Tag: Students

A Note on the Middle Income Trap

In the last couple of years, a number of China political observers have commented on the dangers to China of the middle income trap.  The fear is that the Chinese economy will fall into the trap. Since economic growth is the remaining claim to legitimacy for CCP, a substantial slowdown from real growth rates of 6 to 15 per cent per year, which obtained in the last forty years, will be disturbing to the harmony that keeps CCP in power. 

In what follows I am not making direct claims for or against the middle income trap in China, only describing the concept. 

What does the middle income trap mean? 

Most models of national development posit a growth track that demands –

– increased savings, so savings can be used for investment;

– an abundant low wage population;

– transfer of low wage, low productivity workers into higher productivity jobs in factories;

– promotion of exports; and

– a progression to higher levels of productivity, eventually approaching the GDP per person levels of the most developed countries. 

Only a few countries – notably, the Asian Tigers – Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong – have made that transition.  More countries have begun the transition and after a couple of decades, found themselves stuck – unable to significantly increase GDP per person.  That list is longer – Mexico, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Turkey. The World Bank has identified 37 countries that are prisoners of the middle income trap.  These countries have achieved middle-income country status, but seem unable to pass that barrier, or trap. 

It is important to note that the middle income trap does not mean people are starving, or in poor health.  It does not mean that economies are failing, only that GDP/person is failing to grow much.  National economies are stuck, not declining.   But notably, economic performance is the remaining claim to legitimacy for CCP, now that Marxism-Leninism is discredited (except for Mr. Xi) and nationalism is a dangerous ally.  If nothing else, the middle income trap may be just reversion to the mean of GDP growth.  But that alone is scary for a government whose claim to legitimacy is growth. 

Reasons for the middle income trap include the need to transition institutional arrangements, from those that worked well when the country was emerging from poverty to those needed for higher quality growth – one can imagine changes in rules about finance, banking, savings, property ownership, transfers of ownership, control of bribery and corruption.  With increasing sophistication of work come demands for increasing sophistication of education – workers in finance need different training than workers on factory assembly lines.   Also, changes in cultural features – attitudes to education, health care, family connectedness.   Acemoglu and Robinson in Why Nations Fail boil most of the necessary changes down to institutional change – rules, regulations, laws, customs built in to culture. 

Is there evidence for the middle income trap in China?  Here are some things that keep Chinese macroeconomists up at night.

 Scott Rozelle, education and health researcher in rural China, defines part of the problem, not mentioned in glowing reviews of Chinese economic power.  In decades of research across many Chinese provinces, he finds that iron deficiency anemia was present in 40% of students in fourth and fifth grade in at least four rural provinces; in Guizhou and other southern provinces, 50% of children suffered from at least one type of intestinal parasite; and nearsightedly was common in schoolchildren, but went unaddressed in many rural areas.   Health care and education in rural areas is now significantly better than twenty years ago, but problems persist for much of the rural population.   The health problems are definitely treatable; but they persist, nevertheless.   Rozelle has found that 15% to 20% of rural kids do not do not complete middle high school.  That is a fearful statistic for future growth.   Many of those same kids are affected by poor quality or poisonous drinking water, or rice laden with heavy metals, or air that is even more poisonous.  China has been a leader in flashy environmental projects – wind, solar, dam construction.  Not so much in the unflashy, dirty job of cleaning air, water, land, or ensuring food quality.  Spending on those items will make no contribution to exports or factory technology or even short term health.  For local officials, what’s the point?

For those rural kids, China now has much less ability to build on exports to fuel internal growth.  The rural school children who don’t go to high school are not going to swing investment deals in London, and other countries in Asia and Africa are now lower cost producers of commodity and low-end  products.  That part of the growth path is now less available in China for the 800,000,000 or so who are not middle class and living in Beijing or Shanghai or Hangzhou.  How will they flourish?

That is one side of the problem.  Another side is the ability of superior Chinese scientists and engineers to continue with indigenous innovation.   In one sense, this is not a problem – what is not invented can be stolen, as in the past.  But innovation is no longer an individual working in his garage, but coordinated lab work and bench work and computer work, and collaboration with people outside China is vital.  The Great Firewall, in all its manifestations, inhibits that.  On a project basis, that may not be much of a problem.  In addition to theft, direct internet access to western journals and scientific reports in readily available within scientific and engineering schools and labs.  The firewall, which is eminently adjustable locally, does not affect them.  On another level, however, those same scientists and engineers can find themselves unable to participate in the events of the world in which they have an interest – conferences and symposia and simply news of family and friends outside China.  Sometimes, these sophisticated workers find the daily restrictions and requirements – writing paeans to Xi Jinping Thought, as is a current requirement –  to be just too stupid, and they leave.  They don’t want their kids to write such paeans, either.

When we look at the macroeconomic picture of China is all its glory and warts, we come down to the Acemoglu and Robinson prescription – institutional change.  The change required is not small.  It is systemic, and at the heart of the Chinese model for the last forty years – financial repression and investment in infrastructure and real estate.  Interest on savings in banks was held low, so loans to SOE and other factories and real estate developers could be held low as well.  The hukou kept peasants out of cities, keeping social overhead capital for poor people – primary and secondary education, health care, low income housing, pensions – mostly out of government budgets.  But changing the model means changing the relative shares of income in the economy – poor people and farmers and ordinary savers need to get a larger share of total income, and lots of vested interests in government and SOE and banks need to get a smaller share.  The reluctance to share in China is no less than it is on Wall Street, hence the political conundrum.  Social spending in China on education and health care and pensions needs to go up significantly, as China ages and education needs are greater and pensions, long a source of misspent and stolen funds and poor accounting, become a bigger factor in people’s lives. 

Truthfully, when reform began in 1978, China did need every piece of infrastructure that it could build – trains, planes, airports, ports, expressways, housing, factories, offices.  Now, what was needed is built, and far more.  The return to GDP from more construction is less and less.  That contributor to GDP growth is no more.  But building more stuff is the only lever that officials have right now to goose short term GDP. 

Finally, the world is no longer cooperating with China.  For forty years, in the US and Europe, policy makers were willing to accept some job losses in return for low priced consumer goods.  Now, in 2019, governments are less willing to trade jobs and technology for low priced shirts and televisions.   That is one threat facing China.  Another is the economic construct of a secular stagnation, a  general slowdown in all the advanced economies attributable to ageing populations (which don’t buy as much), greater income disparities (since the wealthy don’t simply buy more food or shirts or televisions), greater savings in advanced economies (due to risks of recession or simple job loss), and even greater flexibility in wages and prices, which we normally think of as a good economic outcome (flexibility can increase savings and decrease spending because incomes can now fall as well as rise).  In general, there is more savings than the world can profitably use, and investment levels remain anemic.  This is certainly not good for China exports or profitable Chinese infrastructure investments overseas. 

There is no guarantee that GDP/person will fail to grow in China.  But the threat is there, as evidenced by the paper by Barry Eichengreen, Donghyun Park, Kwanho Shin in 2013 – Growth Slowdowns Redux: New Evidence on the Middle-Income Trap.  Their conclusion – We also find that slowdowns are less likely in countries where the population has a relatively high level of secondary and tertiary education and where high-technology products account for a relatively large share of exports, consistent with our earlier emphasis of the importance of moving up the technology ladder in order to avoid the middle-income trap.

That is what CCP theoreticians and macroeconomists are thinking about. 

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. 

Life in School – and Beyond

November, 2009 


note:  This was written more than ten years ago, when I began teaching full time in China. Some slight editing and updating.  My students were all undergrads in business, marketing, civil engineering, or urban planning.  These notes are early observations on student life at ZUST in Hangzhou.  I can’t say this email feels inaccurate years later.   Life goes on, in and out of school, but the beat goes on, too – stress upon stress, and not stress of one’s own making.   Smoking and environmental cancer are big contributors to early death.  But stress is also an environmental constant.

The middle class Chinese diet is full of the stuff that doctors in the US tell us we should eat- lots of fish, lots of vegetables, fruit, a little liquor (ok, maybe not a little), a little meat, nuts, grains.  But adult Chinese die at about the same rate as Americans, and now, from mostly the same causes – heart, and cancer.  Why don’t Chinese people live forever?

One reason is stress.   When life is about guanxi (relationship and who you know), then official lines of responsibility mean little.   The official lines do matter, but what is more important is the friendships established over a life of school, and work, and after-work events, and weekend trips, and friend-of-a-friend contacts.    So it is possible to get many things done that could not get done otherwise, because you Know People.  Sort of like being related with the government in any American city.   Or, better, being the one high school senior who knows the name of the maintenance guy who can open the gym a little early so the tables for the dance can be delivered on Friday night, instead of waiting for Saturday morning. 

Stress Relief in Dalian

A Chinese government friend and I were driving to a museum in Dalian when she got stopped by the police.  They were conducting a city sticker search- you know, the annual sticker you buy for $75 or $100 from the local government.  Same in Dalian.    Her car was brand new- I mean, a couple of days old.   She did not have the sticker, since the car dealer is supposed to handle that, and the sticker comes a week or two later.   She had the paperwork showing the car was new, and the sticker was applied for, and  true to police form (anywhere, I think) they still gave her a ticket for no sticker.

She was miffed.   She decided to fight City Hall, instead of just paying the $15 (which I would have done, all day long, and I guess most people in China would have done, also).   She didn’t know anyone in the police department- no direct guanxi there- but her job was sufficiently large that when she went to the police station, the guardians of not letting people see the Chief did not want to mess with her.  So she got to see the Chief, and pleaded her case, and got the ticket dismissed.    She got to see the Chief, she said, when other people would not have gotten that far.   Two lessons here- guanxi is based not just on who you know, but also who you are, and does this sound too different from how any American city works?  Stress relief is possible, some times and for some little things.  But a ticket is just ordinary annoyance stress.  Much of Chinese school and business life is pressure, pressure, pressure, all the time. 

Relationships can make projects easier, but at a cost

It is possible to get a ticket fixed in Chicago, too (so I have heard).  What may be different in China is how extensive the guanxi networks are, and the willingness of everyone to use them as needed.   Just like in Chicago politics, you can’t be using your Chinaman for every little thing, and you can’t pull the race card, or whatever trump you have, at every instance.   But the networks are the life blood of Chinese government, and business also.   Anyone who thinks rule of law in China is just a couple of court cases or law changes in Beijing away from implementation should think again about what 5,000 years of history means.  Networks are as deeply ingrained in China as my disgust with Tony Cuccinello for sending Sherm Lollar, the archetype of slow running catchers, home from first base on a double by Al Smith in the second game of the 1959 World Series, and Lollar was out by – oh, about 85 feet- and the White Sox lost that game that they could have won, and they could have gone to Los Angeles 2-0 instead of 1-1, which would have changed the outcome of the series, and life forever after.   That ingrained.

In China, the proper power relations can get things done – real estate projects, infrastructure projects that require cooperation across governments, business perks. But along with the ability to get things done comes the stress at relationship maintenance.  How many dinners, how much late night drinking, how many hongbao, how much self-denial and relationship sucking up do you need? 

Think of the second string baseball catcher, who plays, but not that often, and the team trades for a young catcher who can hit and has gotten a lot of press.   Or the number 3 member of the girls’ in-group at high school, and the new girl shows up who is prettier, has more money, a bigger smile, and a more winning way with numbers 1 and 2.  Think Mean Girls – The New Queen Bee.  New Queen Bee Stress is constant. There is an ex-queen bee, too.  What is your strategy in these situations?  As the second string catcher, do you talk to the manager more, or the team leader, or just try to play harder, when you do play?   What will you do if they put you to third string, or cut you?  As the number 3 member of the girls’ group, do you try to get more time alone with number 1, or find some other group to belong to, or just hope the group can expand to four people? You have to keep up the network, or the network will leave you behind. And that means phone calls, and little gifts, and remembrances, and doing for others before they do for you.  This is the part that would keep me digging ditches on some farm in China. 

You do not have one boss, or one leader.  There are usually two or three, and they need not agree. The Confucian model of respect for authority means that you must do what your leader asks, and you don’t object.

So when your leader calls, and asks you to do something, you cannot say no.  You may be able to find someone else to carry out the task, but that is your obligation to find.   And when the teacher assigns homework, no one says, wait a minute, we all have a test tomorrow.   We must do it.

It starts in primary school – or before …

One of my colleagues was worried about his daughter.  She is seven, in first grade.  His daughter refuses to go to school, and cries every day about going.  The reason given is that  she must complete 100 addition problems before she can engage with the rest of the class.    The daughter is a smart enough kid, but she is wilting under the pressure from the teachers.  Teachers pass the stress on to parents, who get blamed by teachers if kids fail to keep up.  And, it is China – none of this, “well, you tried your best, you can do better next time” American soft soap.  If you aren’t keeping up, you are told so, and berated in front of all your classmates.  “Why can’t you do better?”  And none of this throwing money at programs for  kids who fall behind in class.  Teachers will publicly berate parents for not monitoring homework, and not requiring extra work at home.  Parental responsibility, seemingly a … well, foreign – concept in the US. 

At home in Hangzhou, we have a little kid audio toy, a letter, animal sound, and addition machine that we bought in China.  On the addition segment, the kid is asked to push a button for the correct answer.  In the US, an incorrect answer is indicated by a raspberry, or a plink or a quick low note.  On our machine, a voice tells the kid in Chinese, you are very stupid. 

The stress starts in primary school, and extends into high school.  The later primary and high school day is generally in the range of ten to twelve hours, from about 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM.   There is time included for phys ed, and lunch, and certainly art and music.   Chinese high school students, at good schools, are well-rounded.  And in college, they learn to sing, and dance, perform, and do art. Maybe not well, but they know the concept.  Once, we had that idea in the US – you know, humanities.   

I have visited a couple of Chinese high schools, and talked with a number of kids, sons or daughters of friends.   My sample size is too small to generalize too much, but let me tell you what I saw.   At the No. 2 high school in Fushun, in Liaoning Province, the school building is new and clean and has a big closed campus, with tennis courts and basketball courts and outdoor performance areas and lots of nice landscaping.   This is a residential school, which means that most high school students live in the dorms, and only a few are day students, who are picked up and dropped off each day. 

The hallway are pasted with big portraits and lists of accomplishments of political leaders and scientists and giants of philosophy.  Yes, Mao and Confucius and others (that, pointedly, I do not know), but also Plato and Aristotle and Bell and Einstein and Edison and Fermi and US presidents and Franklin and Kant and Hobbes and Freud.   High school.  In China.  And these students know who these people are, and when they lived, and what they did.

Everybody learns English, starting at various times but generally about age 7.   I have seen the English workbooks for high school students and for college students.   The high school workbooks, in English, rival what I would expect to see in English in the US.   Participles and mood and future perfect and obscure terms and phrases.   Long passages to decipher and get the meaning.   The college workbooks are harder.  Long passages in technical fields, economics or engineering, to decipher, along with differences between US English and foreign English.   I am teaching three courses right now- a negotiation course, an economics course, and an environmental course- in English, of course, and the student level of understanding is pretty good.  But the technical terms in these three courses are a little daunting for American students, and the only way for Chinese students to keep up is to study, all the time.

… and continues in college …

I just now talked with one of my students, a third year student in marketing.  She would like to do fashion design, but as she says, “I cannot do that.”   She has obligations to her parents and to the school, now, and to the society.   Students in college in China select a major in their first year – or have it selected for them – and stay in that major for four years.  There is one chance to switch majors, at the end of first year, but only if you are in the top 15% of your class and the program to which you want to switch will take you.  How many majors did you have in college?

Ms. Liu is a smart kid, and her English is very good (although she thinks it is not) and the other students look to her for interpretations in Chinese but also for information about other happenings at school.  She is always prepared.

I asked if she had ever been unprepared for an exam in college.  “Yes,” she said, in her freshman microeconomics class.    “How did you do?”    “I got a B,” she said, ashamed.   A whole country of Type A people.

But lots of them don’t want to be Type A people.  They know that going to university in China is a big privilege, and the society is investing a lot in them, and “from those to whom much is given, much is expected.”   But Ms. Liu does not feel free to change her major to fashion design, and she feels that she now has no motivation to do the things that she must do.   Now these are not unfamiliar complaints to any of us, and it is easy to use one student as a metaphor for millions.   Ms. Liu will certainly do fine, and she will snap out of her funk.

But the story is one I hear repeated over and over again, not only from students but from faculty and government officials and people in business.   The sense of obligation to the group, or the greater good, is important and useful to building a society – we have seen that in the last thirty years.

Costs of obligation are passed on to parents, students, employees

But I don’t doubt that the stress, expressed in the form of heart conditions, and blood pressure, depression and lack of motivation are one reason why Chinese do not outlive Americans.   When Americans work sixteen hours a day, 7 days a week, they do it because they want to, or because they know it is a temporary condition – get this project completed, and we can go back to normal.  But in China, it is a constant sword of cultural obligation hanging over everyone’s head.  It is the constant, I must do it.  (2019 update – it is now common for companies in the US to demand that some employees be available 24/7 for texts and emails.  That is certainly Chinese.  But there is now a movement in the US for the “right to disconnect” during a good part of the day.  That will certainly not be Chinese).

I have a friend, a Ph.D. from my school here, who is spending nine months at a school in Houston.   She is unhappy about her living arrangements, and feels trapped by the situation, and not able – culturally – to do anything about it.  She is on a nine-month sabbatical, in school and supposed to be learning some things, but she is in the US and one thing I know is that she should be having some fun.  She is not, and all because, as she says, I must do it wo bi xu zuo.  An American friend of mine recently returned to the US from a six-month academic fellowship in Scotland.  I don’t think he wore a hair shirt for six months.

college and beyond …

Lots of Chinese students apply to college or graduate school in the US.   A lot of the Chinese government students I have had in Chicago have a leader, or a friend, with a son or daughter who is 12 or 17 and wants advice about admissions.   So far, so good.  But too often the parents have given the student a high bar – “if you cannot get into Harvard, or MIT, or Stanford, then your life is a failure, and you are a failure to your parents and family and nation,” or something to that effect.

Now there are parents like that in the US.   But I think there are more in China, and not just because of the population difference.  This is the meritocracy gone mad, the sense that the perfect is in fact the enemy of the good, and individual achievement and wishes matter less than societal approval and the ability to find a job that will make a lot of money. 

Amy Chua, the NYU law professor, is the poster woman for parental stress, passed on to her kids.  As a law professor at a major American university, she is not going to display a laid back, devil-may-care attitude.  But her Tiger Mother book is a call to arms for parents whose approach to parenting does not intentionally impose severe stress on their kids.  It is no doubt true that parental encouragement, even stress, can make kids better at whatever task is demanded, and usually the long term effects seem inconsequential.  The question is always for whom the kids are being pressured – for their own long term benefit, or that of the face and glory of the parents?  Even for Amy Chua, the answer to that question is not so clear. 

And lots of Chinese students do end up in the US, or Australia, or England, or Germany, at small schools and big schools that are not ranked in the top 20 schools in the nation.  And everyone seems to survive that diminished status.   But the stress and shame are not good things, for the kid, or the family, or China.  The suicide rate for Chinese students is far higher than that for American students. 

Students- at least at my university- have between 35 and 40 class periods a week, at 45 minutes a pop, so about 25 to 30 classroom hours a week.   This is the demand for 10 or 12 courses per semester.  On top of that is homework, of which there is quite a lot.   Papers and tests and assignments, just as in any college course.   I have told you before that fun does not seem to be in the course catalog.  I still think that is true.   College students seem tired in the US also, but here the extent of sleeping in class (not so much in mine, I am happy to point out) is remarkable.   And there seems a general sense- not universal, of course – of simply walking through the motions.

That is supported by ideas about entrance to schools in the US and China.  Faculty here tell me that in the US, it is easy to get into college and easy to flunk out.  In China, they tell me, it is hard to get in, but once in, you are assured of graduating.   College is almost like the reward for the intense work in high school (30 class hours per week, and no sleep, and lots of stress.  All effort is focused on the Gaokao, the one-time only college entrance exam taken in senior year.  Midway through junior year – “only 335 days until the gaokao!”). 

I don’t mean that there are no students playing basketball, or tennis, or ping pong, or singing in the singing contest.   All students here just had two days off so freshmen could participate in the annual sports day, which is kind of like the senior class games weekend.  Everybody goes to the stadium and there are vendors and student cheering sections and flag waving for some group’s favorite student athlete, and 110 meter hurdles and sprints and broad jumps and other events.  China is full of contradictions, so I can’t claim definitive knowledge.  But this is what I see, and what I sense.

the system grinds away, through adulthood

Students like Ms. Liu pick a major to study in their freshman year, and for the next four years, the students in that major take all their classes together, study together, and live together in the same dorm and with each other.  Four college girls in a room about the size of your bedroom, with their clothes and books.  For some students, the school picks the major for them, and that major is where nearly all of them stay for four years. So when Chinese people come to America, and say that they have a college friend to see, they are going to see more than someone they were buddies with for a year or two.  These are the lifelong, guanxi networks operating, at long distance and years apart.   When was the last time you spoke with your college roommate?   One of my government official-students from IIT in Chicago, someone who was in Chicago in 2004, called me from Nanjing.  He is at a training seminar for a week, far from his home in Shenyang.   He was going to get on a bus, travel for four hours to see me, and take the bus back to Nanjing for more training.  While I am flattered that I have such an impact on people, I am sobered by the idea that someone would think such a thing thinkable.   But guanxi, and networks, and respect for authority, including teachers, runs deep.

Two days ago I  attended the alumni reunion, in Hangzhou, of all the CCP government officials from Zhejiang Province who have been to IIT in the last 6 years.  A lot of people came- my guess is over a hundred and fifty.   There was the big screen repeating slide show, pics of government officials at IIT, when they were in college, and maybe more recently.   And below one of the repeating slides was the reminder, We Are Family.   This is not just some pop music line, or a marketing campaign.  Far more than in any fundamentalist family in the US, here the family is the primary unit in society.  And family extends to CCP as well. The government students in Chicago had a leader then, and he is still a leader in their minds, with lesser status over time obviously, but still a person of respect and honor.   Another leader to honor, among the two or three or four that everyone has already.   The beat goes on, for good and ill, in everyone’s heads, all the time.   

The National Day Singing Competition

Zhejiang University of Science and Technology, September, 2009


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Update on threats to Anne-Marie Brady

… and an update  12-11-18 on the update.   A senior US official offers intelligence agency cooperation on Chinese interference in New Zealand, citing in particular the Anne-Marie Brady incidents.   And a closed circuit camera is now in her office, which  was broken into after publication of her research on CCP influence in New Zealand.  No word about protection for her home, her car, or her person. 

Back in September, I wrote about threats and break-ins directed at Anne-Marie Brady, a New Zealand scholar who has written about CCP influence in foreign affairs.  Her recent work is titled Magic Weapons – China’s political influence activities under Xi Jinping, an investigation of United Front activities such as media and university partnerships, “management” of overseas Chinese, and multimedia communications strategies to influence and co-opt foreign citizens and Chinese outside China. 

Brady’s office has been broken into twice, her home once, and her car burglarized.  Chinese media has attacked her, and there is no rationale for these attacks other than by persons hired by the Chinese government to intimidate.  The September piece is Intimidation Knows No Boundaries.  Brady has asked for protection for her person and property, and the New Zealand government has done nothing, with approval from Chinese media. 

Now an open letter to the New Zealand government has been prepared, requesting protection for Brady and support for open inquiry.  Brady is by no means the only scholar to face harassment or intimidation outside China, for their work on China.   From SupChina, Thursday, December 6 –

In October, Index on Censorship reported that “anonymous, threatening letters” were sent to residential addresses in the U.K., apparently with the aim of stopping “activities that the Chinese government disapproves of.” Recipients included family members of Tom Grundy, editor of Hong Kong Free Press.

The open letter is here.  Quoting –

These circumstances make it likely that this harassment campaign constitutes a response to her research on the CCP’s influence and an attempt to intimidate her into silence.

Radio New Zealand has reported on the issue, and the letter.

I have signed the letter.  Most everyone on the signature list is a better known journalist or scholar than I, but no one seems to have listed an affiliation inside China.   We will see what happens. 

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

Party’s Over

October 9, 2018 

The crackdown on expression hardens for CCP and anyone in government, even if not CCP 

Jiayun Feng, reporting in SupChina  jeremy@supchina.com – 

 New Party rules to govern members’ online behavior 

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is set to implement some new regulations for its members to monitor how they behave on the internet.

The new set of revised discipline rules was released by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection on September 26, and is set to take effect on October 1. Party members are required to be hyperconscious about what they post on digital platforms, such as the popular messaging app WeChat.

Chinese artist who posted funny image of President Xi Jinping facing five years in prison as authorities crackdown on dissent in the arts.  Independent, May 28, 2015

Source: The Independent – Chinese Artist Detained

These discipline rules are meant to be more stringent than anything coming out of the Party Central Office in the last four years.  But there is foreshadowing of these rules, as there often is in China.  In 2013, the infamous Document No. 9 specified seven rules for CCP members to observe, including forbidding any discussion of free speech, civil society, free press, and – notably, here – any negative comments about CCP or Party history (Mao, famine, Tian’anmen, et.al.)  From the Jiayun Feng piece –

According to the updated regulations, members could face expulsion from the Party if they make inappropriate remarks online. These include the endorsement of bourgeois liberalization, opposition to the Party’s policy of reform and opening up, groundless criticism of the Party’s major policies that will potentially undermine the organization’s unity, defamation of national heroes and models, and slander of the Party and state leaders. The invention or spreading of rumors regarding politics might also lead to various degrees of punishment.

My own sources suggest that the rules taking effect on October 1 will be implemented severely within universities.  In the run-up to the current rules, over the last couple of months, my contacts tell stories about a university Party leader who quit his job rather than be subject to speech discipline.  In another university instance, a faculty member who teaches comparative politics was left in a conundrum – she cannot say anything good about anything foreign.   When she objected, she was summarily removed from her teaching job and assigned to the library – a permanent demotion.  A PhD professor now stacks books, likely for the rest of her career.

Teachers are now observed, surreptitiously, either by provincial or central government jiwei, the discipline inspection bureau.  My students often recorded my lectures; now, that recording of Chinese teachers can be used against them in disciplinary proceedings.  In another despicable development, I have direct stories of person-to-person comments at an informal dinner, later leading to punishment.   Who do you trust?

For obvious reasons, I cannot name names in these articles, and I am reluctant to even name provinces, given the environment.  There was a time, back in the good old days prior to 2012, when one could conceive of the arc of history bending in the direction of greater openness in China.  In general, my CCP friends were happy about the direction of change.  No more.

In the past, personal exchanges on WeChat could include  comments on government policy, good and bad.  Now, those will be forbidden, under penalty of losing one’s job, expulsion from the Party, or at least “punishment,” which could include demotion or passover for promotion.   This assumes that the government can and will listen in on WeChat messages.

The crackdown is getting far more serious.  I told foreign students in 2014 to advise carefully potential future students, about whether they wanted to endure the petty disruptions and censorship that was China then.  (See the prior post here). Now, the disruptions and threats are at the point where some Chinese teachers, CCP members, would rather quit their jobs than be subject to the terror of the jiwei (discipline inspection bureau).  In the case of the comparative politics professor, the dean of her school and the party leader of her school were both disciplined for not controlling what she said in the classroom.

In the last year, I know of three separate incidents, two in Wuhan and one in Tianjin, in which university professors were fired (in one case, the professor reportedly kept his job after begging on his knees) for comments made in class that disturbed the local jiwei (discipline inspection) unit.  Either jiwei personnel or students with an axe to grind or guanxi to gain were listening in on the class.

Consider that these new rules are part and parcel of the social credit score, which has been discussed much in the last year.  If friends of yours make negative comments, not in your presence, that may reduce your own social credit score.   Who will want to collaborate with another faculty member who is impure in thought?

In related developments, the National Radio and Television Administration will now forbid any foreign tv shows to be broadcast in prime time, and foreign content will be limited to 30% of the time on streaming sites.  China limits foreign tv shows and streaming.

This reminds me – a liitle bit – of the level of terror in East Germany, or Stalin’s USSR, when family members informed on each other and friends informed on friends.  In China, this was last done in the Cultural Revolution.  Tellingly, many CCP members have been saying for years that the reign of Xi Jinping reminds them of nothing so much as it does the Cultural Revolution.  Of course, now, truly, no one could say that.

I am reminded of the Paul Simon line in Sounds of Silence – “people talking without speaking.”  Then, it was hearing without listening.  Now, it is what we call “performative declamation” rather than communication – speech acts as performance, without intent to communicate anything of meaning.  Those of you with CCP members in your wechat circle will now get only pablum as commentary.

All one need do to understand this system is read Orwell’s 1984, which describes official language perfectly.  CCP members are now caught in the doublethink trap.  For the most part, CCP members, particularly university teachers, are smart people.  But one must now say what is correct, rather than what one knows to be true –

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

George Orwell.  1984.  Book 1, Chapter 3.

One’s speech must conform to the Truth as dictated.  And truthfully, it is not too difficult for even thoughtful and smart CCP members to spout the Party line. They learned the style of speech long ago, but its use was becoming limited until 2012.  Another name for this type of speech is New China Newspeak, a term popularized by renowned China scholar Geremie Barme. New China Newspeak describes a form of bureaucratic and political speech that uses history, scientific and technical jargon, vernacular references, economics, Chinese victimhood, and moral judgment to argue – seemingly interminably – for the Chinese government perspective as the only rational perspective.  New China Newspeak is not always long-winded, but it is repetitious.

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

Katherine Morton provides an example in The Rights and Responsibilities of Disagreement (The China Story, September 21, 2014)    She refers to the “Hall of the Unified Voice” that she experienced while teaching a group of Chinese and foreign students in Turin, Italy, in 2013.  When one Chinese student ventured a comment on the Chinese Dream, each Chinese student then felt compelled to comment as well, with vacuous – and similar – statements that were a form of verbal posturing rather than attempt at introducing ideas or stimulating debate.  She describes –

an example of ‘group think’ aimed at presenting a united front in the face of independent thinking. It’s just this kind of knee-jerk solidarity that also vouchsafes the individual against the ever-present threat of being reported to the authorities back home.

The current crackdown on expression is part and parcel of this old historical style of speaking and writing.  Sophisticated speakers are good at this, but it takes practice.  One should begin learning with repetition – war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength.

I have a longer essay on Performative Declamation  in the book section of the China Reflections blog.  It needs a little editing – right now, too much “performative declamation.”  But perhaps worth part of a look.