Tag: Language and Culture

What do you think of western civilization?

The question to Gandhi is now being asked again, this time by educated, sophisticated Chinese of each other.

This was the topic of a four-hour phone call a few nights ago between Chinese PhDs, both with extensive American experience and important midlevel career positions. 

In a word, their conclusion was the same as Gandhi’s – it would be a good idea. 

Their argument below is depressing, as if you need any more of that. I am paraphrasing in spots and retelling in what follows.  My own Chinese language skills couldn’t have kept up. 

For my colleagues and for many educated Chinese, the US and the west have been the model of civilization – educated, smart, democratic, highest technology and culture, in a word, modern. Human rights were honored, even if not always observed in the breach. This, coming from Chinese who know that historically, Zhongguo was always considered the center of the universe. 

A little background

That the west was the center of modernity was an idea nurtured over a long span of time, probably going back to the era of treaty ports in the mid-nineteenth century.  Out of the humiliation of the 19th century came the May 4th movement, which sought to replace millennia of deference to authority and superstition with “Dr. Science and Mr. Democracy.” 

Ancient Chinese culture was … well, ancient and feudal.  Chen Duxiu, founder of the Chinese Communist Party, saw modernism and personal independence as the conditions necessary for growth.  This was in 1916.

The US remained the modernist pole star for the next hundred years.  The term for the United States, meiguo, means beautiful country. But by 2010, many Chinese believed in the American dream and an American miracle more than did many educated, sophisticated Americans.  Chinese were not ignorant of American deficiencies – racism, poor schools and health care for poor people, a developing oligarchy, gun nuts and chaotic politics – but democratic values seemed able to pull victory from the claws of every looming defeat, and all that was necessary was a little money to get world class schools, education, health care, and a peaceful life. John Dewey had been a popular figure in China, and above all, America was seen as pragmatic.

That was then, this is now

That was the image, and it is no more, my colleagues said in the wechat call.  America has been the standard, but they also considered western Europe, and found it wanting as well. America – and the west – seem in thrall to an ideology, not one my interlocutors could identify, but it was definitely not pragmatic.

This democracy thing – perhaps more precisely, individualism – has met its match.  The covid-19 virus is only the latest and most clearly defining symptom.  Democracies, they said, seem unable to do basic things that improve the lives of most people.  A hundred thousand dead is an acceptable level of loss?  Policies that pit states against one another to obtain PPE? The interlocutors on the phone call couldn’t get to evolving deficiencies in laws, regulations and institutions that were the subject of Why Nations Fail (Acemoglu and Robinson).  Nor had they read How Democracies Die (Levitsky and Ziblatt).  The sense was the American promise was now – well, if not a lie, at least more marketing than substance.

I have many Chinese government friends and associates, some of whom have made moves to purchase real estate in the US for retirement or for their kids to go to school here, or just in case.  Those days seem over, and not only because of the egomania of the leaders Xi and Trump.  The America that was promised is now an uncertain risk.  Who knows what part might fail next?  Metaphorically, the American car used to be new and shiny and had the latest gadgets.  It was safe, everything worked, and the warranty was sound. Now the American car is a used car, and if you look under the hood, it gets pretty scary.  The warranty is barely worth the Constitution it is printed on. 

This jaded view of the US and the west is not new.  Chinese university students in America have been coming home to China for a decade, unimpressed by the lure of freedom of speech and democracy that comes at the cost of guns and mayhem and ridiculous health care expense.  Now world news and opinion is flush with incredulity and alarm about the US. 

There is little sense of individual responsibility and little concern for the other, said my colleagues.  Freedom to die is apparently the mantra for those now rushing to bars without masks or distancing.  Chinese would say, good luck to them.  And, they say, the Cortland County New York wallet card should be made mandatory in Wisconsin, Georgia, Florida – anywhere the stupid people congregate. 

The comparisons with China are easy and superficial, and my colleagues were speaking only in personal, offhand remarks. Their feelings about the Chinese government in January and February were very negative. Now, looking at the rest of the world, they have a different idea. China bungled badly in the first six weeks or so of the virus time, but with testing and lockdown, distancing and quarantine and tracing, it basically beat the virus in two months.

There was no expressway driving allowed.  If people were infected, they were isolated away from their families.  Temperatures were taken going in and out of residential complexes.  People’s level of cooperation was very high.  It didn’t matter if you were young or old, rich or poor, lives were treated as more important than the economy.  Now that cases have shown up again in Wuhan, the plan is to test all 11,000,000 residents in the next couple of weeks.  We can discount real implementation of that plan as fanciful, but nevertheless, the government will test and isolate and trace, and that will work.  Individuals bear no cost for treatment of Covid-19, from testing to ventilator. There is no point in staying away from the hospital if you are sick because you can’t afford it.  All things considered, including that the virus started there, they said, China had about the best possible response.

One can quibble.  This was their considered evaluation. 

In the US – well, you know the news stories.  The rate of new daily cases has still not fallen in two months, to May 23. And that was with two-months notice before shutdowns began. On the phone call, my Chinese friends were appalled at the ignorance and sheer stupidity.  The Michigan legislature shut down rather than confront gun wielding freedom-to-die fighters who deny medical expertise. If I don’t wear a mask, and I infect you, so what?  Leaders tell old people to die for the sake of the economy, and everyone should drink bleach. Neither Dr. Science nor Mr. Democracy are in evidence. Who are these people?  Left unsaid, I think, was the question of whether these can be real humans at all, but there certainly was a sense of the inmates running the asylum. Over the next few months, will we really accept 2000 deaths a week as the cost of doing business?  Is this what human rights comes to?

My colleagues used Marx for reference.  The first stage of capitalism was certainly ugly.  Marx said that every pore on the skin of the workingman was filled with blood or dirt.  But wealth bought respectability and human rights talk, and this worked pretty well until the real control and desires of the capitalist class were exposed in 2020. The political leaders and a lot of citizens are in thrall to the economic oligarchs. 

A story about a woman named Peggy Popham from North Carolina summarizes the views of my colleagues that a good portion of Americans are just … well, nuts – The coronavirus pandemic created the perfect environment for apocalyptic Christianity to fuse with antigovernment libertarianism, New Age rejection of mainstream science and medicine, and internet-fueled gullibility toward baroque conspiracy theories about secret cabals ruling the world through viruses.  About twenty percent of Americans have said they would not take a vaccine when available.

The rejection of science and rationality, they said, means the US can no longer be considered modern. Other Chinese agree. In a recent article, Wu Haiyun, editor at Sixth Tone, echoed the feelings expressed on the phone call, but she was referring to Chinese now in their late thirties and early forties – Trust in Science Saved China. Practicing It Will Keep It Safe. 

This Chinese view is not itself isolated

Edward Luce at Financial Times writes about the world’s view of America now, and it is not pretty –  William Burns, most senior US diplomat and now head of the Carnegie Endowment – America is first in the world in deaths, first in the world in infections and we stand out as an emblem of global incompetence. The damage to America’s influence and reputation will be very hard to undo.

The Guardian suggests that the world looks on in horror at the US response.

And Fintan O’Toole writes in the Irish Times – Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.

Another colleague of mine whose tax clients are mostly foreign nationals remarked that part of what he had done for forty years was enable people to live, work, or make a living in the US.  Now, he says, he is dealing with the converse – people wanting to move assets or themselves out.

What is to be done?

Now, if you have choices about where to live in the world, where to go? If you have kids, what is a safe and humane place with expectations of solid education in which to bring them up?  Where will a kid be more easily cultivated as a right-valued person?  The virus seems the last straw.

For my colleagues, this democracy thing has come to mean not that citizens are empowered to obtain information and make educated choices, but that “my ignorance is just as good as your expertise” and more to the point, “every man for himself.”  No democratic founder in Athens, the Colonies, or political philosophy in any era would support that view.

This is what the American image has come to.  Evaporation of American soft power cannot be far behind. The vaunted American Dream has become a version of Is that all there is? Robert Frost considered whether the world would end in fire or in ice.  Neither, it turns out.  The world as we know it ends in willful ignorance and stupidity.  The scientist, the doctor, the researcher, the humane and rational end up looking like navigators on Plato’s Ship of Fools. “Fake news,” is what my Chinese colleagues said about this alarming American discrediting of science – but they meant that people could not distinguish science from lunacy.  Good luck to those Americans, is what they said at the end. 

Has Trump has been doing God’s work?

For years, some evangelical leaders have been touting Trump as the wolf-king, anointed by God to enact the Christian right agenda.  Symbols are important in this swamp-fevered world, and Trump’s immorality is actually a positive sign of his worthiness.  Go figure.

Four years ago, Peter Montgomery noted 25 Religious Right Justifications for Supporting Donald Trump.  Christian right leaders spoke endlessly of Trump as a chosen vessel for God’s will, saying things like “God has picked him up” and that Trump is “literally splitting the kingdom of darkness right open” and that “the Lord has put His favor upon him.”

Now I wonder if the coronavirus is a symbol from God as well, a sign of displeasure.  Is God finished with Trump?  Is Trump past his heavenly use-by date?

I ask because there is a long tradition of natural disasters as portents in every culture.  They can be God’s recognition that a ruler is no longer serving the people, and it is time for a change.

American evangelicals tend to see the portents as warnings to society, rather than as warnings to leaders.  Pat Robertson told us that the  Hurricane Katrina disaster was a sign that God is displeased about American policy on abortion. Hurricane Sandy was understood in a similar way.  Jerry Falwell, himself an American natural disaster, pointed the 9-11 finger of judgment at the ACLU, among other miscreants.  Per this poll,  the coronavirus is a portent as well, but only of a general need for Americans to turn back to God.

For me, personally, I don’t like these portents.  Too vague.  The end of days is always nigh, and always attributable to gays, abortion, music, or anyone looking to actually implement teachings from the Sermon on the Mount or pay attention to the Golden Rule.  I want real, actionable portents.

The ancient Chinese Mandate of Heaven seems to work for me.  For more than 3500 years, Chinese have been using alignment of stars and planets and natural disasters of all kinds – floods, tsunami, droughts, even barbarian invasions – as a sign that the ruler may have lost his Mandate of Heaven – the right to rule.   The mandate signals heavenly disapproval of a ruler.

Heaven hears as the people hear, sees as the people see (Mencius 18.8 or Wan Zhang 1.5)

That is the Confucian warning to rulers who fail to protect and serve the people. Chinese emperors, even down to current CCP leaders, have acknowledged the threat.  Terrible Beijing floods in 2012 caused a flood of existential worry at Zhongnanhai, the top leadership encampment in Beijing.  That was the year of transition to Xi Jinping and the rebirth of hard authoritarianism in China.  The disastrous floods in 1626 and 1890 were later seen as dynastic warnings of the end of dynasty. 

The political fear in any authoritarian government is that “performance legitimacy,” the only rationale for its political existence, will be compromised.  This is as true in the US as in China. Mr. Xi has his own ways of avoiding judgment.  For us in the US, Sam Crane at Useless Tree blog notes that democracy in normal times provides a cushion for both rulers and the ruled, by permitting some officials to be replaced without jeopardizing the entire political party.  A few officials or rulers can be changed without threat to the supreme leader.

But these are not normal times, and we have two viruses – one a medical emergency, the other a social, cultural, and democratic emergency.  We are in need of an internal flush, almost a cleaning, as our dear leader promoted the drinking of disinfectant to flush the other virus.   Trump alone is not enough.  We need to flush his enablers as well.

I have written before about similarities among Trump and Xi, CCP and GOP.  The Trump-led GOP is the most despicable and authoritarian regime ever to disgrace American politics.  The portent I am banking on is the covid-19 crisis as retribution from heaven for the banality of evil attributed to the the liar-in-chief and his despicable lackeys.

Franklin Graham, the Billy Graham successor, says the virus is due to mankind turning its back on God.  One wonders whether he has both the direction of causality and the target wrong.  For Trump and GOP, sic semper tyrannis comes to mind.  Perhaps God has heard as the people hear, seen as the people see. 

China seems stuck with Mr. Xi for the duration.  For us, we can only hope that the retribution from heaven is reflected widely in the people’s choices on November 6.  Then, we can get to work on making America great again.

The humane leader – some Confucian thoughts on becoming human

With all the electrons displaced in analysis of our dear leader and his minions, I’ve seen nothing that presents a Confucian view. Confucianism, partly a guide to humane leadership, should have some advice for us right now.

Out of modesty and concern for the other, no learned Confucian would seek to point out how unfit, unwise, unprepared, and dangerous is our dear leader.  I am certainly no Confucian scholar, so I can proceed.  Confucianism, it seems to me, is a tool with which to expose some of our cultural stultification.  Briefly, let’s see what we can learn – advice for leaders, advice on choosing leaders, and advice for all of us, all the time.  The hyperlinks contain pertinent text.

Responsibilities of leaders

The Confucian concept of ren, which we usually translate as benevolence or humaneness, is characteristic of the ideal leader.  A leader must be concerned with the general welfare of his people, and unconcerned with money, status, or power. A ruler who is more concerned with his own welfare than that of the people may be replaced, as Mencius told us.

The legendary Chinese emperor Shun is extolled because of his magnificence – his benevolence was so great, trust in him was so great, that all he had to do was sit facing south, and his ministers would cause the empire to run effectively and efficiently and peacefully.  The great man inspires those around him to be great. 

The way for a leader to become great – indeed, the way for any person – is to practice self-discipline, engage in study and learning for self-cultivation, and enlarge other people.  Those concerned with bodily comfort and wealth are not great, the xiaoren, the little people, or, better, petty persons – small not in stature or number, but small in righteousness.

Responsibilities of all of us

In the Great Learning (one of the four Confucian classics) we learn that all people should work to gradually expand the sphere of self-cultivation, from early study and learning from parents, to having an orderly family, then participating in the governance of the state, and finally, bringing peace and enlightenment to the world.  This remains a goal for all of us, even if bringing peace and enlightenment to the world is a bit above our personal pay grade.

Confucius’ ideas about goals for a human life are similar to those of Jesus and Aristotle, whether we call it self-cultivation, union with god, or flourishing – some form of “be the best person you can be in community.” None have making money, insulting people, lying, deceit, cheating, or debasing the sacred texts as virtues. Jesus and Confucius have some universal advice – from Jesus – humility, charity, brotherly love, and love your neighbor as yourself. From Confucius – in  

Analects Yan Yuan 22, benevolence, education, and sincerity – Fan Chi asked about benevolence. The Master said, “It is to love all men.” He asked about knowledge. The Master said, “It is to know all men.”

And in Analects, Yong Ye 30, humility and charity – Now the man of perfect virtue, wishing to be established himself, seeks also to establish others; wishing to be enlarged himself, he seeks also to enlarge others. To be able to judge of others by what is nigh in ourselves – this may be called the art of virtue.

The Beatitudes are clearer, but similar moral instruction –

Blessed are the poor in spirit; Blessed are they who mourn; Blessed are the meek; Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness; Blessed are the merciful; Blessed are the pure of heart; Blessed are the peacemakers.

Not so many of us – particularly our leaders – are skilled at humility, charity, enlarging others, or assisting the poor, those who mourn, and those who seek righteousness.  But for Confucians – as well as Christians – the moral imperative is there. 

Where our leaders are now

Examples of Trump – and GOP – lying, mendacity, cruelty and mopery are available for all to see on a daily basis. Just one –

Fact-checking Trump’s attempt to erase his previous coronavirus response  (CNN, April 1, 2020)

Ok, one more –

Adam Serwer – The Cruelty is the Point  (Atlantic, October 3, 2018)

The Bible is a rich source of morality contrary to Trump’s tweets, words, and actions. Biblical advice on leadership is mostly confined to church leadership, as in 1 Timothy 3:1 and 2 Timothy 2:2.   There is Mark 10:43-45– “But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all   which sounds quite a bit like advice from Mencius and Confucius. Mencius in 7.2. 60 (Jin Xin 2.60) – The people are most important, the nation second, the leader last. And from Analects Yan Yuan 19, If the leader strives for goodness, the people will follow him in being good. 

For Confucians as well as Christians, the goal of government is to build a harmonious society, including a climate of virtue. Leaders should be role models.  We don’t seem to have that right now.

How to understand where we are

Confucius tells us that political authority is a trust, conferred by heaven for the welfare of the people.  And the greater the political power, the weightier the moral responsibility.  Collectively, we elected Trump, some of us support GOP mendacity, and those are problems for a different article.  In some sense, we deserve what we have. Even given that, how to understand our leader’s lack of public decency, of morality, of benevolence?

Mencius told us about growing in ren, in humaneness. Those humane virtues are what sets humans apart from animals.  One should be virtuous to be a genuine or non-defective human being. In 2A.6 Gong Sun Chou 1, he  tells us that without the feeling of commiseration, one is not a human; without the feeling of shame and dislike, one is not a human; without feeling of modesty and complaisance, one is not a human; and without the feeling of right and wrong, one is not a human. Mencius in 4B Li Lou 2.47 –

That whereby man differs from the lower animals is but small. The mass of people cast it away, while superior men preserve it. Shun clearly understood the multitude of things, and closely observed the relations of humanity. He walked along the path of benevolence and righteousness; he did not need to pursue benevolence and righteousness.

Humanity, righteousness, propriety, and wisdom constitute the virtues one ought to have in order to be a non-defective human being.  These virtues are not inborn.  They must be cultivated, nurtured, and demonstrated to separate humans from beasts. 

We recognize that we are all on different paths to self-completion (mirroring Augustine). When one is faced with inhumanity, one has an obligation to do self-reflection before reacting. What sort of person are we dealing with? In Mencius 4B:56 Li Lou 2 –

Suppose a man treats one in an outrageous manner. Faced with this, a gentleman will say to himself, “I must be lacking in humaneness and propriety, or else how could such a thing happen to me?” When, looking into himself, he finds he has been humane and proper, and yet this outrageous treatment continues, then the gentleman will say to himself, “I must have failed to do my best for him.” When, on looking into himself, he finds he has done his best and yet this outrageous treatment continues, then the gentleman will say, “This man does not know what he is doing. Such a person is no different from an animal. One cannot expect an animal to know better.”

A Confucian notion of human equality is predicated on every individual having equal dignity. Each person has the potential – and obligation – to cultivate knowledge, self-awareness, and benevolence.  Confucians refer to this as self-cultivation. Humans have these abilities. Animals do not. 

Some humans do not achieve a minimum level of self-cultivation. Frank Bruni at the New York Times went looking for Trump’s soul – he might well have included the GOP as well – and noted that George W. Bush reassured us and Barack Obama fought back tears when consoling the nation about national tragedy.  Bruni asked rhetorically, “Do you remember the moment when President Trump’s bearing and words made clear that he grasped not only the magnitude of this rapidly metastasizing pandemic but also our terror in the face of it?”  Bruni concludes that failures in this regard are more than a failure of empathy, or a failure of decency. It’s a failure of basic humanity.

Confucians tell us that rulers should be junzi – not egocentric or power hungry, but superior practitioners of morality and authoritative but modest leaders to a better future.  Make America Great Again is baldly egocentric – Trump sells the hats – and the future is manifestly worse for all.  A superior practitioner of morality, he is not.  He does not demonstrate the qualities that make one human.

What is to be done?

In the US, we don’t expect leaders to be junzi.  We can scarcely have lower expectations than what we seem to produce now for leaders.  But now with a Confucian perspective, we can at least answer the question of why our dear leader acts as he does.

In Analects Xian Wen 34 Confucius told us to repay injury with righteousness- that is, justice.  Someone behaving badly is in need of correction, and we have an obligation to attempt that. After all, the goal of self-cultivation is to improve others as well as oneself. Trump – and evidently, many of his followers – were reared without good moral training from parents and examples from relatives, friends, colleagues and government.  Mencius tells us that humans are born good, and with cultivation may become excellent.  Even individuals whose actions indicate serious human deficiency have the potential for growth.  We should encourage all politicians to engage in self-cultivation so they might develop virtuous behavior and become people of integrity instead of opportunists.

Let us return Trump to his self-promotion business, where he can be the master of all to his own satisfaction and not harm so many of us. Those who wish to deal with him may do so.  In the meantime, we should instruct Trump and toadies in elemental humaneness – call it Confucian or Christian.  To do otherwise makes us accomplices in tolerating someone who, to all appearances, is less than fully human.

What Chinese are Talking About (3) – Love Mr. Xi, Love Mr. Trump

Update at August 13 – 

I wrote a bit about Epoch Times in the post below, mostly about Chinese getting their news from China news sources like public wechat.  Epoch Times is most decidedly anti-CCP, and published by organizations related to Falun Gong, the same people who bring you Shen Yun, the extraordinary dance and performance troup that has been wow-ing Americans for a decade.

In the last two weeks, Epoch Times has been bombarding YouTube with two minute (two minute!) video advertising in advance of a video one is watching.  The ads offer subscriptions to the newspaper, promising to expose the lies of the mainstream media in vilifying Donald Trump.  Here is a screen shot from one subscription ad.  “Honest news” is what they tout.

Donald Trump reads it every day.  ‘Nuff said.  Chinese can get their “honest news” from Beijing or Falun Gong.  Truly, only no news here is good news.

What Chinese are Talking About (3) – Love Mr. Xi, Love Mr. Trump

We know that mainlanders, particularly those in CCP, have a fondness for Mr. Trump.  There are several reasons – Chinese historically have been willing to defer to strong leaders, and Trump projects arrogance, if not wisdom.  It was clear before the 2016 election that if Trump won, Mr. Putin would win and Mr. Xi would also win.  Events bear this out.  There is no adversary so easy to fool as one convinced of his own superiority, particularly one with such poor justification.  Flattery and artifice will get you … everywhere.  For Chinese interested in foreign policy, all they need do is sit back and wait.  Trump’s unforced errors – TPP, belittling allies, cozying up to dictators, removing US from environmental treaties, threatening friends and foes alike – make Chinese arrogance and Mr. Xi’s own unforced errors look positively innocuous.  What’s not to love about someone willing to play the fool for you?

There is reason to think that Chinese in the US, whether citizens, long-time residents or new green card recipients, might hold more nuanced views about Mr. Trump.  And, in fact, they do.

But often not in the direction you might think.  Case in point – the Chinese American news, sent around the US on wechat.

You know wechat is the ubiquitous and multifaceted phone app from Tencent that has become indispensable to Chinese lives.  For communication purposes, there are two broad categories – private wechat, which functions like a group email, and public wechat, in which wechat operates as a news disseminator.

The news disseminator is well established in the US.  There is Chicago American Chinese news, New York American Chinese news, and probably a dozen or twenty more channels.  The channels have some local news, and share word for word some national stories.

All the channels function only in Chinese.  Anyone can read the news, if they can read Chinese.  For many Chinese in America, these channels function as a principal news source.  Every Chinese student who is harmed in America gets featured, along with positive stories about inventions and developments in China. The wechat channels function as modern versions of the Polish or German language newspapers our parents or grandparents read. 

But in our new era, the politics are different.  Rather than a pro-worker or socialist bent, the wechat channels exhibit a distinct pro-Trump, pro-Republican bias. 

Some bias among Chinese is understandable – they tend to be opposed to attempts to change university admissions standards, which tends to undercut hard-working and high-achieving Asians.  And they tend to be suspicious of Democratic relaxation of immigrant controls, when so many Chinese sacrificed so much to get here themselves.

One should remember that the wechat stories for consumption in America are mostly unsourced, identical across wechat platforms nationally in the US, and written in China or by Chinese working directly for wechat. Five or six national stories are reported each day, in addition to local news.

The wechat groups can be a useful and positive organizing technique.  Last year, a Chinese immigrant used WeChat to win a seat in the Maryland House of Delegates.  Lily Qi raised nearly $150,000 for her candidacy, and did so by contacting non-registered voters directly, with an appeal to change their non-voting behavior.

On the other hand, Australians are worried about fake news stories planted in the wechat groups to steer political views.  The Sydney Morning Herald documents fake news and doctored stories on local wechat groups, and comments  – With less than two weeks until the May 18 election, Chinese social media has become an increasingly powerful tool for all political parties, especially in seats with large numbers of Chinese-Australian voters…

Given its dependence on Chinese trade, and its traditional alliance with the other “five eyes” nations (US, Canada, Britain, New Zealand) Australia has become a prime target for Propaganda Ministry or United Front organizations to influence public opinion. 

Bill Bishop comments at Sinocism – any government should be very concerned over the growing role of Wechat as the primary communications and media consumption tool of the Diaspora. It is after all still controllable and censorable from Beijing.

Wechat is not the only social media platform operating in Chinese, of course.  The political newsletter Popular Information reports on wildly pro-Trump stories in Epoch Times, a media conglomerate with strong ties to Falun Gong, the secretive organization banned in China. A publication with Falun Gong ties is going to be virulently anti-CCP, but they do love Trump.

Epoch Times publishes in Chinese and in English, as well as in other languages. Popular Information reports that Epoch Times “was one of the top three political spenders on Facebook in the last week in April,” outspending every political candidate in the country except Biden and Trump, according to third party research. The money was spent “to promote stories that Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, has championed.”  Epoch Times spent almost as much on Facebook ads ($148,937) as did the Trump campaign ($149,610) in early May.  Epoch Times is now featuring hysterical Youtube advertising, debunking the Mueller investigation and directly promoting Trump. 

From the Popular Information story.  Epoch Times is number 4 –

 Also from the Popular Information story, about Epoch Times reporting on the FBI spying on Trump –

if you could read English only moderately well, wouldn’t you migrate to the news in your own native language?  Makes sense to me.  And makes sense to the wechat writers in Beijing, and to the Chinese and English language writers at Epoch Times.  Truly, for Chinese readers in America, no news is good news. 

SFSU kills Confucius Institute Program

In May, 2019, San Francisco State University (SFSU) announced it was closing its Confucius Institute program that had been in operation since 2005.

Closure was not due to concerns about academic freedom, freedom of speech, or even any suspicion of ulterior motives on the part of the teachers sent from China.  In the SFSU case, the National Defense Authorization Act of 2019 denied federal funds for an intensive Chinese language programs if a university also hosted a Confucius Institute, and SFSU has an excellent DOD funded language program.

Sure, DOD can kill Confucius Institutes.  But DOD has nothing on me. I helped kill another SFSU Chinese program ten years earlier.  That was not on the basis of politics, but solely academic rigor.

In 2010, Chinese and American universities were near their peak desire for joint exchange and degree granting programs.  Many of the best US schools – Harvard, Yale, Stanford – had programs in China, for both American and Chinese students.  Second tier American schools were eagerly establishing joint programs or 2×2 programs (two years in school in China, two years in the US, perhaps resulting in a highly valuable American degree). 

In this frenetic academic lovefest, San Francisco State University (SFSU) approached Zhejiang University of Science and Technology (ZUST) about a joint undergraduate civil engineering program.  An administrative official from SFSU – I don’t remember who – came to ZUST to promote the as-yet not completely defined program. He spoke in Chinese to our students – “Two years at ZUST, two years at SFSU, possibly a joint degree, possibly a SFSU degree.  A valuable exchange program in any case.”  He made a convincing case.

The fit was pretty good on paper.  ZUST had a new undergrad civil engineering program taught all in English, for both Chinese and foreign students.  There were about 35 students in the first year, with more to come.

SFSU had a large Asian student population, so it was accustomed to dealing with foreign students.  Foreign students paid full tuition.  There were a number of Chinese civil engineering faculty, so language problems could be minimized.  The SFSU civil engineering program was internationally accredited by ABET (Accreditation Bureau for Engineering and Technology).  No Chinese undergrad program in civil engineering was internationally accredited, so a joint degree would look mighty fine for a ZUST graduate looking to work outside China.

Even in 2010, there was extensive reporting of academic problems with Chinese students in exchange programs.  Yale cancelled its ecology and evolutionary biology program with Tsinghua in Beijing, after extensive plagiarism by Chinese students.  Everyone understood that Chinese learning, even in the best schools, was dominated by repetition and attention only to the book.

SFSU wanted to make sure ZUST students could do the work.   An SFSU core requirement was – still is – a course in American history.  I was a foreigner, so I was tapped to teach.

The ZUST administrators told me I should teach the course “American style”- to me, that meant quizzes and homework and writing and, above all, no cheating. I told the civil engineering dean that was a mistake.  I knew the quality of the students from prior courses, and cheating was rampant.  The school reiterated – “yes, just like you would in America.”  Reluctantly, I said yes.

There is a saying in China about universities in China compared with those in the US – “in China, it is difficult to get into the university, but once there, everyone graduates; in the US, it is easy to get into the university, and easy to flunk out.”

No need to belabor the details.  We had a standard textbook, the Eric Foner Give Me Liberty! with quizzes and very short – five page – writing requirements.  The English listening, speaking, and writing abilities of the Chinese students were adequate.  Their cultural preparation was not.

First off, no more than one or two of the eighteen Chinese students purchased the textbook.  It was expensive by Chinese standards – about $40 – but in the US, students would be buying six or eight of those each semester.  The twenty or so Chinese students were also roommates – they probably occupied a total of four or five dorm rooms – so joint studying would be possible, although tough.  But not possible for two students to read the book at one time.  They were unaccustomed to homework, written short answer questions from the chapter covered that week.  Most tried to copy the homework in class or right before class.  We had a quiz every week on the chapter – ten or fifteen minutes, to see if they had read – anything.  Most had read something, probably just looked at the powerpoints, but the cheating in the quizzes was blatant.  I tore up some quiz papers when students were looking at their phones and writing answers.  There were a lot of low grades on quizzes.

Paper submittals were very disappointing.  I spent more than one entire class – 135 minutes – on how to write – five paragraph essay, formatting and references, APA style. References and citations were a … let us say, foreign … concept. Students had powerpoint notes, other notes from me, and examples.  I emphasized the importance of good references and avoiding plagiarism.  This was not a completely wasted effort.  But mostly.  Papers came back in two or three different color fonts, with different size fonts, with the plagiarized sections often in one of the unique colors or sizes so there was no need to do any checking.  I didn’t know whether to feel discouraged or insulted that the plagiarism was so poorly done. 

References were often simply to “Baidu” the popular online source in China.  This was like using “Google” as a reference.  To be fair, Baidu did not provide good citations for its published materials, and there were few other sources for the students to use. The library was useless as a source for materials in any language.  Students had no access whatsoever to academic journals.  All blocked.

But they needed to know how to write an acceptable five page paper, even as engineering students.  A couple of the Chinese students got the idea.  A few more of the foreign students did.  I allowed students to rewrite papers after my comments.  Some did so.  Most did not.

I point out again that these were not problems with English language. These were cultural differences, and unwillingness to make the changes necessary if they were to venture, as is said in China, outside.  

With the plagiarism, refusal to correct the plagiarism, cheating, and general mopery, we had a lot of failures in the course.  About two-thirds of the class.

I had earnest meetings with several levels of faculty and administrators and deans.  They had warnings before and during the course.  But I had given them what they wanted.

The civil engineering students learned the wisdom of the second part of the saying about universities in the US, without having to actually attend school in the US and spend thousands of dollars for nothing.  No civil engineering student applied for the 2+2 program with SFSU.   The program died a natural death before it ever went live.

I think I did good work on the SFSU program.  Curiously though, no one ever thanked me.  Sometimes, teaching is a thankless job.

Brief Note on the Trade Shootout

It is no surprise to anyone familiar with Chinese thinking on foreign policy or negotiating practice that China is  balking at changing its laws to reflect what the American negotiators apparently thought had been previously agreed. From the Reuters article –

 In each of the seven chapters of the draft trade deal, China had deleted its commitments to change laws to resolve core complaints that caused the United States to launch a trade war: Theft of U.S. intellectual property and trade secrets; forced technology transfers; competition policy; access to financial services; and currency manipulation.

One can marvel at American stupidity, if that is what is involved; or simply invoke the negotiating principle that no items are agreed to until all items are agreed to. One can call it Chinese perfidy, but that would simply imply that the Americans are so uninformed about Chinese negotiating tactics that they should not be in the same room with their counterparties at all.  To paraphrase Harold Washington on politics, trade negotiations ain’t beanbag.

So let’s get past the propaganda and posturing. This below is what no negotiating is going to change.  It is at the heart of some American thinking on the trade battle.

This is from Dan Harris at China Law Blog, the best China business advisory online – Doing Business Overseas? Have you Checked Your Trademarks?

From time to time when we write something here with which a reader      disagrees, we get a comment or an email accusing us of scare-mongering…. If I can scare a few more companies into not losing their trademarks I will have achieved my goal.

… stealing a brand name is a lot easier (and usually a lot more profitable) than stealing a product design. Our international IP lawyers deal with probably three trademark theft cases for every one design case.

…

Why does any of this matter?

It matters because if someone beats you to registering “your” trademark and you are having products made with that trademark on it, the person or company who owns “your” trademark can stop you from manufacturing your product or exporting the product with the trademark on it. The The trademark owner can also register its mark with its own country’s customs authorities and then have customs seize the trademarked product at the port, preventing your shipment from leaving the country in which it was made. This is a particularly nasty surprise in those cases where the foreign buyer has already paid for the product.

Who is going to register your trademarks? It is typically someone you know, like someone tied to your factory, one of your competitors or even a disgruntled employee. One of our China lawyers loves to talk about what happened a few years ago when he gave a series of lectures in China on how to protect your brand and product when manufacturing in China. After the talks, he went to dinner with a group of foreign company production managers who talked of how they had for years been urging the foreign companies for whom they worked to register their trademark. The foreign companies consistently refused, claiming such registrations were a waste of money. These production managers then told our China lawyer the following:

We are going to form our own trading company. We will register all the   important trademarks of our employers in China in the name of that trading company. When we get fired, we will register “their” marks with China customs and completely shut down their Chinese operations. It will serve them right for being so stupid and lazy.

Now just for the record, the laws in many countries would not allow these employees to get away with this, but the mere fact they were plotting this ought to scare many of you. In my view, your bigger threats to register your brand name where you manufacture is someone tied in with your manufacturer (they do this so they can stop you from going to someone else) and your competitors (they do this so they can stop you).

Note though that these operation managers did not say they were going to steal their employer’s product design…. But this small expense might give them considerable power over their former bosses.

Is a law or regulation negotiated at the central government level going to put a stop to what is legal, if unethical, in China?  No agreement in law or regulation will stop this sort of practice, if for no other reason than China is big and law and regulation are heavily decentralized.  Forget Mr. Xi’s language about rule of law and forget the pronouncements from the new Foreign Investment Law and forget the new National Supervision Commission combining government and CCP regulation of conduct.

There is one, and only one, issue in the trade shootout, and that is IP theft, whether theft by cyber or by hand.  By this point in 2019, after decades of dealing with Chinese companies, everything else is attributable to American naivete and some assumptions about beanbag. 

The culture of lying and deception in business should be well understood by now.  As I always say, this means no disrespect to those Chinese business owners who manage to conduct business honorably, whether one uses Confucian or western standards of conduct.  The Silver Rule is fundamentally no different than the Golden Rule – treat others as you would want to be treated.  Sunzi and San shi liu ji are about deceiving an enemy.  Business partners in the west are not usually thought of as enemies.

As I wrote in No Way Out from the Middle Kingdom –

Think about it this way – is there another major American trading partner where one need fear being kidnapped over a real or imagined payment dispute?  Is there another American major trading partner for which the best trade advisories scream, danger, danger, danger?

Caveat emptor, especially in China.   Perhaps an urgent note to our dear leader and his negotiators would be useful. 

Huawei – Taking a Fall, Hoping for a Call

Pardon the soccer reference.  But to my mind, that is the Huawei move.  But Huawei has the support of the fans, at least in China, and they are vocal.

Don Clarke, professor of law at George Washington University, has penned this response to the declaration of the Zhong Lun law firm in Beijing, in support of Huawei as an innocent private company caught in a nasty trade spat.  According to the declaration, no company in China is ever required to comply with demands from the central government to install spyware or backdoors in any communication equipment.   Clarke points out that this is misleading and inaccurate.  Chinese law says nothing about what provincial and local governments might demand from a company, and in any case, law is not a constraint. 

“There’s a whole variety of pressures that the government can bring to bear on a company or individual, and they are not at all limited to criminal prosecution Clarke says.  “China is a Leninist state that does not recognize any limits to government power.”

From Clarke’s China Collection  blog –

Last May, two attorneys from the Zhong Lun law firm submitted a declaration to the FCC in support of Huawei’s position that it could not be compelled by the Chinese authorities to install backdoors, eavesdropping facilities, or other spyware in telecommunications equipment it manufactured or sold. I finally had the time to look at the declaration in detail. I don’t find it convincing. I have written up a pretty full analysis (over 10 single-spaced pages) and posted it here on SSRN. Enjoy.

Incidentally, my colleague Jacques deLisle of the University of Pennsylvania Law School also submitted a statement of his views, which largely support Huawei’s position. (I hope I have not characterized his statement unfairly.) Needless to say, I don’t agree, but the paper here is an analysis of the arguments of the Zhong Lun submission, not Jacques’. Those who are interested can read Jacques’ statement for themselves.

 Even we non-lawyers can read.  I wrote about this previously in Lie Down with Dogs, Get Up with Fleas

 Don Clarke’s analysis –

The Zhong Lun Declaration on the Obligations of Huawei and Other Chinese Companies Under Chinese Law (March 17, 2019)

Added March 22:  Steve Dickinson at China Law Blog on the new foreign investment law, which has been touted as an improvement in business conditions and a response to forced technology transfer – https://www.chinalawblog.com/2019/03/chinas-new-foreign-investment-law-and-forced-technology-transfer-same-as-it-ever-was.html      Steve’s conclusion – 

Article 22 of China’s new Foreign Investment Law is not relevant to the issue of forced technology transfer. On that front absolutely nothing has changed and nobody should expect it to either.

Added May 25: Christopher Balding and Donald Clarke on Who Owns Huawei?  Huawei claims to be employee-owned.  But their shares are not ownership, but contract rights in a profit-sharing plan.  To the extent ownership is vested in a trade union, Chinese law does not grant ownership rights to employees if the company or trade union go bust.  It appears that ultimately Huawei could be state-owned, since all trade unions are part of the state.

Huawei responds

Don Clarke’s rebuttal.  Huawei makes no case for employee-ownership and does not refute any facts in the Balding-Clarke paper. 

Idle Thought – last week in January, 2019

What if this past weekend were the beginning of the end for the orange haired baboon?  And, in the process, the GOP were so damaged that even a Pence presidency couldn’t do much harm, and we gained a president in 2020 who was smart, thoughtful, respected intelligence and loyalty to allies and was up for repairing the extraordinary damage, domestic and international?

Someone who might say something that would remind us of these lines –

“Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans, born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage, and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world. Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

Suppose we looked back on the past two years, or three, as having fought and emerged from a great conflict, knowing that the alternative was always looking us in the face, that if we had failed no one would never hear the American version –

… then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.  Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.”

And in an inaugural speech in January, 2021, we might hear echoes of –

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Good luck to us with that.  How would that sit with all the tinpot dictators who have sprung up in the last five years, and their beleaguered people? And how would that sit with all those in Africa, and the –stans, and South America, who have looked hard and trembled at rapacious lending of China and the prospect of Chinese internet, Chinese censorship, Chinese media, Chinese rule of men, Chinese tribute, wishing for an alternative that left them some dignity?

Oh.  And Reagan on walls –

“Rather than talking about putting up a fence, why don’t we work out some recognition of our mutual problems, make it possible for them to come here legally with a work permit,” he said. “And then while they’re working and earning here, they pay taxes here. And when they want to go back they can go back.”

https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/12/21/analysis-heres-what-reagan-actually-said-about-border-security/

And –

“I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life…in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans…with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That’s how I saw it, and see it still.”

https://www.azquotes.com/quote/547667

The National Day Singing Competition

Zhejiang University of Science and Technology, September, 2009


note:  this post is from 2009, a few weeks after I came to ZUST to teach full time and I was still awed by most everything.  As it turns out, there were no more singing day competitions. This one was part of the celebrations of 60 years since the founding of the PRC.  Still, an impressive event.

One of the emcees wore a black tuxedo with diamond –  I wanted to say rhinestone- studs along the collar and piping.   The other wore a white tux with black piping.  The women emcees wore serious prom type dresses, or serious I-am-a-grownup-take-me-out-dancing dresses- a slinky reflective gold long dress for one, a more demure white for the other. 

The rhinestone reference kept running through my head because the between performances music was the theme song from Ponderosa. 

This was the annual singing competition between departments at ZUST.   Each school department- economics, marketing, civil engineering- puts together a group of about 50 students, generally about half and half by gender, and practices for weeks before the big night.  So for days before tonight, it was like walking past the music building at Northwestern, and hearing beautiful voices floating out from classrooms.   Except these were 50 voices, and lots of the men sounded like men- deep voices and big and almost scary.

I am not going to keep you in suspense.  I am pleased to report that for the 5th year in a row (?), the computer science students beat every other department, including the architects (who came in second this year). 

Every department has money in their budget for clothes for the singing competition.  The standards vary a little, but generally tuxedos for the boys, fancy dresses for the girls, and all the same for each department. 

The competition started about 6:00, and ran until 8:00.  Each department did one number, generally a song built around love of country or home.   One was about the Qiantang River, in Hangzhou, as having come from very far away, and being the mother of all Chinese.  Another was about someone climbing a tree, and when I asked for clarification, I got back a finger pointing at a dictionary entry, “guerilla,” and I didn’t want any further clarification.   But it is still not clear. 

Every department sounded as if they had practiced for a long time.  The men were forceful, the women sweet and a nice  counterpart to the men.   Everyone on stage- this was on a temporary staired stage in front of the library entrance- sang, and loud.  No one looked embarrassed or too cool to sing.   It was a competition. 

There were stage lights, a lot of them, and videos, and a couple of the groups had small sparklers or fireworks as part of their song and a couple of the groups had some slight choreography, as  much as they could do  while standing on temporary stands under hot lights outside in big clothes.   The judges sat at tables in front of the stand, and hundreds of students were behind the judges, standing on small chairs and on planters at the library entrance.   The library has a six story covered entryway between two buildings, so we were shielded from the light rain and  there was plenty of room for hundreds, and the voices carried.  I could hear the groups clearly from my apartment, across the lake from the library and a good quarter mile away.   Somewhere, someone was selling or handing out t shirts inscribed with “music has no borders”  and “nations without foreigners.” 

At the end, after the awards, the winning group came back for an encore and brought in the front row another twenty or so students in ethnic costumes, mostly from the west of China, and an American student from NYC who I know, and one of the German students who is in my urban economics class.   The song was about love of country, and everybody sang.

So for Scott, and Jim, now you understand how the Chinese government IIT students have such wonderful voices, and use them, and how they can put on such performances for spring festival.  They have been doing it every year since they were small, and they practice, and they believe in the value of it.   So much for individualism and do your own thing.   One of my students in the urban economics course said she had heard some things about the development of economies, from slavery to feudalism, to capitalism, to socialism.   But, she said, socialism did not have enough money to do good things for people, and capitalism helps.  But she was worried that capitalism might harm the socialism in China.   I said that was a good question, but that no country was purely capitalist or socialist.   In the US, we have a socialized safety net for health care for the elderly and poor, for people who get hurt on the job, for retirees, for housing for poor people, and for schooling.    China does not have any of those in a nationally uniform way.   But they can really sing, and when they get together to do something, it works.   I read an article yesterday expressing fears about the China future- you know, economic stimulus and corruption and too much infrastructure spending and no democracy.   One of the comments to the article provided the usual “it’s all a sham, and it will collapse any day now”  view.   Another commentator noted that in his experience, the people who claim the sham argument have invariably never been to China.   Or heard them sing, organized, for fun, in a competition just for themselves.

I wish Rachel were here.  She would have loved it.

An Evening in Middle Class Life

October, 2009 

There is a pattern in the west of seizing on negative China stories as definitive proof than revolution, or collapse, or the Second Coming are just around the corner.   Debt and moral vacuum and lack of trust and cheating.  But China is a big country, with a big middle class that is vested in ongoing stability.  This is just a dinner story from ten years ago, with government friends from Hangzhou and Shaoxing.  This is just middle class people relaxing and enjoying the holiday.

This story is also about middle class CCP members, and such an observation seems sorely overlooked in most discussions of China’s future.  I have no systematic data, but my educated guess is that a Venn diagram of Chinese middle class – however you wish to define them – would show great overlap with CCP membership.  There are about 90 million CCP members.  With some dual member households, let’s speculate that comes to 60 million households.  These are the people holding nearly all government jobs, heading up non-government organizations, teaching in high schools and universities, and owning many small and large businesses.  Let’s give those 60 million households one child and a grandparent or two, or four, and that is roughly the same as the size of the middle class.  CCP is the middle class, and when writers talk about emerging democracy and civil society and middle class demands for voice, we should remember who we are talking about.  The CCP is the bourgeoisie.

I went to dinner last night at Jennifer’s apartment, with Stone, and James, and Morgan, and Shelly from Shaoxing.  Alice was there too.  Jennifer and her husband and son live in one of the new developments on Zijinghua Road, just past the xixi wetland national park and about fifteen minutes from ZUST.   Like many or most new developments in China, this one is gated, with a seven foot high wall at the perimeter.   There are problems with burglary in china, not so much robbery, but historically towns and developments of all kinds have been enclosed, in a cellular pattern, so gated communities now are partly for security but also a historic design legacy.   Since this is a pretty fancy development, and mostly for government people, there are two uniformed guards at the gates, who check for who you are visiting and act as building doormen for the residents- get this package, give directions to your aunt when she comes visiting, tell the plumber where to go to find your apartment when he comes to fix the toilet.

Like most any new development, this one is very big.  I don’t know the number of buildings- I will say, thirty- a mix of four story walkups with others, surrounding a driveway that curls around behind buildings and leads to an underground garage, as well as a fair amount of parking at grade level adjacent to the buildings.  The landscaping is pretty, bamboo and rocks and other green stuff, not as extensive as at some projects where there is no at grade parking, but still thoughtful.   There is a community building which has a dining room and a party room, and a slightly raised agora, with stone and landscaping that serves as a meeting point – “meet me at the agora in ten minutes.”   Buildings are close together- the driveway is really one way, except in a couple of places where it doubles back on itself, and the feeling is that of close-knit, though expensive, community.   In the short two way driveway from the gate to the buildings, there are eight or ten small stores on each side of the street, on the first floor of the first two buildings.   A fruit stand, a dry cleaner, a grocery store with a few more essentials, I think an insurance office.    Think self-contained and walkable and low stress and low key.   The world is outside and tense, not far away, but inside, the tension melts.   At least that is what I saw.

Jennifer’s family has the top floor and the fifth floor finished attic, really another entire floor, of a four story walkup.  The apartment has all the tricked out stuff typical of an middle American family with a ten year old boy.   The big screen tv set to video games of wii tennis, or baseball, or badminton.   Soccer ball in the corner, which we used a little in the dining room.   (I can beat the ten year old, no problem).   Plastic basketball net set up facing out from the middle of the railing on the stairway to the fifth floor, at about six feet high.   The kid is a good shot from behind the dining room table, but it is his court.   And he seldom has to drive past somebody twice his size, so I was able to hold my own.

Stone, who is an administrator at a college about an hour away from ZUST but still in Hangzhou (east of the river and the Hi-Tech Zone) picked me up at school.  When we walked in to Jennifer’s apartment everybody there was already making dumplings.  Alice joined in, and this was her entre to the Hangzhou group from one year later at IIT.   You know that many city governments send people to IIT each year, some from the same departments each year, but the group loyalty is to the group that comprises your year, not the group from your city.   So Shelly, from the same year as Jennifer in Chicago, was Alice’s contact to get invited to this dinner.   But Alice was making dumplings with everybody else, and chatting away, and this is one way to get accepted into the group.   If I were crude, I would say it was sort of like dogs sniffing to see if the new person acceptable.  Everybody laughed at my attempts at dumpling making, which was fine.   Some of theirs, notably some of the guys, were not too great either, but my job is to be the clumsy foreigner.

Jennifer’s inlaws cooked dinner. In a way I have seen repeated many times, the parents cook, behind the closed parting doors to the kitchen, which are standard because so much Chinese cooking involves oil, and frying, and fish, but do not join us for dinner.   Dinner the usual- big cherries, not from China, but probably from Australia, maybe US, she said.   (Prices on cherries are down a little from the peak of spring festival.   At the peak, they were 65 rmb a pound, she said, which even if she meant a kilo, is still pretty expensive).  Everyone said they missed the prices on cherries in the US.  Big strawberries.   Little shrimps, which are easy to eat if you pull off the heads and the rest of the shell comes away easily.   Chinese are able to dismantle the shells in their mouths with their tongues, which must under different circumstances be a great comfort to Chinese women.  A fruit like a grape, but with a tough skin that must be peeled, but is good.  Of course, the dumplings we all made, by the dozens, when we got to the apartment, and is a source of much community building.   A shared food making experience that everyone’s ancestors did.   Dumplings are what you eat at  the beginning and end of an event, so this was standard end of spring festival fare.  Also, since it was Lantern Festival day (eve, actually), we had fish balls, which are not nearly so repulsive as they sound.  A little sweetened dough with a little bit of tasty fish wrapped inside the ball, cooked for a moment.   Cabbage and mushrooms, and chicken feet and …. corned beef.    Also specially treated pork, that Jennifer confessed to buying frozen, because it is better than she could make herself, but was tasty with a dark sauce and lots of darker meat.   Alice brought a flagon, I think is the word, of Shaoxing rice wine, which is only from Shaoxing, and is famous, and is tender and drinkable without being sweet or killer in aftereffect, and is the head fake drink that Linda, one of our government students in Chicago, sometimes drinks to get through the nights of business dinners and drinking (One Third Coke, Two Thirds Sprite) in Shenyang, a thousand miles away.  When she is not surreptitiously mixing coke and sprite.

Fireworks on National Day

After dinner, the ten of us or so went downstairs to the agora.  Morgan had brought several boxes of fireworks, and tonight was the last night to set off fireworks during the spring festival.  Morgan and Stone were in charge of placement of the skyrockets and firecracker strings.  They placed some, held others in reserve.   Several of us took turns lighting the rockets, which were bursting in air just like in the song.   Not too high, maybe three or four stories, but pretty and loud and smoky and fun.   We stood around, talked, some other people stopped with their two year olds, and watched, others went about their business.   The other apartment buildings were not more than 30 or 40 yards away, but no one was yelling out the window or calling the cops or fussing at us.   Given the age of Jennifer and Morgan and the other students, you have to think of our parents at age 35 or 40, in the backyard with the neighbors, shooting off fireworks in 1955 or 1960.   Everybody the same age, everybody the same situation, including having parents live with them, everybody pretty happy to be where they are, everybody happy to let someone else be happy.  It is true that fireworks in china are part of the culture, and it certainly is true that I do not see a lot of what I am looking at, but I am telling you what I did see.   There is a lot of paper and mess to clean up after a fireworks display, but we did not have to worry about that, presumably because the cleaning people would be there in an hour or tomorrow morning to take care.  It is part of the deal.  They would do a good job on the cleaning, because that was their job.

A digression-  there is a lot of writing and observation about how difficult it is to get Chinese to work.  Response to instructions is literal, and no one does more than minimally acceptable. The Chinese version of the Russian, “we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us.”  I see some of the literalness in students, and some of the mule mentality – “we will work if you beat us” thing.    Maybe the positive side of that description is that people respond to incentives, and maybe the literal instruction is “pick up every visible scrap of paper you see,” but I have a hard time reconciling the mule mentality with the cleanliness of the agora as I know it will be tomorrow.   Maybe having to work is a great incentive- the cleaning people are never twenty or thirty years old, but look to be seventy.   Though they might only be forty.

The evening stroll

After the fireworks, we walked toward the front gate, Jennifer chatting with a couple of neighbors on the way.   it is fascinating to see Jennifer this way.   In Chicago, she was the academic monitor of the Zhejiang students – the person in charge of making sure schoolwork got done and serving as liaison with the school faculty. My image of her was always this nice, not overdressed, but nicely dressed and together but tightly wound woman with a friendly but still Chinese seriousness about her.   Like she understood everything, just her range was intentionally limited.  Anyway, here she is in slightly faded jeans that are a little worn, and a floppy grey sweatshirt, and tennis shoes, and she looks relaxed and happy and the entire group of us is just a bunch of friends going for a walk after dinner and fireworks.  No agenda, no face, no guards.   I kid Jennifer that my one hope in China is that some night I take her out to some jazz club on Nanshan Road, and by the end of the night see her dancing on the table.    But with this Jennifer, the one last night, that does not have to be the hope anymore.  This is hostess Jennifer, and mom Jennifer, and daughter Jennifer, and wife Jennifer, and friend and colleague Jennifer, and the package is so much more interesting than the IIT academic monitor Jennifer.

We walked a few blocks down Zijinghua Road, to Wen’er Road and Xichen Square, name of a neighborhood and a retail district.  There is a big department store I have been to a couple of times, and next to it is the actual square.  Nothing too fancy, just a fifteen foot tall sculpture to the moon month goddess, and a flat square surrounded on two sides by apartments and one by the department store.   The department store has a pizza hut and KFC on the first floor, and both are crowded.   This is Saturday night, so the KFC is busy.   That means that there are five lines of customers to place orders, each line four or five people deep.   Not because the busload of tourists from Naperville just arrived.   This is everyday busy.   Upstairs from the KFC and Pizza Hut is the strategically located health club.

We stopped and got ice cream at KFC for Jennifer’s son and his buddy, and walked over to the square, which was fitted out with a bunch of displays, all about celebrating New Year’s year of the tiger and spring festival.   There were stands selling huge amounts of cheap Chinese junk- the same stuff we buy at street fairs and at the beach- the colored trinkets that spin, or blow in the wind, or pop up and down, or just look pretty, or colored light sticks.   We thought there would be fireworks at the square, and maybe there were later, but we left after about 45 minutes and a bunch of pictures of us together in front of the big plastic and paper tiger than moved its head and body on a small motor.   We could have stayed, but I think Alice and Shelly had to get back to Shaoxing, which is about 90 minutes away, and Alice had kept her driver the whole time in Hangzhou, so she wanted to give him a break and let him get home to Shaoxing before midnight.

We walked back to Jennifer’s apartment, past her son’s grade school, and past several other restaurants and apartment buildings.  It was a beautiful February night, about centigrade 10 or 12 degrees, so you needed a jacket, but no scarf or gloves or hat.   There were lots of people out, and stores were all open, and traffic moved, and couples walked by holding hands, and couples were out with their kid, and if you tell me that the entire chinese economy is a ponzi scheme, and will collapse next week, well, you have to account for the incredible normality of daily life.   I suppose we could be sitting in the eye of the hurricane, but the burden of proof is going to have to be on the extreme skeptics.   Can there be slowdowns in growth?   Can real estate prices drop some, and construction take a tumble, along with local government revenues?  Can there be news stories about why didn’t we see this coming, and who do we blame, and what do we do now?   Can the PBOC have to step in and recapitalize some banks?  Can the central government have to restructure fiscal relationships with the provinces, to bail out provincial and city developments?   Can a mountain of debt be a problem for China, too?  I just don’t think Xichen Square is going away, nor the KFC, nor Jennifer’s apartment complex or lifestyle.   Michigan Avenue is still there, and stores are still open, and I bet the beach will be crowded on a hot day in July, when I come back.    We have very tough times ahead in the US, but I don’t think we are going to look like 1932, and  there can be tough times ahead in China, but most everybody will weather the storm. There is a big differences among a financial crisis, an economic crisis, and a depression. There is froth in the financial and real estate markets in China, and that will lead to a tough financial crisis and a minor economic crisis at some point, but it will be contained, because of the ability of the government to act and because past growth, real estate excepted, has been based on realities, not hyperbole.   Yes, the infrastructure may be too advanced to suit the economy (an argument I have heard made by some macroeconomists, and which I get but I think is wildly academic in this case), and there will be some empty office buildings, maybe a lot of empty office buildings, and the apartments are empty because Chinese are long term investors, so the crisis from a drop in apartment prices will be confined to developers mid project and to a few individuals who will need the cash, but their units will be snapped up quickly, and the office space crisis will be limited to the owners, some of which are SOE, who will be bailed out, and when the economic conditions change, the migrant farmers can go back to the farms in the rural provinces, where the government is already building infrastructure and encouraging FDI, and some loosening of investment laws will unleash the next wave of consumer-driven investing and spending in China, so some power shifts will take place.   (Another digression – I disagree now with these early speculations about the Chinese macroeconomy.  That is another story.  I leave these observations as they were made in 2009 to remind myself of how radically different my own views are now.)

I know, I know- I  am seeing Jennifer’s China, not the China of 800,000,000 peasants, but the people in Xichen Square are not all of Jennifer’s lifestyle, but they are there anyway, and the Chinese Dream is well and alive throughout China, I think, so the government has a couple of generations to make good on its promises, riots and disruptions and google and corruption on land taking and blocking of facebook and persecution of activists figured in.   This is by no means a perfect society, Jennifer’s lifestyle notwithstanding, but it is not fragile and not going to hell in a handbasket.   It is 5,000 years old, with pretty much everyone the same culture, and zero history of democracy, and a cultural expectation that the government will provide, which it gladly does, cynically if you wish, to keep the powers that be the powers that be.   With  the legal ability to protest, and strike, and democracy, and far worse metropolitan conditions relatively than in China, and far worse economic prospects for the next decade, the government in the US seems able to buy off those damaged by the crisis with some references to capitalism and free markets and hope and making sure everyone is tuned in to American Idol or the next blonde teenager disappearance national crisis.   Somebody ask Lubet what he thinks about the status of protest in the US now, compared with that in 1968.  And the Chinese government is very well practiced at controlling protest.