese paper Southern Weekend.  The Chinese reporter asked very good questions, and the official gave almost straightforward answers. The interview is quite long and I'll post my translation in two parts.

I have asked questions in this space before on what would happen to Chongqing's police platforms and "mounted" policewomen.  You'll find answers in this interview (and also the accurate cost figures).  Note the fact that it was under Wang Lijun that Chongqing's traffic and patrol police forces were consolidated; apparently this structure will be kept. – Xujun

Feb. 7, 2011 ceremony of Chongqing's Traffic & Patrol Police

[in translation]

Southern Weekend (SW): Since March, we keep hearing that Chongqing's public safety is relapsing. What is the actual situation now?

Chongqing Police Bureau Official: Since March 15, some netizens have been concerned about a relapse in Chongqing's public safety. To address this we carried out a series of actions to ensure that "crackdown intensity is not weakened, precautionary measures are not decreased, public security does not deteriorate, the public's sense of safety is not reduced." Currently, social order in Chongqing is generally steady.

On one hand, we have stepped up precautionary measures, the total number of criminal cases from January to November 2012 fell by 8.4% compared to the same period last year. Among them, the eight major categories including murder, robbery, injury, rape, arson, bombings, hijacking and kidnapping cases decreased by 27.9%. On the other hand, we have also increased the strength of our crackdown, with the number of cases prosecuted increasing by 7.7%.

SW: Over the past three years, Chongqing published lots of data to prove the [criminal] case reduction and the public's sense of safety. Now you are releasing data that say major criminal cases are fewer than then, how can the public believe this is true?

Chongqing Police Official:  The police bureau's data on the eight major categories of criminal activity are relatively accurate, but the data on other ordinary criminal cases are less reliable. The increase in the number of prosecuted cases is also proof that police strength and their ability to solve cases are improving.

In the past, guided by an erroneous view of political performance, in order to achieve short-term personal objectives, the Chongqing Police Bureau exaggerated some public safety data and embellished propaganda: 

First, without any factual basis, some made-up data were issued. For example, saying that the "smash black, banish evil" campaign reduced  110 [emergency number equivalent to 911 in the US] calls in the major urban areas of Chongqing by 40%, or that 80% of the people used real names when reporting crimes, or that street crime rate dropped 40% after the establishment of the Traffic & Patrol, etc.  But in fact, after the establishment of the Traffic & Patrol in 2010, street crime fell by only 2.96% compared to 2009.  

Second, in some cases, data for one point or one time were amplified. For example, saying "Since the establishment of the Traffic & Patrol, Chongqing for the first time in 21 years, had zero incidence of street robbery during one day." 

Third, non-professional polling data were touted. In December 2010, a Chongqing media outlet published opinion polls on public safety satisfaction. The rate of satisfaction was as high as 98.81%.  This non-professional, flamboyant data was used in propaganda as a measure of achievements.

SW: Why was it done that way then?

Chongqing Police Official:  If the data reported by various departments did not satisfy Wang Lijun's requirements, [those involved] might be punished, so some departments reported false data. If our statistics department sent in actual data, they would be in trouble, too. If the reported street crime rate did not decline, or even declined less than Wang Lijun expected, Wang would keep giving statisticians tight shoes to wear. In this situation some departments were forced to cater to Wang Lijun with falsified data.

SW: I've also heard this: Some people feel that, in the past, Wang Lijun governed the police very strictly, and the police were very warm and responsible to citizens, but now some police are no longer as interested in helping people as before.

Chongqing Police Official: Chongqing has a police force of nearly forty thousand, certainly there are problems that exist.  Some individual officers treat public needs coldly or push them away.  But even under Wang Lijun, there were also cases such as police losing their guns, letting suspects slip away because of delays, drunk driving, and  dereliction of duty. But he suppressed such negative information, and expanded the positive messages. The Bureau's new Party committee has attached great importance to complaints involving police. Any complaints through 110 calls and internet channels about police dereliction of duty, will be carefully investigated and handled justly by relevant departments.

SW:   You say public safety has not deteriorated compared to the past, then why is it that people feel differently from what you say?

Chongqing Police Official:  In the past, Chongqing's public security was good, but not as good as the propaganda said. The propaganda magnified it. For example, the portion of burglary cases was the highest among all criminal cases, this was true before Wang Lijun became the police chief, and when he was the police chief, and is still true now with He Ting as the chief. Criminal cases have their own patterns. However, in the past if anyone dared to say on the internet that Chongqing's public security was not good, they would be punished. Now, there are no such worries, and people can say anything they want about the quality of public security.

On the internet some people expressed dissatisfaction with individual cases that have occurred recently in Chongqing, such as smashing car windows and theft.  After we solved these cases, we found that the majority of perpetrators were minors, for whom we couldn't give criminal penalties. After we arrested them, we still had to release them. This is a problem that causes headaches for police across the country. The end of the year is also generally a high occurrence time for criminal cases and accidents; recently we have been taking targeted measurements to deal with pickpocketing, burglary, robbery, etc. based on public reporting.

Public order cannot be improved by one or two crackdowns, or by extreme pressure from police every day. Public order is a societal issue. For example, why would one want to be a pocket-picker?  Police have important responsibilities to solve cases, but crime is a comprehensive reflection of various social conflicts, and prevention of crime must rely on comprehensive governance and management. This is the fundamental way to solve crime.

SW: I saw that some police platforms have disappeared. I also heard that the platforms will be gradually withdrawn. What is your plan really?

Chongqing Police Official: Police platforms will be kept, but they must be mobile. Currently, we have equipped some large police vehicles as moving platforms. The fixed platforms will be gradually optimized.  In some key areas fixed platforms will remain, and others will be changed to regular posts.

SW: Many Chongqing residents think that after the police platforms were set up, public safety was improved. Why do you have to withdraw?   Is it because they are not financially sustainable?

Chongqing Police Official:  The consolidation of traffic and patrol police is a very good idea, but it is worth discussing whether fixed platforms are needed. First, the current platforms lack mobility. The dictate of public security work is that, because crimes are not in a fixed place, the police force must follow the cases. Police should go where criminals are. A lot of crimes occur distant from the platforms. If you let the masses go to the platforms to report, what does 110 do?  The Traffic and Patrol Police are like the hospital registration room and the emergency room,  they are responsible for registration and emergency first aid, but can't treat serious illness. Those cases must be assigned to specialists. Our own requirement is that as soon as the public calls, we go to the crime scene. 

Second, the police platforms take up a lot of manpower. Each platform requires 20-30 officers, and Chongqing has 500 platforms that use nearly 14,000 police.  This is more than 1/3 of the total manpower. Most officers at police stations and community offices were transferred to the platforms. Chongqing originally had 803 police stations, and 2904 task rooms, but because manpower was deployed to the platforms, 220 stations were merged and 926 task rooms were unable to operate normally. The Ministry of Public Security requires that, police stations should account for 40% of the total force. But early this year, Chongqing’s had only 24%, no one to do the work at the stations. For example, transient population, released inmates, drug abusers and those with mental illness were poorly managed. The early warning information on crimes could not be collected. Since March of this year, we have restored 104 police stations and more than 900 task rooms.

To place a lot of the police force on the streets can only treat security problems superficially. People see so many police on the streets and feel safe, happy, that is understandable. But a big number of police does not equal good public order.  In the Liberation Monument area, with the presence of Traffic and Patrol Police, there are still lots of pickpockets. Thus after setting up police platforms, we still had to organize a team of several hundred to specifically deal with pickpockets.

Third, the fixed platforms are too wasteful. One platform costs 300,000 yuan for fixed equipment, and 800,000 annually for operational expenses. Chongqing has 500 platforms, and a year costs a total of 4 billion. The long-term effect is to waste a big amount of fiscal funds.  If they are changed to mobile platforms, to buy a Iveco truck needs only 200,000, and all the equipment can be moved into the vehicle. The monthly cost for each vehicle is 60-70,000 less than a fixed platform. Do the math, how much money can be saved?

In addition, a fixed platform operates in the open air, it's hot in the summer and cold in the winter for both the public and the police. That's not very humane. Mobile platforms have heating in the winter and air-conditioning in the summer. (To be continued)

Blotted Copybooks -- A Surprisingly "Face-Losing Cultural Event" in China

(Published in South China Morning Post)

Late last month, a "cultural event" involving 100 prominent Chinese writers quietly made the news: each of them had hand-copied a passage of Mao Zedong's 1942 "Yan'an Talks on Literature and Arts" for a publication celebrating the 70th anniversary of the speeches. The writers felt they had done nothing out of the ordinary - "no different from the numerous commemorative activities held every day", as one of them, the popular novelist Chi Li, put it.

Unexpectedly, however, the news caused a wave of unbridled derision; the criticism has rumbled through Chinese cyberspace for weeks.

This negative public reaction turned the unremarkable cultural event into a scandal. Readers searched for the names of their favourite authors in that "shame roll", as it was dubbed by Shanghai blogger Wu Hongsen, and expressed relief at the names not found. When some beloved names did turn up, feelings of betrayal turned into angry claims, such as "I'll never read their books again!"

This apparently has taken the writers by surprise; so far, a few have stepped out to explain their involvement. Ye Zhaoyan, a well-known fiction writer from Nanjing , wrote on his weibo page that "the feeling of eating a fly is not very good". He said he never liked Mao's Yan'an speeches, but thought they were a "paper tiger" that "could no longer hurt us", and thus had not taken the event seriously enough to bother sending back the 1,000 yuan (HK$1,230) cash mailed to him.

The majority of those involved, however, have kept silent; among them were more than a few who fell victim to Mao's Yan'an speeches whose bite was once real enough. "Literature and art must serve proletariat politics! Literature and art must serve workers, peasants, and soldiers!" The slogans, incisive extractions from Mao's speeches, flooded China in my childhood during the Cultural Revolution. The rubric that Mao put forth at Yan'an was responsible for the persecution of many writers and artists who dared to speak their mind. Many were imprisoned, even executed.

Under communist rule, for half a century, there was at least one major political campaign every decade wielding those principles - the Yan'an rectification movement in the 1940s, the anti-rightist movement in the 1950s, the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s, and the campaign against "spiritual pollution" in the 1980s. Though such mass campaigns against writers and intellectuals have subsided in recent decades, freedom of speech is still a problem in mainland China.

Yet, I knew writers who truly believed in Mao's rhetoric. In the 1970s, a friend's father, a talented novelist in Sichuan , spent many years writing a two-volume novel that sings genuine praise for the people's communes. When published, the novel was hailed as a major achievement and was broadcast all over the province. Even in 1977, when my first short story was published in Sichuan Literature, the magazine awarded me copies of the novel in lieu of payment.

Later, the truth came out that the people's communes were culpable in the great famine from 1959-62 that killed millions of people in our province. Consequently, the novel my friend's father poured his heart into was never mentioned or seen again. He never wrote another novel either, in his later years taking refuge in the Qing dynasty classic A Dream of Red Mansions.

But if you think that was all in the remote past, think again. As recently as last year, when the now disgraced party secretary Bo Xilai still ruled my home city Chongqing, writers there had taken active roles in creating works to praise Bo's "strike the black, sing the red" campaigns. Huang Jiren, one of the writers who took part in the Mao project and the chair of the Chongqing Writers' Association, spent two years writing a book about Wang Lijun. It never reached readers: the Chongqing police chief fled to the US consulate in Chengdu in February and is now facing treason charges. Like all its predecessors, sooner or later, literature written on party assignment becomes the waste of history.

If Huang was under political pressure to write the book on Wang, he and other participants who hand-copied Mao's Yan'an speeches did it willingly. As a reader mocked online, they at least "had the freedom to have unsteady hands" (the Writers Publishing House that published the book has said that some senior writers they contacted couldn't do it because of unsteady hands).

I share the relief of readers who find their beloved authors spared from this roll of dishonour. A friend told me that Wang Anyi, who I believe to be China's best female novelist of our time, rejected the request for participation by saying: "I never copy anyone." What a great thing to say.

I also share the disappointment of readers who found out that writers they respected were involved. Feng Jicai, Mo Yan, Zhang Jie, Jiang Zilong; these are not "party assignment" takers, like some others. Their own writing will probably have a place in China's literary history. So why did they do it?

It was all to do with "relationships", a friend with knowledge of the project told me. Those prominent writers all know He Jianming, the designer and publisher of the calligraphy collection, very well, making it difficult to reject his invitation. This was probably why Zhang Jie, in addition to copying the Mao passage assigned to her, also wrote another four words for the book - "True to the art" - in obvious conflict with Mao's doctrine.

"Don't you think a critical spirit is more important than a 'relationship' to writers?" I asked the friend, who is also a writer.

"That's a bit presumptuous," he replied. "China has so many things that need criticism, can you criticize them all? Writers need to get along."

I'm just glad China still has writers like Wang Anyi.

Foreigners in China: Now and Then

If you are like me, you are baffled by the idiotic mindset of those Chinese bureaucrats. Apparently, Melissa Chan was expelled because the "relevant" authorities were unhappy about some reports criticizing China that involved her (or not). I'm sure the authorities' desired effect was "killing one to admonish a hundred" (杀一儆百) — but guess what?  It is only natural that such a move greatly increases the awareness and impact of those previously less-known reports.  How clever is that? 

The disturbing thing is, from my contacts with Chinese bureaucrats, they really do believe what they are doing is both good and smart. There is a great gap between reality and their view of it.  Unfortunately, as far as I can tell China's officialdom is dominated by such. Their way of thinking is at least two decades behind the times. I doubt China can have effective political reform before this generation of officials withdraw from the stage.

And be sure to read this hilarious (no kidding) report: Chinese Official Questioned About Al Jazeera Reporter's Expulsion, count how many times the word "relevant" is used, and get a kick out of it.  I'm sure the speaker really believes his answers were very smart.

On a related note, Foreign Policy's Isaac Stone Fish has an interesting post that analyzes the possible connection between race and China's expulsion of Melissa Chan.  To further Fish's point, race has almost always been a factor, if sometimes demonstrated in different ways, in Chinese attitudes toward foreigners.  This again is a generational thing that’s waiting for change.

Following the Melissa Chan incident, NYT's Edward Wong dug up – and Tweeted about –  an old tale of another American journalist, John Burns, who was expelled from China in 1986 because of his exploration of the kingdom’s backwaters.  Burns' story recalls intimately the experience of my husband during that same period. In the summer of 1987, Bob rode his bike across China coming to see me in Chongqing, and enroute he and his bike were both arrested. I wrote about the episode here:    

The American Bicyclist at Large and His Adventure in China

That was 25 years ago.  China may have made great advances in economics and technology, and seen a substantial increase in its openness, but surprisingly little has changed in the depth of official thinking.

On Bo Xilai's "Chongqing Model"

(Note:  this is a longer variant of the piece published in the China Beat today. Here it includes the economic aspects of Bo's performance and my comments on the so-called "Chongqing Model."  – Xujun)

So here is a curious thing: since Bo Xilai's downfall, the international media has gone wild speculating on its causes, but few have mentioned the economic factor.  The majority of English reports focus on Bo's attention-generating personal style that might have offended Beijing's top leaders.  Behind the visible factors, however, is a hidden, and much more alarming, issue: Bo's Chongqing government had (still has) huge fiscal deficits. Premier Wen Jiabao, in his March14th press conference, emphasized controlling local government debt. This suggests that Chongqing's deficits likely played a big role in Beijing's assessment of Bo's performance.

A Chinese report shows that Chongqing's 2011 fiscal deficit was more than 100 billion yuan (roughly 16 billion in US dollar). This, a 30% of the year's fiscal revenue, may not look to be the worst, but deficits have been persistent throughout Bo's tenure. The highest – at 50% – occurred in 2009,  the year the "crackdown on gangsters" campaign began. Mayor Huang Qifan was quoted as saying the deficits were to be balanced out by the central government. The talk of the town is that one motivation for Bo's crackdown was to confiscate private business money to fill the hole in his government spending.

Why did Chongqing's deficits continually run high?  A few examples might provide a clue. One thing I wrote about last year was Bo Xilai's billion-dollar gingko trees.  In a Great Leap Forward like zeal to carry out his vision of "Forest Chongqing," in 2010 alone Bo spent 10 billion yuan to plant expensive gingko trees that he favors but are not suitable for local conditions. That expense was 10% of the city's fiscal revenue for 2009. (I wonder if it is the symbolic value of gingko – a species dubbed as "living fossil" – that Bo was after.  His image would never be far away as long as the gingkoes were around, much like the first well Mao helped to dig in Ruijin in the 1930s that is forever commemorated.)

Another example: in Bo's "red culture" campaign, he prevented Chongqing's satellite TV from showing commercials.  So where could the TV station get its revenue from?  The city's fiscal budget covered 50% of it.  (On March 15, hours after the news broke that Bo was gone, the TV station broadcast its first ad in two years.)

As I've also reported, Bo's "red song" campaign had been a big burden on the city's finance.  The singing activities were a mandatory task driven down through the system's hierarchy to every work unit.  "They arrange work time to sing 'red songs,' and the city finances it," commented a Chongqing historian I interviewed last year, "This expense goes through neither process of auditing nor process of argumentation.  A word from the leader, then you must support the activity."

A source said that, after Chongqing's police force was reorganized in the "crackdown on gangsters" campaign (and Wen Qiang, the old police chief and Wang Lijun's predecessor, was executed), each year Chongqing would order 70,000 police uniforms – at a cost of

 4000 yuan each – from Dalian, where Bo Xilai and Wang Lijun came from. That annual expense alone totals 280 million.

One outcome of the "crackdown" are the so-called "police platforms" that Bo Xilai and Wang Lijun placed everywhere along Chongqing's streets. Each one of those modern-equipped platforms cost several million yuan. There was no study on cost-effectiveness, but the platforms apparently have made people feel safer and thankful to Bo.

~

Here is another curious thing: in the wake of Bo Xilai's sudden downfall, shortly after what could be called an online carnival among China watchers – probably more in celebration of a rare, real-life political drama than anything else – the international media is changing its tune and beginning to paint a more sympathetic image of Bo than previously reported, by focusing on Chinese people's love of him.  Reuters, for example, has a report titled "In China's Chongqing, dismay over downfall of Bo Xilai" that quotes a working "stick man" (棒棒军, a porter-for-hire) who praises Bo as "a good man" that "made life a lot better here." The Telegraph's Malcolm Moore (the intrepid reporter who brought Wukan to the world's attention) even went so far as to call Bo "one of the most loved" officials in China. 

Those reports, however, can be misleading if not balanced by a variety of opinions or careful analysis.

China is the most populous country in the world, and Chongqing is the most populous metropolis in China.  With that many people, one can find any and all kinds of opinions among them, certainly including the ones quoted above.  But when we assess Chinese public opinion about a leader, a crucial factor that should never be forgotten is the opacity of China's politics.  Under this condition, there is only so much one can read into either love or hatred of a leader by the masses.  Mao was the most loved in the 1950s and 60s, but it was Mao's policies that caused tens of millions of deaths during that period.  Deng Xiaoping was one of the most hated during the Cultural Revolution (as "China's second biggest capitalist roader"), but he went on to make China richer with his "reform and opening" policies. As I wrote in a dual book review on Mao's Great Famine and Tombstone, an information blackout during the 1959-61 famine had caused millions of peasants to quietly die with no complaints about Mao and the Communist Party. Today, the Internet has greatly increased information accessibility (often in the form of rumors), but that is still largely beyond people at the bottom of the society who struggle to make a daily living, people like the "stick men."

I have been talking to fellow townsfolk throughout Bo's tenure in Chongqing, both in person during my visits and via phone and email.  One thing I notice – though this is not to claim that my sample set is statistically significant – is that the more access to information people have, the more negative their opinions of Bo are.  (The "stick man" quoted by the Reuters report above provides collateral evidence to my observation – he "said he could not read and did not watch television.")  Age also mattered, with people who had experienced the Cultural Revolution tending to be more suspicious of Bo.

Others’ attitudes toward Bo went through a change after the "crackdown on gangsters" campaign began. I noted this in February 2010, in a blog post titled "Turning Winds in Chongqing's Crackdown." I am one of those who changed.

Watching my hometown from afar, my first impression of Bo Xilai was rather good. In November 2008, Chongqing's taxi drivers went on strike, the first such occurrence in Communist China. I followed this event online as closely as I could, and was worried that a bloody repression might be inevitable. At the time, Bo had held his post as Chongqing Party chief for less than a year.  He was in Beijing when the strike started on a Monday; meanwhile, Chongqing's official media reported arrests of cab drivers. On Thursday, however, after Bo returned to Chongqing, he held a three-hour long televised meeting with representatives of the taxi drivers and citizens to discuss their requests.  He appeared fair and open-minded, telling the drivers that their demands were legitimate and their problems would be attended to.  He gained their trust and the strike ended peacefully. As I wrote at the time, I was very impressed. I still remember the relief I felt for my townsmen. I thought that Bo was different, and that he might make a difference for Chongqing—perhaps for China, too.

A year later, when the "crackdown on gangsters" began, the taxi strike was deemed to have been organized by "mafia."  I visit my home city often and I knew the predicament of the cab drivers was real – so that verdict was enough for me to be alarmed. Where had the sympathetic Bo gone? What was the real purpose of the "crackdown"?

Today I continue to wonder what role the taxi strike played in Bo's decision to start a Cultural Revolution-style campaign, and what he had really felt inside when he appeared as a sympathetic listener to the strikers. 

Initially, the crackdown made a positive impression on me as well – like the general public, I was eager to see the corrupt punished. The irony is, later I would be as shocked by the death sentence of Wen Qiang, Chongqing's police chief preceding Wang Lijun, as I was pleased by Wen's arrest at first.

Then came the official attempt to overturn the verdict of the taxi strike.  Then came the Li Zhuang case. Then came a dozen death sentences and executions in quick succession – a batch execution, really, with a concentration not seen since the heyday of the Cultural Revolution.

An ex-judge I met last year questioned the legality of Chongqing's crackdown. "There is no such a term as 'mafia' or 'gangsters' in China's criminal law," he told me. 

~

The last curious thing I want to mention here is this:  on March 8^th, during the National People's Congress (NPC) in Beijing, Bo Xilai gave a press conference that attracted a big crowd of journalists; lots of questions were asked and answered, but no one brought up the disappearance of a Chongqing delegation member, Zhang Mingyu. Zhang was taken by force from his Beijing residence by Chongqing police, believed to have been sent by Bo Xilai. Zhang's lawyer tried to reach out to media and netizens through microblogs.  I saw reports of Zhang’s disappearance on March 7^th and tweeted about it with a bit of shock – this was happening during the NPC, which is supposed to be China's highest legislative meeting.  Would anybody inquire about a violation of the basic rights of its own delegates? 

A few foreign media outlets reported Zhang's lawyer's calls for help on March 7^th. After that, Zhang, and his name, were no longer seen anywhere, as if he had vanished or never even existed. For a week, I searched for his name on the Chinese internet every day. Nothing. 

Until March 15^th, that is, the day Bo Xilai's removal was announced.  A friend who knew I was concerned with Zhang's fate sent me a link to a VOC report on Zhang's release.

He was lucky.  Another Chongqing citizen, Fang Hong, disappeared a year ago after calling Bo Xilai "shit," and was never seen or heard from again.

It is thinking about the helplessness of individuals like those that brings fear to me. I write things like this essay – will I disappear one day when visiting Chongqing? Bo's departure has made me feel safer.

What about Bo's "Chongqing Model" though?  First, I don't believe there is such a thing as a "Chongqing Model."  If we are talking about the mass-campaign style of carrying out a government policy, that's as old as Maoist China; that's not Chongqing's patent. If we are talking about the urbanization policies, we have to ask whether individual wishes and rights are respected.  Recently a Chongqing farmer attempted suicide when visiting Taiwan with a tourist group; his misery was that all his land was forcibly taken by the government. Meanwhile, Chongqing is to spend $6 billion this year contracting out agriculture to Brazil, Argentina, Canada and other countries, the implications of which are unclear.

I have seen Bo Xilai characterized as a Western-style politician, which I find amusing. Bo is a product of China's political system, pure and simple. His education was Mao worship and he has not transcended it; his ideas are all out of old playbooks; his suffering in his youth – years of unjust imprisonment during the Cultural Revolution – seems to have only made him more cynical and cruel.

China's political system needs to be reformed in order to prevent bigger crises.  So where is the hope? If nobody coming out of the system I grew up in could carve a new path forward, we will probably need to wait for those who grew up after the upheavals of the Cultural Revolution had subsided. Alas, that is a generation raised on crony-capitalism and rampant corruption. Such is the dilemma.

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Update 3/22:

As a follow up, I got a note from the Australian journalist John Garnaut, who works for Sydney Morning Herald. He told me he has been following Zhang Mingyu's story since last year.  Unfortunately he and a colleague "were both locked out of the Bo presser at the NPC, along with many others. I was disappointed no one asked about zhang mingyu. We reported as soon as he was released."

The following links he sent me might be of interest:

http://www.smh.com.au/business/show-them-the-money-old-china-20110325-1ca3f.html

http://www.watoday.com.au/world/bo-can-do-one-man-does-his-bit-to-be-the-great-will-of-china-20110806-1iglu.html

http://www.smh.com.au/world/chinese-businessman-held-on-brink-of-mafia-expose-20120307-1ukx2.html

http://www.smh.com.au/world/sacking-overshadows-china-power-shift-20120315-1v86b.html?skin=text-only

Will Chinese Go Alphabetic?

Yesterday, an email header in my inbox caught my eye, not because of its subject but its language. So I clicked the link.  Here is the screenshot of what I saw:

Note the English word "Hold" in the middle of the otherwise all-Chinese headline that translates to: "Can Real Estate Developers Hold Any Longer?"  The article is a commentary from the independent media group (a rare presence in China) Caixin's website, caixin.cn.  

Though English words do show up here and there in Chinese blog posts nowadays, this is the first time I have seen a reputed Chinese publication mixing the two languages in an article.

Why does the author, who looks quite young from the photo, feel the need to repetedly use a particular English word in a Chinese article?  It's possible that he thinks it expresses his meaning more accurately than Chinese; it's also possible that he thinks this mixed language could be a more attractive style of writing for his readers. But, reading his headline makes my tongue feel utterly awkward.

It reminds me of a Mao quote that sticks from my childhood memory, when reciting Mao quotations was a fashion during the Cultural Revolution. "Language and writing must be reformed to go alphabetic, the common direction of languages in the world," Mao said.  And he indeed gave it a try in the 1950s.  Peter Hessler had an excellent piece in the New Yorker several years ago that tells the language reform history.  As it turns out, the reform attempt did not manage to alphabetize written Chinese, though it resulted in the official "pinyin" system that uses the Roman alphabet to assist the learning of Chinese pronunciation, as well as the simplification of some characters.

Since then, the debate on whether written Chinese should be replaced by an alphabet has never ceased.  By birth, I'm a big fan of the square Chinese characters, which hold cultural, artistic and semantic richness in strokes and structures. I am not eager to see them go. However, today's young generation of Chinese seem to be a lot less attached to their ancestral language, one of the consequences of globalization I suspect.  I had never believed our beautiful square characters would one day become obsolete; now I'm not so sure. 

Glass Magazine Interviews Writers

Glass, a handsome quarterly published in UK, interviews several international writers in their spring issue.  In an article titled "Women Hold Up Half the Sky," the journalist, Samantha Kuok Leese, says about my writing:

Contemporary author Xujun Eberlein is a native of Chongqing, one of China's major south-western cities, who moved to the United States in 1988. Her first book, Apologies Forthcoming, won the 2007 Tartts Fiction Award and established her as one of the most refreshing new voices in Chinese women's writing.

            The collection of eight stories is a moving remembrance of the Cultural Revolution at an individual level, through which Eberlein gives voices to a variety of characters in a range of times and settings. The book's subtitle is pointedly Stories not about Mao. (Note: this refers to the Hong Kong edition – Xujun) Her time outside China encouraged her to present the historical calamity of the Cultural Revolution in small but deeply absorbing episodes.

            "Having lived in two countries of political opposites, I am no longer easily excited by “-ist” labels, be it Communist, capitalist, imperialist, or terrorist. I have learned there are people’s faces behind all those “-ists,” with human commonalities and differences, human weaknesses and biases.  I've seen similarities in national and international politics and propaganda, and the information disparity that exists on both sides of the earth. 

"It is easy for people in each country to see the other in a rather abstract and presumptive manner, instead of as fully fleshed fellow human beings.  My intention was thus to return to the basics of human nature, to portray the characters as realistically human as I could."

There's more about my writing in the article, which also talks about another writer I admire, Xu Xi.  Other writers you will read in this issue are Junot Díaz, Isabel Allende, Russell Hoban, and Liz Calder.  Though the content is not available from their website, you will probably be able to find the magazine on newsstands and in large bookstores. See more information below.

Here's the Glass newsletter that arrived in my inbox: