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

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.

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. 

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.

School’s Out – What Chinese are talking about … (2)

The cult of Xi – from the Little Red Book on Mao Zedong thought to the nightly quiz show on Xi Jinping thought 

extolling Mao with the little red book; and 

extolling Xi with the tv quiz show 

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-china-blog-45728131   A nightly tv show features students vying to be the one who knows most about the life, speeches, and travels of the current dear leader and Marxism.  This is a game show,  but there are no prizes for winners.  That must be why tv ratings are so low. 

As you know, I have some acquaintances from the Chinese government, in several different provinces and in some state owned businesses and universities.  All have pretty good jobs, at mid-level or higher.  A few are moving beyond a middle mid-level, perhaps chu bu ji, to higher reaches ting bu ji, as party leaders in districts or counties or university departments. 

Over the last five years, many expressed concerns about the direction of current Chinese governance, in much the same way that Americans look askance at the machinations of the Republican party and the orange-haired baboon (hat tip to Brad DeLong for the descriptor).  A common theme in China is the return to the fears and terrors of the Cultural Revolution.  Most of my acquaintances were born in that era, and have stories from their parents and families and colleagues.  The disappearances, the arrests now for corruption on actions that until recently were standard operating procedure, the personality cult of Mr. Xi, the demands for ideological purity, the lack of procedural rules that makes accessories to crimes out of officials just doing what they are told to do, the double binds that crop up all too frequently – if I do this thing, it will be illegal;  if I don’t do this thing, my career will be over – all are chilling reminders.  I will detail some of these fears in a future post.

The new era affects CCP members in their most cherished place – their families and kids. 

Among the recent developments in the last couple of years is passport retention by the Discipline Inspection Bureau for all mid-levels.  Prior to about 2013, Chinese officials going abroad could use either of two passports – a government official passport, which was always held by the Human Resources Department of their workplace, or their own private passport, which individuals retained, as we would do in the US.  Now, even the private passports are being held by the Discipline Inspection Bureau jiwei for some midlevels and above in at least some places.  I am told this policy is active in Hubei Province; not sure where else as of October.  It was not in effect in Zhejiang in June.  And some of my acquaintances – more than a couple – are worried that they might be unable to get out of China in the future.  Travel to the US is much more restricted on the Chinese side, and this was the case before the US 2016 election.  Chinese with kids in college in the US no longer get automatic approval to go out to see their kid graduate, notwithstanding the further restrictions on students and their families from the American State Department.

So what to do?  This is not a matter of trying to get illegal gains out of China.  These concerns are being expressed by good public servants who wish to retain options for retirement or school choices for their kids. The government has made it more difficult to move money out of China.  For the past twenty years, that was the safety valve for wealthy families- buy the house in London or Sydney or New York or San Francisco or Vancouver or Seattle, let the wife and kids live there, and at some point, retirement or the need to get out, join them (the US has no extradition treaty with China).  In 2012, Lin Zhe, a professor from the CCP’s Central Party School and a member of the National People’s Congress, said that 1.18 million senior officials’ spouses and children had emigrated between 1995 and 2005.

There are still ways to get money out.  Now, getting the people out is becoming more risky on both ends.  It is reported that senior government officials (perhaps at the provincial vice minister level or higher) will no longer be able to send their children outside China for education. Secret order to bar students from going out  China Said to Issue Secret Order Barring Senior Officials’ Children From Studying in US   This article notes that –

At a Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearing on July 24, Dan Blumenthal, director of Asian studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), recommended that the U.S. government impose visa limitations on the children of the CCP elite as a means of economic pressure.

AEI is a fairly right wing organization, and in normal times there would be no reason to think that its recommendations about visa restrictions would be considered.  However, we are not in normal times.  Good thing that Xi Mingze was able to get out of Harvard by 2014.  Today, she might not have been able to go out, or to get in. 

One of the few known pictures of Xi Mingze from her time at Harvard.   Source: https://images.firstpost.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Xi-daughter-Twitter.jpg

Among many other worries, ability to go out for education is a worry for some smart and thoughtful Chinese officials and business people and academics.   Good thing Canada is still available. 

The International Student Office – Evaluation

This is the executive summary of a report prepared by students in my Modern Chinese Economic History course in spring 2014.

At that time, every Chinese university was competing to admit foreign students, mostly from Africa and the middle east.  University programs got put together on very short timeframes, with no training for staff and procedures more or less made up on the spot.  The pawns in this process were the foreign students themselves, who often arrived unprepared for college work, unfamiliar with China, lacking any Chinese language, their first time out of the home country, and certainly unprepared for Chinese university norms.   This work was an attempt to bring some efficacy, functionality (rather than efficiency) to the international student program.  Although this report is from 2014, there is no doubt that international programs in China still require upgrading to bring them to a minimal acceptable standard of responsiveness and care.

 Any student looking to attend school in China should read this, at least to get the jist of the boots-on-the-ground feel among foreign students.  This is not to say, do not attend school in China.  But forewarned is forearmed.   The full report is available by emailing me. 

 

An Evaluation of the Efficacy of the Administration of the International Student Program at Zhejiang University of Science and Technology

 

                     Prepared by

                     Students of

           Modern Chinese Economic History

        Zhejiang University of Science and Technology

 

 

                     Spring, 2014

 

              William D. Markle, Ph.D. Professor

 

Participating Students

茅晚菱 Mao Wan Ling

Bogdan Oprea

杜亚芳 Du Ya Fang

严丽文 Yan Li Wen

李亚男 Li Ya Nan

Nikodemus Hermanto

Lukas Cavalcante Baier

杨雪芳 Yang Xuefang

Mohammed Abdullah Mohammed Ali

Maingi Joy Nkatha

Dorothy Mutsamwira

沈洁妮Shen Jie Ni

阮芳波Ruan Fang Bo

陈雪Chen Xue

李丹Li Dan

Candy Shirly

Gladis Tshizainga Kasongo

Tariro Kurly Chingarande

章旭霞Zhang Xu Xia

顾盛霞Gu sheng Xia

吴越 Wu Yue

江添 Jiang Tian

Diana Madalina Nemes

Mary Assumpta Muhoza

Golden Chifune

Twagirayezu Didier

Sadick Mahdi Aden

Stefanie Bracher

Martina Odermatt

葛佳锋Ge Jia Feng

张晨凯Zhang Chen Kai

吴雯雯Wu Wen Wen

包舒影 Bao Shu Ying

 

An Evaluation of the Efficacy of the Administration of the International Student Program at Zhejiang University of Science and Technology

 

Executive Summary

 

Zhejiang University of Science and Technology (ZUST) has a long history of cooperation with foreign schools, particularly schools in Germany. While there have been many years of exchanges of faculty for research and lecture purposes, there were no foreign full-time degree candidate students at ZUST until the fall semester of 2009. This is considered the beginning of the ZUST international student program.

In the spring of 2014, there were 392 full time degree candidate foreign students at ZUST. In civil engineering, 167 foreign students; in the School of Economics and Management, in marketing, 47; in international economics and trade, 120; in the Language School, in business Chinese, 47; and a new major, information science, 11 students. First year students in the spring of 2014 numbered 142. There are additional exchange students, mostly from Germany, who stay at ZUST for varying lengths of time, from a few weeks to one year. (source: ZUST International Student Office, personal contact)

International programs are complex, perhaps more for university administration than for university academic faculty. Teachers need to address language barriers and perhaps cultural barriers in class; but administrators must deal with a far broader range of concerns, from admission standards, dorms and living conditions to food and health issues and visa and language and cultural difficulties. 

ZUST has now had an international student program for five years, with a second graduating class this June (2014). It is time to assess the quality of the international student program – is the program working as intended? Are students satisfied with outcomes? Are teachers satisfied with outcomes? What remains to be done to blend the international student program into the culture of a Chinese university? How effective is the program in creating customer satisfaction?

The fundamental goal of this research is to assist ZUST staff in making the International Student Office more effective in serving students, and thereby providing a better experience for foreign students. 

This evaluation addresses the administrative elements of the international student program. We reviewed student experience with health services, postal services, dorms and living conditions, and the international student offices, within the university and the individual department.Individual academic units within the School of Economics and Management and Civil Engineering should address academic quality. But students are the customers, in a real sense, of a Chinese university, and we want to ask whether their consumer needs are being met.

We conducted surveys and interviews of ZUST students, staff, and faculty. We document a wide range of concerns from students, less so from teachers and administrators. This is suggestive, in itself. 

We were also interested in how the ZUST international program compares with that at other schools. While we could not get substantial information due to time constraints, we did obtain good information about the experience of students and administrators. We interviewed students and administrators at two other schools, Zhejiang University and Zhejiang Gongye University (Zhejiang University of Technology).

Many students do not find significant problems in dealing with either the International Student Office in A4 or their department office. Problems that are identified by other students generally are about communications, in various forms.  

Conclusions are described in detail in Chapter 6.  Broadly speaking, we consider three fundamental areas requiring attention –

  • Quality and details in communications with foreign students verbally and in print, by email and text and online

There are difficulties in communication in both directions – Chinese staff to students, and students to Chinese staff. Additional training and techniques are necessary here, particularly for communications that involve student health and safety.

  • Timeliness and trust in communication

There are significant problems in lack of trust in communications from Chinese staff. The problems are attributable to communications that are too late for effective response, last minute requirements, communications that are wrong, and communications that are perceived by foreign students as simply lying. This harms both the administration of the program and academic quality.

  • Management of the International Student Office and department office functions – quality of management and policy direction

There does not appear to be any systematic training for international program staff. Nor can we see program goals, objectives, measures of performance, or an ongoing program of quality improvement.  As ZUST adds more foreign students, these defects will become even more apparent.  By accepting foreign students who are not qualified to be in the classroom, either due to English or preparation difficulties, the International Student Office defeats the purpose of having foreign students at all – to make Chinese students better.  The current model is a business model, not an academic model.

Particular recommendations are described in Chapter 6. 

Academic Integrity in the International Civil Engineering Program at Zhejiang University of Science and Technology

This is the executive summary of a group research project conducted by students in my Modern Chinese Economic History course in spring of 2014.


This work could only have been conducted under my direction – no Chinese faculty member would dare to investigate the rampant cheating in the civil engineering department.   In addition to the widespread academic dishonesty, the investigation found that there seems to be no civil engineering program in China – with the possible exception of a program at Tsinghua – that meets international accreditation standards – meaning that no graduate from a school in China will be eligible to take the PE exam for most countries without significant additional training or experience. 

The full report is available.  Contact me if interested.

An Evaluation of Academic Integrity in the International Civil Engineering Program at Zhejiang University of Science and Technology

 

Prepared by

Students of Modern Chinese Economic History    Zhejiang University of Science and Technology

  Spring, 2014

William D. Markle, Ph.D.  Professor

 

Participating Students

Salman Wasir     Tong Xiaixia     Dancan Siparo Ntirra     Carine Sonia Barutwanyo     Ali Mohamed Ahmed     Chadya Lys Everole Okola Aha

Mary Nyamvumba     Matshik Isabelle Mbako     Mahad Abdullahi Mire     Musabao Kahingania David     Wang Xiaoyan     Ren Zhoudi

Zhou Zhenhao     Shen Bijia     Wang Chenyang     Bogdan Oprea     Mao Wanling

 

An Evaluation of Academic Integrity in the International Civil Engineering Program at Zhejiang University of Science and Technology

Executive Summary

      Accreditation is the process by which a university program is accepted into the academic community.   Is an academic program doing teaching, and research, that is consistent with the quality standards in the field?   Can an academic civil engineering program produce engineers who know enough, have experience enough, are trustworthy enough, to be trusted with the lives, projects, and financial resources of their clients in the future?

      Governments in much of the world do not decide whether an academic program meets the requirements of knowledge transfer and academic integrity.  Accreditation is a peer evaluation of the quality of a program. 

      Academics from other schools and professionals in the field review the teaching, research, students, and outcomes of a program to judge its effectiveness, quality, and correspondence to standards in the academic and professional communities.    Academic programs judged to meet the standards of the academic and professional community are accredited, and are considered part of the academic community.  A program that is not accredited does not necessarily close down; a program might actually be quite successful, and of good quality.   But non-accreditation means that a program has not been admitted to the academic community of scholarship and research, as judged by peers – other scholars.

      In this evaluation, we are looking at the ZUST civil engineering program, with regard to only one element – academic integrity.  Integrity is an essential part of professional and academic life in engineering.  A student who cheats on an exam, when only a grade is at stake, might be expected to cheat on design of a bridge or a building when a lot of money is at stake.   Engineering as a profession does not want such people.

      While individual cases of university cheating and plagiarism would not normally affect accreditation of an engineering program – an individual student can be failed in courses, or expelled from school – the assumption in academic life is that no department or program would permit failures of academic integrity to become epidemic.   Widespread cheating, in one course or over time in several courses in a program, would be cause for immediate attention from departmental leaders, college deans, and university administrators, including the provost.   Accreditation programs would certainly investigate reported incidents of widespread academic dishonesty, whether reported by faculty, students, or outsiders.  If such information becomes widely known, it would affect the ability of the university to attract quality teachers, and affect the ability of students to get better jobs when they graduate.

The goal of this evaluation is to determine whether there is widespread violation of academic standards for honesty in the ZUST civil engineering program.    There have been allegations of widespread cheating on exams and tests.  Is that true?  What response from the civil engineering department faculty or administration?  If true, have students been expelled or punished?   Are violations of academic standards for honesty tolerated at other universities?   How do other schools address the problem?    The results of this evaluation will not produce an answer, “yes,” or  “no.”    We will get information on the experience of students and teachers at ZUST and at other schools, report on our findings, and let others decide what to do as the next step.

The survey and interview results suggest that academic dishonesty is found in a rampant manner within ZUST. The surveys collected and interviews taken from students and teachers across ZUST’s learning environment seem to point that cheating is a serious and dangerous problem for the system, a problem that the administration does not take seriously at the moment. The consequences of such behavior by the administration are leading to a poor quality learning environment and a cheaper degree, which puts students graduating from this program in a difficult stance. All the results and conclusions are based on the surveys and interviews collected in ZUST and in the similar universities as a mean of comparison. The results mainly provide the idea that the unwillingness to control cheating defeats attempts by the school’s administration desire, to upgrade ZUST, from a college (xue yuan) to a university (da xue) level, creating an incentive for students to minimize their efforts in the learning process and engage in being dishonest.

A meaningful interview came from one of the graduates of 2014 promotion. He was asked through an email, what is his perspective on academic dishonesty in ZUST, based on the citation: “A student who cheats on an exam, when only a grade is at stake, might be expected to cheat on design of a bridge or a building when a lot of money is at stake.   Engineering as a profession does not want such people.”

After four years within ZUST civil engineering program, his answers could not be more sincere: “The statement above is, in my opinion, arguably right. I have seen a lot of cases like this in my university life, for about four years. I will not lie to you, I have also cheated two or three times in my exam. I do not quite remember which courses they were, but one of them was finite elements taught by Wang Ji Min. I did that because I could not understand his course, as a whole, due to the difficulty of the course and because the teacher was not competent with his English. For the other courses, I studied hard and did just fine until I graduated few days ago.

What intrigued me was, in four years of university life, I always find students who cheats on every exam. They use their phone (mainly wechat) to take photos then shared the answers. I have never seen anything like this before, so I am quite surprised. 

Cheating in class, based on my experiences, is the faulty of both students and teacher, lets just say 70% faulty on students and 30% on teachers. Students come from all over the world, so they have varied learning background, because we all finished high school. However, I find that the quality of students enrolled in the university (mostly from African continent) is surprisingly below average. It is not because they are not capable, but because they are lazy. They did not put much effort to learn in the courses. I also found something strange with students that applied for a major in ZUST and skipped most of the class because they are working or some other reasons, only showed up 2 or 3 times in class, then attended final exam and PASSED the course. Of course, they copied all the answers from others. This is all I know about integrity problems in ZUST, and sometimes Chinese students also do it, academics dishonesty.”

The conclusion drawn from his interview can be stated with the following quote: “The civil engineering degree then becomes not the first step to a progressive career, but a limiting step.   The graduate is confined to lower level work, without professional engineer status, unless significant additional education or experience is obtained.” 

Performative Declamation

people talking without speaking …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read more: Yang Shuping, sensing a threat, apologizes

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

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

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

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

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

Confucius, responding –

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Intimidation Knows No Boundaries

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Break-ins of Home and Office of New Zealand Academic

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

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

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

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

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

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