Tag: Moderately well acquainted reader

A Note on City Size and Political Economy

Among the China superlatives that we have heard for the last two decades is the fantastic growth in city size – Pudong in Shanghai from fishing and farming villages to the world’s most recognizable skyline; similarly for Shenzhen, Guangdong, and literally dozens of places most of us have never heard of. 

 
Source: Lujiazui 2016.jpg

The US has ten or eleven cities now with a population of at least one million; China has scores, and many of them growing from seemingly nothing.  China has about four times the population of the US, but far more than four times the number of larger-than-1,000,000 population cities – by 2018, well over a hundred.  100 cities bigger than Liverpool.  What gives?  We think we understand the concept of growing economies, and the concept of city growth; but how can these superlatives be so?   A couple of ideas, and some clarification on terms –

1.  urbanization is not only a global phenomenon, it is a modern economy phenomenon – farm-to-factory increased densities of cities a great deal in the Industrial Revolution, but the modern service-oriented economy demands (and allows for) even much greater densities of people, and, moreover, pulls people into the biggest and most diverse cities at a higher rate than in past decades.  There are scale effects – the biggest and most successful tend to get even bigger. (We will ignore the ancient forces that created megacities of a thousand or two thousand years ago – Kaifeng (largest city in the world early in the Song Dynasty, with a population of about 600,000) and Hangzhou, the largest city in the world in the late Song and Yuan dynasties, and into the early Ming,  and Rome, about a million population until the collapse;  and after the collapse of Rome, no place in western or northern Europe until London, about 1700)

List of Cities in China        List of Largest European Cities in History

There was a time in China when manufacturing was conducted each within its own walled danwei, and inside the urban area. Each danwei had its own housing, entertainment areas, and shopping.  Each danwei was the Chinese version of Pullman, the ideal city created by George Pullman in the 1880s)  Pullman, Chicago  This was the Maoist era when land had no value. In the opening and reform under Deng, land began to have realizable value.  In the last three decades, Chinese local governments have undertaken policies to encourage or force manufacturing to relocate to the outskirts, opening large swaths of urban land to development of housing and offices and shopping.  This is American suburbanization of industry conducted at pace and at a time when necessary manufacturing access to river transport had long past.  So, a frenzied catching up.  Think of the demand for oil, before and after invention of the internal combustion engine.  The oil just laid around for millions of years, before it suddenly achieved value.

2.  government fiscal policy matters – After Mao, Chinese cities became the focus of development.  “If we want development, we want cities to grow.”  China supported cities and helped them grow.  “Stadtluft macht frei,” the old saying about the medieval urban place, that “city air makes one free,” was true in China in both senses – that of opportunity for the individual and relative independence of the place from domineering control by a greater unit of government.  In the US, cities were strangled by federal policy, administrative law, and political fragmentation.  The strangulation continues today – Chinese laugh at our inability to build tunnels under the Hudson, fix subways or airports, or let cities grow.  Among cities in China, as in the US, there is the rough and tumble of leader and administrative negotiation over infrastructure expansion and competition for location of business and facilities.  A difference is that in China, there is always a leader with enough power to say yes, and then all the pieces fall into place, and development can happen.  In the US, with heavily fragmented political power buttressed by rule of law, everyone has the power to say “no,” and no one has the power to say “yes,” and force implementation.  Delay is built in to American growth in a way that does not exist in China. The political fragmentation that starves American cities in favor of its suburbs doesn’t exist when the political boundaries of cities in China are so much greater than boundaries in America.

3.  definitions matter – This is the most important distinction between American and Chinese cities for understanding the proliferation of huge Chinese cities.   Briefly, counties in the US are generally larger than cities, and counties are contiguous across the US – one moves from one county into another.  In China, counties are subunits of cities and cities are contiguous – one moves from Hangzhou (city) to Jiaxing (city).  In the US, cities are generally quite small – Chicago is only 225 square miles (590 square kilometers) and New York is only 302 square miles (784 square kilometers). The surrounding suburban area dwarfs central city area.

Every city in China has a substantial rural area – even Beijing and Shanghai.   A city in China can have mountains and large lakes, in addition to farm land.  As you know, there are no mountains or farmland in New York or Chicago.  There are historical reasons for the large area of subprovincial and prefecture-level cities, but another reason for concentration of people and development is the historical government fear over food security.  By law, and enforced pretty fiercely, each province must maintain at least 84% of its land in rural, or let us say, non-urban development land.  This regulation is passed on to cities under the province’s jurisdiction.  The Land Bureau in each city receives an allocation of land each year that can be converted to construction land; without the allocation from the central government and the province, no additional land conversion can take place.  Some of you know about the truly enormous fill-in-the-ocean projects in some Chinese cities – Dongtou County in Wenzhou is one example, but there are others.  This project calls for filling in hundreds of square miles of ocean, creating land for development.  Why?  Wenzhou is a fast growing city (despite the overbuilding of the last decade) and it is surrounded by hills and mountains that make expansion impossible.  So, a solution- create more land.

With unitary government – all power derives from Beijing – it is feasible, and relatively common, for cities to merge and become one administrative place, and for formerly rural counties to become districts of cities.  So areas of cities and population totals are a bit less reliable than those in the US, since change in areas and even definitions is more frequent.  I encountered problems establishing a population for Hangzhou, a place I know pretty well.  For example, Xiaoshan was a county-level city, an independent unit of government (sort of).  In 2001, it became a district of Hangzhou, and Xiaoshan as a separate city disappeared.  The population and the area of Hangzhou increased substantially. Similarly for the Yuhang district of Hangzhou – merged into Hangzhou in  2001, and Lin’an in 2017.  Population and area can grow substantially just by administrative fiat. 

4.  comparing apples with apples – What makes sense from a political science or administrative perspective is to compare roughly similar sized areas.  Hangzhou has a population of 8.7 million, about the same as New York, and three times that of Chicago.  But Hangzhou is 16,847 square kilometers; New York is 784; Chicago is 590.  What is roughly comparable in area with Hangzhou is the metropolitan planning area of Chicago, including seven or ten counties.  The seven counties of northeastern Illinois still have some farmland, and are about 10,387 square kilometers – that is Chicago plus all the land around its satellite cities – Waukegan, Elgin, Aurora, Joliet, Gary.   And still, Hangzhou is substantially larger, at 16,847 square kilometers.  The population of that larger Chicago planning area is 9.5 million for the seven counties.

5.  examples, using area and population –

Hangzhou is the capital of Zhejiang province, and one of the most economically developed cities in China.  Dalian, in Liaoning province, is a rarity in China – a city that is better known than its provincial capital, Shenyang. Dalian, too, is a growing city.  I pick these two places because I know them reasonably well, and they are certainly characteristic of the size relations in Chinese cities.  See the table below.  Data is from published sources, wiki and Chinese government estimates, but I make no claims to precision.  The urban population of Hangzhou (means what?) is said to be about 5.6 million in the 2010 Census; Shenyang, about 5.7 million, Shanghai 20.2, and Dalian, 3.9.  For “urban,” my own preference is to use the districts of a city, as inexact as that may be.  Some comparisons –

Place                           Area, km2                   Population, x 106       Population density, per km2

Liaoning Province          145,900                        43.9                         300                        

Zhejiang Province          101,800                        55.6                         550

Illinois State                  150,000                        12.8                          89.4

New York State              141,300                        19.9                        159

Note that Liaoning and Zhejiang are of roughly similar size as the States of Illinois and New York.   Here you see the roughly 4x greater population in China.  Zhejiang has significantly larger GDP than Liaoning; New York, more than Illinois

Shenyang                         12,980                         8.3   (2010)                  640

 – urban districts                     571                        3.8                            6,655

Shenyang

Dalian                               13,237                         6.7   (2010)                   532

 – urban districts                    550                          2.1  (2015 est.)          7,721

Dalian

Hangzhou                        16,847                         9.4   (2017 estimate)     570

 – urban districts                   706                          3.7                              5,240

Hangzhou

  List of Cities in China by Population and Built-up Area

Shanghai                           6,341                       24.0  (2017 est.)            3,800

 Shanghai

note – these data define Shanghai as only urban, which is not the case from casual observation.  Better data would show Shanghai urban area as much more dense than indicated above.

New York                            784                         8.7                           10,400

Shanghai is close to twenty times the size of New York City in area, with about three times the population.

Cook County                      4,230                        5.2                              2,129

City of Chicago                      590                        2.7                              4,594

Chicago planning area       10,387                        9.5   seven counties

The “urban districts” of Hangzhou are reported at 706 km2, and 3.7 million people.  I know the Yuhang district quite well, and that is not included in the urban district data.  Yuhang is now quite densely built-up suburban, with the main offices for Alibaba and many other companies, and thousands of new apartments.  So, as always, data is only … data.

But one can see that the urban and suburban part of Hangzhou (districts) is much closer to the size of Chicago, and much closer in population.   The population densities of the urban districts of Shenyang, Dalian, Hangzhou, and even Shanghai are reasonably close to those for New York and Chicago.  Again, some liberal allowances are needed for interpretation of the data. 

6.  for decades, political career advancement was partly determined by GDP advancement – Chinese have always valued cities as seats of power, in a way that Americans have not.  Without exception – I think – the provincial capital is the largest city by population in any province. Political power is united with economic power. Compare with American state capitals.  After Deng, and opening up, the advancement of political careers depended in part upon achieving a target rate of GDP growth in the province, city, county, or district.   In addition to feeling modern economic pressures, leaders in China competed to grow their own economies, and growth was most easily defined by real estate growth.  So, the pressures to urbanize in a country with no history of suburban trains-to-downtown to permit office sector workers to live far from their jobs.  Concentration was important for GDP growth as well as for satisfying the needs of a modern economy.  (Don’t get me started on short term v long term GDP growth, or the impact of excessive bad debts.  Careers are made or lost in five years). 

7.  GDP growth is easy when you have determined goals and the power to achieve them –  as a last note, I want to point out that the development goals in American urban planning and Chinese urban planning were at one point broadly similar –  to provide for more people, more GDP generated, more taxes paid locally.  There have always been local exceptions, and quality of life is more of a concern in planning now in the US than was the case thirty or forty years ago, and certainly more of a concern than is currently the case in China.  But let me leave you with an understanding of how easy it can be to achieve GDP growth, if one has the power to control land and location of people and businesses and the growth goal is quantifiable.

As you might know, the National Development and Reform Commission, the economic planning arm of the central government, establishes a target GDP growth for each year in the Five Year Plan.  Five Year Plans  That national growth rate is then allocated, with some give and take, to individual provinces, and from provinces to cities.  A mayor of a city understands what his targets are, and he has five years in which to perform, at which time he is judged on performance and suitability for advancement in governance.

With a target of X% growth per year, how can one accomplish such a task?  Quite simple, really.  Every piece of the built environment – housing, offices, factories, subways, expressways, universities, hospitals, airports, ports, even recreational facilities – has some estimated cost of construction.  While urban planning in China can be quite detailed and sophisticated, planning and implementation are distinct.  If one needs to achieve Y billions of yuan in growth, representing X% GDP growth, all one need do is add up the potential projects, create some new projects if needed, and get started on building.  Not so hard when you control all the land, the developers and contractors and lenders are mostly state owned businesses with goals similar to your own, and there is little to no power to oppose what is decreed.  Lead, follow, or get out of the way is a known sentiment in China. 

If you have made it to the end of this piece, I hope you have the idea that while China is densely populated, the densities are not so far from those in normal urban areas in the US.  Much of the city growth in China in the last three decades is the result of policies to encourage urbanization, city consolidation, and the ability of governments to focus development in ways absolutely unavailable in the US.  Nothing mysterious here – just a different set of policies and priorities.  I tell my Chinese friends that Hangzhou is like Chicago; and Shanghai is like New York, except that there are more Chinese in New York.  Always good for a laugh.

No Way Out, 2 Understanding the Chinese Constitution, the New Citizens Movement, and Document No. 9

The New Citizens Movement should not have been a big deal – a loosely organized group of activists campaigning against corruption and for “constitutionally protected rights” in China.  Xu Zhiyong, a PhD from the Peking University Law School, was one of the leaders.

Xu Zhiyong, shortly before arrest   Xu Zhiyong speaking at a meeting in Beijing in March, 2013, shortly before his arrest

And since Xi Jinping has made anticorruption a key part of purifying the CCP and the Chinese people, one might think that such a citizen’s movement would be welcomed.  A group advocating for what is already in the Chinese Constitution – equality before the law, the right to vote, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly – should be innocuous. 

One would be wrong.  One must remember the fundamental rule of any authoritarian government – the leader determines the truth, the leader determines right and wrong, and only the leader can lead the people.  Any attempt by citizens to “contribute,” particularly if organized, can only be anathema.  Any organization – any civil society organization – that intends to compete with the government must be destroyed as an enemy of the state.  There cannot be any organization that intends to stand between the state and the individual. 

When Xi came to power, some western observers questioned whether Xi would be a reformer, continuing more or less down the path opened by Deng Xiaoping.  The answer by now, in 2018, is certainly clear – CCP members talk (not openly) about a return to the days of the Cultural Revolution, when fear and terror worked among colleagues, friends, and family members to expose the slightest hint of political deviation from Mao Zedong Thought. Students recording and reporting on teachers,  Chill and fear in the classroom, colleagues evening old scores by reporting someone to the jiwei, without evidence.  (This latter was in my direct experience.  More on that in a future post).    

But the Xi path might have been clear when Xi gave his first speech to the press, following his election at the end of the 18th Party Congress in November, 2012  Xi’s first speech after elevation.   He outlined his agenda in stamping out corruption and taking China to a leadership position internationally.  No one – not even CCP members – knew then how the agenda would be implemented. Now we all know.

The crackdown on any dissension from the path of Xi began with arrests of the New Citizens Movement leaders, in April, 2013.  Simultaneously came the infamous Document No. 9, a warning from the CCP Central Committee General Office to CCP members about the seven deadly western sins seeking to destroy CCP and China.   This document, only available for a short time online before being “harmonized,” as they say, telegraphed the entire Xi Jinping crackdown on speech, civil society, a free press, and freedom of assembly.  It is not subtle.   

As you know, there have been many detentions and prison sentences for human rights lawyers, dissidents, artists, academics, and anyone expressing dissatisfaction, or worse, with CCP and the CCP path as defined by Xi Jinping.  A couple more examples, after the destruction of the New Citizens Movement –

 In July, 2015 Wang Yu, a commercial attorney turned civil rights advocate, was seized.  She had been representing six schoolgirls who were abused by a school principal.  Wang Yu  The seven minute video at this site is worth watching.  Wang Yu interview  Her son, Bao Zhuoxuan,  was not permitted to leave Tianjin last year (2017) to attend college in Australia.  The government told her son that he was a national security threat, and mutilated his passport  Family responsibility This is just like ancient China – one guilty person convicts the whole family.  After a forced confession of her sins, Wang will remain under surveillance for years, with little or no access to friends and family, perhaps the rest of her life.

 Wang Yu     Source:  New York Times

I have CCP colleagues, or friends of colleagues in China, who are bereft at the moral quandary they now find themselves in.  They are forbidden to tell the truth, or say what they think – they know the truth, or what is right, or what is the law; and they are required to obey to do otherwise. 

What I want to do in this post is (briefly) review three documents – the Chinese Constitution, the advocacy of the New Citizen’s Movement, and the threats of Document No. 9.  This is a blog, not an essay, so I will let the reader do most of the work here.  But the reading is not long, and the distinctions clear.  The role of the New Citizens Movement, and others like it, in stimulating repression is quite clear.  It is as if Document No. 9 is responding directly to the perceived threat of the New Citizen’s Movement, even though the New Citizen Movement is not calling for anything that isn’t already in the Chinese Constitution. 

First, the Chinese Constitution, occasionally modified but generally intact since the 1982 major rewriting.  Chapter II describes the fundamental rights and duties of citizens –

Article 33 All persons holding the nationality of the People’s Republic of China are citizens of the People’s Republic of China.

All citizens of the People’s Republic of China are equal before the law.

The State respects and preserves human rights …

Article 34 All citizens of the People’s Republic of China who have reached the age of 18 have the right to vote and stand for election, regardless of ethnic status, race, sex, occupation, family background, religious belief, education, property status or length of residence, except persons deprived of political rights according to law.

Article 35 Citizens of the People’s Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration.

Article 36 Citizens of the People’s Republic of China enjoy freedom of religious belief.

No State organ, public organization or individual may compel citizens to believe in, or not to believe in, any religion; nor may they discriminate against citizens who believe in, or do not believe in, any religion.

The State protects normal religious activities. No one may make use of religion to engage in activities that disrupt public order, impair the health of citizens or interfere with the educational system of the State.

Religious bodies and religious affairs are not subject to any foreign domination.

Article 37 Freedom of the person of citizens of the People’s Republic of China is inviolable.

No citizen may be arrested except with the approval or by decision of a people’s procuratorate or by decision of a people’s court, and arrests must be made by a public security organ.

Unlawful detention or deprivation or restriction of citizens’ freedom of the person by other means is prohibited, and unlawful search of the person of citizens is prohibited. …

Article 40 Freedom and privacy of correspondence of citizens of the People’s Republic of China are protected by law. No organization or individual may, on any ground, infringe upon citizens’ freedom and privacy of correspondence, except in cases where, to meet the needs of State security or of criminal investigation, public security or procuratorial organs are permitted to censor correspondence in accordance with the procedures prescribed by law.

Article 41 Citizens of the People’s Republic of China have the right to criticize and make suggestions regarding any State organ or functionary. Citizens have the right to make to relevant State organs complaints or charges against, or exposures of, any State organ or functionary for violation of law or dereliction of duty; but fabrication or distortion of facts for purposes of libel or false incrimination is prohibited.

Wow.  Sounds pretty reasonable.

Second, the mission of the New Citizen’s Movement, as described by Xu Zhiyong in May of 2012, concurrent with the rise of Xi.  Following this one-sentence mission statement are several paragraphs describing what individual Chinese can do to further the movement.  To us, nothing sounds very subversive –

The goal of the New Citizens’ Movement is a free China ruled by democracy and law, a just and happy civil society with “freedom, righteousness, love” as the new national spirit.    Xu Zhiyong’s controversial essay

To push forward the New Citizens’ Movement, the New Citizen can:

Disseminate the New Citizen Spirit: Explain the “freedom, righteousness, and love” of the New Citizen Spirit by way of online posts, street fliers, t-shirt slogans, and any other method of spreading the New Citizen Spirit. The New Citizen Spirit must appear on the Internet, flourish in the streets, and, most of all, take root in the deepest part in our hearts.

Practice New Citizen Responsibility: Promise to practice New Citizen Responsibility, stand fast to New Citizen behavioral standards, reject corruption in one’s life, reject the practice of seeking private gain at the expense of the public, be loyal to good conscience and do not actively do evil, do good service for society, and mutually supervise one another to carry out this promise. The New Citizen Spirit is the spirit of commitment, sacrificing one’s profit to be an example, to maintain good conscience and righteousness, up until righteousness exists all over the Chinese nation.

Use the “Citizen” sign or other identifying methods: Citizens design their own “Citizen” insignias, and strengthen their own Citizen status and self-affirmation by wearing the insignias in everyday life.

Participate in civic life: Hold regular mealtime talks, discuss current political situation, pay close attention to people’s livelihood, care for public service as well as public policy, help the weak, serve society, promulgate fairness and justice. Every place has a group of modern citizens. Everybody needs to group together for society to progress. Unity begins with acquaintance.

Unite to share labor and coordinate work. Repost messages, file lawsuits, photograph everyday injustices, wear t-shirts with slogans, witness everyday events [specifically referring to the phenomenon of standing in a circle around someone causing a scene to witness it], participate or openly refuse to participate in elections, transcribe [things that you see happen], hold gatherings or marches or demonstrations, do performance art, and use other methods in order to jointly promote citizens’ rights movements and citizens’ non-cooperation campaigns—such as assets reporting, openness of information, opposition to corruption, opposition to housing registration stratification, freedom of beliefs, freedom of speech, and the right of election. Practice the New Citizen Spirit in action. Citizens’ power grows in the citizens’ movement.

Xu Zhiyong and other leaders of the New Citizens Movement were arrested in 2013 and sentenced to prison.  Xu was released last year, in 2017.  China Change offered a translation of his “return from captivity” post in September of 2018.  Xu Zhiyong returns   A short YouTube video explains his plans, now that he has been released from prison –  Xu Zhiyong video on plans

The New Citizen Movement promoted following the language of the Chinese Constitution (see above) although not many Chinese have ever seen their constitution or knew that it existed.  But now you can understand why “constitutionalism” was denounced by CCP as dangerous.  Following the rule of law (as suggested in the Chinese Constitution) would mean that CCP members were subject to the same laws as ordinary citizens, and that just could not be permitted.   And read the New Citizen Movement tasks listed above.  The denunciations of western evils in Document No. 9  – free speech, free press, civil society – are all right there in the New Citizens Movement manifesto.  With Document No. 9, it is as if Xi Jinping is responding to the New Citizens’ Movement directly. 

It didn’t help that Xu was also promoting transparency about the fabulous family wealth of Wen Jiabao and Xi Jinping, reported by the New York Times and Bloomberg, respectively, in the summer and fall of 2012.  Today, the NYT and Bloomberg are both still banned in China.  

Third, the infamous Document No. 9 – Compare the goals of the New Citizens Movement, and their program of advocacy, with the warnings in the now infamous Document No. 9 (below), from the spring of 2013, warning CCP members against any tolerance of the western evils attempting to destroy China.  The New Citizens’ Movement was by no means the only civil society group working for change in China, but you can see clearly the relationship between the goals and advocacy of direct action by the NCM and the warnings in Document No. 9.  The document warns against

“constitutionalism, civil society, “nihilistic” views of history, “universal values,” and the promotion of “the West’s view of media.” It also called on Party members to strengthen their resistance to “infiltration” by outside ideas, renew their commitment to work “in the ideological sphere,” and to handle with renewed vigilance all ideas, institutions, and people deemed threatening to unilateral Party rule.”  (Introduction at China File translation)

Document No. 9 appeared on April 22, 2013, a few months after the NCM manifesto and a few months after the ascension of Xi Jinping, before being deleted internally. I edit the following language from Document No. 9 liberally, providing only pertinent language on all seven of the deadly western sins, but the entirely is available at  The Infamous Document No. 9

The document is addressed to leaders, including those in the Party Committees of private businesses, probably at a senior mid-level ranking or higher.  Members are warned to resist and oppose –

  1. Promoting Western Constitutional Democracy: An attempt to undermine the current leadership and the socialism with Chinese characteristics system of governance.
  2. Promoting “universal values” in an attempt to weaken the theoretical foundations of the Party’s leadership.

…

The goal of espousing “universal values” is to claim that the West’s value system defies time and space, transcends nation and class, and applies to all humanity.

This is mainly expressed in the following ways: [The people who espouse universal values] believe Western freedom, democracy, and human rights are universal and eternal. This is evident in their distortion of the Party’s own promotion of democracy, freedom, equality, justice, rule of law, and other such values; their claim that the CCP’s acceptance of universal values is a victory for universal values,” that “the West’s values are the prevailing norm for all human civilization,” that “only when China accepts Western values will it have a future,” and that “Reform and Opening is just a process of gradually accepting universal rights.”

  1. Promoting civil society in an attempt to dismantle the ruling party’s social foundation.

…

Promoting civil society and Western-style theories of governance, they claim that building a civil society in China is a precondition for the protection of individual rights and forms the basis for the realization of constitutional democracy. Viewing civil society as a magic bullet for advancing social management at the local level, they have launched all kinds of so-called citizen’s movements.

Advocates of civil society want to squeeze the Party out of leadership of the masses at the local level, even setting the Party against the masses, to the point that their advocacy is becoming a serious form of political opposition.

 

  1. Promoting Neoliberalism, attempting to change China’s Basic Economic System.
  2. Promoting the West’s idea of journalism, challenging China’s principle that the media and publishing system should be subject to Party discipline.

…

Defining the media as “society’s public instrument” and as the “Fourth Estate;” attacking the Marxist view of news and promote the “free flow of information on the Internet;” slandering our country’s efforts to improve Internet management by calling them a crackdown on the Internet; claiming that the media is not governed by the rule of law but by the arbitrary will of the leadership; and calling for China to promulgate a Media Law based on Western principles. [Some people] also claim that China restricts freedom of the press and bang on about abolishing propaganda departments. The ultimate goal of advocating the West’s view of the media is to hawk the principle of abstract and absolute freedom of press, oppose the Party’s leadership in the media, and gouge an opening through which to infiltrate our ideology.

 

  1. Promoting historical nihilism, trying to undermine the history of the CCP and of New China.
  2. Questioning Reform and Opening and the socialist nature of socialism with Chinese characteristics.

…

These mistaken views and ideas exist in great numbers in overseas media and reactionary publications. They penetrate China through the Internet and underground channels and they are disseminated on domestic Internet forums, blogs, and microblogs, They also appear in public lectures, seminars, university classrooms, class discussion forums, civilian study groups, and individual publications. If we allow any of these ideas to spread, they will disturb people’s existing consensus on important issues like which flag to raise, which road to take, which goals to pursue, etc., and this will disrupt our nation’s stable progress on reform and development.

Western anti-China forces and internal “dissidents” are still actively trying to infiltrate China’s ideological sphere and challenge our mainstream ideology. Some of their latest major efforts include: Some people have disseminated open letters and declarations and have organized petition-signings to vocalize requests for political reforms, improvement of human rights, release of “political prisoners,” “reversing the verdict on ‘6/4’[the Tiananmen Massacre],” and other such political demands; they have made a fuss over asset disclosure by officials, fighting corruption with the Internet, media supervision of government, and other sensitive hot-button issues, all of which stoke dissatisfaction with the Party and government. Western embassies, consulates, media operations, and NGOs operating inside China under various covers are spreading Western ideas and values and are cultivating so-called “anti-government forces.” Cooking up anti-government publications overseas. Within China’s borders, some private organizations are creating reactionary underground publications, and still others are filming documentaries on sensitive subject matter, disseminating political rumors, and defaming the party and the national leadership.

 

Quite a mandate.

I described the quandary for American businesses in No Way Out.  But that is a quandary about profits and operations.  For CCP members, and rights lawyers, and journalists, and academics, and dissidents, the quandary is much more personal, about moral choices and family preservation, and threats to life and livelihood.  It is No Way Out at a different level of salience. 

A little more on attorney detentions, disappearances, prison terms, threats, and torture –

 Arrest of more than 200 civil rights lawyers followed in July, 2015 (the 709 incident).  200 lawyers detained – the 709 incident

More on New Citizens Movement

Description of 14 more lawyer cases –

14 Cases Exemplify the Role Played by Lawyers in the Rights Defense Movement, 2003–2015  By Yaxue Cao and Yaqiu Wang.  China Change,  August 19, 2015

enyce and guanxi and … chen dongfan

Fall, 2009 


Note – this was a couple of months after I began teaching full time in Hangzhou, so I was being sensitive to … everything.  Food, clothes, manners.

Ju la, or as it is sometimes written, Ru la, is an American-sixties style restaurant in the hills of Hangzhou. Chinese food, Chinese patrons, but the design is all exposed and rough-cut wood, with American nineteen-fifties advertising posters on the walls and tables that are enormous rough hewn blocks.  It is very popular, especially on Sundays.  It is a custom to go to a restaurant on Sunday, take a table, and spend two or three hours or more eating and drinking and talking.  No waiters hustling you out as you take your first bite of dessert.  It is Sunday, the one day of rest.

Ju ra       Trip Advisor – Restaurants Hangzhou

I told you about Ju la before.  It is set in the very pretty Hangzhou hills, surrounded by tea farms and trees. Birds flit and sing just outside the open windows.  We sat on the second floor, in one of the private rooms by a window with a big tree outside and some vines overhanging the window.   There were many small birds, about three inches long, with orange tops of their heads, sort of bluish bodies, and white underbodies.  Tiny and chirping and having fun. Flitting in and out of the vines and the trees.  They looked like birds somebody painted up for a Chicago Bears game, in blue and orange.

Inna Xu Yi Yin and I already had plans to go there for lunch, to plan her assault on the Hangzhou government to support young Chinese artists, as she has been doing herself for some years.  Try as she might, she could not get the Hangzhou government to support any of her artists, in any way.  She did not want money, but access – to galleries, to media, to public exposure.   I told her I knew some people in the Cultural Bureau, which is the Bureau that put on the Hangzhou Reading Festival, and maybe they could help.

As it turns out, Mr. Xiao Jun from the Cultural Bureau called me on Friday, and asked me to go with him on Sunday for lunch.   So I put the deal together for us all to meet at Ju la.

Mr. Xiao and his son picked me up at 9:30, and we drove to Ju la.  His son is 9, and has been taking English for a year.   It is pretty good, certainly better than my Chinese, and I understand my role in these events is to be the Foreigner Who Speaks English, to help the kid, let him talk with an actual meiguo (American), and not so incidentally keep up the English skills of my host.

We got some tea, and waited for Inna to come.  I brought my learning-Chinese language book (the middle school daughter of a friend of mine looked at the book and sniffed, huh, first grade).  But we exchanged words and ideas and talked about the New China (with the dad, not the kid).  Inna got up late, and called three times in the 45 minutes we waited to assure us that she was on the way.

It is probably not necessary to describe the clothing styles.  Mr. Xiao is a good guy, spent 2007 and 2008 at Nottingham getting a Master’s degree.  He is a good and smart public servant, and was dressed casually in a grey long sleeve sweater and nice pants.  His son had gym shoes and sweat pants and a down vest, also blue and orange, and a red sweater with embroidered raised enyce on the front.  Ms. Inna rushed in, a little out of breath, in her uniform.   Slightly worn blue jeans with colored patches carefully sewn into the carefully designed rips in the legs, a multicolored rope belt, and a charcoal grey turtleneck.  A black leather vest.  Imperially slim, with the frizzed hair and the huge smile and the doe eyes.  Faye Dunaway.  The room, at least, shifted.

We did introductions and ordered corn juice.  I told you before about corn juice.   Mark my words, it is coming to the US.  Hot or cold, still good.  I suppose you could add a shot of Jameson’s, if the vitamins in the corn juice were not enough.  Anyway, at this point in the lunch my role was to talk with Mr. Xiao’s son, and watch, and get caught up every now and then when someone stopped for breath. 

Inna was describing her philosophy of life, the needs of young artists in Hangzhou, her work over the last few years in doing just that, purity vs. commercialism in art, and what she would like for the future.   Mostly Mr. Xiao listened, but countered with some philosophy of his own, some perspective on government support for the arts, and advice on what to do next.

I think I was in this same meeting in Chicago about 1977 – many times.   Then, it was about storefront theaters or outdoor seating in restaurants.   Informed, reasoned, but passionate case-making on one side, and well, we have to be careful, we don’t have that much money, what might happen, and we have to follow the guidelines on the other.

Don’t get me wrong.  I think we met with the right guy.  Mr. Xiao and I had talked before about the need to change the government approach to thinking, and schools, and innovation. Mr. Xiao was my guide for the Hangzhou reading festival event, where I received the gift of books from  the vice mayor of Hangzhou, so we had spent some time together.   But he was saying what an interested and helpful bureaucrat would say.

Every now and then, I would chime in with some Wisdom about Development from America.   The role of theaters in economic development in Chicago.  The concept of an arts incubator.  Government support for artists does not mean supporting the meaning of the art, it is support for the whole of the economy of Hangzhou.  Hangzhou as the cultural center of China. The standards of measurement for art- a key issue for Mr. Xiao – were unavailable.  Van Gogh was not terribly successful during his life.   Once dead, the value of his art zoomed.  So the measure of the success of art is the death of the artist?  The only quantifiable measure is the market.   There is little difference between a reading festival and an arts festival.  Both are designed to get people to think differently about their world.   La Villita Little Village in San Antonio, as an arts colony that became a tourist destination in town.  The stated goal of the central government to increase tourism to China over the next few years (2018 note – this was in 2009).  The reason why the government should do this (or something) is that some amount of failure is expected.  If success could be measured, if the externalities were few, then a private business could do this (whatever it is).   That success is measured over twenty years, not two months.   So the government role in supporting the development of the artists is a natural economic consequence of the nature of the good, art.   In twenty years, Hangzhou will be thankful it started something now.

My role was to be the objective foreign voice.  I couldn’t think of anything else.

Mr. Xiao was talking about the usefulness of soft power, another central government idea that is floating around now.  That the arts are a form of soft power.   I asked his son to open his vest, showing everyone the enyce on his sweater.   Neither Mr. Xiao nor Inna knew what that meant, but I explained, and demonstrated the soft power of NYC, regardless of the commercial origin of the sweater.   So Mr. Xiao understood.

We all left about 2:30, Mr. Xiao to drive me back to school and Inna in her white Range Rover.   The next step is for Inna to meet with the No. 1, the Party leader, in the Cultural Bureau.  He would make the final determination about access.

All in all, not bad for a Sunday afternoon sitting next to Inna with the Government across the table.   So Ju la is where I brokered my first deal.  I not only know what the word guanxi means, I think I have it, and have now used it. 

Postscript – About a year later, Inna got a commission for her star young artist, Chen Dongfan, to decorate the exterior of two buildings in the neighborhood of Liu Xia, the town in Hangzhou about three miles from ZUST, my school.  Inna now has a gallery and studio space in Hangzhou and a gallery in New York  Inna Contemporary Art Space  and Chen has exhibited in shows across Europe.    Pictures of the building art below –

Chen dongfan, the author, and Brenna, my daughter –  May, 2011

 

 

You can see more of Chen’ work at –

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/chen-dongfans-mural-on-doyers-street-1329968

and the work at Inna’s studios –

http://www.innart.org/en/

http://www.innart.org/en/artist/about/7b6eww.html

Inna at linked-in   https://www.linkedin.com/in/inna-xu-67818b66

The Mysterious Parking Garage Market

Tea party activists and Randians and market fundamentalist miss some things about the real world.   One is the distinction between free markets and competitive markets.  Free markets are for one-off deals with buyers and sellers who don’t know each other, have equal power in the market, will not see each other again, and don’t convey any information about the transaction to the rest of the market.  One-off deals are the métier for people like our current dear leader.  Except for the equal power in the marketplace bit.

All competitive markets have some rules.   Rules evolve, perhaps without the intervention from government regulation, and the system works repeatedly.   Supply shows up, demand shows up, demand and supply are satisfied, and markets clear.

This is a good story.   There are some details that get glossed over, however, and one of them is in whose interests the rules of the market are written.  And this is really about power – not just market power, but sometimes physical power or power to withhold service or power to delay.

Fundamentalists on these matters can claim that even the rules of the market are market-driven – that is, there is some discussion, bargaining, negotiation, over the rules. 

And that is true.   As long as supply needs some demand, there must be a way to make the demand come back the next time.   So “market-friendly”  rules consider some of the needs of the buyers in the market.

But, caveats.  Sometimes, the supply in the market does not create its own demand – Say, as we say, is wrong.   Say’s Law    (Yes, I know, Say was talking about a general glut of products, and later changed his view.  Here, I am only concerned about a general glut of parking spaces, with waiting demand, and … the market fails to work).

Sometimes, the supply could not care less about demand, because the supply exists for reasons other than to meet demand.   We don’t always see the reasons, but they certainly exist, even if shrouded in mystery.  Sometimes, artists just like to make art.  But there can be more prosaic reasons that excess supply exists in the presence of obvious demand.

Parking garages near the Hangzhou Pregnant Women’s Hospital are a good example.    The hospital, and two other big hospitals within two blocks, are all located close to xihu, the big lake that is the focal point of Hangzhou.   This is not really downtown, in the sense of lower Manhattan downtown, but it is Columbus Circle downtown, in terms of people on the street, taxis, bikes, motorbikes, buses, trucks, with the added challenge that it is China, and only free market rules about which side of the road to drive on, or walk on, or just stand still on.

There are thousands of people, sick, healthy, family, friends, doctors, nurses, garbage trucks, food supply trucks, medical supply trucks, all trying to get into or out of the hospital in the period 6:00 AM to 10:00 AM.

It is fair to say that parking for cars is limited.   In all of our visits to the area, and to the hospitals, I have found only two real public parking lots within, say, a mile.   There is other parking, but it is only for customers of a particular hotel, or restaurant, or business.    General public parking, for those who want to visit xihu, or go shopping on the street, or go to the hospitals, is tough.   The Pregnant Women’s Hospital does have a designated parking garage of its own, but that is for doctors and administrative staff.  Husbands of women who have already given birth are also allowed to park there.  One of the benefits of having a baby.

The two public lots – actually, they are one big underground lot, with two levels and entrances and exits on opposite sides of the street –  are very convenient to the hospitals – about a block away from all three hospitals.   And if you get there by 6:30 in the morning, you can drive right in, find a spot (there are plenty of parking lot attendants to guide you to empty spots on both levels) and be on your way.   But by 7:30 or so, the parking lot management decides to limit demand satisfaction – to ration supply.   They block off the entrances, and limit access to one car every few minutes, from 3 to 10 minutes per car.

One could understand some reasons to ration demand, if spaces are reserved for doctors, or hospital use, or something.  But even doctors come to work by 9:00, or 10:00, and the parking lots are still limiting entry, and the doctors would have no other way to get into the lot other than sitting in line with everyone else, so such a rule makes no sense.

I mean, it really makes no sense.   At 7:30, or 9:00, or 10:00, there are plenty of available spaces inside the garage.   Many.  Scores, to hundreds.   With no one parking in them.   During the course of the workday, the garage never comes close to capacity.

The parking is not free.   Not expensive, but you might think that the market rules in this case are being written by the forces of supply in the market, and the rules are written to maximize profit.    But that is clearly not the case, with so many available spots and dozens of cars lined up, around the blocks, in two lines, one line for each entrance, waiting to get in.    The wait to get into the parking lot, at 8:30 in the morning, ranges from 45 to 90 minutes.  (see note 1, below)

So there must be some other rule being observed, or some other principle maximized.

Maybe the parking lot management wants to raise fees, and is waiting to build demand before implementing a rate change.   But with so many cars waiting outside, every day, for months on end, that makes no sense.

It is China.  Maybe spaces are being reserved in case Hu Jintao (this was written in early 2012) or somebody, wants to come inspect the parking garage, and there will be 50 or 100 spaces waiting to satisfy demand from the entourage when they show up unexpectedly.   But even in China, that makes no sense.

It is China.   Maybe the parking lot attendants, unbeknownst to the management, are doing a little business on the side, taking some cars in before others, in exchange for a little hui lu- a bribe.   But again, there are no cars coming in any side entrance, or going around the other cars in line.   So that makes sense, but does not seem to be happening.

It is China.   The parking lot underground is really big, and on two levels, and the attendants are not using radios to communicate, so perhaps, in consideration of the customers, the attendants are making sure that there are spots available before letting the next car in.    Maybe there is a communication problem – the guys directing cars into spaces have to tell the next guy down the line that there is still another spot available, and that information gets passed to about six people, and takes about 3 to 10 minutes, before it gets to the guy who removes the “parking lot full” sign for the one next car.   It is China, and that could make sense, but even in China, the attendants would probably show enough initiative to count higher than one, and allow two cars in at a time.

Perhaps the vacant spaces are reserved for individuals, who own the space and would want to have it always available.  Perhaps.  But I don’t think ownership of parking spaces would work in a location such as this, and in any case, there were always scores of empty spaces.  Wouldn’t some enterprising parking lot manager make some deals?

Unlike my suggestions above, there could be simpler, even stupider explanations – air pollution regulations limit the number of engines running within the garage at any one time (sure);  the parking lot management is concerned about pedestrian safety (to exit or enter the garage, people on foot have to mix with the car traffic on the ramps, a no-no in the US) – (right – although it is certainly possible to receive such an explanation, given with a straight face);  the government of Hangzhou, in attempts to limit traffic, provides limits on parking garage access – this is actually sort of plausible, even if ridiculously stupid.   The heavy traffic jams within two blocks all around, due to cars lined up to get into the garage, would be eliminated with more “market friendly” access policies.

All the times my wife and I visited the hospital I parked in this lot, so I have some experience.  The 45 to 90 minute wait after 8:30 is no joke.  But parking is extremely tight everywhere.  One of the most ingenious ways of getting around the restricted supply of parking spaces was undertaken by a woman right in front of me in the line.  We were both sufficiently close to the entrance gate that no other car could pass us or take our space.  We were on the downward slope into the underground garage.  But the woman had no intention of parking in the garage.  She had an errand to run – perhaps ten minutes, or fifteen.  She waited in the line of cars until she was almost in the garage, then got out of her car, took the keys, and went and ran her errand.  Got back, nothing about the line had changed.  She got back in the car, did a u-turn in the combined entry-exit driveway, drove out, and was on her way.  Free parking.   I think this is what Bob Hariman, or James Scott, calls local knowledge.  Fabulous.  This is something about making the system work to your advantage.

About the parking lot – I confess to being at a loss.  I always say that there are many ways to solve any problem, but …. It is a mystery.   I would like to demonstrate the intricacies of the market, or of China, but I am stumped.    The point I want to make, though, is that in this market, such as it is, the supply makes the rules, and the demand can only choose to respond or go on driving around the block.    The rules don’t seem to be in the interests of the supply, either.  It is a puzzle.   A mystery.  This sort of thing should be undefined.     And it is at this point that Chinese themselves shrug their shoulders and utter the standard comment –  you know, it is China.  It’s fuza – complicated.   Say’s law is clearly wrong – there can be a general glut of parking spaces in this garage, even in the face of excess demand.  Somewhere, money must be involved.

Note 1- the line of cars waiting to get into the parking garage for the hospitals has plenty of precedents.  For many shopping malls – I am thinking of yintai near xihu (bastardized English as InTime), or the xichen square mall on wensan lu, or even MixMall in the new CBD, there can be a line of twenty or more cars waiting to get into the underground garage, on a normal evening at xichen, or weekend anytime at yintai or MixMall.   The parking lots can and do fill up, and the wait can be ten to twenty minutes even before the lot is full.

One has to question the design – it is not as if cars in modern China just appeared five years ago, and the shopping malls are very high standard in terms of store quality.  No one is walking in, or even taking a motorbike.   But there too, it is fuza – complicated. 

Libertarian Health Care

November, 2012 and updated 

Personal responsibility and preservation of power .. 

This was written just before and after the birth of our son, and was my take on the medical system.  I could not vouch personally for more than a few hospitals, perhaps six to eight, but stories from over the years, including doctors being murdered by enraged patients or family, confirms that my views expressed here are representative. 

What I saw every day –

Source: Gilles Sabrié, The New York Times at
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/01/chinas-health-care-crisis-lines-before-dawn-violence-and-no-trust.html

Just for fun, I looked online for stock photos of Chinese hospitals, doctors, and patients.  This site below has dozens of photos of what I never saw any day at any time.  Take a look, just for fun –

https://www.istockphoto.com/photos/china-hospital?sort=mostpopular&mediatype=photography&phrase=china%20hospital

My article below is from 2012, but not inaccurate now for that.   The Systemic problem cannot be solved by Mr. Xi, regardless of how stringent the anti-corruption campaign becomes.  It is common for people to offer hongbao (red envelopes) as gifts to doctors, teachers, business associates, and government officials from whom one would appreciate a good result.  The anti-corruption campaign does not change that behavior, nor does it change the grinding down of people as they try to obtain medical services. The picture below is representative of the typical room in the pregnant women’s hospital.  Four or five women side by side in a room, before and after the birth.  The VIP room – a single room – might require a hongbao.

Bribery serves as life-support for Chinese hospitals.  Arku Jasmine.  Graphic Online, July 24, 2013.https://www.graphic.com.gh/international/international-news/bribery-serves-as-life-support-for-chinese-hospitals.html

Those who followed my reporting over a span of years noted that my attitude in China changed when Qing became pregnant.  As I read back, that seems right.  My concerns then became about more than head colds and what amazing stimulus was I going to experience next week.  I was in the day-to-day lived experience of 1.3 billion other people.  Oh – one more thing.  Now, in 2018, there is no evidence that Keynes is the author of the quote below.  So, I should say, attributed to Keynes by Samuelson. 

Calling All Libertarians!

A couple of years ago, I wrote about Brenna and I going to the hospital to check on a chest and throat cold, and I described how easy and efficient and inexpensive the experience was. Now, I find myself in the position of Keynes when challenged by a political rival for changing his views on some issue of current affairs, retorted, “When the conditions change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the preservation of the System in hospital design.
The System design, for control and power, is preserved. And really, power conservation is not so unusual. But what I want to write about now is what accompanies power conservation, and that is the conservation of stupidity and laziness and acceptance of the status quo and “that’s not my job” attitude, even among people who are otherwise reasonably intelligent and have at least some modicum of training. And how the System allows for that. The System requires grinding people down.  The tools are mystery, lack of information, long lines to receive – not service, but a ticket to get service later.  Lack of information is the key.  When people do not have the ability to make sense of the System, whatever it is, they make up stories, including stories about leader power and efficacy of at-home remedies. And when people do get information from an official source, they have to choose – to rely on that message as Truth, or mistrust it as they have learned a thousand times before.  In the Chinese medical system, one confronts official mystery head-on.

In 2012, there began some noise about western hospitals looking to go to China – presumably in search of profits, not better health care for the world.  Even at that time, I thought – from my completely uninformed position in the American and Chinese medical markets and systems – that this was a poor plan.  To come in to a System, to have one entry point in a complex arrangement of sinews and choke points and flows of goods and patients and money – and expect to either reform the System or extract profit from it – this would seem an ultimate hubris.  Now, in 2018, I don’t see much change from 2012.  Perhaps there has been some due diligence going on.  The medical system is the government system in China.  There is a small private piece of the market, but it is of little consequence overall. In the vast majority of cases, it is the government hospital, government doctors, that Chinese will choose to trust.  After all – as has been the case in China for two thousand years – a private provider of a service has an incentive to cheat you.  In theory, the government provider should have no conflicted goals.

There are private market hospitals in the major cities including Hangzhou, particularly for pregnant women.  We looked at a couple of them.  They are close approximations to what I would expect from a pregnant women’s hospital in the US.  I was impressed.  Qing was more circumspect.  The hospitals are designed to serve 22-year old Chinese girls, who can pop babies out like candy.  Qing was almost twice as old, and the private hospitals were really not set up for medical complications, which old moms might have.  We chose the state-owned Hangzhou Pregnant Women’s Hospital, a couple of blocks from Xihu. This is a highly recommended hospital with the top rating of hospitals in China.  I used several connections to get us a VIP room at the hospital, which usually required not only guanxi but a reservation four or five months in advance.  Calls were made, and our reservation was confirmed.  Pretty much like the Hyatt, which was also just a couple of blocks away.  The story begins –

We are at D-Day minus 1. After class, we leave for the hospital, with suitcases and bags full of household goods. The plan is to stay for a week, since the delivery is to be by Caesarian.  Qing is pretty small, and she is not 19 years old, and natural birth might be tougher. The idea has been to do the birth by Caesarian since the beginning of seeing doctors, about 9 months ago.

We got to the hospital about 1:30 in the afternoon, Qing and her sister and I, and we went to the 8th floor of building 2 to see the doctor. This is the doctor Qing has seen for the last few months, and she is supposed to do the delivery tomorrow afternoon, after lunch. Say, about 2:00. This was just a quick hello, look-at-the-stomach visit, about ten minutes tops. Then, off to pay the money. Everything is paid in advance. Makes it easier for the hospital if you have complaints or a crisis, and want to take issue with the service. They already have – not only your money, but your bank account information. No credit cards – no intermediary to assist in a dispute, a la American Express.  Cash, or direct withdrawl. The hospital can presumably drain your bank account, if they want. Not sure they need the nicety of a signature on a receipt, and, as I tell my negotiation class, so you have a receipt.  If you don’t agree with the result, or have a problem, what to do, now?  In libertarian China, cash is king.  And people have to take personal responsibility for their health care, in ways that Americans could not imagine.

At about 3:00, we were in the room and registered. Not bad, considering all the prior SBB (stupid beyond belief) events of the previous months. This was the process.

Signing in took only about ten minutes, as well. Much faster when people have to take personal responsibility for their medical care. I mean, there was no worry about insurance. This is due to the manner in which health insurance works in China. Instead of the insurance company standing between you and the medical establishment, the insurer simply reimburses you for your prior expenses. You collect all the bills, invoices, statements you have accumulated over the last 9 months, and submit them as a package to the insurer.

The insurer then decides how much they want to pay, and after some time, they send you money. There does not seem to be any knowledge anywhere about what insurers will pay for and not pay for – certainly, no agent standing between you and the insurer. There does seem to be general knowledge that pregnancy is not considered an insurable event – I mean, personal responsibility again – if you are pregnant, that is your doing. You probably had a hand in the deal, or were at least in some way complicit, so this puts you in a moral hazard position. You could have not gotten pregnant, had you just been careful. How can we insure against such irresponsible behavior?

So the insurance company will pay for some things, and pay for some parts of pregnancy and childbirth at a lower rate. Apparently, you don’t know what they will cover or not, and there is no negotiation involved. As with many things in China, you simply take what you get. If you want to know why something did not get paid, you confront the System. Don’t forget the end-of-discussion put-off – ‘No why.”

The pay-in-advance health insurance system does have additional benefits for the insurance companies. Can you keep straight all the invoices and bills for medicine, and doctors, and tests, and hospital visits, for a major surgery? Think you might misplace one or two in the battlefield chaos that characterizes walking around the hospital in China? You are standing in line, to pay, to get a number, to see the doctor, to get a test, running from floor to floor without clear directions as to which office to go into, all the while keeping your medical records and receipts and schedules in a clear plastic pocket file.  You know, the kind of files that you might put receipts in, to add up at the end of the year to do income taxes. That is the preferred means of storing medical records here.  All this running around is done while pregnant, and fighting through the hordes of people all trying to do the same deciphering of the System.  God forbid you should have to go to the bathroom somewhere in the process, and lose your place in line.  You are constantly taking pieces of paper out of the pocket file, putting paper in, showing to this clerk or nurse or that one, making sure the paper is stamped, and stamped properly.  Think you might misplace a receipt?

If you do need a duplicate bill for some piece of the service, are you really going to go stand in line for another couple of hours at the hospital to do that? Take a day off from work to run through the labyrinth? Maybe better to just eat some bitterness, as is the age-old phrase in China.

The insurance companies make out ok in another respect. The sheer volume of crowds, and the delay, and the personal care 
of medical records (with attendant possibility of loss, or false recording, or missing information) mean that many illnesses that are covered by insurance probably do not get treated, or they get treated to a very low level of quality. The government claims that 95% of Chinese have health insurance.  That is no doubt true, as true as any statement in extremity can be.

Cost savings from lost records, geographic isolation, and extremely limited coverage are passed on to the government and the insurance companies.  And really, what good is an insurance system that can’t make money?  In China, we should always be thinking of the greater good – that of the System.  George Orwell understood very well.

Take heart attacks, or cancer. No doubt whatsoever that
 the crowds and delay and general incompetence – not to mention lack of availability and coverage –  kill a lot of
 people before they would die in some other parts of the world.  We have a new hospital not ten minutes driving from our apartment.  But in the difficult world of traffic and non-yielding of drivers to emergency vehicles, that ten minute trip could easily expand to an hour or more.
  And don’t forget that the largest businesses in China, including
 the health insurance companies, are state owned. So the
 government and the companies have some common interests -
they have moral hazard problems, as we say in micro class. 
The State designs the health care system. The insurance
 companies live in it. But both have an interest in keeping medical care costs down. I am not trying to be too flip about this – a little, but not too much – the organizational
 design reminds me of the joke about hitting a pedestrian
 with your car – better to kill him, than injure him. Back up and roll over him again, if you need to. The State designs 
the system for delay, and inattention, and grinding, from building design to scheduling of visits to provision of care to reimbursement for expenses. The State 
helps the insurance companies by keeping too many people 
from getting care that is too good. Good care would mean more costs for the insurance companies. Lower profits mean lower GDP growth.  It is really the case that some Chinese just choose not to go to the hospital rather than enter the System.

In the US, we have had the discussions about providing health care for most Americans. The concept is that providing decent preventive care, and decent routine care, will prevent much more costly emergency care when there is a crisis. But this is different systemic thinking than in China.  The health care system does not work well for many people in either place; but I venture to say that the system works better for the majority of people in the US, even at ruinous costs in premiums, than it does in China, where premium costs are less but service and availability and coverage and information are much less.

Keep in mind that we are living in the capital of one of the three or four wealthiest provinces in China. We are in the Zhejiang Province Pregnant Women’s Hospital, the hospital generally acknowledged here as the best place to be.

So other hospitals, in other places, are not as good, even in Hangzhou. And there are other cities in Zhejiang Province. And there are other cities in China. And there is the rural countryside, where some medical care is now provided but sort of at a “first-aid” level of service. There is a lot of faith in folklore and tales and medicinal herbs and Chinese culture, though. Easier, faster, less expensive, and for many things, just might work.

In the US, the insurance companies want the government to provide coverage, or demand that people buy it. The companies will make out like bandits – more customers, more profits. But in China, my guess is that there is no such 
push from insurance companies to provide more health coverage for rural people, or to improve the level of care for urban people. More coverage for rural people just means that the government has to pay more to the insurance companies for the care. A higher level of care would mean that some people would live longer, and require more services. And improving the quality of care would just cost more money. Where is the benefit? How does providing more care improve GDP?

You begin to understand how big companies in China can be
 so profitable. I mean, there are plenty of other reasons -
sweetheart contracts, and soft budget constraints on state-owned companies, and cooking the books, if needed. But
 costs of providing services, whatever the business, are low – 
labor costs are typically 70% or so of business costs, even in the US.  In China, land costs are a much greater portion of overall costs than in the US – either acquisition costs or rental costs.  And labor is cheap in China, even with rising salaries and some overstaffed organizations. And, in general, the level of service provided, in relation to the costs, is poor.  For many things, the costs to the customer in China are higher than in the US – cars, apartments, clothes, electronics, household appliances, furniture. There is a large 
enough middle class to pay for the extra costs. But there is a huge part of the population that is left out of the market, and no short term way to bring them into the market. And, even 
if a couple of hundred million more people can be brought into
 the system, the quality of what is purchased is often quite poor.
 You remember me bringing suitcases full of cosmetics, vitamins, baby formula, and electronics to China on my trips back from Chicago.
 All the same goods are available in China, same packaging, quite possibly made in China, but people in China trust what is made in
 the US, or at least imported into the US from China and then sent back to China, more than the same stuff made in China and distributed in China.
 The lack of enforcement of quality controls, inability to control the supply chain, lack of enforcement of intellectual property laws, and the lax treatment of copying, means that people in China have no
 confidence that the Louis Vuitton bag in the LV store in China is really an LV bag – or that the drugs purchased in the Watson’s, or the hospital pharmacy, are real.  And they have no confidence that the 
Elizabeth Arden face cream, or the Robitussen cough medicine,
 same box as in the US, same labels, is not made in some
 garage using waste products for raw materials. So, the same model Mercedes Benz car that is made in Germany costs much more than the Mercedes Benz car made in China, and the difference is not only in import fees and shipping.

So, suffice it to say that the level of service in the hospital reflects the design of the culture. The System is designed for mystery and conservation of power.  The System is designed not to provide information, and not to make personal decision-making easy. When people cannot get the information they need to make decisions, they resort to whatever might seem to give them a hint as to quality – rumor, online evaluations (even if those, too, are fake), smell, trust obtained through personal guanxi.  The result is a herd instinct – quality detected in one arena leads to great market demand, and distortion of prices.  There is a saying about quality in China – “People don’t know.  Money knows.” Meaning that price is a strong indicator of quality.  That might be more true in China than in the US, with its regulation and inspections and ability to sue and free media.

The room in the hospital is actually sort of ok. We are paying an extra 40,000 yuan for one of the VIP rooms on one of the upper floors.  The VIP rooms separate the officers, as it were, from the enlisted men. The lower floors have the enlisted women’s delivery and recovery rooms. Four or five women to a room, beds lined up like in an episode of MASH, although with the beds closer together and probably not quite as sanitary as the MASH units actually were.

We have one of the officer’s quarters rooms. Bright, lots of recessed lights, flat screen tv, microwave. As befits the Chinese interpretation of hospital room as hotel room, there is a mini-fridge, a bathroom with one of those Japanese electronic toilets that do all those things that we don’t really know about, and you are afraid to push any buttons because you don’t know what might squirt you and with what and where. And lots and lots of closet space. More than in our apartment. Shelves, places to store boxes, like people are moving in for a week. Which, actually, I guess, they are. There is a couch that folds into a bed, for the spouse or relative to sleep on. There is one not so nice chair, and a small dresser. The afternoon light is good, and we are high up enough to get only background traffic noise, which to me is ok – some awareness of what is going on outside, while our own intense attention and activity is focused inside.

It turns out that we needed the closet and shelf space.  I did not understand why we left our apartment in Hangzhou with so much … stuff – towels and bed linens and plastic bowls.  Turns out that we have rented a hotel room, although a fairly low class hotel at that.  Customers bring their own bed linens, towels, bowels for washing and cleaning.  The hospital provides very nearly nothing except a bed with one set of sheets and blankets.

It is now 4:15 in the afternoon. Qing is off doing other tests, ultrasound, blood tests. When she returned, I thought that we could order food from the hospital for lunch, or dinner.  Wrong again.  Our hotel room is not American plan. If you want food, you can buy it from the hospital restaurant (in the VIP rooms, you order from a menu. In the enlisted men’s – or women’s – rooms, your choice is the shitang, the dining hall, with military grade dining).  In the majority of cases, the patient’s family brings food in from outside and mix and heat up ingredients in the room.  It is up to the family to make sure the patient gets a proper diet, even after an operation –  again, taking personal responsibility for health care.  And again, this is the VIP room.

Events for tomorrow are shaping up as follows – morning, nothing. Watch tv. After lunch, about 1:30, the main events begin. Operation will take about 90 minutes, including recovery time, and they don’t give Qing any relaxant, or pill to get her a bit groggy, much before the operation. At this point, I am expecting to have some details to report by about 3:00 our time.

Signing off for now. More when events warrant.

Update. At 2:00 AM, Qing’s water broke. She called the nurse, using the call button. Nurse comes, surveys the situation. Does nothing. For those of you who have not yet figured this out, China can be a libertarian’s wet dream. It is personal responsibility all the way. As I mentioned before, the hospital room is really more like renting a hotel room. There is a bed, and some closets. But no towels, cups, glasses. One bottle of nearly empty hand soap. As with a hotel room, there is a shower with small bottles of liquid soap, shampoo, some 
other kind of lotion. But no washcloths or towels. There is one box of tissues, and a reasonably full container of toilet
paper, but those items are not replenished when empty. Bring your own. What was in the room when we walked in was left over by the previous tenant – and not taken away by the cleaning staff.  Personal responsibility dictates that you bring your own towels, washcloths, tissues, toilet paper. The hospital provides a room, and a once-a-day change of sheets.  If the sheets get soiled, or wet – as in, a pregnant woman’s water breaking – well, too bad. You should have thought of that when you moved in. Wait until tomorrow to change the sheets.

So, back to water breaking –

There are people here who walk around with white uniforms, and are called “nurses,” but I doubt their competence. They refuse to answer any but the simplest questions, and they refuse to do any work. So the “nurse” who comes in to survey the damage from the water breaking does so, I think, only so she can file a report saying that the water broke. All the clean up, all the replacement of sheets, is done by anyone else in the room other than the people who are paid to work at the hospital. Same thing for assistance in bed pan use. In the hospital in China, you make provisions for your own bed pan changes. Personal responsibility. When the water breaks, the only reaction of the nursing and doctor staff is to ask us – us – whether we want to wait for the regular doctor, at about 2:00 PM as originally scheduled, do the operation now, at 2:00 AM, or try to do natural child birth.

The question is presented as you would ask someone if you want fries with that, and the answer is expected to be about as thoughtful. No questions allowed, other than the most simplistic. No information on what others do, no consideration of age or particular situation, no consideration of progress in having contractions. Personal responsibility. You decide about your medical care. When you decide, the hospital will deliver the goods, as it were. But you cannot ask about consequences, you cannot get information on common practice, you cannot ask what someone with – you know, some medical training – would do in a similar circumstance. For us, the demand for a decision is a false choice, since there is no harm in waiting at least until the morning, and that is what I suggest to Qing. She agrees. So we wait.

There are bed mats, of a sort, that one can put under a person who is draining anything, to absorb the liquids and sort of prevent the patient from having to lie in his or her own excretions. You can buy them in the stores in the US, for use at home. You change them as needed.

The retail market for such mats is big in China, because people have to bring their own to the hospital. And, you know, if you bring it, you should install it. So the nursing staff will not change the mats. You can throw the used ones in the corner, and maybe tomorrow someone will come by to pick it up. This is the VIP level of service in one of the most sophisticated hospitals in Zhejiang Province. God help you if have only one person to assist you in the hospital. You need two people to lift up the patient and remove the used mat and put the clean one underneath.

Which brings up a larger question – what happens to the person who does not have two or three or four family members who do not have to work, who can take days off at a time to provide round the clock care to a relative in the hospital?  You can rent assistance – farm women are available outside the hospital to come in and be surrogate family for a few hours or a few days.  You can imagine their level of care in changing sheets, bedpans, and cleaning up.  My guess is that people who need to rent such help have a high rate of infections or other complications. But no need to worry about the hospital – personal responsibility. No worry about malpractice lawsuits.

The suggestion of trying natural child birth is an interesting proposal. In the prior 9 months, no one thought that natural child birth would be a good idea for Qing, given her physical size and age. Now, you know, neither the doctors nor the nurses nor the hospital generally have any information about Qing whatsoever. Patients provide their own medical history and “chart” information. The hospital has approximately the information that a hotel would have about its customers.  So I suppose one could forgive a 14 year-old candy striper volunteer for making the natural child birth suggestion to Qing and me. But that is not supposed to be the sort of person we are dealing with. We are supposed to be talking to a “nurse” – one with surgical or at least obstetric experience – we are on the VIP floor of the Pregnant Women’s Hospital. So the only justification I can see for offering the natural child birth option is that the hospital would make more money. Now it is true, with natural child birth, the delivery cost is less, and a woman only stays in the hospital for 3 days instead of 7.  But as is often the case, I think, Chinese are playing a different game than we would play in the US. A personal responsibility game. If you begin the natural child birth, and then have to switch to the Caesarian due to complications, then the hospital charges you for both procedures. I knew that. Trusting soul that I am, I asked that question a few days before, when we did the tour of the VIP floor. Beat them at their own game, that time, I did. So the suggestion to try natural child birth is actually to request an upgrade in service, albeit one that might end up costing us double. But, you say, what about the difference in the money received for 3 days hotel room rental instead of 7 days? Doesn’t that still provide a loss for the hospital, if you opt for the natural over Caesarian? Not necessarily. You have to consider turnover. If the hospital can process two births in the time once reserved for one, the increase in payments to the hospital is not so marginal. So – the hospital proposal is, try the natural child birth, which, if you find you cannot do it, we charge you for two births; and if you do the natural child birth, and it works, we can squeeze another customer into the schedule, with another birth and the attendant extra costs.

There are other complications. Our doctor, who works every day at the hospital, and only sees patients with a fair amount of guanxi, and probably sends most of her customers to the VIP floors, does not seem to have the same status on the VIP floors as the doctors assigned to the VIP floors.  Perhaps this is because our regular doctor gets different kickbacks than the full time doctors on staff – I really don’t know, but that is a fair guess. The regular doctors assigned to the VIP floor get an end of the year bonus if they take business away from the other doctors, or something. Only speculation on my part, but I am confident that such a system could be possible. So the nurses on the floor are sort of pushing us in the direction of not waiting for our “regular” doctor to do the operation. The nurses probably get a cut of the doctor’s bonus.

Qing wanted to wait, but the contractions started coming pretty often, and by 7:00 AM, we are down to four minutes, lasting about two minutes.
We decide to do the operation now. The hospital staff concurred with our excellent decision – get Qing in and out early, and perhaps the processing of regularly scheduled Caesarian births could still be maintained.  A woman comes by with a bed, to transfer Qing to the operating room. The woman does nothing. We (Qing’s sisters and I) transfer Qing to the bed. The hospital woman stands there. We put the railings up on the sides of the bed, and we wheel the bed down the hall. The woman does provide directions, though. I have to give her credit for that. Real personal responsibility would have demanded that we stop and ask for directions to the operating room, a couple of floors away.

Contempt is the word that comes to mind – my feelings about the hospital and staff. I know they are subject as well to the System grinding down process, but I cannot feel sympathy for their situation, since I detect none in them for us. I asked, or Qing asked, a “nurse” about the frequency of contractions, and strength, and duration. All are indicative of progress in birth process. I know that to ask such questions is high impertinence, but that is just who I am. The “nurse” was able to tell us that contractions five minutes apart were closer than contractions that were 10 minutes apart. She did volunteer, though, that stronger contractions were more significant than milder ones. She must have taken the extra credit classes in nursing school.

When we get to the operating room, all is ready – if they can start by 7:15, they can finish by 9:00 when the regularly scheduled customers start to arrive. Maintain the schedule. The doctors give Qing a sedative and anesthetic.  They start to cut on her stomach before the anesthetic fully kicks in, but that is ok.  The doctors remain on schedule.

Ben is born about 8:45 AM, November 2, 2012.  He is fine, and Qing is as fine as she can be, given what she has gone through.  Done by 9:00.  Phew.  Got in and out just in time.

At one point, about 1:30 in the afternoon of November 2, when Qing and the baby are trying to sleep after a trying morning, three different “nurses” came into the room in a span of about 25 minutes. This is what they did – one turned on the lights and woke everyone to check Qing’s blood pressure – which is already being constantly monitored on a screen, and certainly does not require turning on any lights; second one comes in to wake up Qing to take her temperature, which really doesn’t require waking her; third one comes in to take the baby’s temperature, waking him up in the process. My guess is that in the US, the over-regulated, too-expensive US, one nurse would be able to handle all three of those difficult tasks. She might come in just as you and the baby were trying to sleep, and turn on the light, but it would only happen once. By the way, this sort of invasion happened again, later in the afternoon, when again all of us were trying to get some sleep.

At about 4:00 in the afternoon, the “nurse” who is supposed to show us all how to put the baby on the nipple, found that the baby had pooped, and the diaper needed to be changed.  I have already told you that “nurses” here do virtually nothing – they do not change out catheter bags, for instance – again, more taking personal responsibility for health care – but this “nurse” proceeded, probably against the training of the last 60 years of Chinese culture, to change the baby’s diaper for us, wiping off the poop from his butt.  She did, however, expect to stop after two cursory wipes, when poop was still stuck everywhere on the kid’s bottom. I had to go from spot to spot, pointing out, three times, where this (deleted) “nurse” had yet to actually clean the kid off. If the kid got diaper rash, no doubt they would blame the ignorant foreigner parent.

Not changing out catheter bags, by the way, means that the family has to bring several plastic bowls, pretty big, to the hospital.  So that is what the plastic bowls are for – to catch drainage or leakage in process.  At least one to empty out things like catheter bags, or maybe store the soiled bed mats until someone can come by and take them away. My plan is to just dump all the waste outside the door, and let someone else clean it up. I think my years in China have taught me how to be more Chinese.

Pain management does get a high level of attention in the Chinese hospital. The key goal is to keep costs down, so patients are expected to just sort of grin and bear it. It is now Saturday morning, about 24 hours after the birth. Qing has been in some pain since yesterday afternoon, at the site of insertion of some drip. She has asked for something for the pain, but the “nurse” came in, talked to her for a moment, and assured Qing that everything was ok.  She was offered some sort of temporary relief via a shot – but, personal responsibility again, we were warned that the shot would cost extra. For most people, pain should just be overcome, like a good communist soldier. For the cause.

And that is the end of it. Qing sent me home for some sleep last night. No doubt that I needed it, but I think she also sent me home to keep me from physically harming a “nurse” who tells me that pain is ok. Grin and bear it.

The thing that knocks me out is that the population goes along with this lunacy. If the “nurse” says it is ok, well, then. It is her experience that triumphs the pain of the individual. The patient is just supposed to be more stoic, more Buddhist, more Daoist, I dunno, offer it up to Jesus, or something. Grinding.

I am convinced at this point that it would have been less expensive, and more efficient, and with higher level of care, if we had just rented a regular hotel room in a hotel, and then hired a doctor and some real nurses to take care of Qing and the baby for a week. I would be willing to fly them over. There are reports of good expat hospitals in Beijing and Shanghai. But so far, not in the capital of one of the three or four richest provinces in China. After all, China is still a developing country. And for all those libertarians in the US, maybe progress in medical care in China has gone about as fur as it can go.  Like the World’s Fair in St. Louis in 1904.  With regard to personal responsibility, it is about the best of all possible worlds.  “Progress” would almost certainly mean the hospital taking on more risk.

Some liberal bleeding heart reading this in the US might want to stick up for the underdog hospital and medical system in this story. After all, it is a different culture. It is China. Chinese women’s bodies are different from those of women in America, I am told.  I don’t understand the culture. I don’t understand the wisdom of the System.  5000 years of Chinese culture. After all, 1.3 billion people got born here in the last 80 or so years.  All their moms got through the process. Why should I impose my western standards on China?

This is the point at which the cultural relativists, already in agreement with libertarians on a lot of issues, have a problem with medical science and basic personal choice. Many women in China who have the means opt to go to Hong Kong, with western medical standards, to give birth. Screw 5000 years of culture. When I am in pain, give me medicine. When my baby needs care, give it to
 her. Don’t tell me that pain or infection or inattention is God’s will, or Fate.  I am choosing not to believe Todd Aiken, the Republican congressman from Tennessee who claimed that in the case of “legitimate” rape, women’s bodies “just have a way to shut that whole thing down.”  In the cases of “legitimate” pregnancy, I don’t think women should just suck it up and bear the pain. Political scientists talk about two choices for people in a society – voice, and exit.  Express your desires, work for change, or leave. The first choice, voice, is not doing Chinese women any good just yet. So, if they can get out for pregnancy and delivery, they get out or they finagle their way to more guanxi than I have.

I have been referring to the hospital here as a dongwu yi yuan – an animal hospital. But that is really unfair, to the animal hospitals in the US. Yes, it is true that people get treated like animals, and their personal care and time mean nothing to the System. Only the processing of people matters. There are pretensions to the contrary. The floor on the VIP floor is pretty clean. The lights in the hallway are bright. There are some plants, and I can look down the hall and see a “nurse” walking, but no horde of humanity pushing to cheat their way in line or get theirs before someone else does. But as with many things in China, the cleanliness and newness are form over substance.  As in the Wizard of Oz, best to not look behind the curtain.

Enough for now.  Written on my hospital breaks, when the niece and sisters are taking charge of changing catheter bags, and washing the towels that we brought to wipe off Qing and the baby, changing diapers, and bed mats. They really are much better at all this than I am. After all, it is China. They have much more of a sense of personal responsibility.

No Way Out from the Middle Kingdom

You remember the movie, with Kevin Kostner as the exemplary US Navy officer-special assistant to the Secretary of Defense (Gene Hackman).  The plot twists around search for a purported Russian spy in the US, codenamed Yuri, who has been able to infiltrate the Navy at the highest levels.  Following several plot twists, Kostner is ultimately left with no way out – he cannot be seen in public, as he will be implicated in a murder; and he does not want to return to his homeland, which he has not seen for at least twenty years.  He has no safe place to go, and no way out of his predicament.

No doubt some American businesses are in a similar predicament now, with regard to their manufacturing or distribution or licensing deals in China.  Conditions have been getting more difficult for foreign businesses, particularly American businesses, for years before the tirades coming from the current occupant of the White House.  Seagate closed its factory in Suzhou in 2017. Panasonic ceased all manufacturing in China in 2015.  And Home Depot, L’Oreal, Revlon, and Best Buy.  Microsoft moved its two China plants to Vietnam in 2015. 

Xi Jinping has worked hard to promote the home advantage for Chinese companies – in 2015, Starbucks was accused by the government and the Chinese media of gouging Chinese customers  Starbucks China Pricing  Similar charges were leveled against Apple  China’s anti-Apple campaign   and Yum Brands and Hewlett- Packard.  In all cases, Chinese responded to the government with a large raspberry. For Starbucks and Apple, they cited the safety of the coffee and the attractiveness of the iPhone.

Those were minor skirmishes that any big company must get used to.  Now companies of all sizes find themselves in the middle of a war, a trade war, conducted with spite and malice on both sides, and no clear end game.  Tariffs are a tool, but the Chinese government has many other tools that can be more effective against any one company.

The tools are essentially enforcement of existing laws in a biased manner, enforcement of regulations made up on the spot, threats, and support for local businesses acting in an entirely extra-legal manner.

Differential enforcement of law and application of “special” law is a well-known tactic in the US, for persecution of blacks and other minorities.  But in the US, there can be appeal to other avenues within the society – media, lawsuits, popular support, social media, engaging with legislators or regulators. These avenues are obviously restricted or non-existent for most American businesses in China – Starbucks and Apple being two that can generate widespread popular support.

But most American businesses in China are small to medium sized and without local guanxi.  Those businesses trying to get factories, molds, money, and personnel out of China may be subject to a whole other level of persecution.  By the way, I focus on manufacturing industries because foreign service businesses – retail, banking, finance, health care, education, real estate, insurance, media and entertainment – are highly restricted or forbidden in China.  To date, foreign service businesses are not much of a factor in trade.  Yes, Walmart and many chain retailers in shopping malls; but these are big companies with sufficient legal and financial wherewithal to withstand some ups and downs in the market, and American IP, personnel, and equipment are not at stake.

Dan Harris, at Harris/Bricken law firm, writes China Law Blog, by far the most useful general law blog about doing business in China.  Over the years, he and co-authors have explained difficulties of doing business in China, with examples and clearly written language that provides both useful information and blatant warnings about the dark side of doing business there.

Now, Harris has reposted some of his most dire warnings, based on what he is hearing from businesses in 2018 in China and seeking to get out –

How to Leave China AND Survive  September 23, 2018

The money paragraphs from this article –

Way back in 2013, in The Single Best Way To Avoid Being Taken Hostage In China, we wrote of how Chinese companies and individuals often take hostages in an effort to collect on alleged debts or to protest employee layoffs or the closing of a China facility:

As the article states, “it is not rare in China for managers to be held by workers demanding back pay or other benefits, often from their Chinese owners, though occasionally also involving foreign bosses.”

My law firm’s advice every single time to our clients who are laying off workers in China or closing a facility in China or allegedly owing money in China is to stay outside China for all negotiations.  One only needs to be a regular reader of our blog to know that we took this position long ago and have never waffled:

  • If you are in a debt dispute with a Chinese company, the best thing to do is not go to China at all.
  • If you must go to China, think about using a bodyguard or two and think very carefully about where you stay and where you go. Most importantly, be very careful with whom you meet.
  • Consider preemptively suing the alleged creditor somewhere so that you can very plausibly claim that you have been seized not because you owe a debt, but out of retaliation for having sued someone. If you are going to sue, carry proof of your lawsuit with you at all times while you are in China.

By this point many of you are probably wondering why I am writing about debt when the issue is leaving China. My answer is very simple: once the news goes out that you will be leaving China, alleged creditors will come out of the woodwork. The tax authorities will come up with taxes that you owe. Your landlord will explain why you owe it way more than you thought you did. Your suppliers will send you bills for items they never actually gave you. Your employees will demand all sorts of severance. I am not saying these sorts of things always happen, but I am saying that they often do and you need to be prepared for it.

No way out is not too strong an image.   Whatever the merits of the current US complaints about Chinese business practices – and there are plenty of valid complaints, including IP theft, preferential treatment for local companies, and subsidies for exporters – China-US IP battle – the US companies love the profits earned in China, and so are between a rock and a hard place.  For some companies, mostly the consumer facing companies like Starbucks or KFC, there is growing competition, but a measure of public support.  CCP members drink coffee and eat KFC ice cream, too.  B to B companies are out of sight, out of mind, a perfect mental location for the excesses of law or regulation that are simply another way to cheat or extort from the foreigners.

Try this post – China Factory Scams: Their Time is Ripe   By Steve Dickinson on September 9, 2018

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?

In the movie No Way Out, we don’t know what happens to Kevin Kostner.  But his Russian contact is right – “Let him go. He will be back.  Where else can he go?”  In the tariff war, we can’t tell right now what will happen.  The US has a theoretical advantage in buying more than it is selling to China, and China will soon run out of US imports to tariff; but Mr. Xi doesn’t have to stand for reelection, and Chinese, even modern Chinese, are accustomed to conceding to power.  Neither Mr. Xi nor the orange haired baboon can concede without losing substantial face.  The uncertainty on all sides is palpable, and uncertainty in operations is deadly scary for manufacturing businesses.  (Ask any business in England right now).   The American Chamber of Commerce in China (AmCham China) says that almost half of 430 member companies surveyed expect a strong negative impact from the tariff war AmCham – more pain ahead. (note – this link is now blocked or deleted) Even though American businesses are developing strategies to move operations to Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines, or Malaysia, it will be difficult to reproduce the infrastructure and organizational experience of having spent years in China. But at some point, companies will have to abandon the lure of profits when the cost and uncertainty become too great.  China is trying to soft-pedal its formal response to the orange-haired baboon, but the indirect penalties may soon become intolerable.

High tech industries in the US face a related set of problems.  In addition to traditional IP theft, Chinese companies are now innovative enough on their own to challenge world competitors, and the China market for high tech – business and consumer – is the biggest in the world.  Large government subsidies and huge attractive packages for individual scientists who relocate to China are the norm.  Chinese students educated in STEM fields in the US are now likely to return to China where opportunities are greater.  Money alone does not drive innovation, but it is certainly a catalyst.  Now American companies are feeling pressure to partner with Chinese companies on research, even as the threat of IP theft continues (even if less now than before) and loss of researcher talent continues.  How to respond in this new environment, particularly one in which malice aforethought is salient?  An MIT Sloan School of Management report from June of this year describes the conundrum – Changing Face of Innovation in China (limited access with sign-in).  The Sloan recommendations for foreign companies in China may be all that can be done   – hire more Chinese locally, learn to file patents faster in China, and “Engage in cutting-edge innovation in China when returns exceed global risks.”  I’m not sure what this means, but the Sloan report described it this way –

This requires both an aggressive global innovation strategy (for example, doubling down on promising R&D projects outside China and speeding up R&D outside China) and a complementary business strategy (for example, strategically patenting, engaging in more mergers and acquisitions in China and abroad, seeking greater support from home governments, and possibly shifting away from product lines increasingly dominated by Chinese companies).

Ok.

Obviously, tariffs and different locations within China affect industries differently.  For me, I expect those indirect costs – the unfair application of regulations and paperwork and extra-legal harassment as tools of trade war – to push a sizable chunk of American manufacturing out of China.  Not major companies, but many smaller companies, looking at the short and medium term, will need to negotiate a way out.  In the latest AmCham survey, 25% of American respondents said they had moved or are planning to move capacity out of China – and this survey was conducted a year ago.  At that time, businesses cited labor costs, IP theft, and a “more challenging regulatory environment” as the reasons for relocation. Forty-five per cent reported flat or declining revenue in China, and only 64% reporting a profit, the lowest percentage in five years.  Now comes the trade war.  AmCham – businesses leaving China (note – this link is now blocked or deleted) Larger companies may choose to reinvest elsewhere, but they too will have to bear the brunt of both sides – tariffs on imports to the US and tariffs on imports and punishment from China.   The greater the role that public stockholders play in company valuation, the more difficult it will be for American companies to find a way out.  Potential loss of profits and the sunk costs of capacity will be hard for stockholders to bear.   But no way out can only be a short term solution.  For some firms, as for Kostner in the movie, returning home – or at least, leaving China – may be the only way out. 

Performative Declamation

people talking without speaking …

note: I am reminded that this needs more than a little editing and a bit of shortening.  Ok.  You may skim rather than read.  And I am now reminded of how GOP apparatchiks fall into line when defending the latest from their current dear leader.  Another way in which the GOP has bought the Chinese export. 

At Gettysburg,  the featured speaker Edward Everett talked for two hours, and Lincoln for three minutes.  Some thought Lincoln’s remarks were foolish and inappropriate.  Chinese leaders never want to look foolish.  I have sat through the one and two hour speeches that might have been delivered  in ten minutes – if content were what mattered, rather than performance. 

Over the course of fifteen years, my Chinese government students asked many questions about American governance or politics or economic policy.  I occasionally wondered what happened when I began to explain details and found the attention of my Chinese questioners drifting off after only a moment’s discourse.  Was it just poor delivery on my part?  Maybe.  Maybe not.

A response draped in correlative thinking would sometimes have been better.   “Why do Americans have so many guns?”  “A man’s home is his castle.”     Less clear, no details, vague, but certainly – shorter and with some shred of correlation between guns and property rights.

Sometimes being shorter in public speaking is not enough.  In public speaking in China, one needs to obfuscate, and if one is a leader, one needs to speak at length as a show of authority and sophistication.  As in teaching in China, quantity is often a substitute for quality.

The joke about socialism – the only thing wrong with socialism is, too many meetings.  Americans in universities and business and government complain about too many meetings, and too long, and too disconnected.  But Americans are novices at meetings, compared with Chinese.   Americans would not meet at all for many of the things that Chinese faculty in universities spend two or three hours on.  A single phone call, perhaps a conference call, perhaps a momentary meeting in the hall.  Perhaps a decision by the dean, or a proposal with alternatives, a sort of survey.  In Chinese meetings, not always but often, every person at the meeting is expected to offer thoughts.  And those thoughts are still constrained by deference to leaders.   Chinese will sometimes refer to this as a form of democracy.  The spoken word results are what is called performative declamation.

It is of no matter to a speaker at a meeting, or people on the dais, that perhaps no one in the audience is paying attention.  Attendance may be mandatory; attention is not, when a single speaker can declaim for two or three hours.  I was surprised to find leaders, who are given great deference in other circumstances, speaking to a crowd that has their heads down, focused on cell phones.  But – performative is what counts.  Substance will be communicated via other means.   

One should immediately see the connections to use of political rhetoric in China.  Speaking carefully to leaders is another aspect of Chineseness that is thousands of years old.  The proper address, the proper kowtow, the proper words are more important than substance.

China has done an excellent job of adopting and adapting to western science and technology, and even to popular culture.  The most senior and highest ranking CCP members are as global in their outlooks – probably more so – than most US Congressman.   And yet, there remains one doppelganger, one elephant in the room, for the CCP in adapting to western ideas.  That is the fear of multiple definitions of the good in society – that CCP will be unable to continue its legitimate monopoly on what counts for the Good in society.  That way public dissension lies, civil society lies, multiple parties lie, and an end to the vanguard of the proletariat.  Most frightening for the CCP, there is the constant assault from the west of attitudes to multiple goods in society – that the government does not always know the best path, that government does not always have the truth.

Individual people know this, and they know that the government does not tolerate too much dissent.   Superficial disagreement about means and methods is fine; but disagreement with leaders about fundamental goals is dangerous in situations where the Party’s face, or prestige, is on the line.

There is not so much risk in university faculty meetings.  But disagreement with the leader is still considered inappropriate, unless couched in vague terms.  And there is pressure to follow the leader’s path.

In the US, we also understand “positive energy” in communications.  Corporations and governments in the US want employees to project a positive image, and speak well of the company or the department and its work.  “Tomorrow, we will do better – we will be better.”   The CCP takes the positive energy message quite seriously.  High school and university faculty and students are exhorted to use positive energy is speeches and writing.

One sees this in “performative declamation” 表态.  Katherine Morton, at the Australian National University, describes the performance among Chinese students at a summer program in Turin, Italy.  She was discussing the concept of the Chinese Dream, recently made popular by Xi Jinping –

Mainland Chinese participants, although of varied backgrounds and very different personal opinions (in private) felt that, after one of their number requested that she be given time to make a ‘personal’ statement on the subject of The China Dream, they all had to fall in line publicly and, hands raised, chorused a series of anodyne and vacuous declarations.  If nothing else, I remarked to the non-Mainland students present, they had an insight into the Communist-inculcated cultural practice of ‘performative declamation’ 表态, a form of verbal posturing, an example of ‘group think’ aimed at presenting a united front in the face of independent thinking. It’s just this kind of knee-jerk solidarity that also vouchsafes the individual against the ever-present threat of being reported to the authorities back home.

Morton refers to this as the“Hall of the Unified Voice,”of the high Maoist era, in which each speaker declaims, for as long as thought expected, on the wisdom and wonderfulness of leaders and their plans.

Katherine Morton.  The Rights and Responsibilities of Disagreement.  The China Story, The Australian Centre on China in the World, September 21, 2014. Rights and Responsibilities of Disagreement

Ci Jiwei, author of Moral China in the Age of Reform, calls this form of speech surface optimism.

I call it surface optimism in the sense that it is not informed by an underlying quest for certainty as the hallmark of knowledge. As the trajectory of the Socratic tradition has repeatedly shown, the quest for certainty goes hand in hand with skepticism and has a uniquely powerful potential to lead to pessimistic conclusions about knowledge or at the very least to deflate overly confident claims regarding its possibility or scope.

Ci, Jiwei.  What is in the cloud? A critical engagement with Thomas Metzger on “The clash between Chinese and western political theories” Boundary 2, 2007, v. 34 n. 3, p. 61-86.  University of Hong Kong.  At  Ci Jiwei – What is in the Cloud?

Geremie Barme, editor at China Heritage Quarterly, at Australian National University, reminds us of “New China Newspeak,” a style of speaking and writing that is seen in official reports, speeches, and communications both within China and meant for foreign consumption.

The expression covers a wide range of prose and spoken forms of modern Chinese that have evolved and been consciously developed as the result of profound linguistic changes and experiments that date back to the late-Qing period, all of which are intimately connected with politics, ideas and the projection of power. Some of these styles reflect the militarization of Chinese in modern times (during the Republic, in Manchukuo, and under both the Nationalist and the Communist parties). Added to this is the stilted diction of bureaucratese (developed on the basis of traditional bureaucratic language), as well as scientific and academic jargon, to which have been added various forms of political and commercial exaggeration, euphemisms and neologisms. It mixes argot and the vernacular with the wooden language of Communist Party discourse. In recent decades this body of language practices has been ‘enriched’ by the verbiage of neoliberal economics and revived Cultural Revolution-era vituperation.

Geremie Barme.  New China Newspeak.  The China Story.  Australian Centre on China in the World.  August 2, 2012.  Geremie Barme – New China Newspeak

Examples are to be found in any speech or any writing delivered by any leader at any level.  Here is Jiang Shigong, eminent legal scholar at Peking University Law School, heaping praise on the “core leader, the core of the entire party,” Xi Jinping, on Xi’s speech at the 19th Party Congress in Otober, 2017 –

More important is the fact that Xi Jinping, at a particular moment in history, courageously took up the political responsibility of the historical mission, and in the face of an era of historical transformation of the entire world, demonstrated the capacity to construct the great theory facilitating China’s development path, as well as the capacity to control complicated domestic and international events, thus consolidating the hearts and minds of the entire Party and the people of the entire country, hence becoming the core leader praised by the entire Party, the entire army and the entire country, possessing a special ‘charismatic power’.

Gloria Davies. Post of Jiang Shigong,  Philosophy and History:  Interpreting the “Xi Jinping Era” through Xi’s Report to the Nineteenth National Congress of the CCP.  Translation by David Ownby.  Reading and Writing the China Dream.’ The China Story – Australian Centre on China in the World.  Posted May 11, 2018. First published in Guangzhou Journal, January, 2018.  Available at Interpreting Xi at the 19th Party Congress

This work by Jiang is considered good writing.  Jiang has no problem emphasizing that Xi, and the CCP, speak for all Chinese on all matters of … well, not faith and morals, as does the Pope, but all matters of political and moral and economic and historical and cultural significance to all Chinese people.  Nor does Jiang have any problem emphasizing how CCP delivered the Chinese people from centuries of oppression by the west, and will remain on guard against the evil influence of the west.

The dead hand of such writing can carry on for ten or twenty or thirty pages of single spaced, small font characters.  You can imagine how it sounds when you have to listen for an hour or two or three.

Parenthetically, there is no question but that much of this writing is backed by extensive and detailed research in Chinese and western sources when the speech is delivered by a sufficiently high level official.  Study is always a part of performative writing.  No doubt Mr. Jiang could carry on a discussion of the philosophy of  western or American law that would surprise some American legal scholars.

This stilted style is not unknown elsewhere, of course;  and George Orwell provided a model in 1948 so insightful that one sometimes wonders if some CCP communications are not trying to simply model Orwell.  Read Qiushi – the publication of the CCP Central Committee, Seeking Truth – if you want good examples. It is available in English at Qiushi – Seeking Truth.

Barme cites the term “socialist market economy” as a good example of newspeak.  The term is confusing in the west; but in China, it expresses the contradictions of economic realities now.  And, more important, it provides cover for whatever deviations from Marxism-Leninism the CCP wishes to undertake.  A term with no meaning can mean anything; or, more precisely, it can mean whatever the government wants, whenever it wants it.  CCP tells us that, as a Communist Party, it will decide the meaning of socialism.  Well, ok, fair enough. But that privilege should not apply to all words.  We have to remember Orwell in 1984 – War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength – that is the nature of what we are dealing with.

Qiushi (Seeking Truth).  Publication of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee, online in English at http://english.qstheory.cn/

But this “Mao-speak” is not a new concept within China.  Barme notes that Confucius used particular individuals as character-models to either praise or censure political acts in moral terms in his comments on the state of Lu in the Spring and Autumn Annals.  Confucius particularly called out for criticism those individuals – we might call them sophists – who could argue any side of a position.  “Rectification of names” was about calling things by their proper name.

Barme’s comments on New China Newspeak remind us of Orwell, of course, in 1984 –

To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself—that was the ultimate subtlety; consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word ‘doublethink’ involved the use of doublethink.

George Orwell.  1984.  Signet Classic, 1961,  Book 1, Chapter 3, page 32.

Barme provides an example that reminds me of many private conversations with CCP members on politics or rights. One ends up quickly at a non sequiter – there is just nowhere to go short of an hour or two of discussion.  I think that is what is intended. Barme’s example is about Liu Xiaobo, who later won the Nobel Prize in Literature –

On 11 February 2010, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu 马朝旭 declared that: ‘There are no dissidents in China.’ This was, as Agence France-Presse reported it, ‘just hours after a Beijing court upheld an 11-year jail term for one of the country’s top pro-democracy voices.’  The report went on to say that: ‘Ma made the comment in answer to a question about leading mainland dissident Liu Xiaobo, whose appeal of his conviction on subversion charges was denied early on Thursday. When asked to elaborate, Ma said: “In China, you can judge yourself whether such a group exists. But I believe this term is questionable in China.”

Shortly thereafter, the artist and cultural blogger Ai Weiwei observed of this risible statement via his Twitter feed that:

1. Dissidents are criminals
2. Only criminals have dissenting views
3. The distinction between criminals and non-criminals is whether they have dissenting views
4. If you think China has dissidents, you are a criminal
5. The reason [China] has no dissidents is because they are [in fact already] criminals
6. Does anyone have a dissenting view regarding my statement?

Geramie Barme.  Citing ‘There are no dissidents in China’, Agence France-Presse, 11 February 2010.   Barme – Ai Weiwei on No Dissidents in China

One of the benefits of performative declamation is that one retains relative anonymity in the crowd.  David Ze reminds us that in imperial China, one could not separate words from the person.  What a person said indicated his personality.  Depending on the Emperor, there was no trying out of ideas, or hypothetical suggestions.  It seems not so different, now.  David Ze –

This feature was distinct in imperial Chinese culture.  If a suggestion was not favoured by the emperor, it meant the suggester’s loyalty should be questioned. In Hanfeizi’s words, it was not important what a person knew, but what, when, and how he said or refused to say it.    

This feature…  (was)  maintained and developed in China long after writing and printing technologies were established. While many gifted men were jailed or killed for what they wrote and many literary works were lost because of the political persecution of their authors, these two features were substantially used for ideological control by the state in two ways. First, they were used as a strategy to eliminate political enemies and consolidate the centralized control of thought. Second, by propagating this mentality, the state mobilized the masses in its political campaigns against unorthodox views and the persons who held such views. When either the views or the persons were labelled “evil,” the masses would take their own initiative in resisting the “evil” influence by supervising and reporting the persons’ actions or by refusing to print, sell, and read their literature. 

David Ze. Walter Ong’s Paradigm and Chinese Literacy.  Canadian Journal of Communications, 20:4 (1995)   Available at  Ze – Walter Ong and Chinese Literacy

Lest one think this was only an imperial China concept, we have plenty of current examples.  Violations of the requirements of performative declamation – what we might call free speech – can garnering instant rebuke from Chinese students, as well as from the government directly.  One example, of many one can find.  In 2017, Yang Shuping, a Chinese student studying at the University of Maryland, delivered a valedictory speech that made the mistake of expressing admiration and warmth for her time in the US, and comparing the US favorably to the conditions back home in Yunnan. She was immediately set upon by some of her fellow Chinese students, and she earned a direct rebuke from the government as well.  Both Global Times and People’s Daily rebuked her expression of opinion.

See discussion at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuping_Yang_commencement_speech_controversy

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman (!) criticized Yang,  saying, “Every Chinese citizen should be responsible for his or her remarks.” Responsible to whom? One should remember that the verb “to criticize” has different connotations in English and Chinese. To criticize someone in Chinese has a moral and normative tone – not, “that’s not a good idea,” but “you must not do that.” One wonders what lack of positive energy Ms. Yang will experience from businesses in her job hunt in China.  Later, she did apologize to the Chinese people.  No doubt, all 1.4 billion people breathed a sign of relief.  But her violation will certainly be noted in her dang’an – her dossier that travels with her through life – for any employer to see.

Zhu Mei.  MOFA responds to Chinese student’s controversial speech praising US.  China Global Television Network (CGTN), 2017-05-24.  Available at  Ministry of Foreign Affairs responds to a student comment

This, of course, demonstrates the intense and intrusive behavior of Chinese foreign affairs departments, charged with fostering and sometimes enforcing politically correct speech among Chinese outside of China. Faced with isolation and being unemployable when she returned home, the girl felt forced to apologize to her classmates, the government, and presumably to the Chinese people, for ‘having hurt their feelings.’  The Chinese government departments charged with observing and guiding and monitoring speech of students outside China are sometimes referred to as the “Bureau of Overseas Chinese Affairs,” or “Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries” and are described as existing to keep overseas Chinese aware of what is happening in China, as if students were pining for information about Chinese baseball scores or what is on sale back home at the mall.  These bureaus are being given a lot of attention as of 2018, as Chinese in overseas universities are perceived as not just students but sometimes as agents of the government.   Quite a few of our Chinese government students in Chicago worked at such departments in Zhejiang or Liaoning provinces.  In the Yang Shuping case, the “university’s Chinese Students and Scholars Association asked other mainland students studying in the US to create videos supporting and introducing their home towns. Those who do are encouraged to use the tagline “I have different views from Shuping Yang. I am proud of China.””   The Chinese Students and Scholars Association is supported by the Chinese government, in the form of monetary grants from local consulates.

Read more: Yang Shuping, sensing a threat, apologizes

There are multiple instances of Chinese with permanent residency in the US being told by the Chinese government that their family in China – parents, siblings, grandparents – might be harmed unless information is provided to assist the government in China.  This despicable threat seems to apply mostly to Chinese wanted with regard to having smuggled money out of China, or Chinese with a sibling who knows too much about internal CCP operations.  Obviously, the Chinese consulates in the US would be the logical agents to follow up on Chinese in the US.  But the consulate can remain above the fray.  The Bureau of Overseas Chinese Affairs is the agency that takes on this responsibility.

Leaders, and others, take active notice of the quality and quantity of deference to superiors.  In 2017, there was much jockeying about who was going to be elevated to the Political Bureau Standing Committee (PSC), the group of seven most important Chinese leaders.  Xi Jinping was expected to be making most of the choices himself, or at least have an extremely strong vote in selections.  Journalists and politicians read or listened to speeches by likely candidates.  No one actually “runs” for this position – that was part of the Bo Xilai hubris.  Since Xi Jinping had been designated as the “core” of Chinese leadership, observers would count how many times Mr. Xi, or the core, were mentioned in speeches.  More references indicated more deference, and possibly more chance to be elevated.  Performance, indeed.

Confucius told us about artful speech, which he derided just as Aristotle derided sophists.    Consider the “rectification of names,” passage in Analects 13 –

Tsze-lu said, “The ruler of Wei has been waiting for you, in order with you to administer the government. What will you consider the first thing to be done?”

The Master replied, “What is necessary is to rectify names.” “So! indeed!” said Tsze-lu. “You are wide of the mark! Why must there be such rectification?”

Confucius, responding –

“If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success.

“When affairs cannot be carried on to success, proprieties and music do not flourish. When proprieties and music do not flourish, punishments will not be properly awarded. When punishments are not properly awarded, the people do not know how to move hand or foot.

“Therefore a superior man considers it necessary that the names he uses may be spoken appropriately, and also that what he speaks may be carried out appropriately. What the superior man requires is just that in his words there may be nothing incorrect.”

Confucius is citing the need to speak the truth.  But in the hands of the CCP, rectification of names means not speaking unless one is directed to speak, and then speaking as expected, not as one thinks.   This is the performance game  that Ci Jiwei described in the prior section.

Artistry with meaning is not a new concept.  Ci Jiwei says this artistry with meaning creates the “two faces” problem in China.

People live in two worlds, then, an internal and external world.  In the external world, people mimic theb truth and meanings provided to them, adherence to which is critical for continued employment and promotions if in government, state owned businesses, or academic world.   People go through motions of assent.   The internal world of belief and meaning is starved, however.   As Ci says, the result is a vacuum of belief and meaning.   

Ci Jiwei, Moral China in the Age of Reform, Cambridge University Press, 2015.

The “two worlds” apply to academic work, as well as politics. The French sinologist Henri Maspero, in a citation now lost, showed the gulf between Chinese and western historians in making sense of the past –

Where we look for facts, nothing but facts, a Chinese literatus looks for a rule of life, a moral.  Seen from this perspective, history is not about the past but about the present, it is not science but literature, it is not about true and false but about right and wrong. It is all about judgments.  And yes, it is history, not despite but because of all this: not an anemic and meaningless “realistic” reconstruction of the past but an interpretation of the past in terms of the present, intended to serve as a guide for the future.  

It is this Chinese search for the convenient fact, in fact, that fosters western uncertainty with regard to findings of Xia and Shang dynasty relics.  Certainty in archeology is generally rare.  Why are you so sure, other than convenience, that this site you are researching is a Xia Dynasty site?

Performative declamation is part of the manner in which Chinese government addresses foreign leaders and governments.  One should remember that zhongguo is considered the most civilized place on earth, the central country, the superior model.  All other countries are vassal states, whether they provide tribute or not, as was expected for two thousand years, from the Xiongnu on to Tibet and Mongolia and Laos and Nepal, at the end of the Qing.  China accepts homage when it works to the benefit of China, but considers itself under no obligation to respond in kind.   So the Chinese government has no qualms about instructing the barbarians, even now, in proper deference to China and the Chinese people.  This is performative declamation in foreign policy jargon.  Tianxia, all under heaven, is properly ruled by the emperor in Beijing, even in the 21st century.

Performative declamation is not only for external communication.  In the innumerable – and per CCP officials, seemingly endless – meetings to discuss elements of business, it is customary for every individual in the meeting to speak, to offer an opinion.  But how to know what opinion to offer?  Following the message of the leader is not unknown in American business meetings.  But what if the big leader in the room has not arrived yet, or does not speak first?  What to do?

Contrary to expectations, the big leader in the room in any meeting does not necessarily always speak first.   The big leader could speak first, and indicate what course of action he wants to follow.  Subordinates, all of whom get to speak as well, then know how to declaim.  The big leader may leave, if he has other commitments; but the subordinates all remain to perform.  All participants watch each other.  If the big leader in the room speaks last, it will usually be clear from his assistant what path he wishes to follow, so subordinates will be able to perform well in any case.  Lest you think I exaggerate on the requirement that subordinates exude praise and follow the leader, there is a  term for this behavior toward the leader – pai ma pi, which means, patting the horse’s ass.  Everyone in China knows this phrase.

Depending on the leader, some real discussion and disagreement may be permitted.   This permission may be simply the habit of that particular leader, or the subject matter may indicate that real opinions are sought.   But if the leader in the room is very powerful, then disagreement tends to disappear, as it might in meetings in the US.  Disagreement brings loss of face, even for a powerful leader.  Just as Hanfeizi said, if a proposal is not favored by the leader, then the suggester’s loyalty should be questioned. There is no such thing as loyal opposition or heeding the advice of the lone voice.

The constant sense of the need to struggle develops another form of anxiety in China, one that is seen in government, in the CCP, in business, in schools.  That is the need to perform, immediately, upon demand.   Urgency is a form of currency – ability to perform quickly for a particular leader is a show of respect, and gives face to that leader.

We understand urgency in the US – real deadlines and arbitrary demands by the boss.   American urgency is usually for the sake of the task, not for the face of the boss, and therein lies a difference.   China is different.

I was at dinner with three university colleagues, all PhDs at my school.   One of the three was the vice dean of the business school, and the other two were senior faculty in that school. After dinner, about 9:00 PM, after drinking – some, not too much – we were driving back to school. Question from the driver to each – should we drop you at home or at the office?  Answer – office, I must go back to finish important work. At night. After dinner. After drinks.

At the time, I was suitably impressed.  Now, some years later, I understand that answer as a sort of performative declamation, an “I work harder than you do” expression.  It was pointless – all three went home directly.

But the pressure to produce, to work harder than anyone else, indeed, to show off for the leader, is always present.  It gives high performance a whole new meaning.

Intimidation Knows No Boundaries

This direct threat to a New Zealand academic – her office and home invaded –  is part of the intimidation pattern – transition from hard power to soft power to sharp power.  CCP is always watching.  In this case, Anne Marie Brady has studied Chinese politics, and recently wrote a report describing Chinese government infiltration in New Zealand politics, education, and media.

So, another story of direct threat to an academic, this time in New Zealand, by person or persons unknown.  The unknown perps are generally understood to be a Chinese government-promoted foreign version of chengguan – the plainclothes thugs hired informally by Chinese local governments to maintain street order, help evict farmers, provide household imprisonment services, threaten dissidents, and occasionally beat up or murder government objects of disaffection.  In this case, Anne Marie Brady wrote a detailed research report, titled Magic Weapons, describing the means by which Beijing intends to (surreptitiously) influence domestic and foreign policy in foreign countries using the United Front vehicles.  From the Magic Weapons article –

After more than 30 years of this work, there are few overseas Chinese associations able to completely evade “guidance” — other than those affiliated with the religious group Falungong, Taiwan independence, pro-independence Tibetans and Uighurs, independent Chinese religious groups outside party-state controlled religions, and the democracy movement—and even these are subject to being infiltrated by informers and a target for united front work.

 As in the Cold War years, united front work not only serves foreign policy goals, but can sometimes be used as a cover for intelligence activities.

 The Ministry of State Security, Ministry of Public Security, PLA Joint Staff Headquarters’ Third Department, Xinhua News Service, the United Front Work Department, International Liaison Department, are the main, but not the only, PRC party-state agencies who recruit foreign, especially ethnic Chinese, agents for the purpose of collecting intelligence.

 In 2014, one former spy said that the Third Department had at least 200,000 agents abroad.

 Some Chinese community associations act as fronts for Chinese mafia who engage in illegal gambling; human trafficking; extortion; and money laundering. As a leaked 1997 report by Canada’s RCMP-SIS noted, these organizations also frequently have connections with China’s party-state intelligence organizations.

The crisis of 1989 resulted in the CCP government stepping up foreign persuasion efforts (外宣) aimed at the non-ethnic-Chinese public too. As they had done in the past, in this the Chinese government drew on the help of high level “friends of China” —foreign political figures such as the USA’s Henry Kissinger, to repair China’s relations with the USA and other Western democracies. In 1991 the State Council Information Office was set up to better promote China’s policies to the outside world. Reflecting the fact that it is both a party and a state body, its other Chinese-only nameplate is the Office of Foreign Propaganda, 外宣办. Soon after, China Central Television (CCTV) launched its first English language channel. China gradually expanded its external influence activities under CCP General Secretary Jiang Zemin (1989-2002). While these activities failed to ameliorate negative global public opinion towards the Chinese government and its policies, efforts to promote a positive image of China’s economic policies had much more success.

John Burge, the notorious Chicago police commander who oversaw torture and intimidation in arrests, had nothing on the chengguan in the way of despicable behavior.

https://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/06/can-chinas-hated-local-police-reform-their-image/277202/

Source:Bystanders surround a street vendor beaten by the chengguan, China’s municipal police force (Sohu/Fair Use) in Yueran Zhang. Can China’s Hated Local Police Reform Their Image?  Atlantic, June 25, 2013.

From the New Zealand Herald, quoted in the South China Morning Post (!) –

According to The New Zealand Herald, Brady said her office on campus was broken into in December, and her home burgled last week, with computers, phones and USB storage devices stolen while other obvious valuables were overlooked.

Brady said the latest burglary was preceded by an anonymous letter threatening “pushback” against opponents of Beijing’s interests, with the warning: “You are next.”

And the intimidation is not a new story.  China has always blocked entry to China of scholars and writers it found to speak or write too honestly.  Minxin Pei, Andrew Nathan, and Perry Link are examples.  And –

Intimidation of foreign journalists in China in 2011 (actually, rather a constant)  Intimidation

And – Kevin Carrico, who was monitored in both the US and in Australia  Inside Higher Ed – Monitoring and Scrutiny of Foreign Professors  This Inside Higher Ed story is worth reading.

And you all know of the threat to Cambridge University Press and other academic publishers regarding demands to censor journals.

Foreigners in China, of course, have always been subject to scrutiny and more.  In recent weeks, Christopher Balding (teaching at the Shenzhen Branch of Peking University graduate school of business) has left China  Balding Out   He writes, “China has reached a point where I do not feel safe being a professor and discussing even the economy, business, and financial markets.”   He was threatened in 2015, as was I, although his experience was more extreme than mine.  His office at school was broken into, his apartment also, and he was quite sure his phone was being tapped. 

On to this most recent story  in the New York Times –

Break-ins of Home and Office of New Zealand Academic

Fingers Point to China After Break-Ins Target New Zealand Professor

…

Ms. Brady’s recent paper, “Magic Weapons,” was published last September. It identified categories of political-influence activities by China in Western democracies, laid out what Ms. Brady said was the Chinese Communist Party’s blueprint for conducting such activities worldwide, and examined New Zealand as a case study of Chinese influence across most spheres of public life.

When Ms. Brady returned home on the day of the burglary, bed covers were rumpled and papers strewn about, but her husband’s laptop was left untouched. She said that it appeared to be a “psychological operation” and the latest in a series of incidents targeting her over her work. She said her computer’s hard drive had been tampered with when she was previously in China, and that Communist Party officials questioned people she spoke with there.

Before the February burglary, she said, she received a letter warning her she would be attacked …..

Do read the original paper,  Magic Weapons China’s Political Influence Activities Under Xi Jinping

This story is also reported by Bill Bishop today at Axios China

Shibboleth

October 2007 and Spring, 2015 

The first time was in 2007, in Dalian, one of my favorite cities.

One of my students – government officials from China – was showing me her hometown, and we were late night driving from Dalian to our next stop that would take me to the airport in the morning.

She was not driving.  Her driver did that, so we had plenty of time to talk.  And there were two other of my students in the van, and we moved from topic to topic about China and the US and national monuments and American history and  9-11 and terrorism in China and the US.   And I said that the 9-11 terrorists missed the most important target – the Statue of Liberty.

The government officials had just spent a year in Chicago, learning about markets and government management in the US, and many of them had become personal friends and they had just returned to their home, and I was visiting.  A lot of them were sad to leave Chicago. They had had a year of new experiences and fun and learning on the government’s dime, and they were going back to pressure and anxiety.

But like a lot of people in China, my government students were looking at American schools for their kids and openness and a life free of the kind of stress they were all returning to.

And I talked about the history of the Statue of Liberty.  From France. And in New York Harbor, facing southeast, to Europe.  And the Emma Lazarus.

And we were hurtling through the night, 10,000 kilometers from home, all of us nostalgic, me a little homesick, talking softly even in the warmth among friends, and the word just poured out.

Give me your tired, your poor

(Friends, from different backgrounds)

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free

(And now different lives facing us tomorrow)

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore

(Nostalgia, wanting to turn back the clock)

Send these, the homeless, tempest tossed, to me

(And for some, even with serious jobs and bright futures, muffled anxiety and a wish that might become a reality again, someday)

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

I could go back, they could not.   Tomorrow, I could get on a plane, and they could not.   They had lives, good ones, great ones, family, friends, future, security, money.   But I could go, and they absolutely could not. 

The sign, the password to the plane was American.   As in,  I am an American.   And I could go back to a place where, once inside, there was no password, no test, no badge of admission to the school or the city hall, no code of arms or card or letter of introduction that gave me benefits and not the other guy. 

And it was impossible not to tear up at that moment.   Ten thousand kilometers from home, among friends who were staying home, not reluctantly but inevitably, but everyone in the car felt a tug.

Believe me, you should try it sometime.

Everyone in China has a password or a loyalty test or shibboleth to master.  Not a phrase, or a card.  But access always requires a password.  Somebody knows somebody.  In China, it is like Milt Rakove said, we don’t want nobody nobody sent.

And the second time.  In the fall of 2014, and into 2015, the Chinese government was cracking down hard on foreign web sites, and foreign email addresses, and almost anything that was foreign.  Foreign businesses targeted for investigations, foreign products assailed. 

In the new shopping mall ten minutes from our home, there was – for reasons unknown – a 25 foot statue of liberty, complete, for about two years. A new shopping mall for modern Chinese, with modern ideas. 

In spring of 2015, it disappeared.   Times are reminiscent – for some Chinese – of 1966, the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.  The hammer is coming down everywhere – on foreigners, on Chinese.   And it was time to … come home.

One of my computers had already been fried by the government – no internet access at all anymore, anytime.   And my undergrad foreign students were in danger of failing a course because papers they emailed to me had been blocked by the Chinese government, and I could not email them in return to say whether I had received their paper or not. 

I had a CD set of the tv show West Wing, and I was watching episode 8 of season 2.  Now you know the writing and acting in West Wing was just about the best ever done on television, so finding a heart-string pulling scene is not tough.

And the story was about 96 Chinese Christians who had stowed away in a shipping container, six weeks on the ocean, 13 dying en route, to get to America and freedom from religious persecution.  

I was listening to President Bartlet practice the Thanksgiving proclamation –

Well over three and a half centuries ago, strengthened by faith and bound by a common desire for liberty, a small band of pilgrims sought out a place in the new world …

and a pause…  

… where they could worship according to their own beliefs …

and a pause…  

… Now therefore, I, Josiah Bartlet, President of the United States by virtue of the authority and laws invested in me do hereby proclaim this to be a national day of Thanksgiving.

 And then, to his aide Josh Lyman –

Let me tell you something … we can be the world’s policeman, we can be the world’s bank, the world’s factory, the world’s farm … what does it mean if we’re not also …. 

 Almost breaking up –

They made it to the new world, Josh …

You know what I get to do now?   I get to proclaim a national day of  thanksgiving….

To avoid an international incident, Bartlet, with some assistance from a remarkably lax guard at the stowaways temporary holding rooms, provided an entre to another new world where there was no password or loyalty test needed.  He convinced himself of the sincerity of their faith by using a shibboleth, giving 83 people access to a place where they no longer needed one.

And we do wish that life could imitate art.

Go ahead, watch the two clips.