What Chinese are talking about … fake news

You know that China is increasing pressure on every state it can bully.  The bullying is easiest when the victim state has a substantial share of its GDP connected to China, whether as exports or as Chinese FDI coming in.  Now come fake news stories published in China, quoting New Zealand politicians approving of Chinese policies on the Belt and Road initiative.  New Zealand is in a tough spot. 
 
It is one of the “five eyes” countries, those English speaking countries that share some cultural backgrounds and concepts of law and government.  Others are the US, England, Canada, and Australia.  These five share intelligence efforts in some detail.  The US agencies involved include the FBI and the National Security Agency (NSA).  Security issues – now, the Huawei 5G business, and related Chinese hacking and theft – are top priorities among the five eyes countries.  Even more than Australia, New Zealand is a western country in Asia. 
 
New Zealand is isolated.  It is more than 1300 miles from Sydney to Auckland and it cannot develop much stronger markets for agricultural goods elsewhere in the world.  China is its largest trading partner, followed by Australia.  Agricultural exports are about 27% of GDP, and food exports are about half of that. New Zealand signed a free trade agreement with China in 2008.
 
A good example of the position in which New Zealand finds itself is the relative lack of police response to the attacks on the home and office of Anne Marie Brady, a scholar at the University of Canterbury, who has written in detail about the means by which China is infecting media and politics and public opinion outside China.  I wrote about these attacks in two places in the last couple of months. It is suspected that the intruders, who have also left threatening phone messages, are some local version of chengguan, the Chinese hired thugs who terrorize street vendors, old ladies who don’t want to leave their homes in the way of demolition, and anyone in the way of growth and development.  A substantial contingent of chengguan were responsible for watching Chen Guangcheng for years before he escaped in 2012.   New Zealand police have found no evidence, it seems, and do not seem too alarmed by the attacks.  There seems no doubt that these despicable attacks are politically motivated.  Brady’s recent article is Magic Weapons: China’s political influence activities under Xi Jinping. 
 
What is New Zealand to do? 
 
 
4. Chinese pressure on New Zealand increasing
Fake OpEd on People’s Daily English site by former Prime Minister Dame Jenny Shipley – Foreign Minister Winston Peters slams former Prime Minister Jenny Shipley after China Daily article appears – NZ Herald:
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has launched a stinging attack on former Prime Minister Dame Jenny Shipley after an article appeared in China’s “People’s Daily” under her byline complimenting China on its reforms and the Belt and Road Initiative.
But Shipley did not write the piece, which appears under the Online opinion section. It is headlined “We need to listen to China” and carries Dame Jenny’s byline and on Tuesday night was the fourth best read piece on the website.
She was interviewed by the state-run newspaper in December for a feature article which has run already and was surprised to learn a new piece had been published under her name.

Some economic development issues are similar around the world.   An American local government, faced with declining tax base, ageing population, loss of markets, and little ability to change the course of history is faced with  tough choices.  New Zealand is in a similar spot, with respect to China and the English-speaking west.   But American local governments usually don’t have to deal with fake news stories planted by enemies in the town next door.

Url for the New Zealand Herald article –

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12205347&ref=clavis

Huawei – Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas

You know the meme – when you work with bad guys, you should expect to be labeled a bad guy. I mean no disrespect to the thousands of Chinese companies doing business across the world that manage to be profitable without intimate Chinese government relations.  But in our globalized, internet era, it is impossible for a high tech company, particularly one as fundamentally important to internet networks, to not be tarnished with the specter of theft of intellectual property and CCP internet control and monitoring of Chinese businesspeople, students, even foreigners.

Probably no one outside a small group of analysts has the actual evidence of real dirt on Huawei.  But that is the risk of being a national champion in China.  If the government is promoting you, then there must be a government interest in promoting you, beyond just “go team.”  This is simply Chinese practical reasoning.

But it seems that lying down with dogs is more than just a saying here.  In his extraordinary Sinocism news blog, Bill Bishop continues the Huawei stories.  From the February 9 edition, with no repetition in the stories (all should be clickable) –

1.  Huawei’s bad start to the Year of the Pig

Trump likely to sign executive order banning Chinese telecom equipment next week – POLITICO:

President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order, banning Chinese telecom equipment from U.S. wireless networks before a major industry conference at the end of February, three sources told POLITICO.

The administration plans to release the directive, part of its broader effort to protect the U.S. from cyber threats, before MWC Barcelona, formerly known as Mobile World Congress, which takes place Feb. 25 to Feb. 28.

Mobile network operator’s body GSMA considers crisis meeting over Huawei | Reuters:

Mobile communications industry body GSMA has proposed its members discuss the possibility that Chinese network vendor Huawei [HWT.UL] is excluded from key markets, amid concerns such a development could set operators back by years…

GSMA Director General Mats Granryd has written to members proposing to put the debate around Huawei onto the agenda of its next board meeting, a spokesman for the federation told Reuters on Saturday.

The meeting will be held in late February on the sidelines of the Mobile World Congress, the industry’s biggest annual gathering, in Barcelona.

Trump envoy urges Europe to ‘link arms’ against China – POLITICO:

Describing China’s influence as “malign,” Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, told POLITICO that his country and the EU should overcome their current trade tensions and join forces against the Chinese.

“We should … combine our mutual energies — we have a $40 trillion combined GDP, there is nothing on the planet that is more powerful than that — to meet China and check China in multiple respects: economically, from an intelligence standpoint, militarily,” he said in an interview.

“That’s where the EU and U.S. really should be linking arms,” Sondland continued, advocating for “a quick resolution that would move our trade relationship in the right direction so that we can both turn toward China, which is really the future problem in multiple respects.”

Huawei Deals for Tech Will Have Consequences, U.S. Warns EU – Bloomberg:

“There are no compelling reasons that I can see to do business with the Chinese, so long as they have the structure in place to reach in and manipulate or spy on their customers,” Ambassador Gordon Sondland, Trump’s envoy in Brussels, said Thursday in an interview. “Those who are charging ahead blindly and embracing the Chinese technology without regard to these concerns may find themselves in a disadvantage in dealing with us.”

Huawei representative rebukes US ambassador’s accusation, defends integrity and safety – China Daily:

“Recently, Huawei has been under constant attack by some countries and politicians. We are shocked, or sometimes feel amused, by those ungrounded and senseless allegations,” said Abraham Liu, Huawei’s vice-president for the European region and chief representative to the EU institutions.

“For example, yesterday, the US ambassador to the European Union, Mr (Gordon) Sondland, said (that) someone in Beijing (could) remotely run a certain car off the road on 5G network and kill the person that’s in it. This is an insult to people’s intelligence, let alone the technological experts across the world,” Liu said.

Chinese firm Huawei blocked from ‘sensitive state projects’ and 5G amid security concerns-The Sun:

New laws on foreign investment in the UK will block Chinese firm Huawei from sensitive state projects, The Sun can reveal… senior Cabinet ministers and Britain’s most senior civil servant Mark Sedwill fear Huawei’s involvement in such critical infrastructure could jeopardise national security.

They are planning reforms to allow the Government to ban Chinese firms like Huawei from future involvement in “strategically significant” UK tech projects.

Huawei Says U.K. Software Issues Will Take Years to Fix – WSJ $$:

The telecom giant also said in a letter to the U.K. Parliament that its board of directors has signed off on a companywide overhaul of its software engineering, budgeting $2 billion over five years for the effort..

German ministers meeting to discuss how to deal with Huawei in 5G auction: source | Reuters:

Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Tuesday that Germany needed guarantees that Huawei would not hand over data to the Chinese state before the telecoms equipment supplier can participate in building its 5G network.

German newspaper Handelsblatt said Wednesday’s meeting would focus on whether a security catalog, prepared by the Federal Network Agency and the cyber defense agency (BSI), along with certification rules and a no-spy agreement with China, would be enough to ensure future 5G mobile networks are safe.

Norway’s PST warns against Huawei – Newsinenglish.no:

Justice Minister Tor Mikkel Wara of the Progress Party, who joined Bjørnland at Monday’s PST briefing, later announced that measures would be introduced to reduce the vulnerability of the Norwegian network. The goal is to hinder Norway’s large mobile operators Telenor, Telia and Ice from choosing equipment suppliers that could threaten the nation’s and their users’ security. Huawei is the prime target.

China hacked Norway’s Visma to steal client secrets: investigators | Reuters:

Hackers working on behalf of Chinese intelligence breached the network of Norwegian software firm Visma to steal secrets from its clients, cyber security researchers said, in what a company executive described as a potentially catastrophic attack.

The attack was part of what Western countries said in December is a global hacking campaign by China’s Ministry of State Security to steal intellectual property and corporate secrets, according to investigators at cyber security firm Recorded Future.

China says it is not a threat to Norway, denies cyber espionage | Reuters:

“China poses no threat to Norway’s security. It’s very ridiculous for the intelligence service of a country to make security assessment and attack China with pure hypothetical language,” the Chinese Embassy in Oslo said in a statement on its website.

Huawei Threatens Lawsuit Against Czech Republic After Security Warning – The New York Times:

The warning, which carries the force of law, requires all companies in the Czech Republic that are deemed critical to the nation’s health to perform a risk analysis that takes security concerns into account.

China denies ‘ridiculous’ spying allegations by Lithuania | AFP:

Earlier in the week, two Lithuanian intelligence agencies condemned China for an “increasingly aggressive” spy campaign, which they said included “attempts to recruit Lithuanian citizens”.

Darius Jauniskis, head of Lithuania’s State Security Department, said his agency was analysing the potential “threat” posed by Huawei, whose technology is being used to build the EU and Nato state’s new 5G telecommunications infrastructure.

Huawei offers to build cyber security center in Poland | Reuters:

Italy denies it will ban Huawei, ZTE from its 5G plans | Reuters:

Thailand launches Huawei 5G test bed, even as U.S. urges allies to bar Chinese gear | Reuters:

University of California Berkeley bans new research projects with Huawei after US indicts Chinese telecoms giant | South China Morning Post

Stanford halts research ties with Huawei amid surveillance controversy – The Stanford Daily

Vermont phone carriers in dispute over concerns about Chinese firm Huawei – VTDigger

 

2.  FBI raids Huawei’s San Diego offices

This is a damning story. One argument some defenders of Huawei have used is that the firm’s culture has changed since inception and while it committed an “original sin” of IP theft in its early years now that it is a global tech firm its behavior has changed. This story destroys that argument.

Huawei Sting Offers Rare Glimpse of U.S. Targeting Chinese Giant – Bloomberg:

Diamond glass could make your phone’s screen nearly unbreakable—and its inventor says the FBI enlisted him after Huawei tried to steal his secrets…

The first sign of trouble came two months later, in May, when Huawei missed the deadline to return the sample. Shurboff says his emails to Han requesting its immediate return were ignored. The following month, Han wrote that Huawei had been performing “standard” tests on the sample and included a photo showing a big scratch on its surface. Finally, a package from Huawei showed up at Gurnee on Aug. 2. ..

Shurboff says he knew there was no way the sample could have been damaged in shipping—all the pieces would still be there in the case. Instead, he believed that Huawei had tried to cut through the sample to gauge the thickness of its diamond film and to figure out how Akhan had engineered it. “My heart sank,” he says. “I thought, ‘Great, this multibillion-dollar company is coming after our technology. What are we going to do now?’”..

The FBI raided Huawei’s San Diego facility on the morning of Jan. 28. That evening, the two special agents and Assistant U.S. Attorney Kessler briefed Khan and Shurboff by phone. The agents described the scope of the search warrant in vague terms and instructed Khan and Shurboff to have no further contact with Huawei.

 ———-

It is an old truism that China tends to be tone deaf in dealing with foreigners, particularly on foreign policy issues.  So we find no small sense of irony in the story from Reuters last week Huawei Offers to Build Cyber-security Center in Poland – “China’s Huawei has offered to build a cyber security center in Poland where last month authorities arrested a Chinese employee of the telecommunications firm along with a former Polish security official on spying charges.”

One of the stories circulating in the past couple of years is that Huawei might have stolen some technology early in its life, but those days are over now, all is in the past, now we are in a new era.  Stories from the bad old days –  In 2002, Cisco Systems Inc. accused (Huawei) company of stealing source code for its routers. Motorola said in a 2010 lawsuit that Huawei had successfully turned some of its Chinese-born employees into informants. And in 2012 the U.S. House Intelligence Committee labeled Huawei a national security threat and urged the government and American businesses not to buy its products. Huawei denied all the claims. The Cisco and Motorola lawsuits ended with settlements.

For anyone still unsure of the extent of Huawei espionage or theft, there is this Bloomberg story – Huawei Sting Offers Rare Glimpse of the US Targeting a Chinese Giant.  This story is about a small American company creating a “diamond glass” computer screen that would be stronger than anything now on the market.  The diamond glass story is about an IP theft from last August.

The detention of Meng Wanzhou, originally on charges of violating economic sanctions against Iran by using a shell company to get around restrictions, now seems less of a political stunt.  From the Chinese foreign ministry – “For a long time, the U.S. has used state power to smear and attack certain Chinese companies in an attempt to stifle legitimate business operations … Behind that, there is strong political motivation and manipulation. We strongly urge the U.S. to stop unreasonable suppression of Chinese companies, including Huawei, and treat Chinese enterprises fairly and objectively.”

Un huh.  One can only hope that Huawei is not treated as “fairly and objectively” as Trump treated ZTE

Idle Thought – last week in January, 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh.  And Reagan on walls –

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

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

And –

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

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

Update on Peking U Ideological Battle

January, 2019 

In a recent post, The Ideology of Occupation, I described an ideological struggle being played out last month at Peking University, the combined Harvard-Yale of China.   Now, a followup on what has happened to the “Old Marxist” students who questioned the manner in which CCP has been providing leadership of the proletariat.  Spoiler – they are in jail.

Bill Bishop has the story at Sinocism – Seven Maoist Students Detained in Beijing After Talking to Foreign Media  Original story from Radio Free Asia.  A video was made by Peking student Zhang Ziwei immediately before he was himself detained –

“I’m Zhang Ziwei,” the recording says. “Six of my classmates have been detained already today, two of them just downstairs from where we live.”

“They were shoved into a car, shouting ‘call the police!,'” Zhang says, adding that he too is a target.

“Dark forces are conducting house-to-house searches right now,” he says. “They want to take me away too, just like they did to the others.”

It appears that the “Old Marxist” students have been not only defeated, but jailed. Their support for the Marxism of class struggle is out of date in the modern China of Xi Jinping. 

I am reminded of the climactic scene in the movie A Few Good Men in which Colonel Jessup (Jack Nicholson) rages against the upstart attorney Lieutenant Kaffee (Tom Cruise).   In the setup, the Colonel is standing on the wall, battling the forces of evil, while Kaffee and his cohort stand for rule of law and honor to regulations and tradition, properly understood.  Jessup rages against Kaffee and colleagues for questioning the manner in which Jessup stands on the wall – You Can’t Handle the Truth.  You know the scene, and how it ends. Jessup claims a greater responsibility than Kaffee can imagine. So, too, at Peking U.  In this Peking University struggle, the New Marxists are the forces of modernity, standing on the wall and battling the forces of western imperialism and western thought and western concepts.   CCP will determine what socialism and Communism means, and there can only be one source of truth.  There is no questioning of the manner in which CCP provides leadership.  In the Chinese version of the movie,  Jessup would be exonerated and honored.  The “Old Marxist” students, representing the outdated western import of Marxism, can’t handle the truth. 

The Ideology of Occupation

January, 2019 

In the last couple of weeks, two student groups were battling at Peking university, one of China’s most prestigious institutions.  These were battles of words, not fists, but all the more intense for that.

Some might dismiss the conflict as a minor student skirmish over ideology. But the Chinese government reaction suggests that there is a lot more going on – that occupation by a ruling elite can have a light touch, except when it finds itself threatened.   Existential threats, even small ones, must be put down.

To be sure, the conflict at Peking was not a contest for student body president, or a fight over which gendered pronoun to use in addressing a classmate.  It was an ideological fight over who gets to interpret Marxism, and the fight illustrates the extent to which CCP, like every dynasty before it, can be understood as an occupying force.  SupChina has the story-  One Marxist student group is backed by the Party.  The other’s WeChat account is blocked

Source:  Socialist Worker – A Time of turmoil shaped Karl Marx’s ideas

One can understand this fight as that between “old” Marxists, who think the Party should be representing workers and farmers in class struggle, and “new” Marxists, who want the Party to continue its version of opening up and representing the major productive forces in the economy – like big businesses, the forces of capital, and – not coincidentally – the ruling elite.   The old Marxists are thinking first of the workers at the university – dining hall workers, cleaners, landscapers – but also the farmers left behind in the rush to modernize and make money.  The new Marxists represent the views of the university administration and CCP generally, and it is CCP that is in power in China. 

At Peking, the new Marxists, representing the Youth League and supported by faculty and the university administration, seem to have won the battle.   The social media of the old Marxists have been blocked, so they have no easy way of communicating with each other or with outside supporters, and individual students have been disappeared, expelled, beaten and arrested.   The university administration and the government have seen to it that doctrinal interpretation will remain with the rulers in power.

American campuses have long had such labor-oriented protests and disagreements, though mostly pitting students against university administration over wages and benefits for non-academic employees.  But the Peking conflict is one involving public speech, public writing, student organizing, and the fundamentals of Marxism.  A ruling elite that is willing to give superior students – the future of the Party, the literati – some leeway in discussion was finally stirred to action.   Finally, the hammer comes down.

Perry Link makes a similar point in The Anaconda in the Chandelier, which focuses on Chinese government censorship, but the analogy is the same.  What might be scarier than a big snake in a chandelier? The snake hides above, unseen and unrecognized, lying quietly until stirred, and then it can strike without warning.  Perry Link writes about elite preservation –  … repression remains an important problem, and its extent and methods are still poorly understood in the West. To appreciate it one must re-visit a dull but fundamental fact: the highest priority of the top leadership of the Communist Party remains, as in the past, not economic development, or a just society, or China’s international standing, or any other goal for the nation as a whole, but its own grip on power.

Chinese claim more than two thousand years of continuous dynastic rule, and we wonder how that could possibly be achieved.  Through dynastic changes and uprisings and invasions, why the return to the same system of governance – emperor and a small bureaucracy of literati overseeing a vast nation of farmers and traders.  The ruling house and bureaucracy – the occupying elite – was relatively small, even into late Qing times.  How could it be done?

There are several fascinating answers, but one that stands out is that the ruling elite generally kept a light touch on its occupation of the country.  By occupation, I don’t mean a military force – this is not Japan in 1930s China, or Britain in India or the US in the Philippines.  The elite needed sufficient taxes to pay for the imperial court and the bureaucracy, but beyond that, most governance and spending was local, with locally raised or extorted monies.   A single magistrate might be responsible for an area with 100,000 or more people, and his staff consisted of clerks and runners paid out of his own pocket or with fees for services provided – a fee for bringing paperwork inside the building for the review by the magistrate. 

A way of understanding this sort of occupation is Mancur Olson’s concept of the stationary bandit, described in his 1993 article  Dictatorship, Democracy, and Development.  A roving bandit sweeps in, steals what he can, and leaves.  Such a bandit is a short term profit maximizer.  A stationary bandit has incentives to steal less, so that he can remain to steal tomorrow.   A stationary bandit with dynastic pretensions is only providing for his offspring and family if he steals enough, but not too much, so the family business can be preserved.  In China, that model has worked on average for a couple of hundred years for each dynasty, before other conditions finally forced a change.   When the new rulers came in, they saw the identical incentives.   Chinese central government taxation was almost never excessive, nor were most central demands for corvee labor or restrictions on trade.  The literati, the bureaucracy, or what we might now call the “deep state,” had incentives to remain in power as well, and the two combined to do so. 

Economic historians Loren Brandt, Thomas Rawski, and Debin Ma argued in their article From Divergence to Convergence: Re-evaluating the History Behind  China’s Economic Boom that the stationary bandit model works pretty well for Chinese dynasties.   It is in that sense that we can see dynasties, and now CCP, as an occupying force.  CCP must remain the only source of power, the only source of truth.  Propaganda is marketing and defense for the Party, conducted in speeches, reports, news stories, editorials, electronic and social media.  Representation of the peasants –  the workers and farmers – is fine for political speeches, but let’s not get carried away.  In other words, don’t start believing your own press releases.  The CCP is an imperial elite in power, and intends to remain so.   Students at Peking are the next generation literati.  Remember?

Kent Deng at the London School of Economics argues for a historically stable triad among the three sets of actors – emperor, literati, and peasants.  Any two of the three could align with each other to force change in the third – Development and its Deadlock in Imperial China, 221 BC-1840 AD.

In the Peking University case, we can see the ruling elite aligning with some of the literati – the best of the best in Chinese universities – against those who would advance the cause of the peasants just a bit too far.   The old Marxists in this case want to talk about class struggle and working class allies.  That is a step too far for the occupying forces.  The rhetorical concept of the new Marxists, speaking to the old Marxists,  is “The workers are living so peacefully, stop bothering them,”  “Are you really being true friends to the workers? You’re just using the workers for your own purposes!”

The new Marxists understand the rule of power retention – “In order to study Marxism, the Chinese Communist Party must be embraced; opposing the Party means opposing Marxism.”  In other words, you old Marxists, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. 

The old Marxists aren’t really opposing the Party, but they are rocking the boat.  CCP has said many times that it will be the entity to determine what Chinese communism means.  The student old Marxists just don’t get the Lord Acton proviso – ‘power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”   It may be corrupt, but it remains in power.

Are you getting hammered from the typhoon?

The constant question from the US in fall of 2015 …

Hangzhou, Xihu District, Shui Mu Qing Hua residential development.  Reporting from the front.  On the fifth floor.

Liu hé lu, the street right outside the school and our apartment complex, was flooded today. That is the only exit from our development.  Late in the day, there was occasional traffic in each direction in the west bound lanes only; a few of the brave drivers who made the attempt did not stall or get flooded out.  Other major local streets were also flooded, and closed.  There is no other way in or out of our development, and all the other developments to the west of us.  The thousands of us were stranded, at least for the rest of the day. The street floods a couple of time a year anyway, so this was not unexpected. 

Source: Englishsina.com

Source:  chinadaily.com.cn

We have no school tomorrow morning, since the school felt that many teachers, who live just a few minutes away but have to travel liu he lu to get here, will not be able to make it. Maybe have school in the afternoon.  Contact everyone by wechat, and teachers should stand by, ready to respond.

Literally closer to home, we had some ceiling leaks coming from the apartment above.  We are on the fifth floor of a six-story walk-up.

So, lessons about real estate in China –  the apartment above is owned by a woman from Guangdong, in the south of China.  Currently, no one lives in the apartment above.   The owner will not decorate it – do the buildout – because it is not worth it to get the rent.  One reason why apartment construction is so much faster in China than in the US is that the work done by the developer is so much less – excavation, foundations, concrete block walls, plumbing risers with stubs into units, same for electricity, poured concrete floors, stairs, windows, exterior doors to apartments, c’est fini. At a point when an American developer would be about 50% complete with the project, the Chinese developer is walking away.  The apartment above us is left in its pristine original unfinished condition.

The owner above us rents the apartment out as is, bare concrete walls, sort of a makeshift squat toilet and tiny sink.   No kitchen at all.   No furniture, of course.  No lights, no gas.

She rents this apartment to students, and to construction workers (farmers) working on local projects.   The rent is clearly unstable, and the apartment has been vacant for a few months now.   When students were living there, the owner had divided the apartment with makeshift walls and doors into five or six separate units, each about 10 square meters, that student couples rented.   Sort of “starter” apartments for couples.  The students or workers run some bare wires, attach some light bulbs.  Take some plastic tubing, lay it on the floor, and that is water supply to a sort of kitchen and a bathroom.  Tape some plastic pipe to the concrete wall to get a shower effect in the bathroom.  You get the idea.  Not quite up to code.  But no problem in libertarian China.

With no one living there, the owner gave the key to the management company for our development that hires people to take care of landscaping, general cleaning, trash removal, and the guards.

It appears that people from the management company, or their contract workers, would use the apartment from time to time.  In any case, it appears that some of the windows above us were left open during the typhoon, hence the inch or two of water on the floor, hence our ceiling leaks.   Since the apartment above ours is the top floor, it is also distinctly possible that the leaks are coming from the roof, probably not the flat parts but from flashings or places where pipes go through the roof, maybe with little or inappropriate flashing.   There are also a couple of windows out in the unit upstairs, certainly a big source of water in a typhoon. 

Whatever the source, the problems became evident yesterday morning, when the dining room ceiling began to leak.   Qing called the management company – three times – before someone came over to take a look.   First call – call answered, promise to send someone over, but no physical response; second call, not our problem, call the owner;  third call, this time a bit more insistent, then five people show up, with little dust-cleaning pans and brooms that one might use to sweep the kitchen floor. Very light duty if all one were doing is mopping the floor as part of a daily routine.  This was ceiling leaks in five or six places in our apartment. Chinese response -lots of labor, few or poor tools. 

But sometimes throwing labor at a problem works.   In about an hour, they had the floor about as dry as it was going to get.   The leaks have stopped in our apartment.  We asked the management company to keep the door to the unit open, so we could inspect over the next couple of days.   They agreed.

Joking, I told Qing to call her insurance company.   There is no property insurance.   The owner of the apartment above does not have insurance either.   In these cases, as with the car accidents, the parties are supposed to meet and try to come to some settlement, on their own, without lawyers or police.   There is no concept whatsoever of government building or housing inspectors.

The bureaucratic response of the management company to Qing’s phone calls is familiar.  Qing finally resorted to the “I pay you, you should do something”  approach, and that seemed to work.  In China, many of the people who own apartments do so at no out-of-pocket cost, other than the mortgage – there is no property tax, they carry no insurance, and they refuse to pay the small monthly management and maintenance fees.  There are apparently some abilities to get owners to pay the maintenance fees, but the measures are not used much, as I understand it.   Just too hard to go after people.   So property management companies tend to be underfunded – not only a Chinese complaint – without recourse.   Garbage gets picked up, guards function as guards, some cleaning is done – but anything else, apartment owners are at the mercy of whether their fellow owners have paid their dues, in addition to the usual bureaucratic delay.   It should go without saying that the budgetary processes are opaque.  It is not at all clear how to find out whether the property management company is getting money and not spending it, or just not collecting, or just using it elsewhere.  

The owner of the apartment above will send over a friend, today, to have a look and discuss some settlement.   The friend, and Qing, will use their extensive construction expertise to decide on the costs of fixing our ceiling and remuneration for any problems that might show up next week.

So, lessons –

  1.  owners have no responsibility to take care of property.  Nor do management companies.  All is caveat emptor.
  2.  management companies do not maintain “common areas” beyond some light cleaning.  If the roof leaks, the owner below the roof should fix it.  This is one reason that the top couple of floors in a building tend to be priced less than units a few floors down – more risk for maintenance costs.
  3.  “local knowledge” can be effective at solving problems – lots of labor and no proper tools does work, sometimes
  4.  bureaucratic response is bureaucratic response, no matter what country
  5.  owning apartments is easy if there are no – zero – costs of operation
  6.  but zero costs of operation means that the common elements, even the landscaping and the guards, are at the mercy of how many people decide they will make the (ridiculously small) monthly dues payments
  7. so China suffers from standard tragedy of the commons problems – it is in no one’s personal interest to make dues payments, hence the property as a whole suffers
  8. in libertarian China, problems should be resolved by discussion and negotiation between the parties.  How charming!  How civilized.  How ignorant of the details of problems, and their resolution, and particularly, how ignorant of the role of power in personal negotiations.  It is not clear to me that more lawyers and legal processes always make the world fairer, or better.   But no lawyers and no rules certainly constitute a libertarian heaven. 
  9. it is important to see these elements – construction, management, repairs, evaluation of performance – operating as a system.  As a result, poor performance in construction, or anything, is excused – a solution can always be negotiated later, when the problem occurs.  This reminds me of the “fatalism” thought to be part of eastern culture.  There is little thought to the consequences of actions, or impact on others.  What happens, happens.  Who could have predicted?  In the US, friends of mine had a fire in a townhouse they own, the result of poor wiring.  They are considering the liability of the original contractor who built all of the units, in their fire discussions.   There is no such concept here.  
  1.  In the system, you see the importance of face – landscaping is well maintained, the guards have uniforms.   But real maintenance – painting of railings on fences or balconies, roof repairs, repair of broken sidewalks, securing window openings with no glass – those things are never considered.
  2. there is the ultimate tragedy of the commons problem – it is assumed (as we do in economics, generally) that everyone is doing the best they can, most or all of the time.  It is assumed that people do not intentionally do less than that of which they are capable.  But the bar for “the best that one can” is very low here.  As a result, everyone goofs off.   There is no inspection, evaluation, auditing, testing, checking up – that is worth the time spent doing it.   There is a lot of reporting, and checking, and looking over somebody’s shoulder – but the results of that are often left in the pile of monthly reports, and never make it to real action in the world. I have some knowledge of this beyond experience with our own apartment. Qing’s brother-in-law, who lives with us, is a construction inspector.  So is his son, and I have interviewed both at some length. To confront someone with not having done as good a job as is possible is a loss of face.   I am making a bit much of this – there is plenty of yelling and screaming at each other over quality – but that seems to be discussion about work in process.   Discussion of what has already occurred is considered too difficult – requires expertise and power, and often best just to preserve the relationship and accept the consequences.   So, anything in which quality is difficult to assess at the point of purchase – construction, teaching, cars, food – is suspect.

Anyway, this is what I was thinking about while I watched women use dust pans to scoop up water that was otherwise going to be coming through our ceiling in a few minutes, if they did not move quickly.

So which is the more civilized – that the government regulations force behavior, with ability to sue and be sued, or that people should talk with each other, and discuss, and come to some agreement about a solution?   Are people born good, or not?  Do people learn goodness, or evil?  Does regulation remove moral responsibility?  We talk about this all the time in the US.

The key issue is power – tenants cannot turn on the heat in a central heating plant, and they don’t know a good roof from a bad one, a dangerous situation from a benign one.   When functioning well, the government serves to equalize power relations, which includes technical expertise. 

And you see the enormity of the Chinese development model problem – I mean, with so many people, you expect capital to garner a large share of profits. Scarce capital is worth more, relatively.  But even now, how can so many people be kept so poor, even in the face of opportunities to make money and improve – fix buildings, test for quality, provide evaluation services?   The answer lies in both culture and organizations.  Chinese organizations work for the benefit of capital – it is illegal for a group of us to put money together and build a building, even in the face of enormous demand. It is illegal for us to organize to get better treatment.   It is difficult, if not impossible, to sue over poor conditions. 

 And Chinese do not want to trust a small company over a big one.   A big company has power, stemming from obvious relations with the government.   A small company has no relationships.    So the culture biases in favor of the big over the small.

And one more note on our leak problem –  four inches of concrete serves as a decent water barrier, in these conditions.   Socialist concrete construction works better in poor water conditions than American capitalist three inches of concrete on steel joists.   That is one reason why roof coverings are so poor in China – no one feels they need to maintain roofs, because the concrete does an ok job, except at joints, and any leaks are either the responsibility of the person suffering the problem, or are in common areas, which no one cares about.

And yes, on the scrutiny of consumer products – I have seen many people do that here, students from IIT and Qing and others.   They are looking for an indication of quality,  expiration dates, some hint that the product they are buying might be ok to use.   I saw this among IIT students, and Qing, in stores in China.  In the grocery store in the US, I grab a bottle of milk or bread from the shelf, and pay and walk out. Chinese pursue the fine print. Government regulation and culture.

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

What Chinese are talking about (1) – Shaolin Temple raises the red flag

I hope this will become an occasional post, based on what I hear on the ground. 

Shaolin Monks, originators of Kung Fu, Kneel to Chinese Government 
Shaolin Buddhist monks, the world famous monks of astounding feats of athletic skill, concentration, and mind over body, originators of the martial art of kung fu, have indicated their subservience to the Chinese government in a ceremony held at their home temple in Dengfeng County in Henan Province.  This is a first in 1500 years, that the monks would indicate political subservience.

All photos: http://english.sina.com/china/s/2018-08-28/detail-ihifuvpi1509972.shtml

August 28, 2018 – Beijing: Shaolin Temple raises the red flag  by Kirsty Needham  (China correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald)

Shaolin Temple, the birthplace of kung fu and famous home of the fighting monks, has raised the Chinese national flag for the first time in its 1500-year history.

A flag raising ceremony on Monday was attended by officials from the United Front Work Department, which oversees religious groups in China because of the Communist Party’s fear they may be a threat to its rule ….

The national flag would bring socialist core values into religious venues and “enhance national awareness” the temple said.    Shaolin temple raises the red flag

This is a surprising development for Chinese, who generally see Buddhism, and the Shaolin monks in particular, as sacrosanct.   Even in an era of crackdown on religion, on Tibetan Buddhism, this was unexpected, both for the brazenness of the demand from the United Front bureau and the willingness of the monks to acquiesce. 

From a South China Morning Post piece –

Red flag for Buddhists? Shaolin Temple ‘takes the lead’ in Chinese patriotism push

…  While the move was applauded by some, critics said it risked tainting religion with politics.

“As a Buddhist, this makes me feel uncomfortable,” one Weibo user wrote. “Before, I thought of religious faith as pure, but now it confuses me … With patriotism interfering with spiritual life, there is no space at all for individual thought. Is this what a harmonious society looks like?”

Another wrote: “The Buddha and Marx have shaken hands … Buddhism is meant to cultivate the mind, body and spirit – what has it got to do with politics? Haven’t the monks in the monastery renounced worldly living? I feel uncomfortable and just think that raising the national flag at the temple is simply not appropriate.”   SCMP – Red flag for Shaolin monksMonks and United Front officials watch the ceremony

The pressure on the Shaolin monks is likely related to two developments – first, the Shaolin monks have had their share of scandal, as they have become a global revenue generator from shows and demonstrations. The government will always take a strong interest in a historical cultural phenomenon that generates millions of dollars each year.  For more see Rise and fall of CEO monk.

Second, forcing the monks to raise the flag is a sign to all other religions in China, particularly Catholicism, that there is no greater force than CCP in the universe.  This has greater significance in light of the concurrent deal between the Vatican and the government to permit government involvement in selection of bishops in China.  This is anathema to many Chinese Catholics, in China and outside, but the Shaolin flag-raising emphasizes that CCP will brook no competitors for power.   (For more on the new era of crackdown on Christianity, see for example this South China Morning Post piece –   Christianity crackdown  (note – this link is now blocked or deleted) )

There is another aspect to the Shaolin development.  The Shaolin Buddhist monks do not owe allegiance to the Dalai Lama, but in the current environment in China, religious activities must be dealt with directly and forcefully.  The Dalai Lama does not cooperate, so pressure must be brought where it can.

There is ongoing fear in CCP that the current Dalai Lama, the spiritual head of Tibetan Buddhism, will not name an heir, a new Dalai Lama, making Beijing scramble to figure out who will be a leader they can control.  This is the nature of the deal made recently between the Vatican and the Chinese government – the Vatican will choose to approve bishops preselected by CCP.  Beijing has in fact demanded that the current Dalai Lama, in exile, name a successor, otherwise, CCP will do so for Buddhists.  Even CCP is reluctant to take this move – atheistic CCP appointing a new head of Tibetan Buddhism.  From a 2004 Time Magazine interview with the current Dalai Lama –

The institution of the Dalai Lama, and whether it should continue or not, is up to the Tibetan people. If they feel it is not relevant, then it will cease and there will be no 15th Dalai Lama. But if I die today I think they will want another Dalai Lama. The purpose of reincarnation is to fulfill the previous [incarnation’s] life task. My life is outside Tibet, therefore my reincarnation will logically be found outside. But then, the next question: Will the Chinese accept this or not? China will not accept. The Chinese government most probably will appoint another Dalai Lama, like it did with the Panchen Lama. Then there will be two Dalai Lamas: one, the Dalai Lama of the Tibetan heart, and one that is officially appointed.

Alex Perry. “A Conversation with the Dalai Lama”TimeOctober 18, 2004.

To further confound CCP, the Dalai Lama issued a statement in 2011 –

Bear in mind that, apart from the reincarnation recognized through such legitimate methods, no recognition or acceptance should be given to a candidate chosen for political ends by anyone, including those in the People’s Republic of China.  Retirement and Reincarnation Message

Checkmate, in advance.

 Short video about the flag raising ceremony –

 We have no king but Caesar?

The required Shaolin flag raising is, among other symbolic representations, a response to a Dalai Lama checkmate.  Hell hath no fury like a CCP scorned.

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.

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