关系 | guanxi

New Site

2009-01-26T11:44:00.000-05:00

The blog has a new home (and more regular posts). See http://guanxiblog.com.

Why were Chinese people so angry about the attempts to seize the torch in the international torch relay?

2008-08-01T20:02:00.002-04:00

Susan Brownwell from the China Beat has a fascinating post describing a visit by an Olympic torchbearer to a primary school in the earthquake-stricken town of Deyang in Sichuan province. She follows the story by putting on her anthropologist hat to discuss the torch’s significance as a symbol and source of international friction:

Against the background of the furor over the international torch relay, observing the reverence and emotion for The Torch and The Torchbearer made me suddenly see how cynical we are, more often than not, in the West, as a product of our secularized, rationalized society in which there are only small spaces in which it is acceptable to express reverence for symbols. A picture appeared in my mind which is an exaggeration but perhaps with a kernel of truth: In China, the majority of public expressions take place in a vast field of rituals and symbols, while the protest zones that were recently announced for the Olympic Games are the small, circumscribed spaces where critical analytical thought is expressed. In the US, the majority of public expressions take place in a vast field of critical analytical thought, while ritual expression takes place in small, circumscribed places like churches and, arguably, sports events. I realized that at least part of the anger that many Chinese people felt at the disruptions of the international torch relay was the result of the (to them) appalling and uncivilized lack of respect for a nearly-sacred object.

Homeward Bound

2008-07-05T04:00:00.004-04:00

I'm down to a little over a week to go before I head back stateside. I've been in Kunming for nearly two years now. Not really feeling too nostalgic. Actually a lot more concerned about getting all my stuff back home in one piece. September 1st I'll be starting grad school back in D.C. In the meantime I'll be bouncing around visiting friends and family. I don't know how much I'll be updating this from here on out but I've back-dated some writing I've posted on Facebook and some other places. Scroll down to see what I've been up to and what I've been ranting about.

Here's a random collection of pictures I've taken since last August.

Economist Misses the Mark on Kunming

2008-06-27T01:58:00.004-04:00

The Economist magazine's "Correspondent's Diary" trekked through southwest China. This is what they wrote about Kunming:

"Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province, is an affluent city. Large foreign cars fill the roads; billboards with advertisements for large foreign cars line them. These vehicles, along with the coal-fired power stations and nearby heavy industry, create a thick, hazy pollution soup that sits permanently above the town." [Read more...]

It's hard to figure out where to start. I never really liked this kind of journalism. Leaning far too heavily on snap impressions gleaned from a day or two of travel, this unnamed correspondent makes mistakes that could easily have been avoided with some basic background research.

I'm not sure what day the reporter visited the city, but Kunming's air quality is downright pristine when compared to other inland Chinese cities like Xi'an or Wuhan. In fact, Kunming ranked 4th out of the 31 major cities with at least 351 days of "fairly good" air quality by China's National Bureau of Statistics.* A major factor behind this ranking is the relative absence of heavy industry. Yunnan doesn't have a ton of mega-manufacturers. Those that are present, like the Kunming Iron & Steel Company (abbreviated in Chinese as Kungang), tend to operate a safe distance from Kunming. In Kungang's case, 20 miles (32 km) away. The larger factories closer to Kunming - like cigarette manufacturing - are generally less heavily polluting. Meanwhile car ownership, while increasing rapidly, still lags far behind the more industrialized centers to the east. The city government has taken at least a symbolic interest in addressing auto emissions by holding monthly car-free days. They're also planting a heck of a lot of trees.

Similarly, the reporter's "affluence" argument is a bit problematic. To begin with, the evidence is shaky. Smog is clearly not what it's made out to be. And a smattering of high-end retail hardly counts as anything besides a convenient anecdote. I'm no economist but if you look at GDP per capita Kunming (at ¥7,833, US$1,141) doesn't hold up so well when compared to other cities like Shanghai (¥57,310, US$8,346), Chengdu (¥20,625, US$3,004), or even Nanning (¥16,121, US$2,348). Even discussing affluence in broad general terms can obscure the fact that while a small but growing number do sport Gucci bags and drive BMWs, the vast majority survive on less than US$200 per month.

I'm not out to poo-poo travel writing. Last September The New York Times travel section ran a terrific piece on Kunming. Unfortunately, this reporter just didn't do his or her homework.

*The figures are from 2004, the last year I could locate specific numbers. In 2006, Kunming was listed as Class II, meaning it had "fairly good" air quality. Only two cities in 2006 - Lhasa and Haikou (the provincial capital of Hainan) - were listed as Class I, meaning they had "excellent" air quality. Most of the other cities in the Class II category were either located directly on the shore or had far smaller populations than Kunming.

2004 data: http://www.allcountries.org/[...]

2006 data: http://www.china.org.cn/[...]

Why Drilling for Oil in ANWR is a Bad Idea

2008-06-22T02:24:00.000-04:00

Recently my dad has been fixated on the need for more oil drilling along the Gulf Coast and the Alaska Natural Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). I zeroed in on ANWR, looked at the pro-drilling arguments, and tried to figure out a coherent counterargument. This is what I got:

I don't believe that conservation advocates are distorting the actual risk to wildlife. Rather, they seem to me to be making an ethically valid defense of settled policy dating back to the Theodore Roosevelt administration. As Roosevelt (a Republican) himself said in 1907:

"To waste, to destroy our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed."

If you start from that basis and see the policy implications through to the Nixon-era Clean Air and Water Acts (1970 and 1972 respectively -- during the administration of another Republican), I think it is fair to argue that the burden of proof for ANWR drilling lies with the pro-drilling advocates. Specifically, they need to show that:

A) drilling in protected areas fulfills a clear and imminent economic or national security need, and/or

B) the benefits of drilling will outweigh the potential cost to wildlife and Native inhabitants.

At first glance, the drilling advocates seem to have shoo-in when it comes to economic and national security. Gasoline prices now average above $4.00 a gallon and basic supply/demand suggests that as supply stagnates and demand increases (largely from China and India), prices will continue to move upward. Furthermore, because the demand increase is external, domestic conservation efforts may still yield a net demand increase worldwide. To complicate matters, the major oil supplying nations are typically some combination of unfriendly (Venezuela), unsavory (Saudi Arabia), or unstable (Iraq). Because the United States is heavily dependent on oil – and will likely remain so for the foreseeable future – boosting domestic production can protect market stability and take the edge off our dealing with Chavez and the other shadowy characters that dominate OPEC.

That said, the oil market is not as straightforward as some might suggest. The market itself is convoluted and indirect. But even more important and more straightforward, exporters and importers are co-dependent. Oil has a severely distorting effect on producer nations' economies. Just as Americans are rightfully concerned about our dependency, exporters are concerned in equal or greater measure. Norway is a classic example. When the country began pumping oil in the 1970s the economy skyrocketed. However when prices collapsed in 1986 the fall was devastating. The economy overheated, inflation set in, and the currency exchange rate tanked. Governments have tried to learn the lesson through modernization and diversification (think Dubai) but have more often failed as a result of corruption and incompetence (Saudi Arabia).

Therefore the key thing to remember is that even countries with rouge-like tendencies realize that their continued prosperity and influence is inextricably bound to continued Western demand, and by extension the continued health of the U.S. and European economies. While some might point to the 1973 and 1979 oil shocks, there is now broad consensus that both incidents hurt exporters more than importers and failed to accomplish their intended political objectives. Counterintuitively, past instability actually bolsters the case for current and future stability. That means that even radical political ideology won't ultimately derail normal economic activity. The Saudis will turn a blind eye to radical Islamist activity. Chavez will shout down Bush at the UN. But neither will shutter the spickit.

Regarding the second point ("B"):

Obviously, progress has been made in drilling technology. These advancements include horizontal wells that require fewer vertical entry points. That said, the support structure required for a $22+ billion effort will necessarily result in industrial development and major disruption of the very wildlife ANWR is designed to protect. Drilling advocates have tried to downplay these concerns by promoting potential solutions like temporary ice roads. Yet these proposals are more disingenuous than might first appear. Artic warming patterns over the past 30 years has reduced the number of hard-tundra winter days by at least half. To maintain economic feasibility, it is likely that the planned ice roads will have to be replaced by disruptive gravel or pavement alternatives that will long outlast the drilling operations.

None of this considers the impact of pipelines, human occupation, or the potential for oil spills. You think it was traumatic watching Al Gore's computer generated polar bears claw onto sinking ice chunks? Imagine them swimming through the wreckage of a second Exxon Valdez.

Finally, I'm not sure if the numbers really add up. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that there is 7.14 billion barrels of economically recoverable oil in ANWR with a small chance that another 3.26 billion barrels could be found. Those numbers actually rise to 9.7 and 14.6 billion barrels respectively when taking into account that the actual legislation on the table also eliminates protection for nearby Native American lands.

Even back in 1973 when the United States was a net importer of only 6.0 billion barrels per year, the ANWR fields could have served domestic demand for a year or two. In 2005 (the last year statistics are available from the U.S. government's Energy Information Agency) net imports had ballooned to 12.5 billion barrels, and had increased by at least 500 million barrels per year since 2000. These numbers do illustrate a steady decrease in domestic production, but they also suggest a failure to seriously invest in alternative energy sources.

Such investments have come along too slowly and too half-heartedly for a country that remains the world leader in scientific R&D funding and new patent applications. Not long ago politicians from across the political spectrum were excited about the potential for corn and switch grass based ethanol. Yet, as growing acreage is converted from food production to energy production, ranchers have taken a hit and food prices have risen. This is due partly to the falling dominoes of unintended consequences, but equally the result of willful (and politically-motivated) ignorance on the part of policymakers. Other ideas – like hybrid technology – are slowly gaining traction, but are not bold enough to actually solve the overarching fossil fuel dependency. For once I won't throw any political bombs, but I do think aggressive development of hydrogen and/or electric technology is a far more effective solution to America's foreign oil dependency than mucking around ANWR.

Sichuan Earthquake

2008-06-09T03:43:00.002-04:00

I took these photos about three weeks after the May 15th earthquake in Sichuan. They are from Mianzhu, a small city outside Chengdu. Most of the buildings left standing in the pictures are structurally unstable and need to be torn down. Until new permanent homes can be built, most residents live in tents or temporary trailers set up by the People's Liberation Army (PLA), China's military. Still, Mianzhu suffered minor damage in comparison to the quake's epicenter in Wenchuan.

Fear and Loathing in Beijing

2008-04-23T01:44:00.003-04:00

What’s happening in China? Somehow Tibet, CNN, Nicholas Sarkozy, Carrefour, and the Olympics have all been ensnared in a schizophrenic fireball of collective idiotic fury.

For a while I was intrigued. I enjoyed sharing perspectives with Chinese friends. Partly it was genuine curiosity. Partly it must have been a dose of egoism. Even a basic conversation about Tibet requires all sorts of factual interjections. No, the Dalai Lama did not mastermind the violence. No, Tibet is not autonomous just because its official name ends in “Autonomous Region.” No, Tibet has not “ALWAYS” been a part of China.

Yet something has changed over the past week or two. The CCP has been gradually ratcheting up tensions since their mouthpiece Xinhua declared CNN was “biased.” It’s hard to argue that there isn’t some degree of misunderstanding in the West, but the accusation seems just a bit rich coming from a propaganda outlet.

The anti-media drumbeat soon morphed into a Carrefour boycott, ostensibly because the French president said he won’t be going to Beijing and because the torch relay was disrupted in Paris. There were also rumors that a major shareholder in the supermarket chain funds the Dalai Lama (a response came out this weekend that sounded eerily like “I am not now, nor have I ever been…”). In any case reason took a back seat to emotion. No tangible “aim” has been announced from what I have heard. Rather the main goal seems to be showing the world how tough and scary the Chinese can be.

Enter schizophrenia. Initially the CCP indirectly signaled its support for the boycott simply by letting the message spread via online message boards (nearly all non-approved mass movements are quickly filtered out by government censors). It wasn’t long before the party/state-run papers got onboard. Yet on the eve of massive demonstrations in Wuhan and other cities, Xinhua cautioned, “Patriotic fervor should be channeled into a rational track and must be transformed into real action toward doing our work well.”

Perhaps the CCP is just beginning to worry that the darkening anti-foreign tone could turn on the government. Ultranationalism – festering on a closed circuit of propagandized media, education, and political culture – is hard to control once it’s in full force. Those shopping in defiance of the Carrefour ban are denounced by screaming fanatics as “national traitors” (爱国贼). Some fare even worse. Grace Wang, a Chinese student at Duke University who was photographed alongside pro-Tibetan protesters, had personal information posted online including her national identification number and her parents’ address. She received several threats including one that read: “If you return to China, your dead corpse will be chopped into 10,000 pieces.” Her parents’ home has been pelted with rocks and they are now reportedly in hiding. And just when I thought I might have been reading a little too much into the news headlines, I saw a Chinese friend had written this: “现在在中国不存在什么洋鬼子，他们就像乞丐一样，可以换一个名字了，洋垃圾!!” (Roughly it translates as: “Now China does not have foreign devils. Actually they are beggars. A better name would be ‘foreign trash’!”)

Anyway, thanks for the welcome mat but as far as I’m concerned the Chinese can take their nationalism and their second Cultural Revolution and shove it. I don’t think I’m totally out of line on this. I’ve said basically the same thing before to “these colors don’t bleed” Americans. Ultranationalism is not a selling point. And it certainly has no place at the Olympics. If Beijing 2008 fails it will be solely the product of Chinese xenophobia.

It’s still too early to tell how this all will play out, but if this angry absurdity gets much worse or lasts much longer I’ll be heading home and I have a feeling a lot of people will be thinking twice before visiting Beijing in August.

"Pyongyang" in Laos and the NY Times

2008-03-01T05:22:00.000-05:00

I just stumbled on this New York Times post about a guy who snuck across the DMZ with a cameraman. The videolink is unbearably slow from China, but the descriptions -- particularly of the “empty but fully-served banquet hall” –- remind me of a recent adventure to a North Korean restaurant in Vientiane.

The night before we flew back to Kunming, my friend Bartosz and I tracked down the restaurant run by Laos' communist brother. It was as tacky as it was austere. And definitely surreal.

When we arrived at half past eight it was so empty we assumed it was closed. One of the servers (huge bangs, '40s-esque blouse and skirt) waved us in. Most of the workers scattered soon after we entered.

Our waitress stood a few feet from our table humming along to the "patriotic opera" karaoke displaying images of shiny happy children with The Dear Leader. She couldn't speak English, but Bartosz asked her a few questions in Chinese. I interjected just long enough to offend her by saying "Bei Han" (North Korea) rather than "Chaoxian" (Choson).

Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take any pictures. (No surprise, but we had to ask).

LINK: The Empty Banquet Halls of North Korea By Virginia Heffernan

Washington Photos

2007-08-15T16:22:00.000-04:00

Playing around with my new camera. Still learning...

Jared's Semi-World Tour

2007-07-23T13:48:00.000-04:00

Taking some time off from the blog. Here's my schedule for the next month or so until I'm back in Kunming:

Shenzhen (China) - 17-18 July
South Florida - 19 July - 3 August
New York - 3-9 August
Washington - 9-20 August
Dubai - 22 August
Hong Kong - 23-27 August
Kunming - 28 August

Typing Without a Spacebar, etc.

2007-06-20T10:52:00.000-04:00

This post is going to be a short one because as of Monday night the following keys on my laptop are no longer in functioning condition: space bar, backspace, all four arrow keys, and several others found on the rightmost edges of my keyboard. The circumstances behind this tragedy are far too idiotic to comment upon further, except for... Public service announcement: do not reach across your computer if there is a full beverage in front of you.

1. Pictures from my weekend in Dali are up on facebook. I will create a Picasa album soon. Below: Steph and Rachelle in front of one of the city gates.

2. My mother and Charlie (my stepfather) will be landing in Kunming tomorrow evening at 7:30pm. It should be a busy week of sight-seeing and Peking Duck consumption.

3. Brief, but interesting, review in today’s New York Times. The book is Confessions: An Innocent Life in Communist China by Kang Zhengguo. After I get through Nixon and Mao along with the four books mom is bringing from home, I want to check it out. Having time to read is one of the few luxuries that come along with teaching in China (75¢ DVDs is another one).

4. Finally, Bloomberg announced he’s trading his -R for an -I. He never quite fit the role of conservative ideologue. As Politico points out,

His first major act as mayor was a large property tax increase, his most controversial was a citywide ban on smoking, and the signature accomplishment of his first term was an education reform that mixed centralized control with increased spending.

Vocally opposed to remarriage for himself, he favors the right to same-sex marriage and has confessed not only to smoking marijuana but to enjoying it.

Needless to say the move has already created a flurry of coverage on his potential 2008 ambitions.

It's been days

2007-06-14T12:16:00.000-04:00

8 in fact. There's been some good stuff brewing on and off-line, but I guess nothing I felt all that moved to reflect on. I'll be taking my first trip to Dali this weekend, so with any luck I'll have some stories & photos to share. And, if that fails, my mother and Charlie will be arriving Thursday. One of my students has already promised embarrassing questions...

iTunes Goes to College

2007-06-07T00:28:00.001-04:00

Please forgive the blatant Apple-boosting for a moment, but I’m pretty excited about a new feature on the iTunes store. A new feature – “iTunes U” – now brings course lectures, forums, and potentially innovative educational projects straight to your computer or iPod.

At launch, 16 schools were listed. Among them were ultra-competitive institutions like UC Berkeley, MIT, Duke, and Stanford. As iTunes U matures, it has the potential to help make higher education more accessible at a time when universities are becoming increasingly expensive and selective.

One project that seems to have particular promise is MIT’s “Visualizing Cultures” video podcast. Launched by noted Japan historian John Dower, the project aims to “illuminate history through the images of the time.” I’m currently downloading the introduction along with “Asia Rises,” a piece on the 1905 Russo-Japanese War. With my creaky Internet connection it might take awhile, but I’ll post some comments after I get a chance to watch them.

What NPR Gets Wrong about Shangri-La

2007-06-05T00:01:00.000-04:00

NPR's foreign desk has a story on tourism in Shangri-La (Zhongdian).* After living in China for so many months, it's refreshing to see something approaching real reporting. That said, I think NPR piece is thoroughly wrong-headed.

Yes, the piece highlights some valid critiques. Well-heeled ethnic Hans (the dominant group throughout most of China) are swarming into what is essentially a Tibetan town. And, as might be expected, the profits are hardly being shared equally.

But those aspects miss the bigger picture of what is going on in Zhongdian. Ten years ago, it was a struggling frontier town. Its economy was heavily dependent on logging, which faced a nationwide ban from Beijing. Life is difficult in rural China, and it is even more so in geographically disadvantaged Yunnan, among the country’s poorest provinces. Large scale agriculture is nearly impossible in northwestern Diqing where Zhongdian is located.

Yet NPR neglects to mention any of that, and by using the passive voice, and saying the city "was rechristened five years ago Shangri-La," the editors sidestep the reasons behind the switch. It was not greedy fat cats that turned Zhongdian into an emerging tourist haven. It was the local government under pressure by an economy on the verge of collapse.

Of course any “rebranding” or “retooling” is going to lead to growing pains. However, I was seriously annoyed that such weighty issues as "too many shopping centers" and a busy local monastery gift shop seemed to dominate the article.

Only in the last line, however, did my frustration finally boil over. Paraphrasing a local photographer, the article claims, “The area's culture and its fragile ecosystem are under threat from tourism.” I’m no expert, but this seems – at best – to be a seriously suspect argument.

While imperfect in motivation, the economic opportunities offered by tourism have made preserving traditional culture profitable – and therefore sustainable. A great example of this is in Lijiang, where octogenarians perform classical Naxi music on stage next to twentysomethings. Profits from tourism there have been invested in educational programs to protect the unique (and nearly extinct) Dongba script.

Zhongdian itself is filled with Tibetan handicrafts that are sold in the same “shopping centers” (actually alley-side stalls) that are knocked in the piece. Just outside Zhongdian, “ecovillages” have emerged by mixing traditional culture, eco-friendly living, and small-scale tourism.

I don’t know enough about the environmental aspect to go on too long, but from my visit it seemed as though the town's chief environmental challenge was the scarred landscape of over-logging from decades past. And logging is exactly the issue that local tourism promotion seeks to address.

*The one point of the article that I do tend to agree with is that "Shangri-La" is so awkward I have trouble writing about it or even taking it seriously. I used the older Chinese name -- Zhongdian -- in this post.

The Rickshaw and the Maglev (and Other Thoughts)

2007-05-29T11:06:00.000-04:00

For me, this photo totally sums up urban China, or at least my limited experiences with it. I saw a headline of a similar name at China Digital Times but China's Net Nanny wouldn't let me view the page. I found this version on Yahoo.

The Chinese Language
中文

I've had some somewhat encouraging experiences over the past few days on the 中文 front. My tutor Island spent an extra half hour with me today, at least in part, I think, because he was pleased with my progress with learning characters. I've always enjoyed the aesthetic value of Chinese characters, but recently I've been more looking at each one as almost a word -- examining each as a compound of simpler characters (letters). This approach has proved much more efficient than the sheer force of brute memorization alone.

China and the United States
中国和美国

In my last post I discussed Michael Hunt's article on U.S. foreign policy. Since August I haven't read or written much on topics like that.

Instead I've been alternatively fascinated and frustrated by everything Chinese. All along I feel like I've been pretty consistently committed to the end of Chinese cultural, historical, and linguistic fluency. Still, the means -- the process -- is another story. It is easy to get disillusioned in a place where you can't even go out to dinner without stumbling hopelessly. But, by reading Hunt's article I've realized that there isn't too much for me to learn about American foreign relations outside a graduate program or maybe the National Security Archive.

Despite the inevitable frustration, I feel like this China thing has been a positive experience. It has helped me stay true to the notion that it is important to relate to people with whom you would otherwise have nothing in common. It has taught me (perhaps contradictorily) about both self-sufficiency and interdependence.

But, back to Mr. Hunt. Being here has given me a chance to reach beyond my comfort zone and eventually, hope to make a worthwhile contribution to the history of the relationship between the two lumbering giants of the twenty-first century. Better history can only improve the mutual understanding and likelihood of a sustainable peace in the decades to come.

Without the short-term frustrations, it would be impossible to research and write a truly bi-national history. The U.S. end is, after all, only half the puzzle.

ps, on the topic of pet food (and food safety more generally), I'm glad the it has made its way to the front-page of the international press. One of the biggest challenges to China's economic growth is quality control. I hope it doesn't take twenty years before the country tackles this problem. It's fine if the army toy you got from the 25¢ gum ball machine breaks after a half hour, but the last thing you want to hear is that your toothpaste is toxic.

Empire and Hegemony

2007-05-28T12:18:00.000-04:00

Michael Hunt* has a piece up on the History News Network that is worth a read. In it he takes apart the terms empire and hegemony and moves them from the realm of anti-Bush epithet to that of thoughtful discussion.

Hunt might be opening up more questions than he answers, but in doing so he provides useful definitions, compelling comparisons, and points out a degree of friction between the competing goals of empire and hegemony.

Perhaps his most controversial assertion is that "[r]ather than focus on distinctions between formal and informal control, we might more fruitfully think instead about how control is exercised." This seems to have provoked a somewhat heated debate in the comments section.

*Michael Hunt is a professor of history at the University of North Carolina. He is the author of several major books on the history of U.S. foreign relations, the most recent being The American Ascendancy: How the United States Gained and Wielded Global Dominance (2007).

XXX (Or, Steph's 30th)

2007-05-26T23:59:00.000-04:00

Stephanie turns 30 today. Check out Rachelle's faceb ook album of photos from last night's dinner & bowling.

Banned in China: "Though I am Gone"

2007-05-17T01:42:00.000-04:00

I first came across this on Granite Studio, when an update just appeared with a link to a profile in Der Spiegal (in English). Though I am Gone («我虽死去»), a documentary film by Hu Jie, was recently banned in China but you can still watch it on YouTube divided into ten segments. The first is below (scroll down for links to the others).

The film explores the story of Bian Zhonyun, a professor at Beijing Teachers University, who was beaten to death by her students in the first political killing of the Cultural Revolution.

Here's more background on the film itself from Der Spiegal:

Most Chinese people will never get to see Hu's historical work. The Chinese Communist Party has continued to keep silent about this chapter of its history. In 2006, the 40th anniversary of the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, it instructed academics, artists and journalists to simply ignore the topic.

This was probably the reason the authorities recently cancelled the Multiculture Visual Festival in the southern province of Yunnan, an event where director Hu had planned to screen his documentary.... Hu, a military painter by trade, is used to these kinds of difficulties. When he filmed an earlier documentary about another Mao victim ("In Search of the Soul of Lin Zhao"), he lost his job with Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency.
Though I am Gone:
Part 1 (above) | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10

Good Reads

2007-05-16T13:04:00.000-04:00

Molly Norris just sent me an invitation to what I thought was going to be just another useless social networking group. I checked it out solely on the basis that its name was clean and simple (Good Reads) rather the latest batch of wannabe technobabble.

It turns out it's pretty neat. I just started uploading mini-reviews and such, but it seems like a basic but useful way to share favorite books. Didn't get much farther to see how the other features hold up, but so far so good.

Take a look and see if you want to join.

Habeas Schmabeas

2007-05-10T22:12:00.000-04:00

This American Life, a program from Chicago Public Radio, has a must-hear podcast on the prisoners held at Guantanamo. When the show was originally broadcast last year it won a Peabody Award. It has now been updated and rebroadcast. You can get the program either by subscribing for free on iTunes or checking out their website.

Two Post-May Day Miniposts

2007-05-10T06:35:00.000-04:00

中文
Chinese

I finally gave up on trying to keep up with the Vietnamese students. I hated being alternatively the slowest (in the women’s classes) and the only serious student (in the men’s classes). Because the women spend hours each day practicing while the men generally just embarrass themselves (to put it mildly), the classes are divided. I found that couldn’t keep up with the women because I theoretically have a full-time job. As far as the men’s classes it wasn’t not worth being laughed at or talked over every time I try to read a sentence.

Enter Island, my new tutor. He’s a student at Yunnan University majoring in teaching Chinese to foreigners. So far, things are going well. On Tuesday had me read a paragraph in hānzi (Chinese characters) for the first time. It was a bit tough, but I at least managed to make an amusing mistake. I came across the character 牛 (niú) which I mostly see together with 肉 (ròu). Together they mean beef. So when I saw 牛奶 (niú năi) I naturally blurted out “beef milk.” Yeah… I guess that’s about a good representation of how crappy my Chinese sounds at this point.

(above: People's Liberation Army soldiers in Beijing Workers Stadium, circa 1966)

无产阶级文化大革命
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution

Last week was the May Day holiday. Back about six months ago I had big plans for the holiday. I’d go to Beijing to see the parade or maybe take a bike trip south to Laos. Well, I think I just ran out of energy. Most of the admittedly tentative plans I had basically fell through. So I just decided to hang out and relax.

I spent the holiday digging into two shipments worth of books from Amazon. I still have hardly made a dent, but I have decided to write some sort of article about the Cultural Revolution. Using Mao’s Last Revolution by MacFarquhar and Schoenhals (perhaps the first full-scale attempt at a history of the period), I’m trying to get a handle on the basic events of the period. I also have a few other good books, but no access to any sort of academic database (it appears that the AU library site is somehow blocked from here).

Needless to say it will probably take me awhile, but I might use the blog as a sounding board for working through the sources I have. Two possible angles I have right now for my own independent research are:

psychological issues relating to marriage, divorce, and radical sexual puritanism during the CR; side topic: to what extent did people realize that Mao’s hypocrisy on those subjects?
dissent: is dissent possible in a totalitarian society like the CR period? If so, what form(s) did it take? Are there any survivors around today?

I prefer the second one, but it all depends on what’s available in terms of sources, etc.

Walmart in China

2007-05-04T08:58:00.001-04:00

Before I left, one of the hottest China topics (at least among activists) was that China had forced the staunchly anti-union Walmart into unionization. Most socially conscious observers seemed heartened by the move. It seemed a rebuke to the single-minded lurch toward corporate investment that too often characterizes developing economies.

A few nights ago I had dinner with an American PhD candidate studying social mobilization in Beijing, Shanghai, and Yunnan. She argued that Walmart’s “loss” had little to do with social justice and a lot more to do with poor business maneuvering.

She highlighted the example of Carrefour, the French supermarket chain with at least eight locations in Kunming. The chain had come into China semi-illegally by cultivating relations with local governments while ignoring the central government. While technically, companies need both central and local government approval to operate, Carrefour executives wined and dined provincial officials while investing sizeable sums into local education and transit projects. Carrefour’s popularity among provincial officials ultimately filtered up the party/government latter into official recognition from Beijing.

By contrast, Walmart, an American corporation with a Southern-conservative streak, took a harsh line on anything constituting “bribes” to local officials. Unlike Carrefour, Walmart executives decided to deal only with central government officials. The underpaid provincial officials took this as a sign of foreign arrogance and refused to issue local permission. Just as Carrefour’s local “generosity” had filtered up the chain of command, Walmart was ultimately slapped with harsh conditions from Beijing for offending lower level officials.

As a French corporation, it is hard to picture Carrefour running an anti-union shop, but if corroborated, the story above suggests that China has more in mind than labor rights in forcing the public humiliation of Walmart. After all, if labor issues were really the primary state concern, most of the Hong Kong and Taiwan-operated manufacturers in southeast China would be out of business. And let’s not get into the fact that most people in Yunnan work for less than the state-mandated minimum wage of ¥8 (about $1) per hour.

Also, I’m not too sure how much union membership matters when workers pay their dues to the same people that try to attract new business with tax (and other?) incentives.

Jeffrey Lewis Rhymes Illustrated History of Communism in China

2007-05-02T23:39:00.001-04:00

(From the desk of Michael Douglas Haack)

News Habits of My Chinese Students

2007-04-02T05:48:00.000-04:00

I conducted an informal survey of the group of 92 self-selected journalism students that I'm teaching for the spring semester. I think it's only fair to point out that most of these students are business majors and are not interested in pursuing professional journalism.

Still, I have to say I was slightly disappointed that the largest group of everyday news readers (Internet news) was still only 20 students. The most common answer for news consumption was clearly "once a week." It seems surprising that even students who chose to take a journalism course don't find time to read the news more often.

As a secondary note, I don't have comparative stats for American students, but I would guess that the main difference between similarly sized samples would be in daily Internet use. The last two questions didn't limit students only to reporting blogs and podcasts they had read for news yet Chinese students still seemed wary of the web. My feeling is that American college students would be more likely to regularly browse the Internet for news, blogs, and podcasts.

The Good Chairman

2007-04-01T10:50:00.000-04:00

I’m going to start off this post by pleading guilty. Almost two years ago I was finishing my senior history thesis on the 1960s antiwar movement and I got a hip-looking Mao patch in the mail from my sister. Naturally, I duct-taped it to the corner of my fish tank. At the time the image conjured up Sartre running through the streets of Paris waving his Little Red Book along with the vanguard of the French Left.

Only a couple of days later, my roommate Patrick came in, glanced at the Mao badge and muttered, disgustedly, “I can’t believe you put that up.” I don’t remember the rest of the conversation well enough to quote, but the jist of his argument was that Mao was every bit as evil as Hitler and Stalin. At first I got defensive, making allusions to the international Third World movement, but finally I relented and said I’d study the matter further.

I never took the Mao badge down, but I realized soon enough that the Good Chairman was a bit more than “30% wrong.” I read more actual histories of China – not just the romanticized portrayals I’d been glued to during my thesis research. I watched devastating films including To Live (Zhang Yimou, 1994) and Xiu Xiu (Joan Chen, 1998).

Now, after moving to China and focusing more keenly on Chinese history, I have to admit, finally, that Patrick was right.

Here’s some further insight from Cogs and Wheels (another blog blocked in the People’s Republic):

It’s fascinating how differently we approach the iconography of communism and fascism. And, for that matter, Soviet Communism and, say, that of China or Cuba. I guess the ideology - the concepts of equality, a united workforce, shared ownership and community - of Marxism/communism continues to capture the popular imagination. Its attraction is so compelling that people can look past the reality of daily life under communist regimes. And I also imagine that while Soviet Russia was just too close to home, too much of a threat to the West during the 1950s and 1960s, China and Cuba (not in the US) remained just distant enough (spatially and ideologically) to develop a veneer of ‘cool’. Plus, as far as Mao is concerned, the closed nature of China allowed the myth, that he had created a socialist utopia, to perpetuate (until his death and the arrest of the Gang of Four), while Khruschev had - through his criticisms of Stalin - fundamentally destroyed any western illusions of life in the USSR.

But, in hindsight, we know how disastrous the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution were, so why does this idea of Mao as a benign paternal figure perpetuate in western subcultural (and increasing popcultural) contexts? Is it because people - especially those students/intellectuals who bought into the whole Maoism thing in the 1960s and 1970s cannot face to have their illusions shattered, once again? As Heath and Potter discuss in their book The Rebel Sell: How the Counterculture Became Consumer Culture, it is these very people who have gone on to work in the creative industries that promote and repackage subcultural coolness for a mass audience. And, as the well heeled ’movers and shakers’ of industry, they themselves constitute a key demographic for marketers.

Here's one more snipet that Cogs and Wheels borrowed in part from Peking Duck:

Jeremiah writing at The Peking Duck asks whether the kitschy use of Mao’s image is morally and ethically justifiable (I particularly like the last sentence from this extract; ‘Can you de-fang a tyrant by turning him into kitsch?’ sounds like the title of a great thesis chapter to me!):

The CCP came up with the rather neat figure of 70% correct and 30% incorrect. But how does one split a canvas 70/30? Does this mean it is okay to wear a silkscreened Mao t-shirt 70% of the time? Does it mean the next time I’m at Panjiayuan Market in Beijing, I should ask for a 30% discount on a Mao cigarette lighter that plays “Dong Fang Hong” when it lights? Can you de-fang a tyrant by turning him into kitsch or does that trivialize the horrors he perpetrated?