Is Occupy Wall Street Preoccupying Beijing?
November 10, 2011 § 1 Comment
Occupy Wall Street protests have not spread to China, but Beijing’s crackdown on media coverage and Internet activity related to OWS isn’t surprising. What’s less predictable are ways that Occupy protests could shake up China’s internal politics, especially among neo-Maoists.
Occupy Wall Street protests have not spread to the People’s Republic of China. But word of the protests has, and the Chinese authorities are trying to figure out how to respond.
Their reactions have run the gamut: from gloating denunciations of American capitalism, to a crackdown on all media coverage of Occupy Wall Street (OWS). Of course, there is no real surprise in this sequence of responses. More interesting, and less predictable, are the ways in which the Occupy Wall Street protests could substantively shape China’s internal politics.
In the early days of the OWS movement, when protests were confined to US cities, a China Daily OpEd (Sept. 30) harshly attacked the American media for journalistic hypocrisy, for not giving coverage to protests in their own country even as they had relished covering protests in the Arab world just a few months earlier. A couple weeks later, state-run Xinhua News was harsher still, arguing that the protests in New York’s Zuccotti Park “laid bare malpractices of the US government and ailments of its political and economic systems.”
But as the Occupy movement spread globally, the Chinese response shifted. Assault on the silence of the American press gave way to anxiety about the possible effects Chinese media coverage might have on their Chinese audience.
On Oct. 17, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, after remarking that the issues raised by OWS may be “worth pondering,” cautioned the Chinese media, saying that their “reflections should be conducive to maintaining the sound and steady development of the world economy.” On the same day, editors of the Chinese Communist Party-run Global Times called for people to “calmly observe the protest movement and the global situation, and not be confused by extreme points of view.”
A few days later, on Oct. 19 and 20, Beijing authorities – setting aside any ambivalence they might have had about the Occupy movement – issued an order to the Chinese media to cease all reporting and commenting on the OWS movement.
What happened? Perhaps Beijing had examined the numbers in the intervening three days, and been reminded that as high as the income gap in the United States is, China’s income and wealth inequality is right up there as well, even higher according to some estimates. Or perhaps recognition had set in that China’s elite 1 percent just might – like America’s 1 percent elite – be open to charges of greed and corruption.
Given, too, that 36 percent of the Chinese people (that’s 481 million people) live on $2 a day or less, the Beijing leadership might have become worried that the Chinese would not remain as “calm” in the face of news about the US protests as the Global Times might wish.
Cyberspace censorship quickly followed after the media gag order. Searches for “Occupy Wall Street” and, more pointedly, for “Occupy Beijing,” “Occupy Shanghai,” “Occupy Guangzhou,” “Occupy Zhongnanhai,” and “Occupy Lhasa,” among a growing list of banned terms, now yield blank screens on microblogging sites like Sina Weibo (China’s version of Twitter).
Such a crackdown was predictable. Since the Arab Spring uprisings, the Chinese leadership, vigilant about any signs of civil unrest at home, has been aggressive in promoting the “harmonious society” that is the Community Party’s mantra.
But tensions in the ruling Chinese Communist Party have surfaced in recent years. New Leftists, sometime called New Maoists, have become more voluble about the widening gulf between rich and poor; corporate and official collusion; the state’s inattentiveness to the needs of the elderly, the infirm, and the impoverished; and the rise in “mass incidents” of protest against official corruption. It is time, the New Leftists suggest, to put the brakes on the liberal reform experiment launched in the post-Mao era by Deng Xiaoping. It is time to resurrect the revolutionary, egalitarian spirit of Chairman Mao.
Will the message or spirit of the Occupy Wall Street protests resonate with China’s 99-percenters and give momentum to China’s New Maoist agenda? OWS has already produced small demonstrations in nearby Hong Kong and Taiwan. If OWS endures and expands its reach to mainland China, savvy politician Bo Xilai, party chief of Chongqing municipality in China’s southwest, would likely have much to gain. The leading figure and public face of the New Maoists, Bo is angling – some would say campaigning – to win a position on the all-powerful nine-member Standing Committee of the Politburo in 2012.
Described as “handsome,” “outgoing,” and “Kennedy-esque,” Mr. Bo has made a name for himself as an activist party chief – even as he has ruffled feathers along the way. He launched a popular campaign targeting organized crime and official corruption in 2009. He also sponsored low-income housing projects and welfare programs for the working class and the poor in Chongqing. This summer, he inaugurated the Red Culture Movement, calling for a renaissance of the revolutionary spirit embodied by Chairman Mao.
Residents of Chongqing are encouraged to come together in parks and stadiums to sing “red songs” – songs extolling the achievements of Mao and the Chinese Communist Party – and to watch the revolutionary dramas that have replaced the soap operas on Chongqing TV. With such efforts, charismatic Bo has struck a strong populist chord in Chongqing and beyond.
But winning acclaim from the people and winning a place on the Standing Committee of the Politburo are two different matters. Bo’s flamboyant style is at odds with the staid style of present members of the Standing Committee (which in a process lacking any transparency will select the replacements for those retiring from the Standing Committee next year).
His support for a more tightly state-controlled economy is at odds with the more liberal state capitalism now in vogue. And his Maoist rhetoric is at odds with the liberal reform rhetoric embraced by the Chinese leadership for the past decade, and especially by current Premier Wen Jiabao. Bo’s words and actions have conjured up, at least for some, the specter of a return to Cultural Revolution days.
Still, in the words of the press, Bo is a “political rock star.” Excluding him from the Standing Committee may be difficult. But should China’s 99-percenters awaken to the call of Occupy Wall Street and coalesce around the movement, excluding Bo from the Standing Committee mix would be more than difficult – it would simply be too risky, even for China’s authoritarian ruling party.
This post first appeared as an op-ed article in the Christian Science Monitor on November 8.
Mao, Confucius, and Louis Vuitton in Tiananmen Square
July 5, 2011 § 2 Comments
The Setting: Tiananmen Square
The Time: January 2011-June 2011
The Players: Mao Zedong, Confucius, Louis Vuitton
Sounds almost like a Tom Stoppard play. But, no, Mao, Confucius, and Louis Vuitton have been mixing it up lately on China’s most renowned stage.
For decades now, Mao’s portrait has hung over the Tiananmen Gate at the far north of the Square, even as his embalmed body lies in the mausoleum built immediately after his death in the center of the Square. Mao, the Great Helmsman, founder of the People’s Republic of China, looms mightily over the Square reminding the Chinese people of the Party’s achievement in raising the country out of its “feudal” and impoverished past and restoring it to prosperity and global influence.
On January 13, Mao was joined in the Square by a figure of at least equal repute in China: Confucius.
Born in 551 B.C.E., the Sage, as he is known, left behind a set of teachings as influential as any the world has known. These teachings became the basis of state ideology by the second century B.C.E., and remained so, with some ups and downs, for more than two millennia. But with the opening decades of the 20th century, prominent intellectuals and political figures took aim at Confucian teachings, arguing that they were in large part responsible for China’s backwardness and weakness relative to the West.
Mao especially disliked what he believed to be the enduring effects of Confucius’ “feudal” practices on the people and, during the cultural revolution of 1967-1976, called on the Red Guards to destroy all texts, temples, sites, and statues associated with Confucius throughout China. No small irony then that, suddenly, in early January, a humongous 17-ton statue of the Sage appeared at the north gate of the newly renovated National Museum of China on the east side of the Square—facing, almost directly, Mao’s 15’ x 25’ visage hanging above the Tiananmen Gate.
Now, if Mao himself wasn’t agitated, loyal supporters apparently were. Confucius, after all, was an affront to all that Mao had stood—and fought—for. Consequently, Confucius, all 17 tons of him, disappeared on April 20, as suddenly and mysteriously as he had appeared 3 months earlier. No one has yet come forward with a formal explanation of the statue’s comings and goings, but pundits assume, no doubt rightly, that Confucius’ appearance and disappearance represent behind-the-scenes political jockeying between different camps within the leadership.
So, Confucius has exited the square. Enter Louis Vuitton. Louis Vuitton has taken up a perch almost exactly where the bronze Confucius had been set down. But rather than outside the north entrance of the National Museum, Louis Vuitton is inside the National Museum. What’s he doing there next to rare porcelain vases and bronzes vessels. He is displaying, in a 4-room exhibition, LV luggage and handbags dating back to the 1860s, reminding museum-goers of all the luxury they missed out on since the country’s fall from power in the mid-19th century. Clever marketing, especially in a country where the world’s high-end brands are all competing for visibility among a newly consumerist population.
The question that comes to mind is this: Confucius has been chased from Mao’s square, but can Louis Vuitton, the representative of capitalist luxury and wasteful consumption, be any more palatable to the Chairman? Is Louis’ presence there preferable to the Sage’s? Some Chinese, among them no doubt Mao’s followers, have expressed displeasure with a Louis Vuitton show in a Chinese historical museum, of all places. Stores are one thing—there are now 27 Louis Vuitton stores in China—but a spot in the fabulously renovated National Museum of China in one of the world’s most historically rich squares?
Don’t assume, however, that Confucius has entirely left the stage. Having lost his much coveted spot outside the National Museum in Tiananmen Square, he’s moved on to Shanghai. For reasons that are not at all clear, the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum decided that the great Sage, with his renewed popularity, deserved a show at the very same time the museum had planned to display “Albert Einstein (1879-1955),” an exhibition owned by the Historical Museum of Bern, Switzerland (currently on view at the Hong Kong Science Museum).
The Shanghai museum’s motive here is unclear. Did it see a comparative-sage exhibition as a potential blockbuster? Or was it a nationalistic decision? That is, we have our Eastern Sage too? Or maybe it was simply to fill gallery space. In any event, unhappy with the Shanghai’s proposal to merge the Einstein exhibition with a Confucius exhibition, the Bern Museum announced on Tuesday (June 7) that it had shelved plans to bring its show to Shanghai.
Confucius thus seems to have fared better against Einstein in Shanghai than against Mao in Beijing. Whether Confucius will have a solo show in the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum remains to be seen. And the meaning of the showdown between Confucius and Einstein is, if possible, less clear, at least at the moment, than that between Confucius and the Chairman.
What is clear, though, is that Confucius, however aged, is getting around these days.
A version of this post first appeared as an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times on June 29.
China’s One-Child Policy: What Does the Future Hold?
May 27, 2011 § 6 Comments
The preliminary 2010 China census figures are in—and they are eye-opening.
Some numbers (Science):
1. Total population in 2010: 1.34 billion
Total population in 2000: 1.27 billion
2. Percentage of population 14 years-old and younger in 2010: 16.6%
Percentage of population 14 years-old and younger in 2000: 22.9%
3. Percentage of population 60 and over in 2010: 13.3%
Percentage of population 60 and over in 2000: 10.4%
4. Sex ratio of boys to girls in 2010: 118.1 to 100
Sex ratio of boys to girls in 2000: 116.9 to 100
I’m not a demographer or a statistician, so the observations here will keep to the obvious.
China’s population is still growing and is still the largest in the world, but at a growth rate of only 5.8% since 2000 (vs. 11.7% between 1990 and 2000), China is on track to cede its “most populous nation” ranking to India by 2025.
Because of the low birth rate, associated with the one-child policy instituted more than 30 years ago now, China’s work force has been shrinking for the past decade; the current census indicates that the shrinkage is set to become more pronounced. Analysts have been noting for some time that the supply of cheap labor in China is drying up, as the ever smaller labor force demands ever higher wages. With wages increasing, companies have begun “going west,” seeking cheaper pools of labor in the less developed inland regions of China (where wages can be half of what they are on China’s more prosperous east coast).
International companies, looking at the growing costs of labor, are leaving China altogether, offshoring and outsourcing their manufacturing to countries still less developed, such as Vietnam and Cambodia. Recognizing this trend, the Beijing government has made accessibility to higher education and the development of indigenous higher-tech industry key planks of the current Five-Year Plan (2011-2015).
China is getting older, the census figures also tell us. And this is a major problem. As a result of the one-child-policy fewer children are available to take care of aging parents. In the past, it was assumed that children would be responsible for the well-being of their parents—and grandparents. This was all part of the family compact: parents were to raise, feed, and shelter the young and, in turn, as part of their reciprocal filial obligations, the young were to nurture and care for their parents in old age (and even in death). The one-child policy means, of course, that there are not multiple children to share the responsibility.
But that families are down to one child is only a piece of the problem. As more and more young people move to the cities in search of economic opportunities, they now commonly live at rather great distances from their parents and grandparents. Parents tell of not seeing their children for a year or more at a time. An epidemic of elderly depression has been tied to the consequent loneliness experienced by the elderly, especially when the spouse dies. How to provide for the elderly, materially and psychologically, is thus an enormous issue facing China today. The country’s social service system is hobbling as it is—which may explain why the leadership has floated the novel, but curious, idea of writing filial piety into law, requiring children to care for and visit their parents “regularly,” allowing parents to sue their children if they don’t comply–whatever “regularly” might mean (see sampling of netizens’ views in China Daily article).
Clearly the sex imbalance of 118 to 100 is well beyond the normal. No doubt this has much to do with the one-child policy in a country where the preference for males who could carry on the family line is deeply rooted. Some of the imbalance is likely owing to underreporting of female births by those who’d like to have another child; but mostly it’s owing to selective abortion, illegal but quite common.
What might this imbalance foretell? As females in the marriage market decrease, competition for them will increase. The challenge for males will be to be successful in a market where demand is high and supply is low. Recent years suggest that the formula for success is to promise the would-be bride that the male comes complete with house and car—which has driven up consumption, inflation, and the housing bubble. Yes, I think there is a connection to be made between the one-child-policy and the current, seemingly uncontrollable, housing bubbles. Families regard the investment in a home as a necessary investment in the continuation of the family line. Recent surveys have shown over and over that marriageable females rank housing and a car as the most desirable assets a potential husband can bring to a marriage.
It might seem that women, at least, would benefit from the sex imbalance. But it has also encouraged the growth of a market in women: poor peasant girls, kidnapped or lured from their homes by brokers, may be transported to distant provinces and sold as wives to men unable to find brides.
And what about the slew of males who come up empty-handed? It is estimated that, by 2020, there will be 30 million more men than women in China (China Daily article as well). Traditionally the Chinese government has always been worried about such “bare sticks”—family-less young men dissatisfied with their lot—and the danger they pose to social order. The current government is no different—China’s leaders are painfully aware of the impact that bands of unhappy, partner-less, high testosterone 20-something males could have on the “harmonious society.”
There’s, of course, much more that could be said about these census numbers. But I hope that these few, brief observations help to explain why in China today there is ongoing debate over whether to continue the one-child policy or not.
Mao Today: “Red Culture,” “Red Songs”–and Now “Red Volleyball”?
May 9, 2011 § 3 Comments
The Red Army fears not the trials of the Long March,
Holding light ten thousand crags and torrents.
The Five Ridges wind like gentle ripples
And the majestic Wumeng roll by, globules of clay.
Warm the steep cliffs lapped by the waters of Golden Sand,
Cold the iron chains spanning the Tatu River.
Minshan’s thousand li of snow joyously crossed,
The three Armies march on, each face glowing. (The Long March)
Written by Mao Zedong in October of 1935 to commemorate the Red Army’s legendary 6000-mile trek (1934-1935) that broke the Guomindang blockade, the “Long March” is being read avidly today—at least by members of the Chinese women’s Olympic volleyball team. During practice, the team works on their spikes, stuffs, sets, and line shots; after practice they come together to read the “Long March.”
Why do they read and recite the “Long March”? The China Volleyball Association website explains,
Through these kinds of activities, the Chinese women’s volleyball team…learns from the old Red Army, stays brave when facing difficulties, devotes itself to daily training, works hard, raises standards and prepares for the London Olympics with the momentum that Chairman Mao had when leading the Red Army throughout the Long March.
Never mind that we can’t know how genuinely inspired team members are by their reading of “Long March” or whether the Chairman’s poetry will provide sufficient inspiration for them to win gold in London in 2012. What’s notable here is that Mao is enjoying a renaissance. That the Olympic volleyball team holds study sessions to discuss the poems of the Chairman, much as youths 50 years ago, during the Cultural Revolution, studied the sayings of Mao in the Little Red Book, is but one indicator of his renewed popularity.
Another, more telling indicator is to be found in metropolitan Chongqing (pop. 30 million). Tune in to Chongqing Television (CTV) at prime time and you’ll no longer see the lineup of popular soap operas and sit-coms; instead you’ll be able to watch epic films or sing along to one of 36 “red songs” (selected by the government) that extol the achievements of Chairman Mao and the Chinese Communist Party.
Watching "red" programming in Chongqing
Chongqing Party Secretary Bo Xilai ordered the change in programming–as part of his “red culture” movement. For Bo, and others like him– dubbed the “new left”–China has strayed too far from its “red” roots and needs to recommit itself to the revolutionary values of the early People’s Republic.
In the first couple of decades of the PRC (1949- ), the new left maintains, the Mao-led government guaranteed economic security—jobs for all at equal pay; a safety net—where the elderly and infirm were to be provided for by the state; and a social equality—where distinctions between the privileged and unprivileged, the rich and the poor, the urban and the rural were not indelible. Zhang Jiedong, a recent graduate of the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, says this message resonates now, especially with older generations, in its nostalgic appeal to an era where “there was less stress; income was guaranteed and competition for status symbols was almost non-existent.” (Bloomberg)
Where is all of this–the reading of the “Long March,” the watching of revolutionary films, the singing of “red songs,” and the calling for government policies that hew more closely to the founding ideals of the PRC–headed? Hard to say. But that the Chairman’s voice–35 years after his death–is vibrant and influential in China today—is certain.
Mao Retakes Tiananmen Square: Confucius Departs
May 3, 2011 § 2 Comments
What do Chinese artist-activist Ai Weiwei and the iconic Sage Confucius have in common? They’ve both recently disappeared from public sight without explanation.
Ai went missing on April 3. Only on April 7 did government officials acknowledge that he had been detained as he was preparing to board a flight for Hong Kong. A few days later, reason for the detainment appeared briefly on the Xinhua’s wire service before it too disappeared: Ai was under investigation for “suspected economic crimes.”
Sure, “economic crimes” is a possible reason. More likely, Party leaders have grown tired of his in-your-face political activism—directed at the Party. The photo series of his outstretched middle finger, taken in Tiananmen Square and aimed at the Tiananmen Gate, atop of which Chairman Mao announced the establishment of the People’s Republic 60 years ago, no doubt rankled some Party higher-ups.
If the photo series didn’t, his unrelenting public campaign to hold government officials accountable for the shoddily constructed schools that collapsed in the 2008 earthquake in Chengdu, killing more than 5000 innocent children, did. Then there’s his ongoing, again very public, twitter-driven rant denouncing the government’s repression of freedom of expression and human rights.
Confucius’ disappearing act remains more mysterious. Only three months ago, on January 12, authorities placed a 17-ton, 30-foot statue of the Sage in the very square in which Mao declared the new People’s Republic in 1949. Not just in the very square, but positioned at the northern gate of the National Museum of China, a spot from which Confucius could gaze on the massive 15’ x 25’ portrait of Mao that hangs just above the Tiananmen Gate. It was, from the beginning, an uneasy relationship.
After all, Mao’s contempt for the “feudal” Confucius, had been deep and enduring, resulting in a massive anti-Confucius campaign that swept through the country during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s-70s, bringing ruin to temples, books, and historical landmarks associated with the Confucian tradition. Safe to say then that Confucius’ sudden, unannounced appearance across the Square from Mao’s gaze was not a welcome sight to the Chairman or his dedicated followers. To them—and many observers—it represented the CCP’s rehabilitation of Confucius and his teachings and the Party’s further distancing from Maoism.
But where authorities did, after a few days, explain the “disappearance” of Ai Weiwei, none has yet been given for the removal of Confucius late Wednesday night, April 20. Visitors to the Square on Thursday, hoping to get a glimpse of him, found only an empty pit cordoned off by blue corrugated iron fencing. No sign, no explanation.
We can assume, I think, that he is not under investigation for “suspected economic crimes.” We can assume too that he never gave the finger to the Tiananmen Gate, in the direction of Mao’s portrait; or complained that the corrupt or irresponsible officials in were in part responsible for the deaths of schoolchildren in Chengdu; or criticized the regime for its refusal to open up more political and social space for the Chinese people to express themselves. (Though the specter of his doing so may have been very real to some.)
So, why the disappearance? We simply don’t know for sure. One museum worker is reported to have said that the statue’s placement outside of the museum facing Tiananmen Gate had been temporary and was being moved to an out-of-the-way sculpture garden inside the Museum. Seems plausible, but why not a more formal announcement to that effect, from either authorities at the Museum or in the government? And, if that is the case, what was the point, given the massive construction efforts and costs involved, in placing it in the symbolically sacred Square in the first place–the significance of which certainly wouldn’t have been lost on the Beijing leadership?
Chinese leaders today are in a state of high anxiety. The turmoil in the Mideast has them agitated and overly vigilant. It seems too that there’s a tug of war within the leadership itself, between hardliners (like Wu Banguo) and more reform-minded liberals (like Premier Wen Jiabao), with the hardliners, for the time being, ascendant. In any event, the Beijing government doesn’t appear to be in the mood to countenance any threats to its authority—and to the authoritarian principles that undergird Communist Party rule. Confucius’ very presence in the Square may have been perceived by many as diminishing Mao (e.g., Maoflag.net), the “Great Helmsman” of the Chinese revolution and the continued source of much of the CCP’s legitimacy today.
An emerging “red culture” movement, promoted most famously by rising political star Bo Xilai, Party Secretary of Chongqing municipality, further indicates that Mao and hardline descendants have not surrendered to the reform agenda inaugurated three decades ago by Deng Xiaoping. They are resisting what they view as the loosening of CCP control over Chinese society. At the heart of this “red culture” movement, dubbed by some a “New Maoism,” is the celebration of the achievements of the Chinese Communist Party, a reminder to the Chinese people that it is the steady, guiding hand of Mao and the Party that is responsible for the country’s rising fortunes since 1949.
In Chongqing (pop. 30 million), Party Secretary Bo has ordered Chongqing television to stop airing soap operas and sitcoms during prime time and to show instead film epics like Marching Forward for the New China and Liberation of the Great Southwest and public service ads; radio stations are expected to broadcast the 36 “red songs”—selected by the government—like “Ode to the Motherland,” “Without the Communist Party There Would be No New China,” and “Fluttering Flag” throughout the day. Reports are that this movement is striking a chord, especially among older people who remember nostalgically the first decades of the People’s Republic as a time of social and economic security and equality—a security and equality largely absent today.
To return to the disappearing Confucius: as the story of perhaps the world’s only 17-ton portable statue unfolds, we may learn more about the shifting political winds in China. Or, we may find that even then we’re still in the dark. Chinese politics can be hard to read. But, on the face of it now, it looks to me like Mao has won the recent round in the showdown at Tiananmen.
