"The Biggest Threat Is not Social Unrest but Societal Breakdown" (2)

by Sun Liping, Professor of Sociology at Tsinghua University

(Continued from yesterday's post)

[in translation]

8. Society has lost the ability to think long-term. Vested interest groups formed on bureaucratic capitalism pay overly great attention to short term interests; they have neither the ancient emperors' responsibility toward their descendants, nor the nobleman's detachment and transcending spirit. There is a tendency in our society for an exaggeration-syndrome over short-term problems to co-exist with a numbness-syndrome over long-term behavior. For every problem at the moment, each bush and tree looks like an enemy soldier; Problems concerning our descendants and society's long-term development all meet with a blind eye. "Get drunk today when there is still wine" becomes institutionalized behavior. With resource and environmental issues, they drain the lake to catch all the fish. Facing institutional malpractice, they put off whenever they can. The city of Handan went through ten mayors in a decade. The national average for a mayor's term is now 1.7 years. In the first half of each term, the job is to "hold up [the new leadership] onto the horse and accompany them for a distance"; in the second half of the term it is to search for and train the successor. Power and interest before one's eye is everything; there is no time to do real things.

9. Why can't counter-corruption be carried out effectively? This shows how things are weighed from the perspective of vested interests, i.e., which is more frightening, the corruption, or the prospect of appealling to society in order to institute counter-corruption measures? This logic of course holds for a corrupt individual, but when it transforms into an institutional logic, the problem becomes severe. Unfortunately, the above logic is far from non-institutional. Many years of counter-corruption activities basically stop at the point of making a show and killing the chicken to frighten the monkey. When it comes to substantial measures in countering corruption, despite the fact that everyone, top to bottom, knows what is going on, there has never been fundamental progress, let alone an appeal to society to implement measures for counter-corruption.

10. Maintaining vested interests is a tiring job, and our society has placed too much of its energy and resources behind this. To maintain vested interests, freedom of speech must be suppressed. Just think about it, how much energy and resources have been used to suppress those voices? To maintain vested interests, democracy the obstruction must be bypassed using every possible means. Just think about it, how much energy have we wasted on justifying, how many reasons and theories have we made up, in order not to have democracy? To maintain vested interests, we have to suppress the people's rightful expression of interest, as a consequence how many mass incidents have brewed, and how much energy has been spent on resolving those mass incidents? To maintain vested interests, we don't dare to adopt many effective counter-corruption measures used in other countries, and we have to use those clumsy and ineffective campaign-style methods. How much more energy and resources have been wasted with those campaigns? One must know that, to simultaneously realize the two goals of maximizing vested interests and maintaining normal operation of society is a considerably difficult and laborious thing to do. It tires our system, and it tires the management. The psychological burden is heavy from the system to the manager. More importantly, to maintain vested interests, our society needs to pay a deeper and further cost. For instance, why do we have to criticize universal values on a grand scale? Does something in universal values make us lose our temper? To be frank, it is democracy and liberty. Because they threaten vested interests, but to directly criticize democracy and liberty does not sound good, so those in power have to take on universal values. In today's faithless and morally degraded reality, even universal values become the subject of criticism, the consequence is predictable. But for the sake of vested interests, it has to be done.

11. The root cause for societal breakdown is the formation of bureaucratic capitalism. In the past, many viewed power and the free market as two opposite things, now one can see the two things are married in China. This is like two people whom others think it would be impossible to marry are wed. Not only they married, but they live well together. In the past there was this thought that power would be restricted in a market economy; Now it is exactly the emergence of the market that provides power with greater opportunity for its use. The market is the market in which power plays a role, power is the power used in the market. Furthermore, power is traded at a better price in the market. This is the problem we face right now. In 2002 I raised the "broken society" concept (see http://www.blogchina.com/20090210664016.html). Vested interest groups under bureaucratic capitalism can form a divide between "us" and "them." As analyzed above, this divide has created a psychological distance.

12. China's realm of ideology faces the marriage between power and money. Both power and markets need to be regulated, but more importantly the link between the two must be severed. Recently Mr. Mao Yushi proposed to "prohibit the rich from having power, prohibit the powerful from making money," which is the same idea. We must see that the key problem is the marriage between power and money. But the situation in China's current realm of ideology is like this: Presently, power and money the seemly unmarriageable two have made a family and are living well together. Now, a dispute appears between the leftist and the rightist. One says, in the family, the husband is a good husband, the wife is a bad wife. The other says, but the wife is the good one and the husband is bad. The two sides quarrel fiercely, while the married couple are living their sweet life.

13. Due to the wrong way of thinking, all kinds of measures in "maintaining stability" have made it impossible to carry out reforms to help society's health, and the consequence is further exacerbation of societal breakdown. Social unrest can be handled by "maintaining stability," while societal breakdown is much harder to deal with. I recall the time when the former President of Philippines, Estrada, fell because of corruption, one American media outlet commented that the internal wound caused by the country's corruption might need its people to pay the cost for 100 years. When corruption becomes a life style, when corruption becomes an irreproachable value, when corruption becomes a thing that everyone curses yet everyone wants, the entire social life enters a state of metamorphosis. History will prove that, "stability" not only can't prevail over everything, its pursuit can destroy everything. The stiff thinking to have stability prevail over everything will kill any sprouting effort at making our nation healthy.

14. The marriage of power and money and the corruption it causes have fundamentally distorted China's social development process. Last year was the 30th anniversary of China's reform. At such an important moment, people expected a serious summary and in-depth reflection upon the past. Regrettably however, cheap praise and meaningless set-expressions lost the great opportunity. This shows we have lost the ability and courage to face reality, including reform. In fact, as I emphasized in a series of articles in 2005, to some extent reform is becoming a war of property robbery. The consensus on reform has basically fallen through; the drive for reform has been lost. The reason? It is that reform is constrained by the frame of vested interests. Even the really open-minded reformer is unable to get rid of such constraints. In this situation, the mechanism to distort reform has formed. Even a reform with the best motive can have the opposite result.

15. Actually, China's reform is neither as good as some have said, nor as bad as others have said. I never agree to completely attribute the economic development speed and the improvement in people's material life to reform. As long as there are no unusual natural or man-made disasters, the economy will develop as a matter of fact. Some people often compare today's material life with that of 30 years ago, in order to illustrate the success of reform. But in fact, in addition to the fact that normal social development has been driven by technology progress, the decrease of birth rate and average family size is also an important factor. If today's cities, had many families with 3 children, what kind of life would it be? Therefore we can say that reform and opening-up have benefited from family planning, and that reform has benefited from opening-up (which speeds technological progress). This is not to deny reform, but to take a rational attitude toward it. The real meaning of reform is to transform China from a distorted and metamorphic society into a normal society and merge it into the mainstream of human civilization. A market economy is only a limited part of it. And this process is far from complete, in recent years has even been retreating.

16. China's reform has congenital deficiency. Reflecting on its starting point can help us re-think a few issues. China's reform actually did not start from "the verge of collapse of the national economy." The launch of the reform was the result of several forces combined. There was people's desire to improve their economic condition, and there was intellectuals' ideal of changing the status quo, but more importantly there was the demand from those who lost their power in the Cultural Revolution to return to the power center. The latter includes two kinds of people: those who wanted to return to the 17 years before the Cultural Revolution, and those who wanted to borrow the opportunity to advance into a new civilization. In the early 1980s reform was controlled by this part of the people. However, what was in contrast to the situation then was only the absurd years of the Cultural Revolution, therefore the power-holders were full of confidence. This confidence created the enlightened period of the 1980s. However the surface progress concealed the fundamental deficits of the reform, i.e., its lack of a real value target that leads to a new civilization.

17. "Stability" has begun to become a means to maintain the existing structure of vested interests. (The end)

"The Biggest Threat Is not Social Unrest but Societal Breakdown" (1)

by Sun Liping

(Note: I just returned from a month-long visit to China, during which I talked to many people from various social classes – more about that in future posts. One thing that surprised me a bit is that the state of freedom of speech in China is not as bad as I'd expected, despite the notorious internet blockage that prevented me from even viewing my own blog. On the Chinese internet one can read lots of dissenting voices, some admirably rational. The following is my translation of a recent article by Sun Liping, a professor of sociology at Tsinghua University. This article, recommended to me by a writer friend in Shanghai, has been reprinted on many Chinese websites and can be easily googled within China. You can read the Chinese original here. Also note its large readership. – Xujun)

[in translation]

This is a discussion post; its core point is: the biggest threat to China perhaps is not social unrest but societal breakdown. This is a tentative view, therefore this post is in constant revision. Constructive discussion from interested friends is welcome.

1. Are we anxious about the wrong problem? Now people are all concerned with social conflicts and clashes, mass incidents, etc. Those concerns come from the worry about large scale social unrest. But in fact, the biggest threat to China perhaps is not social unrest but societal breakdown.

2. Social unrest means that serious conflicts can threaten the basic structure of the ruling regime and system, while societal breakdown is the cell necrosis of the societal body. With more imagery, unrest is like a healthy body wounded by someone else's attack, while breakdown means one's own organs or cells are having serious problems. Mr. Fei Xiaotong's "social erosion" and Samuel Huntington's "political decay" are two concepts that can deepen our understanding on this, even though neither concept is completely the same as the "societal breakdown" as discussed here. The latter of these two concepts might be closer.

3. The opposite of social unrest is social stability; the opposite of societal breakdown is societal health. Although the two are often related, they should be distinguished. Now the problem is, the misdiagnosis of the former often becomes the obstacle of treating the latter. It's like a cancer patient who needs surgery, but the doctor misdiagnoses the patient as having a heart attack, counter indicating surgery. In fact the patient may not be having a heart attack, or may be having only a mild one. In societal reality, some reforms are needed to prevent societal breakdown, but the concern that the reforms would threaten social stability has pushed them aside, and the consequence of this is that the tendency toward societal breakdown becomes more obvious.

4. In a recent article I repeatedly emphasized that, despite many current social conflicts, some even showing signs of intensifying, the possibility of large scale social unrest is small. I wrote about this 10 years ago. See also a two-page interview in Southern Weekend from last year. In the past decade or so, because we overestimated the factors generating instability, a fixed way of thinking that stability must prevail over everything has been formed. In this fixed way of thinking, "stability" becomes the ultimate negating factor; everything must yield to "stability." As a consequence many things that should be done can't be done. Actually, in 365 days of a year, if there is not this incident there will be that incident. In a country with a population of 1.3 billion, big disasters and small troubles are inevitable. If you take pains to look for instability, you will always find it, not to mention that uncontrolled power is continuously creating "mass incidents" (for example the recent "mass incident" in Guizhou was caused by the government's bizarre idea to stop mass entertainment activities). The key is what mentality we should have in viewing such problems. Any country in the world would have destabilizing incidents like ours, but only we have organizations like "the office for maintaining stability."

5. In recent years, signs of societal breakdown have become more apparent. The core problem is the loss of control over power. During the past 30 years of reform, despite the establishment of a basic framework for a market economy, power remains the backbone of our society. Because societal breakdown first appears as the loss of control over power, corruption is but the surface manifestation. By loss of control over power I mean that power becomes a force unconstrained not only externally, but also internally. Before this, although it lacked external constraints, internal constraints had been relatively effective. The power base is weakening; several years ago we had already heard the saying "commands don’t reach outside of Zhongnanhai [the headquarters of the CCP and China’s Central Government]." Local power and sector power have become unconstrained from above and unmonitored from below, at the same time lacking any check or balance from the left or right. This is to say, state power is fragmented, and officials are unable to work responsibly. To preserve their positions they don't balk at sacrificing system benefits (not to mention societal interest). With this background, corruption has gotten beyond control and become untreatable.

6.This societal breakdown spreads to every aspect of life: unspoken rules prevail, becoming the basis for being an official or even being a person, about which Mr. Wu Si (吴思) has a good analysis; Powerful interest groups are unbridled and the tendency toward an underworld society emerges; Social justice erodes; Lack of professional ethics is common; Society's information system is filled with falsehoods, fake statistical data representing systematic distortions of information. "Village cheats village, county cheats county, cheating all the way to the State Council" is a more solid reality than official statistical data.

7.Sense of social identity and centripetal forces are rapidly lost. The big fire at a CCTV building on the day of the Lantern Festival caused a several tens of billions damage, but there are only gloating voices over the disaster on the internet. No sadness, no grief. The morose delectation expresses an unspeakable pleasure. Some say this shows people's coldness; some say there is no hope for our nation; still some ask, why don't those who gloat think that part of their own property burned in the fire (because the CCTV building is state property)? This makes me recall a big fire in the 1980s' Shenyang, at the time many people stood on the streets crying out. How can this be explained using our national identity? Where is the problem? It lies in whether we identify with the society. Crying over Shenyang's big fire, people felt "our own" buildings had burned. In the CCTV big fire, some said, even if tens of billions of yuan were not burned, they would be eaten anyway. Here the eating and drinking of course means using public money. Others worried how much water would be used to put out the fire when there was a drought going on. Behind those talks is psychological distance, that is, those things are "theirs," not "ours." Psychological distance is reflection of structural distance. (to be continued)

The Cultural Revolution on Wall Street

by Larry Mongoss, guest blogger

I figured I had either heard of, or conceived in my own imagination, every possible way one might think about the current financial crisis. Thus my surprise and delight, while watching Charlie Rose, to hear David Faber of CNBC compare it to China’s Cultural Revolution.

Well, in all fairness to Mr. Faber he didn’t actually mention the Cultural Revolution, and probably would be baffled by the comparison, but he said something that really resonated. For a CNBC special on the financial meltdown called House of Cards he had been talking to many people. Lots were mad, he said, but also said that both the victims on Main Street and the culprits on Wall Street must carry some of the blame for what happened. Without borrowers willing to take on houses beyond their means the bubble would not have been there to pop in the first place. Or more thematically, given the name of the special, the cards would not have been stacked so high.

And that brings me back to the Cultural Revolution. The borrowers and the Wall Street bankers believed in the miracle, that prosperity will yield prosperity. Somewhere in the excitement, common sense went out the door. It is human nature to get caught up in the moment, and this time the factions, instead of fighting amongst themselves, were all pulling together till the cards began to topple.

So if the bankers and the borrowers where different Red Guard factions, then who was Mao? That one is pretty easy, and he is one of the featured speakers in the special. Even today, Alan Greenspan basically says he could not have taken any action to make this adjustment less painful. It is kind of funny to hear him say that. If you ever chewed bubble gum as a kid, and can remember back to that time, you can probably see the bubble forming in front of you. Some of those bubbles were amazing: huge, round, perfect. Others did not look so good: lopsided, weak and just plain ugly. When I saw that things were not working out I would suck the air out, and chew some more. Some of my friends, however, would simply blow hard and force the bubble to pop. Apparently Mr. Greenspan was like them.

Getting past Mao to the Gang of Four is a little bit more of a stretch, but Mr. Bernanke certainly seems like he ought to be included. Then, given Mr. Geitner’s much awaited, and astonishingly underwhelming, announcement of his plans, or lack thereof, I have to add him to the roster. Rounding that out with Mr. Paulson and Mr. Summers seems to make sense, though I wouldn’t care to hazard a guess as to which of them is Jiang Qing. They are, it seems, unhappy allies in this boondoggle we find ourselves in.

Ridiculous and absurd you say? Though that is true, there may actually be something in the comparison beyond what is, hopefully, a bit of comic relief in the face of so much dour news. And that is what happens next.

The end of the Cultural Revolution marked the beginning of China’s emergence as world economic power. A very important ingredient in that spectacular rise has been the development of businesses, activities and really just ways of doing things that simply did not exist before. This has been done in the face of a large and well established bureaucracy that, at first glance, should have doused any attempt of the country to lift itself.

A similar situation exists in America today. Too big to fail is something that people might have said about the Chinese Communist Party, but in America it is banks, car companies and insurers that get the tagline. The number of entrenched interests in America is substantial, and they are guided by very powerful people. So the challenge is similar to that faced by China in the 80s, to keep all that from standing in the way of progress. This is always difficult, but has become much more so as the very existence of many of yesterday’s most powerful institutions is threatened.

Can Barack Obama, through reason and persuasion, accomplish what Deng Xiaoping did through concentrated power? It seems unlikely, but I am ever hopeful. So I will watch the drama on Wall Street and Main Street as well as in Washington unfold with that picture in my mind.

Valentine's Madness in Shanghai

by Maple Xu

[in translation]

On Valentine's Day, Shanghai went mad! No parking available at squares, restaurants or karaokes; to eat out one had to wait in a long line; streets were unbearably jammed by cars.

Strangely, since the financial crisis began, it seems my countrymen's consumption power has been growing intensely. In the past years on Valentine's Day, at most the price of roses went up and Western-style restaurants got more customers. This year, the old and the young all came out to join in the merry-making. Even Chinese-style restaurants had long lines. Movie theaters were explosively filled. Rose prices surged from 2 yuan to 15 yuan a stem; people still grabbed them like a free-lunch, buying 99 stems at a time.

I suspect my countrymen are having the fin-de-siecle anxiety, smashing the pot that has already cracked. Why wait for inflation, why not indulge in flowers and wine now and buy that one-time happiness. But most of my friends think this is because Chinese have bank deposits; in addition, people are irritated by the American financial crisis, so they spend just to show you they can spend.

In this year's Spring Festival Gala, Zhao Benshan (note: a famous skit and sitcom actor) had a stage speech "we are not short of money; give me whatever is good." Now people around me often say "not short of money!"

Talking in Chongqing

1. With a taxi driver

(at the stop)

Driver (impatiently): Hurry! Hurry!

Me: Why, isn't this a designated stop…

Driver: Don't be loquacious! Don't get me fined!

Chongqing taxi

(on the road )

Me: Shifu, you seem to be in a bad mood.

Driver (upset): I just got fined! The police fined me for tailgating his car! But there was a private car between me and him. What the fuck! Why did he skip the private car but take on a taxi? Some sort of revenge?

Me: Didn't you reason with him?

Driver: What's the use! They don't care!

(a moment later)

Me: Shifu, did your situation improve a bit after last year's strike?

Driver: What improved? The taxi company did nothing, didn't reduce a penny of our "share-payment."

My sister: So it's only the government pays you each an extra 50 yuan a day…

Driver: 50 yuan per car. 25 yuan each driver. But the company imposes on us more restrictions after the strike. You dare do anything, 200 yuan fine! 300 yuan fine! Who can afford those?

Me: Don't you have a Taxi Association now? Wouldn't it do something for you?

Driver: Do a fart! That association is led by the Party.

Me: But it wasn't supposed to be an official organization…

Driver: Are you Chinese? Any organization has to accept the Party's leadership.

Me: But I heard that Bo Xilai (note: the Party Secretary of Chongqing) handled the strike pretty well last year…

Driver: Bo Xilai is not going to stay. He's leaving soon. Our situation won't change.

Me: Oh yeah? How do you know he's leaving?

My sister: He has been in Chongqing for less than a year.

Driver: Word is spreading around. Then again, even if Bo Xilai has a good idea, he's not the one to implement it. So it's just not going to be implemented. (Suddenly) You work for the government, wouldn't you know more than I do?

Me: Oh no, I'm just a tourist returned home for a visit from somewhere else.

My sister (suddenly): Shifu, you've passed our destination!

Driver (stopping and laughing): Hah hah! Sorry, I had too much fun chatting with you.

2. With a migrant worker

(image from http://hsb.hsw.cn)

(Mrs. Leng, 45, is a housekeeper working in the neighborhood where my parents live)

Me: When did you come to Chongqing?

Mrs. Leng: March 2001. (Counting with fingers) Aiya, 8 years already!

Me: So you left the countryside then?

Mrs. Leng: No, I went to Guangzhou first. I worked in a shoe factory for about half a year.

Me: What made you leave Guangzhou?

Mrs. Leng: I missed my two children too much … The factory gave us two weeks vacation because its suppliers were backlogged. I returned home and didn't want to go there again. Chongqing is close enough to home.

Me: Are your children with you now?

Mrs Leng: No, they are in schools at home in Dazu. But I can go see them on holidays, and they come to stay with us in the summer.

Me: What does your husband do?

Mrs. Leng: He works as a freelance installer and transporter for an electronic appliance distributor. He gets paid on each job, because it's a better deal than being a staff worker on fixed-salary.

Me: What happened to your land in the countryside?

Mrs Leng: We gave it to a relative to farm.

Me: Does he pay you for using it?

Mrs Leng: No, he doesn't pay anything. We just don't want the land to go fallow. He's doing very well with it. He is richer than us now. People who stayed on the land are doing better than us migrant workers now.

Me: Really? Then don't you want to return to your land?

Mrs. Leng: Not at all. Farm labor is a lot harder than urban jobs. I can't imagine going back to the hard labor again. We've become lazier, spoiled by city life. But if I had stayed at home I wouldn't do worse than anyone! Even in the bad times I managed our land and pigs well.

Me: How many people have left your village to the cities?

Mrs. Leng: Most the young people.

Me: Is any land left unfarmed now?

Mrs. Leng: Yes, mostly the unfertile areas. Our land is very fertile. Some families who have money hire others to farm their land.

Me: I heard that the government no longer allows an urban resident registration to change to a rural one.

Mrs. Leng: That's true. Now the land is much more valuable. We wouldn't want to change our registrations to urban. We wouldn't want to give away our land.

Me: I heard that Chongqing is experimenting with unifying urban and rural registrations.

Mrs. Leng: But our registrations don't belong to Chongqing.

Me: Ah. Do you make enough in the city?

Mrs. Leng: We are just getting by…didn't manage to save any money in the past year. My daughter mistakenly left out three questions in the high school entrance exam last summer, so her score was lower than the admission-line for first-rate schools. We had to pay 9000 yuan to get her into such a school. For her meals alone we are paying the school 450 yuan a month…

Me: Public school?

Mrs. Leng: Yes. Then my father-in-law was killed walking near his village by a hit-and-run motorcycle, and we spent over 10,000 yuan for his funeral. The police still haven't found the motorist. Where do you go to find such a person? It was dark in the night…

Just before the Spring Festival my husband got into fight with another man and we had to pay for that man's medical cost…

Me: How did he get into a fight?

Mrs. Leng: He had never gotten into a fight with anyone before! He was attending several jobs that day and couldn't finish one of them. He told the customer he would forego the payment because he didn't have the time to finish it.

Me: A city guy?

Mrs. Leng: Yes. But the guy yelled at him, "Are you the country pumpkin looking for fists?" My husband dared back, "Just try me then!" So the guy hit him on the left eye and he hit back…

Me: Who's bigger?

Mrs. Leng: My husband. I became really scared afterward. He could have beaten that guy really badly! Fortunately that man's wife was also there and she grabbed my husband's arm tightly, so he only got in a few kicks.

Me: Were you there?

Mrs. Leng: No. I went to the police station after my husband called me. The other guy's wife accused my husband, "The migrant worker lacks culture!" I wanted to say, Who are you? Even my very cultured boss doesn't look down at us migrant workers.

Me: What did the police do?

Mrs. Leng: The police officer said, "I see you are evenly uncultured." The police ordered them to pay our medical cost and we pay their medical cost. Each family ended up paying a similar amount.

A bit more on Charter 08 and the Great Firewall

Ian Lamont at The Industry Standard contacted me last week (I'm visiting China) asking my opinion on what role the Internet has played in Charter 08's spread, and whether the Charter will present a serious challenge to the government of the PRC. Here's my response:

About websites filtering in general, James Fallows provided by far the clearest explanation of how China's "great firewall" works. You can find an entire chapter in his new book Postcards from Tomorrow Square: Reports from China devoted to this topic.

As far as I know, for internet savvy people, it is not that hard to get around the "great firewall" - there are many ways to do it. As an example, my blog is blocked here in China, still I can use Google's translation feature to view it completely. This is to say, for anyone in China who wants to access particular information, there is a way to find it with a bit extra work or cost. As such, I have the impression that the purpose of the filtering is more to discourage the general population than to completely block information. And so far it has worked exactly to that effect, because most people don't like to go through that extra trouble.

About Charter 08 in particular, I've found at least one Chinese language website hosted on a sever in the US can be accessed from within China, see https://knol.google.com/k/-/08/3jhi1zdzvxj3f/9#. This site can easily be Googled using either Chinese or English keywords. If you read Chinese, you can see the comments on that site by mainland Chinese are mixed: there are supporting voices and there are doubts and criticism.

From my latest conversations with people in China, most have not heard about the Charter. Among those I have talked to, only one friend, an educated man who is interested in political issues, knew about it. I think internet blockage is not the sole reason for this. As I have reviewed, and also analyzed by ESWN and Rconversation, the Charter needs more work to appeal to the working class and general population, especially at a time when the Chinese government enjoys high trust and support from a large population who are more sensitive to economic conditions than political issues. In short, so far the Charter is an abstract though sound concept in the ivory tower, without concrete and practical ideas, interesting mostly to a small group of elites.

Part of the above response has been quoted in Ian Lamont's article "Charter 08 exposes flaws in China's 'Great Firewall'."

Comments from Behind the Great Firewall

[I'm still in China. Today I received the following note through the Contact page. Because the Great Firewall prohibited me from viewing or commenting but not posting on my own blog, I'm making a special post for those comments. Discussions are welcome. -- Xujun]

Comments from hsknotes:

I'm in the mainland so I can only access your site through secure-tunnel. (If you know of a better alternative that would allow me to post comments directly in response to post, that would be much appreciated.)

Anyway, here are a few comments I wanted to leave, but couldn't. By the way, I'm an American who is currently living in Beijing working as a translator.

Comment 1:

Does anyone in the English speaking world even know where or what Canton is? What are we from the 70s? Peking, Canton, Chungking fell off the map for English speakers at least 20 years ago at the latest.

As for Charter 08, I don't even know why the government tries to block such things or even takes actions against a few of the signers, the impact and push for that kind of thing is non-existent in China. The rioting in the countryside where the real disquiet and unrest is is so out of sync and out of touch with the rhetoric coming out of the foreign (overseas) intellectual community that it's bizarre. Its more disturbing that the overseas intellectual community still even bothers or thinks that their declarations make any difference.

Comment 2:

Ok. About "awkwardness". I myself work as a translator and also had the experience of reading Chinese literature in translation (and loving a lot of it) before I ever knew any Chinese. Years later when I got around to say, looking at what Howard Goldblatt does to modern Chinese literature in translation, I was frightened. 师傅你越来越幽默 becomes Shifu, You'll do anything for a laugh. What the fuck is that? Was he planning on putting a footnote on the cover?

Ok, back to the point at hand. When you pick a book translated from any language into English there's a certain amount of "local flavor" you can stand without it being 拗眼? Sometimes, when you're translating you feel like you can go pages and translate things freely, because every other word isn't piled with chengyu or beijing slang (Wang Shuo's writing for example). When I translate his work, there is no choice like you have, to think about a phrase. From the first word to the last line of much of his work there's nothing there that cleanly "translates" to english. When people like Goldblatt take Mo Yan or even Wang Shuo and make it clean and "Nobel-worthy" they're essentially rewriting it in nice smooth English of their own creation. That is bad, very, very bad.

Ok, once again back to your issues. You obviously have to choose the "english" phrase as opposed to the "literal" chinese one. The problem here is that you're thinking the "literal" chinese phrase carries some sort of meaning when the truth is that even in chinese, these "stock phrases" are incredibly unimportant. No serious chinese-to-english translator in a million years should ever consider translating "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" into Chinese literally, but Chinese people live under this delusion that chengyu and "phrases" somehow operate differently in their language. They don't, they operate how all these "historical sayings" worked in European languages till about 50 to 100 years ago. Allowing the "chengyu" and other related sayings to be translated "literally" for "effect" or "flavor" when there is no incredible and abiding reason (for example, someone says the "sticks and stones" line and then has rocks thrown at them, but even then a footnote explaining the phrase is well-deserved) is mistake, a giant mistake that ghettoizes, ethnicizes, and just is one whole pile of otherness and things good translations shouldn't get into. Awkwardness, strangeness in "language" is the enemy of any good translator or writer. Your well intentioned search for flavor and "effect" should come across from characters, style, story, etc. Given all that, tons of the translators still feel it's ok to throw in a few "non-translations"/"literals" for effect. To anyone who knows the original language it's almost always an eyesore/embarassment, but to people who don't, its always up for grabs. The point is your readers don't know anything, I could translate 200 pages of "literal" translations of Wang Shuo's hoodlum dialect mixed with slang and refined Chinese and I can guarantee you not a single person would like it. On the other hand, I could pull a Goldblatt and make shit up and that's also horrible. The point is, be very, very careful and never try to "ethnic up" something. Look at Naipaul's comments about the young Indian writers writing in English and doing the whole exoticism shtick. He rightly calls a spade a spade and sees it as horribly crass boutique multicularism gone marketing. Don't do the same with translation, and the literal chengyu translations go scarily close to that. It's why people who know chinese feel so incredibly uncomfortable when they see things like that.

Here's a link to some of what I'm talking about with Naipaul.

http://www.literaryreview.co.uk/naipaul_04_06.html

(from hsknotes)

My Hip-Hop Nephew

Doggy is a 15-year-old Chongqing kid, who tells me he's a B-boy ("B" for "breaking"). His English comprehension and pronunciation are surprisingly good, given that he hates school. I asked him how he learned his English, and he said from rap music. He loves 2pac and T.I., and urges me to download their music from Baidu.com, where one can find Chinese translations of the songs as well. His favorites are "Don't Worry," "Life Goes on," and "Dead and Gone." He calls the lyrics "touching."

"Why do you like those songs?" I asked.

"They are more real," he told me. Apparently he views Chinese songs as not real, too much propaganda.

my nephew Doggy

He wears a cool colorful brand jacket and big loose pants with a great number of buckles and pendants; the pants hang low exposing his boxers and the legs flow down over his shoes, inimically American. The ever present baseball cap adorning his head is the source of constant arguments as it so often twists askew. The adults blame him for looking like a loafer, not a middle school student, and he defends himself for just having different fashion taste. As a concession to his aunties and grandparents, he has been keeping his hats straight during my visit.

He refuses to drink the plain boiled water his parents and grandparents exist on. Instead he buys bottles of sweetened ice red tea. If he can't get hold of his favorite drink for more than a day, he becomes visibly agitated. So his mother, a retired government worker, allows him that luxury. And this again causes arguments between family members who love him and have high hopes for him. I keep my mouth shut when they argue.

His mother, my older sister, who never got a college education because of the Cultural Revolution, wants nothing but good grades from him. Doggy, on the other hand, cares mostly about Street Dance. Every afternoon he assiduously practices on the living room floor, too small a space for his 1.83m frame. His mother often complains about his indulgence in hip-hop culture. "Only boys with bad grades like Street Dance," she said. And Doggy rebuts, "You don't understand!"

He constantly worries about growing taller. The taller one gets, the harder to dance well, he said. He sometimes gets leg cramps, and his mother thought he was growing so fast he needed more calcium. I was requested to bring American calcium for him. But Doggy's first question for me was, "Will calcium make me taller?"

It's puzzling to me that he's so tall. Chongqing men are known to be short on average. Perhaps it's because his generation gets better nutrition, perhaps not. One theory my sister has is that he liked to eat chicken, and chicken might have been fed with hormones. But Doggy said four boys in his class are even taller. They might have all eaten hormone-fed chicken then.

He has taken dancing class from Chongqing New Dance Society. There may be over a hundred such hip-hop dance societies in Chongqing, he told me. When I asked whether the government interferes with such organizations, Doggy said, "Of course not! Why should they?" I told him when I was 15 no one was allowed to launch a private organization, not even a math-study group. He looked confused and did not know what I was talking about.

Here are a few photos I took when Doggy was practicing:

In addition to dancing he likes comic books and graphic novels, as long as they are not from Japan. I can’t figure out where the distaste for Japanese things comes from, but made in America is great. He also dabbles in writing and drawing. Here is a sketch of Jackie Chan he did for Bob.

The Silk Road to Recovery

by Larry Mongoss, guest blogger

It was interesting to see Xujun’s post on consumer activity in China. Her observations suggest some interesting developments may be coming in the years ahead. Curious about this, I contacted a couple of my friends in Shanghai to get their take on consumer activity. Their personal observations were consistent with hers, but they were prudently reluctant to draw any conclusions from that, especially given the Spring Festival splurging going on. When it comes to officially reported numbers, all were viewed with skepticism.

With all those disclaimers, it is still seems that the Chinese consumer is far more confident than his or her American counterpart. Could this mean that China will help rescue the US?

China and America have had an odd relationship over the past 20 years. Things get produced in China and sent to America. Then, instead of sending back other things of equal value, America sends an IOU. Lots of people, including me, have worried endlessly about what will happen when those IOUs come due. But we have been missing the point.

Now that America doesn’t want so much of the stuff it was not paying for, the Chinese will have to turn elsewhere, most notably to themselves. It sounds like the government, by simple admonishment, can cause a jump in consumer spending. The effect of that may dwarf their 500 billion dollar stimulus package announced last year. A pretty cool technique if it works, especially if it is possible to turn consumer spending back down as well.

Telling Americans to spend more, on the other hand, is not at all likely to work. Many would need to borrow money to make that happen, and right now those that can borrow don’t want to and those that want to can’t – or so it seems. Most Chinese, in contrast, only spend money that they have saved, and many have built up modest accounts over the past decade. Thus, narrowly from the perspective of consumer sentiment and ability to spend, China is much better positioned to grow consumption, and there are signs they are doing just that.

Put simply, the Chinese are taking care of themselves. Domestic consumption appears to be compensating for the fall off in exports, not magnifying it as is happening in Japan. And that consumption, though with a different focus than the export production, is related. All of this is good for China, at least in the short run, but what about America?

Since the 1980s, China has seen amazing economic advancement, in large part from catching up to western manufacturing techniques. Some people have belittled this as just being the activity of copycats, but that was exactly smartest thing to do. It is much faster to copy what is being done than to reinvent it. Giving stuff away, and manufacturing to the needs of the developed world, has allowed China unprecedented growth in both activity, and sophistication.

That sophistication is good news for America, because it also carries over to consumers. Chinese consumers love things that are made in America, and growing consumerism in China is a golden opportunity. In the past, the Chinese government has discouraged consumption to keep the export driven economy from overheating. Now, it will need to discourage exports, to keep the consumer driven economy from overheating.

An exaggeration most likely, but we have a very real possibility to see more exports from America to China. We may, in fact, see the huge American trade deficit turn into a trade surplus. America will be producing things, and giving them to the Chinese along with the money to pay for them. Only this time through, it will be because the money is being paid back by America instead of lent by China.

Unlike the past situation, which was clearly not sustainable, the present situation is. If America can become proficient at producing more than it consumes, it will pay back its foreign debts. Once those debts are paid back, America can turn back to itself, and use that excess production to take care of its retired people. China becomes the training ground for dealing with the social security crises people keep talking about.

For China the path is somewhat more convoluted. They are facing an even stronger demographic adjustment than America. In addition to doing something for the rural population, the Chinese need to temper their domestic consumption with the knowledge that people will be retiring without replacement in the near future. Developing the equivalent of a social security system is critical to keeping China functioning smoothly. Luckily for them, there is no shortage of poor people to practice on.

Hainan, China: Market Crunch

Surprise! Blogger.com is not blocked here in Hainan, though my blog is. This is illogical to me. I'm not sure what I have done to deserve such an honor. This also means that I can log in and post, but can't view my blog normally – quite ironic really.

Let me come to the main point quickly. I returned to China with the lingering question of how people fare in the financial crisis. (Apparently I'm not the only one who is concerned. An American writer friend wrote me to say she "would be fascinating to hear how China is weathering this amazing economic descent into wherever we're going. How is it affecting the people there? I'd love to hear." PekingDuck also had a post on this subject titled "China is the place to be," which attracted quite a few comments.

I've been throwing questions around since my arrival Friday (AA delayed my trip by one day, hardly a surprise). And this is the impression I got:

For urban people, the financial crisis is largely a Western issue. Life and business in Chinese cities are humming along as usual. If anything, the purchasing activity has only increased in the run up to the Spring Festival. A relative who works in the financial sector for a private company tells me that, since last fall, the government has changed its position from discouraging general consumption (in order to slow down the overheated economy) to encouraging domestic consumption (as the world braces for recession). Now, "to consume is to be patriotic," and people seem to be more than happy to follow this calling.

I was in Shanghai Thursday night and saw on CCTV that some cities were subsidizing grocery prices to help stimulate holiday shopping. My experience in Hainan, hardly a rich place, seems to question the necessity of such a policy.

Here are a few photos I took Saturday in a huge supermarket named Da Ruenfa owned by a Hong Kong company, where I went grocery shopping with my sisters and their husbands. I haven't been in such an overwhelmingly crowded store for decades.

Supermarket: an entrance ("New Year Goods Avenue")

The supermarket is one of the biggest I've ever seen, yet there wasn't even enough space for a single shopping cart to turn around. I was told it had been like this crowded for over a month. At the pork counter, people fought like looters ("as if the meat were free," my sister Maple complained). However the fact is that nearly all prices have increased because of the high demand. It was near the meat counter that a staff member came to stop me from taking photos. "We are a business, not a journalism unit. No photos," he insisted. Afterward my brothers-in-law said he probably thought we were from a competitor.

Supermarket: meat counter

After my sisters finally snatched their pork (to make dumplings for New Year eve), they went to the next counter to have it ground, a free service provided by the supermarket. However the staff working there simply ignored all such requests. Instead they were busy selling pre-packaged ground pork for 13 Yuan a pound, a 75% increase from the 8 yuan/pound of our pork. My sisters had a brief conference between themselves on whether to go for the expensive price and abandon their hard-earned unground pork, but they had little option.

There were about 40 check-out lines, each looked like it would take an hour or longer to reach the cashier. We diverted to look for the shortest line, another bit of hard work. Eventually Maple's husband found one at the farthest corner of the supermarket and called by cell phone for us to converge. "Line 15!" he ordered. It took a sweaty battle to push the packed shopping cart through layers and layers of human walls.

Supermarket: an exit

Presumably, it is premature to make a general conclusion from this thrilling shopping scene. For one thing, the biggest holiday season of the year may have colored things. At the dinner table with my family members, who came from different cold-weathered cities to gather in this warm island, Maple's home, for the Chinese New Year, I asked about housing markets and the situation of migrant workers. The consensus was that the export business (in which one of the men works) has been hit hardest (surprise!), especially the light manufacturers such as textile factories in Canton and other coastal cities. Those producers had been the biggest employers of migrant workers. The estimated contribution from the export business to China's GDP is about 20%. There had been about 200 million migrant workers across the country, and among those about 20-30% lost their jobs due to the financial crisis. That 40-60 million people was a big number to cause a stir, and the government worried intensely about the holiday season's "harmony and stability."

That was when I asked if they had heard Charter 08. The answer was uniformly "No," though they knew the name of one of the signatories Liu Xiaobo. My brief description of Charter 08 did not generate much interest. "Useless," one of the men said, in an immediate reaction. Then he thought about it a bit more and said tolerantly that such things were not that bad to have. "The democracy activists and foreign media complaints about our government help to improve policies sometimes. Just one of those natural noises that should be allowed to exist. But if they attack too much they will get attacked back by Chinese people." His assessment was that right now the government enjoys the highest trust ever in history, and others agreed with him.

Their guess on why the government has blocked the spread of information on Charter 08 was it 's timing, with the clouds of financial crisis hanging above the migrant workers and the Spring Festival approaching. At a time like this the government is most nervous about potential chaos and tends to overreact.

My relatives mentioned that local governments such as those in Sichuan, one of the provinces that supplies a large number of migrant workers from its countryside, were ordered to arrange local jobs for the newly unemployed who returned home from coastal cities. There is no concept of unemployment insurance for those people, but apparently actively putting them to work is part of the mandate. Many did get new jobs, I heard, though no one could say to what extent the problem had been resolved. I may find out more about this when I go back to Sichuan after the Spring Festival.

About the housing markets: I heard Canton was again hit the hardest, with an estimated 40% plunge in real estate prices. People say this was mainly the result of bankrupt factories selling no-longer-wanted properties cheaply. Chengdu's real-estate market, where my younger sister bought a yet-to-build house last year, went down 10-20% in the last several months, but it has stabilized since the government began to encourage domestic consumption. Chongqing's housing market has actually been going up, because its prices were low to start with. These two cities are among my planned next visits.

The Chinese stock market has crashed badly, but none of my family members were affected because they are not players. Lucky for them.

Terracotta Typewriter

One more thing before I go --

Matthew Lubin, a writer and editor living in China, is starting a new literary magazine, Terracotta Typewriter. The magazine welcomes submissions from Western expats in China and Chinese expats in other parts of the world, or anyone who has something to say about China. You can write about any subject, as long as there is a connection to China. I think this is a great idea. Please take a look and send your creative work to Terracotta Typewriter!

See you in February.

The Sky Is Not All Grey

Postcards from Tomorrow Square: Reports from China
by James Fallows

A review by Xujun Eberlein

1.
A proprietary approach I use to help assess English journalism books about China is to measure how much they tell me, a Chinese, what I don't already know. This, needless to say, lacks objectivity, and it can easily undervalue an otherwise excellent book. As an example, Out of Mao's Shadow by Philip Pan consists essentially of stories I had already read from the Chinese media or the internet. Not new to me, but that doesn’t mean the book is not worth reading for Western readers (in fact, it is).

On the other hand, this approach raises a high bar for journalists writing about China. To find stories not broadly known even to the Chinese requires not only extraordinarily acute ears, but also the admirably open mind of a deep thinker. Thus, I can narrow down my reading list to a few outstanding books. James Fallows' new book, Postcards from Tomorrow Square: Reports from China, is one of them. Many things he writes about are new to me, but that's the least of the delightful surprises. Continue reading on The China Beat >>

The Mosuo Walking Marriage on Lugu Lake (2)

by Maple Xu

(Maple's travel log continues from The Mosuo Walking Marriage on Lugu Lake (1)...)

On the long distance bus to Lugu Lake, two men sitting behind me had been chatting about "walking marriage." One man asked, "Mosuo men can 'walking-marry' freely, but they don't get to live with their children, wouldn't they be too lonely in old age? Who take care of them when they get old?" The other replied: "The abundant romance of youth, is worth the loneliness of old age. Everything has a price after all."

The two men did not know all the facts. Though Mosuo men live with their mother, and are not responsible for rearing their own children, they have the duty to help bring up the children of their sisters. In a Mosuo family, uncles are the decision makers on external affairs. They have an adage, "The biggest flying thing in the sky is eagle, the biggest walking thing on the earth is uncle." When they get old, their nieces and nephews attend upon them until their death.

Lugu Lake

A friend once told me, his Mosuo friends couldn't understand why the Han people have terms like "lonely old widows" and "five-guaranteed households" (五保户"). They don't understand why Han families are full of domestic fights, even violence and family wars. Those are things they just can't imagine. The Mosuo people living along the Lugu Lake are proud of the auspicious and peaceful ambience in their family life; in this respect they think they are superior to any other race.

*

One morning I was photographing a sunrise at the lakeside, and ran into a bunch of tourists waiting for a bus to return to Lijiang. A fifty-ish northern woman was talking volubly. She said, "Yesterday I asked the young man rowing the boat, 'You sing and laugh all day, do you ever have an unhappy moment?' But he asked me back, 'What is "unhappy"?' I wasn't convinced and again asked a girl who was washing her hands in the lake, 'Are there times that you feel unhappy?' She replied, 'Unhappy? Why unhappy?'"

At this point the northern woman got very excited and raised her voice, "Look! They don't even know what unhappy means! They are always happy!" Her companion replied that nobody can always be happy. The woman argued, "They don't suffer extramarital affairs or property disputes like in our Han families, why shouldn't they be always happy?"

Her friend teased, "Sounds like heaven, then why don't you stay here?" The woman said seriously, "I really wish I were a Mosuo woman!"

That was the moment I understood why my friend has lived here contentedly for ten years.

*

Last night at my friend's teahouse, we warmed ourselves by a fire and chatted. The landlord came by, and I tagged him. "I have many questions for you," I said. He sat down by me and said good-naturedly, "I'm happy to answer any question."

My friend's tea house on Lugu Lake

- First question: How come you and your wife live together?

- That's because we have three brothers but no sister, and our mother died early. A family must have a woman as the household head; I'm the oldest brother, so my wife has to live here and take the responsibility of managing the family. Actually, "walking marriage" isn't the only form of marriage. There is another form: man and woman live together with either one's family. The principle is that the relationship is based on love, to marry by will, to leave freely. If the relationship is terminated, then each side returns to his or her mother's family. Unlike me, my two brothers are in walking marriages, and my youngest brother is the village head.

- How did you decide on your wife?

- Our love is no different from you Han people. When I was young I dated three or four girls. Only after I had children with my wife did the relationship become stable.

- How do you end a relationship?

- When the woman stops opening her door, or the man no longer comes in the night, the old relationship is ended and both sides are free to start a new one. It's all natural.

- How does a woman's family view her man in a walking marriage?

- The man comes to the woman after dusk, and leaves before dawn. At first he would avoid running into her family members. In the morning if you see sheepish men passing by, chances are they are returning home after a night of the walking marriage. The lovers will stay shy, even pretending not know each other on the street, before they have children and their relationship goes public. If you observe closely you will see that, in the night, no matter who knocks on a door, no one inside will open it for you, unless you shout out that you are an outside visitor, then an elder or a child will come.

- Since a man does not have the legal obligation to raise his children, wouldn't that give men too much freedom and women too much work?

- Mosuo women are the happiest members in their family. The female house head has all the power, including control of property and money. Her siblings take care of the children together with her. Even in sexual relationships women take initiative. On the surface, men have all the freedom, but once he is rejected by his girlfriend, there's nothing left for him except a "spring dream." There is a Musuo adage, "Men's heaven, women's world."

- Could a man be walking-marrying to three women simultaneously?

- (Laugh) Where does his time or energy come from? When I was dating my wife, we had a 20-kilometer distance between us. It was only because we were young and energetic that we lasted. Although there is no rule on how many walking marriages one can have, you must terminate one relationship before starting another. Custom and tradition do not allow two relationships simultaneously; an unfaithful man is going to be despised. This is no different from you Han people.

- Would you enter another walking marriage?

- Certainly not. What age does what things. Most Mosuo people settle down after they have children. Furthermore, I'm very satisfied with my present life. My wife is good in every respect!

What he said made my thoughts fly to the Mosuo life style. All relationships are based on love. A big matriarchal family with tens of members is filled with joy and peace. Children are loved by multiple mothers. Elders calmly enjoy their final years with a loving family. In another thousand years, will we Han evolve to such an ideal state? But the vanguard Mosuo people already began the heavenly life 1500 years ago. #

(All photos by Maple Xu, ©Copyright 2008, Maple Xu)

China: Revolution or Reform? - A Summary of the "Charter 08" Dispute

New America Media, News Analysis, Xujun Eberlein, Published: Jan 07, 2009

(Note: the following text is my original draft, slightly longer than the NAM published version, with more complete links. Posted with NAM's permission. - Xujun)

During the final month of 2008, there was a heated debate among Chinese bloggers and commentators outside of China. The cause of it was "Charter 08," a democracy manifesto originally signed by over 300 Chinese citizens and published on the internet on December 10.

Times Online said Sunday that since then it "has been signed by more than 7,000 prominent citizens," but the number is difficult to verify. Two versions of the English translation for this manifesto can be found online, one at nybooks.com (by professor Perry Link), and one at Human Rights in China. While the former is widely linked and reprinted, the latter is a more accurate translation of the Chinese original. A detailed recounting of the birth of the Charter can be found on Fool’s Mountain.

By now the hubbub around "Charter 08" has largely died down, however the issues raised in the dispute continue to beckon for attention. There are unanswered questions as to why the Chinese government and the US media reacted the way they did, and whether the Charter has achieved its intended effect. As such it might be a good time to look back at the reactions the event has provoked, and make a few observations.

The official reaction from the Chinese government was both harsh and overdone. Liu Xiaobo, a primary drafter and signatory of "Charter 08," was arrested in Beijing two days before its publication. No explanation was given by the government. Twenty three days later, Liu was allowed to see his wife for New Year’s Day, but police still did not say why he was detained. Many other signatories were summoned and threatened, according to a post on Fool’s Mountain.

Any discussion of "Charter 08" likely has been banned in China; a Google search using the Chinese keywords turned up no mainland links on the subject.

A well-known dissident writer and journalist in Beijing, Dai Qing, also one of the signatories, said in an interview with Voice of Germany that "the [Chinese] government's reaction is too irrational, a total surprise to us."

On December 11, The US State Department's spokesman Sean McCormack said in a statement that "We are particularly concerned about the well being of Liu Xiaobo, a prominent dissident writer, who remains in the custody of authorities."

According to Time Magazine, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao told journalists on Dec. 16 that the U.S. position was another example of the unwelcome "interference of other nations in China's internal affairs."

Curiously, major US media outlets, CNN including, have been unusually quiet, despite the fact that the Charter is hailed as a major breakthrough by its supporters. Time Magazine and the Christian Science Monitor were pretty much alone in reporting on the Charter, with the latter commenting in a somewhat upbeat tone that "the Communist Party's hesitancy to crack down harshly on the scholars, lawyers, engineers, and others who issued the so-called 'Charter 08' document sends a subtle signal of hope."

More curious, and changing, reactions, came from Falun Gong, or FLG, a religious and political group that has been banned in mainland China. A search on FLG's Chinese language website Sunday came up with 100 links cheering "Charter 08," with titles such as "Reform Is Dead, Long Live Revolution!" However a click on any of those links gave only a blank page. Remnants of posts here and there indicate that FLG originally found "Charter 08" an exciting sign of the coming revolution and supported it whole-heartedly. Later, though, they made a 180 degree turn after the FLG leader deemed the manifesto not revolutionary enough, but rather a "ghost shadow" of the communist party.

Understandably however, revolution is favored by few Chinese, whether supporters or contenders of Charter 08. In contrast, many pointed out the legitimacy of Charter 08 in accordance with China's constitution.

Among the well-known signatories, Dai Qing calls the Charter a mild appeal. "If the government can't even accept such a mild appeal, I think the government is too frail," she says in the aforementioned interview. A scholar of Western philosophy, Xu Youyu says the Charter is totally constitutional, and his signing was a citizen's "rational and responsible decision." Bao Tong, a high-ranking official imprisoned after the June 4th movement in 1989 and still under house-arrest, angrily inquired of the government "What crime has Charter 08 committed?"

On nearly every website I visited that discusses Charter 08, in English or Chinese, there are not only voices advocating and opposing, but also supporters raising constructive criticism and contenders issuing moral support (plus the usual white noises and meaningless vituperates). The issues that are at the center of argument include – by no means an exhaustive list – whether the ideas are too "Western," or the proposed democracy model suits China; whether the proposal for a "Federal Republic of China" makes sense, or it has gone too far; whether the wording in the Foreword is needlessly inflammatory; whether Taiwan's democracy is a good model for the mainland; whether the aim of the Charter is to agitate the government or have a practical impact.

There are also a few one-of-a-kind remarks worth noting:

-- A blogger on dwnews.com is unhappy that the signatories include a well-known advocate for Tibet independence. He says he is against the Charter because it supports the Dalai Lama's "republic of greater Tibet". (On a related note, On December 12, the Daila Lama issued a statement saying “I am greatly encouraged by the launching of Charter 08.")

- Taiwan News published an editorial on Dec. 25 to praise Charter 08 but also criticize it as "unable to transcend 'great Chinese nationalism' as its implied commitment to eventual unification seems to share the CCP`s rejection of the free right of choice of Taiwan`s 23 million people, not to mention the people of Tibet or even Hong Kong and Macau."

- A religious blogger claims that she does not support the Charter because it doesn't address how to reform the Chinese people's faith.

As a Chinese adage goes, "What bewilders the players, spectators see clearly." A European expat blog in China, Chinayouren blog, which was the first to note the inconsistency between the Chinese original of Charter 08 and Prof. Link's translation of it, published a post on December 26 titled "Charter 08 and political change in China." It assesses positively the Charter's significance and provides several constructive criticisms. The author points that, "A document of this kind should try to seek the maximum consensus in mainland China. This is, in my understanding, the main weakness of the Charter 08."

The post ends with:"… Most importantly, from a theoretical point of view, figures like Mao or KMT should have no place in a Charter that wants to unite the Chinese. The recent History of China is an amazing tale of cruel failures and unequaled successes. Events that need to be openly discussed at some point, certainly, and compensation given to the victims. But direct accusations are altogether at a different level and unworthy of sharing the same document with the generous ideals stated in the Charter. These things do not only weaken the Charter 08 from a practical point of view, but also reduce its soundness as a Universal Statement."

If nothing else, "Charter 08" has stimulated a great discussion on China's future direction. #

Chinese Humor Posters

A friend sent me the following photos. If you can read Chinese, you're guaranteed to get a few chuckles out of them. The English translation on some of the posters is incorrect, so I provided my own. I'm afraid though, the humor may have been lost in translation.

"Everyone pretends to be proper; I'll have to pretend to be improper"

"Dare to love, dare to elope"


"Carrying talent is like being pregnant, only time can tell"

"Oh love is like a ghost - more people believe in it than encounter it."

Today!: China's Premiere Underground Magazine Turns 30

(image from http://book.ifeng.com)

The January 2009 issue of Hong Kong's Mingpao Monthly published an article titled "For Today's Yesterday and Tomorrow" by poet Liao Weitang. It reports on the celebration activities for the 30^th anniversary of Today magazine in Hong Kong during December 11-13. The celebration was initiated by Bei Dao (北岛), and many Chinese poets participated, including my old friends Zhai Yongming (翟永明), Ouyang Jianghe (欧阳江河), Meng Lang (孟浪), and a new friend Xi Chuan (西川, whom I met in Beijing in summer 2007).

American readers probably know nothing about Today, the once extremely influential "underground" literary magazine in China. Nobel nominee Bei Dao was one of the founding editors of the magazine, and his poetry first became known to us through Today. When I was a university student in China, in the early 1980s Bei Dao's sorrowful lines such as "Privilege is the passport of the privileged / low is the epitaph of the lowly" were recited on every campus I visited. Whoever got hold an issue of the mimeographed Today magazine, it was quickly grabbed by another student. The magazine passed from hand to hand until it literally melted to pieces. Oh, what an unforgettable time it was! I can't think of it without being sentimental. We gathered in undersized dormitory rooms in this and that university, in small groups, arguing about China's future and read aloud poems from Today. As the first batch of students admitted to universities after the Cultural Revolution (the so called "year 77," though our first class began in spring 1978), we felt responsible for changing China. Each issue of Today induced more passion in us, even after the magazine was banned (around the time the "Democracy Wall" in Beijing was demolished in late 1980, I think).

I know of no other literary magazines, official or otherwise, that had the influence on young people Today did in the early 1980s. (Around that time there were many others, underground magazines thrived like bamboo shoots after a spring rain.) Later Today resumed its publication overseas, however it has lost its clout. On the other hand, it is the only unofficial magazine from the post-CR time that still exists today.

Bei Dao says in commemorating Today magazine's 30^th anniversary that (in translation):

I want to emphasize that, a nation needs a spiritual sky, especially at a time of materialism. Without imagination and passion, no matter how wealthy a nation is, it is still poor; no matter how powerful a nation is, it is still weak. In this sense, Today returns to its starting point: it revolts not only against autocracy, but also against abuse of language, mediocrity in aesthetics, and wretchedness in life.

Sadly, the impact of poetry seems to be getting weaker and weaker as society grows its material wealth. Perhaps poetry's revitalization requires mankind's purposeful effort to restrain both material wealth and the development of luxury technologies.