Photographs: Tese Wintz Neighbor
Top Ten Things to Know about China in the Twenty-First Century, August 19. 2014
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TEN: THE PAST IS NOT SO FAR AWAY
China is one of the world’s oldest continuous civilizations. This ancient culture of shared
legends, rituals, ideas, traditions, and written language helps to explain even today why the
Chinese people act the way they do and how they interpret their world.
The Chinese early on set up a pantheon of “brilliant human beings” who were “inventors of
Chinese culture.” These extraordinary “mythical sages” were fathers of agriculture, industry, family
institutions, and writing. They domesticated animals and invented boats and carts, ploughs and
hoes, and bows and arrows. They established calendars and rituals, state institutions and hereditary
succession. One of them was Yu the Great, who supposedly founded the Xia Dynasty (ca. 2200–1750
BCE). This legendary father of flood control is in the Chinese news even today. The Chinese
compare his great flood-quelling ability with that of the engineers who built the 59 billion dollar
Three Gorges Dam on the Yangzi River. It is the largest undertaking in Chinese history since the
Great Wall. This dam (completed in 2012) – along with new ones rising up – are being built to not
only tame floods but to generate power to feed the new factories of the world.
China’s present continues to reflect seminal ideas and great discoveries from China’s past.
For example, 3,000-year-old oracle bone inscriptions included the following divination: “Lady Hao
gave birth and it may not be good.” And verification: “She gave birth. It really was not good. It was
a girl.” China’s strict birth control policy introduced in 1979 has been at loggerheads with such
attitudes that have survived three millenniums. While this policy is beginning to loosen up now, for
the past three decades many women were caught in a catch-22. They were permitted to conceive
one or two children by the government but criticized (and worse) by their husbands and parents-inlaw when that child is a girl because of the ancient tradition that says women must bear a son to
secure the male family line. In rural China, especially, this “moral” obligation reinforced a
“practical” one. Since most daughters still leave their families, and often villages, when they marry,
a son provides rural parents with necessary social security in old age.
China’s past is important for us to study so that we understand Chinese reactions to modern
events. * For more than a decade leading up to Hong Kong rejoining Mainland China in 1997,
thousands of front-page articles in the foreign press predicted political, economic, and
social chaos. But to my Chinese friends, home and abroad, the handover was above all a
* Other modern
events of
symbolic event, the official end to China’s “unequal” relations with Western powers
historical
since the first Opium War (1839–42). Chinese of all ages would discuss this war and the
significance:
Macao handover,
hundred-plus years following as some of the darkest pages in Chinese history. As the
WTO
various clocks throughout China counted down the month, day, hour, minute, and
membership,
second until July 1, 1997, so too did many Chinese as they symbolically threw off years
Beijing Olympics,
Shanghai World
of suffering, war, division, and strife—and embraced their modern “equal” world nation
Expo.
status.
INTRODUCTION TO CHINESE HISTORY & PHILOSOPHY
Online Lecture Videos: ChinaX
Peter K. Bol, William C. Kirby, & others / HarvardX / 2013
https://www.edx.org/course-list/harvardx/history/allcourses
Taught by two Harvard professors, ChinaX is a free online course – divided into 10 six-week modules
– that introduces the entire 5,000 year history of China from the earliest Bronze age settlement to
the present time. Each six-week module focuses on a particular period of China and is divided into
weekly topics; each weekly topic is, in turn, divided into five to 10 minute lecture and discussion
videos. The lecture material is accessible to a non-specialist audience and can be used in the
classroom as a basis for discussing certain topics. This online course series comes highly
recommended and has no equal among free and paid video course options.
Top Ten Things to Know about China in the Twenty-First Century, August 19. 2014
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Website: Asia for Educators
Asia for Educators Staff / Asia for Educators at Columbia University / 2009
http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/main_pop/kpct/index.html
The Asia for Educators website features a number of resources to help the educator understand and
develop lesson plans for the study of East Asia. Of particular interest to the educator are the
extensive timelines, introductions, primary documents, and lesson plans covering just about every
period of Chinese history up to the present.
Online Course Sources: General Introduction to Early China
Robert Eno / Early Chinese Thought course at Indiana University / Fall 2010
http://www.indiana.edu/~p374/Home.html
Professor Eno's online course material for Early Chinese Thought includes several accessible
introductions to the various schools of Chinese philosophy. A particular piece worth reading is his
13-page “General Introduction to Early China” (found in the “Online Course Material” section),
which provides a thorough introduction to the geography, culture, and language of early Chinese
civilization.
Website: A Visual Sourcebook of Chinese Civilization
Patricia Buckley Ebrey / University of Washington / early 2000s
http://depts.washington.edu/chinaciv/index.htm
In developing this sourcebook, the author states, “the goal of this "visual sourcebook" is to add to
the material teachers can use to help their students understand Chinese history, culture, and
society. It was not designed to stand alone; we assume that teachers who use it will also assign a
textbook with basic information about Chinese history.” The website features a dozen 100-page
teacher guides to Chinese geography, archeology, and the fine arts. Includes related picture
galleries.
Article: Timeline of East Asian History
Mark Bender / East Asian Humanities course at Ohio State University / 2006
http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/bender4/eall131/EAHReadings/module02/m02chinese.html
This is a short, comprehensive timeline of Chinese history from the early Bronze period to
contemporary times with a particular focus on several particular “themes” of Chinese history:
dynasty rise and fall, aggression from outsiders, openness to outsiders, and government stability.
Includes related charts, pictures, and maps.
Article: Why are Hundreds of Harvard Students Studying Ancient Chinese Philosophy?
Christine Gross-Loh / The Atlantic / October 8th 2013
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/10/why-are-hundreds-of-harvard-studentsstudying-ancient-chinese-philosophy/280356/
“Puett's course Classical Chinese Ethical and Political Theory has become the third most popular
course at the university. […] Puett began offering his course to introduce his students not just to a
completely different cultural worldview but also to a different set of tools. He told me he is seeing
more students who are 'feeling pushed onto a very specific path towards very concrete career goals'
than he did when he began teaching nearly 20 years ago.”
FURTHER READING
Book: China: A New History
John King Fairbanks & Merle Goldman / Havard Belknap Press / 2006 – Second Ed.
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674018280
Top Ten Things to Know about China in the Twenty-First Century, August 19. 2014
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From the publisher: “John King Fairbank was the West’s doyen on China, and this book is the full
and final expression of his lifelong engagement with this vast ancient civilization. It remains a
masterwork without parallel. The distinguished historian Merle Goldman brings the book up to date,
covering reforms in the post-Mao period through the early years of the twenty-first century,
including the leadership of Hu Jintao. She also provides an epilogue discussing the changes in
contemporary China that will shape the nation in the years to come.”
Book: The Search for Modern China
Jonathan D. Spence / W.W. Norton & Company / 976 pages / 2012 – Third Ed.
http://books.wwnorton.com/books/The-Search-for-Modern-China/
From the publisher: “This text, the classic introduction to modern China for students and general
readers, emerged from Spence’s highly successful introductory course at Yale, in which he traced
the beginnings of modern China to internal developments beginning in the early 17th century.
Strong on social and political history, as well as Chinese culture and its intersections with politics,
this paperback is a longstanding leader in the survey course on modern China.”
Book: The Rise of Modern China
Immanuel C. Y. Hsu / Oxford University Press / 1136 pages / 1999 – Sixth Edition
http://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-rise-of-modern-china-9780195125047
From the publisher: “China enters the twenty-first century in the best international position it has
known since the mid-eighteenth century. The prolonged period of internal decay and external
exploitation has given way to vibrant rejuvenation and national rebirth. The century-old search for
wealth, power, and recognition seems to be within reach. Its growing economic, military, and
political clout has earned it international acknowledgment as a regional superpower in Asia-Pacific,
and an emergent superpower possibly by 2020. The Rise of Modern China, now in its sixth edition,
has been updated to examine the return of Hong Kong in 1997 and the upcoming return of Macao in
1999. Hsu discusses the end of the last vestiges of foreign imperialism in China, as well as China's
emergence as a regional and global superpower. U.S.-China rivalry and the prospect of unification
between China and Taiwan are also considered, and the further readings sections have been
entirely revised.”
Top Ten Things to Know about China in the Twenty-First Century, August 19. 2014
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NINE: THE CALL TO MODERNIZE WAS NOT AN EMPTY SLOGAN
I remember visiting China in the late 70s, and living there in the early 80s, and being
bombarded by “Four Modernizations” billboards all across the country: “Modernize China by 2000 in
Agriculture, Industry, Science and Technology, and Defense.” Dodging a man transporting a huge
sofa on his bicycle while noticing yet another billboard, I rode my bike to work where Chinese
colleagues and I would pound out articles using 40-year old typewriters. How could this gigantic,
poor country modernize by 2000?
Well, it has. Over the past three decades, China has experienced tremendous progress in the
Four Modernizations and more. How could anyone have predicted the incredible tiger ride that
China has pursued since Deng Xiaoping instituted reforms and uttered the phrase: “Black cat, white
cat, who cares what color the cat is as long as it catches mice?” The Chinese have not only stood
up—they are running! No other country in history has made such a successful and profound
transformation in such a short time. Headlines abound describing China’s entry into the twenty-first
century:
– China’s economy defies the worldwide slowdown and
continues its long streak of rapid growth. It is the second
largest economy in the world. In human terms this growth
means that many Chinese now enjoy material benefits
that were largely absent three decades ago.
– Industry in China continues to expand and grow in
almost every category of manufactured goods from shoes
to cameras, from bikes to semiconductors. In 2013 Beijing
announced it was the world’s largest trading nation.
– China is the world’s largest agricultural producer,
feeding 22 percent of the world’s population on less than
10 percent of the world’s arable land.
– The PRC has the world’s longest high-speed rail network.
– Foreigners have invested more money in the PRC than anywhere else in the world, including the
U.S. (2012)
– China has the second largest military expenditure; it has the largest military force in the world.
With these spectacular headlines comes the fine print that describes some harsh realities:
– China, in several decades, has gone from one of the most egalitarian societies to one with yawning
gaps between rich and poor.
– Closing down or downsizing some of the state-owned enterprises (SOEs) has left millions
unemployed.
– Farmers with tiny plots of land can no longer support their families as taxes, education, and health
care prices increase. Families are split by the largest migration in history.
– Local governments appropriate land from 4 M yearly; 65% of China’s 187,000 protests in 2010 were
land disputes.
– China’s cities are booming providing jobs for more than 150 million migrants, yet laborers are
often exploited.
– China’s greatest industrial achievement now fuels China’s biggest environmental headache
(spurring more than 180,000 annual protests).
– China is facing a critical shortage of fresh water—an essential element needed to sustain not only
the human population, but also the industrial and agricultural engines that drive China’s economic
growth.
Top Ten Things to Know about China in the Twenty-First Century, August 19. 2014
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DENG XIAOPING AND MODERNIZATION
Article: Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism – Interview with Merle Goldman
Merle Goldman / PBS / 2005
http://www.pbs.org/heavenonearth/interviews_goldman.html
Professor Goldman's interview for this documentary is an introduction to the “transition” period
between Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping: what conditions made China ripe for economic
modernization and how did Deng Xiaoping sustain economic modernization as a national policy for
the following three decades. Of interest is what distinguishes Deng from Mao: “What was different
about Deng Xiaoping is that he was not ideological. He was very pragmatic. He wasn’t carried away
by utopian ideas the way Mao Zedong was. He didn’t believe you could introduce utopia overnight,
as Mao thought he could do. He realized that in order to bring about change in China you had to
have fundamental economic reforms.”
Article: The Partial Reformer
Andrew J. Nathan / New Republic / February 22nd 2012
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/books-and-arts/magazine/100983/deng-xiaoping-mao-chinarevolution-communism
Professor Nathan delves into the political history of Deng Xiaoping to reconstruct the image of a
leader who shrewdly navigated the complex machinery of Chinese Communist politics to achieve his
political ends. In contrast to often arbitrarily and centralized political system of Mao's later years,
the author argues that Deng Xiaoping allowed the party to survive and ultimately prosper by
instituting a system of retirement for China's top leaders, establishing a more orderly, merit-based
system for recruiting leadership, and delegating significant power to experiment to lower-level
officials.
Book: Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China
Ezra Vogel / Harvard University Press / 2011
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674055445
From a Washington Post review: “His main argument is that Deng deserves a central place in the
pantheon of 20th-century leaders. For he not only launched China’s market-oriented economic
reforms but also accomplished something that had eluded Chinese leaders for almost two centuries:
the transformation of the world’s oldest civilization into a modern nation. 'Did any other leader in
the twentieth century do more to improve the lives of so many?' Vogel asks. 'Did any other
twentieth century leader have such a large and lasting influence on world history?' He clearly
believes that Deng — known in the West mostly for engineering the slaughter of protesters in the
streets near Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989 — has been wronged by history. His tome is an
attempt to redress the balance.” (The review is available here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/b ook-review-deng-xiaoping-and-thetransformation-of-china-by-ezra-f-vogel/2011/08/26/gIQAfTD6F K_story.html. For a more critical
perspective on the author's argument, see the review “The Real Deng” here:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/nov/10/real-deng.)
INDUSTRIALIZATION AND URBANIZATION
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Article: The Rise of China's Economy
Thomas G. Rawski / Foreign Policy Research Institute / June 2011
http://www.fpri.org/articles/2011/06/rise-chinas-economy
The author provides a solid background to the economy history of modern China and focuses
particularly on sociopolitical factors such as human capital in understanding how Chinese society
successfully achieved reforms in the post-Mao era. The author's main contention is that “Chinese
reform created a “virtuous cycle” that enabled myriad small reforms to cumulate into substantial
institutional change. Reform expanded competition and created financial pressures that spurred
some participants toward innovation, resulting in further intensification of competition. Even when
financial pressures resulted in lobbying rather than innovation, the typical response involved further
partial reform, which unleashed fresh rounds of competition.”
Video: Why Did China Boom?
Various Contributors / The China Boom Project at Asia Society / 2010
http://chinaboom.asiasociety.org/
One hundred experts from the academic, business, journalism, and policy worlds respond to the
question of “Why did China boom?” by analyzing key factors that, in their estimation, allowed China
to take off in the post-Mao period. The variety of experts and the equally varied areas they focus on
make this an interesting resource to study and also share with more advanced students. Includes
many video interviews.
Video: What Should We Understand about Urbanization in China? – Interview with Karen C. Seto
Karen C. Seto / Yale Insights at Yale School of
Management / July 2nd 2014
http://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/whatshould-we-understand-about-urbanization-china
In this ten-minute video interview, Professor
Seto hits upon several key points that explain
how we should understand Chinese urbanization:
“I think the third thing that’s critical about
China’s urbanization that everyone should know
is that it’s not a black and white thing. It’s not
Watch a related video from The Economist
that China cities are bad for the environment or
explaining China’s internal migration here:
that they’re all going to save the environment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNXg-kYk-LU
[…] Some of the cities that have been able to
develop more slowly have been able to develop
in a much more rational way in terms of, again, preserving the environment. Other cities have a
much more 'go west' or frontier feeling, and when we think about the 'go west' feeling or the
frontier landscapes, those are places where almost anything goes.” Includes a video interview and
external links to more statistics, tables, and other videos.
Article: China's Great Uprooting: Moving 250 Million into Cities
Ian Johnson / The New York Times / June 15th 2013
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/world/asia/chinas-great-uprooting-moving-250-million-intocities.html
Ian Johnson documents how China's ongoing decades-long urbanization
plan has re-engineered the landscapes of rural China and comes with huge
social and environmental costs. This essay is the first in a series of four
essays exploring how urbanization has changed the countryside and how
farmers are responding to this upheaval. On the goals for such a plan:
“This will decisively change the character of China, where the Communist
Top Ten Things to Know about China in the Twenty-First Century, August 19. 2014
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Party insisted for decades that most peasants, even those working in cities, remain tied to their tiny
plots of land to ensure political and economic stability. Now, the party has shifted priorities, mainly
to find a new source of growth for a slowing economy that depends increasingly on a consuming
class of city dwellers.” Includes related charts, a picture gallery, and video.
Article: Society: Realizing China's Urban Dream
Bai Xuemei, Shi Peijun, & Liu Yansui / Nature / May 7th 2014
http://www.nature.com/news/society-realizing-china-s-urban-dream-1.15151
The authors provide a comprehensive overview of the current administration's “National New-Type
Urbanization Plan” (which aims for 60% urbanization of the Chinese population by 2020) and
discusses some of the challenges that such a policy faces. On the plan's goals: “The plan is
comprehensive and ambitious. It covers almost every conceivable aspect of urbanization, from
rural–urban migration and integration to the spatial distribution of and linkages between cities;
sustainable development; institutional arrangements; and implementation. It sets numerical goals
[...] and as a guiding principle emphasizes a sustainable and people-centered approach, paying
more attention to welfare and well being — a significant and positive shift from the current
economic focus on land development. It also aims to rectify existing problems associated with the
rapid urbanization in the past three decades.” Includes charts, maps, and tables.
ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION
Article: The China Urban Sustainability Index 2013
Various Contributors / McKinsey China / April 28th 2014
http://www.mckinseychina.com/the-china-urban-sustainability-index-2013/
The executive summary of this report notes some very
 Check China Dialogue daily for
interesting trends on the development of Chinese
environmental articles about China:
cities: most of China's cities are shifting towards more
https://www.chinadialogue.net
healthy economic growth as a result of social pressure
from its citizens (although the more developed cities
 Check China Green regularly for short
of the China's eastern seaboard, with its relatively
new documentaries on environmental
higher levels of economic development, still lead on
issues:
overall sustainability performance. The entire reports
covers some of the social and environmental issues
that Chinese cities face as well as policies that they
http://sites.asiasociety.org/chinagreen/
must implement in order to maintain a healthy balance between economy and social &
environmental issues. Includes a link to the full report with related charts, graphs, maps and
various pictures.
Article: Pitfalls Abound in China's Push from Farm to City
Ian Johnson / The New York Times / July 13th 2013
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/14/world/asia/pitfalls-abound-in-chinas-push-from-farm-tocity.html
Ian Johnson focuses on the farmers and villagers who have lost or are threatened to lose their land
to urban development. This is the second in a series of four essays documenting how rural
inhabitants are reacting to the largest urbanization drive in human history. On the push to urbanize:
“All told, 250 million more Chinese may live in cities in the next dozen years. The rush to urbanize
comes despite concerns that many rural residents cannot find jobs in the new urban areas or are
simply unwilling to leave behind a way of life that many cherish.” Includes related charts, a picture
gallery, and videos.
Top Ten Things to Know about China in the Twenty-First Century, August 19. 2014
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Article: China and the Environment: The East is Grey
The Economist Staff / The Economist / August 10th
2013
http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/2158324
5-china-worlds-worst-polluter-largest-investorgreen-energy-its-rise-will-have
With summary explanations of China's most pressing
environmental concerns, this is a solid background
piece explaining how air population, carbon dioxide
omissions, and desertification among other issues
have impacted China's economic growth and forced
the government to confront these issues. On
Beijing's infamous air population: “The fetid smog
that settled on Beijing in January 2013 could join
the ranks of these game-changing environmental
disruptions. For several weeks the air was worse than in an airport smoking lounge. […] The
concentration of particles with a diameter of 2.5 microns or less, hit 900 parts per million—40 times
the level the World Health Organisation deems safe. You could smell, taste and choke on it.”
Includes related charts and maps.
Documentary: The Warriors of Qiugang: A Chinese Village Fights Back
Ruby Yang & Thomas Lennon / Yale Environment 360 / 2011
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/the_warriors_of_qiugang_a_chinese_village_fights_back/2358/
Synopsis from the producers: “Like many villages in China’s industrial heartland, Qiugang — a
hamlet of nearly 1,900 people in Anhui province — has long suffered from runaway pollution from
nearby factories. In Qiugang’s case, three major enterprises with little or no
2011 Academy
pollution controls churned out chemicals, pesticides, and dyes, turning the local
Award Nominee
river black, killing fish and wildlife, and filling the air with foul fumes that burned
for Best
residents’ eyes and throats and sickened children. The pollution from the Jiucailuo
Documentary.
Chemical plant became so egregious that in 2007, Qiugang’s residents — working
Download 40with a fledgling environmental group, Green Anhui — began to try to do something
minute film for
about it. Their efforts soon attracted the attention of Chinese-American filmmaker
free!
Ruby Yang, who with cinematographer Guan Xin and longtime collaborator Thomas
Lennon, spent the ensuing three years chronicling the struggle of Qiugang’s increasingly
emboldened population to curb the pollution that was poisoning them in their homes, schools, and
fields.”
Article: China's Dirty Population Secret: The Boom Poisoned its Soil and Crops
He Guangwei / Yale Environment 360 / June 30th 2014
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/chinas_dirty_pollution_secret_the_boom_poisoned_its_soil_and_crop
s/2782/
He Guangwei reports on the issue of soil pollution in the rural areas near central China: “The story
of the cancer hotspot of Yixing is characteristic: In the rush to develop that engulfed China from the
1990s, local officials were eager to invite factories and chemical plants into the area, and their
already weak environmental controls were often disregarded entirely. 'Government officials just
care about GDP,' Zhang complained. 'They were happy to welcome any polluting firm.' So, for a time,
were the villagers who found jobs in the new factories. […] Zhang Junwei and villagers like him are
well aware that cancer rates in their district have risen, and they suspect that pollution was the
cause. They say the number of cancer victims started to increase ten years ago, when local farmers
began to fall ill and die. Their suspicions were well founded: When crops are grown in soil
Top Ten Things to Know about China in the Twenty-First Century, August 19. 2014
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contaminated with cadmium or other heavy metals, the grain absorbs the toxins. But even today,
despite this awareness of what pollution can do, local farmers have little choice but to continue to
plant. These are families that reaped no direct benefit from industrialization and still have few
alternative sources of income. The poorest still eat locally produced food, knowing it is
contaminated.” Includes related picture galleries.
Documentaries on Chinese Environmental Issues
An expanding body of excellent documentary films on Chinese environmental issues should be
included in courses on China and global environmental issues. These are just a few:
Manufactured Landscapes (2006)
http://www.aems.illinois.edu/searchresults_detail.html?biblioId=7466
“A haunting if slow-moving film that forces the consumer/viewer to confront the detritus of global
production.”
Mardi Gras: Made in China (2005)
http://www.aems.illinois.edu/searchresults_detail.html?biblioId=6847
“A sly, slightly off-color documentary contrasting the careless wastefulness of drunken New Orleans
revelers with the repressive lives of the sweatshop girls who manufacture plastic beads.”
Waking the Green Tiger (2011)
https://www.chinadialogue.net/books/6557-Waking-the-green-tiger-the-rise-of-China-s-greenmovement/en
“A fascinating documentary that interweaves civil society anti-dam activism and Mao-era footage.”
Beijing Besieged by Waste (2011)
http://www.aems.illinois.edu/searchresults_detail.html?biblioId=8258
“A moving portrait of the lives of subsistence-level garbage pickers.”
Top Ten Things to Know about China in the Twenty-First Century, August 19. 2014
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Warriors of Qiugang (2011) Download entire 40 minute film for free!
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/the_warriors_of_qiugang_a_chinese_village_fights_back/2358/
“The Warriors of Qiugang, was nominated for ta 2011 Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short
Subject).”
What’s for Dinner? (2011)
http://www.aems.illinois.edu/overview/index.html
“This documentary examines the impact this monumental dietary shift (growing consumption of
meat) is having in terms of sustainability, climate change, public health, food security, and animal
welfare.”
NOTE: See Asia Educational Media Service for more documentaries about China.
Top Ten Things to Know about China in the Twenty-First Century, August 19. 2014
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EIGHT: “SOCIALISM WITH CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS”
EXERIMENTATION
ALLOWS FOR
Today people—both inside and outside China—debate whether or not capitalism will replace
communism in the future in the People’s Republic. They describe what is going on variously as:
market Leninism, socialist market economy, authoritarian capitalism, developmental autocracy, dot
communism, or Confucian capitalism. For now the official phrase for China’s economic
transformation is “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.”
While textbook socialism calls for the end of private property and for government ownership
of the means of production and the distribution of goods, “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics”
seems to be loosely defined as “whatever improves your life.” Meanwhile, capitalism is commonly
practiced, albeit not publicly endorsed. Chinese entrepreneurs go about their businesses—heeding
the late Deng Xiaoping’s words in 1992 to stop asking whether policies are “surnamed socialism or
surnamed capitalism.”
So who is running this locomotive now? Is Beijing setting the national agenda or are millions
of entrepreneurs (from fish farmers in the Yangzi delta to toy manufacturers in Shenzhen) changing
China’s economic and social landscape? Some would say that the “get rich quick” provinces (like
Guangdong Province in southern China) are not only setting their own economic path, but are
charting new courses in the media and politics. The old Chinese saying “the mountains are high and
the emperor is far away” is just as relevant today. The powers that be in Beijing are no longer
grappling with whether to choose a future of rapid change. Rather, they are dealing with the
consequences of these changes inside and outside of Beijing.
“SOCIALISM WITH CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS”
Article: Building a Socialism with a Specifically Chinese Character
Deng Xiaoping / Collected Works of Deng Xiaoping, Vol. 3 / June 30th
1984
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/dengxp/vol3/text/c1220.html
This seminal speech among others highlights Deng Xiaoping's move to
reconcile market reforms within the Maoist framework of
communism. The underlying claim – that Western practices can be
adopted without undermining the Party's socialist principles – can be
traced back to the beginning of the modern period when reformers
made similar arguments about the necessity of modernizing (e.g. ti
yong, a shorthand for “retain Chinese essence while using Western practice/technology”) and is
often cited as example of Deng's pragmatism.
Article: The Mixed Bag of Socialism
Qian Gang / China Media Project at the Journalism and Media Studies Centre / October 4th 2012
http://cmp.hku.hk/2012/10/04/27771/
Chinese journalist Qian Gang explains the ever-shifting meaning of “socialism with Chinese
characteristics” as employed by the government and its leaders. His conclusion: “ [We do not have]
a lucid definition of socialism with Chinese characteristics, but a perplexing mixed bag of Party
watchwords. The phrase “other important strategic ideas” reminds us that this is a collection of
evolving ideologies. You could see it as the accumulating sum of China's political baggage.” Includes
related charts.
Article: China's Grand Experiments
Top Ten Things to Know about China in the Twenty-First Century, August 19. 2014
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Wang Fei-Ling / The Diplomat / December 12th 2011
http://thediplomat.com/2011/12/chinas-grand-experiments/
Professor Wang argues that China's current success can be attributed to its continual
experimentation with foreign ideas and practices but that such an approach can and will inevitably
reveal the flimsiness of its approach: “The pragmatic Deng Xiaoping opened new rounds of
experimentation, focusing on imitating East Asian neighbors to get rich via trial and error. Imported
institutions, technology, and ideas flooded the country, despite vigilant political filtration. Unlike
other rising powers in the past, the “Chinese Lab” has a limited ideological master plan or blueprint
beyond the highly experimental hubris of rejuvenating Chinese civilization. It’s also clear on peeling
through the thick propaganda that only one thing now remains off-limit to experimentation – the
CCP’s monopoly of political power.”
Article: Red China, Inc.: Does Communism Work After All?
Andreas Lorenz & Weiland Wagner / Spiegel Online International / February 27th 2007
http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/red-china-inc-does-communism-work-after-all-a465007.html
The authors present a sweeping account of how the
adoption of market reforms have slowly but surely
changed how the economic arm of the Chinese
Communist Party functions and conducts business.
An interesting tidbit: The times are even changing
at the central party school. Harvard professors
occasionally teach at the school, and 300 senior
party officials periodically attend refresher courses
in political science and economics at elite American,
French, and British universities. Indeed, Armani suits
replaced the Mao jacket long ago. Some officials
already feel more at home at the World Economic
Forum in Davos, Switzerland than in the Communist
Party's neighborhood committees.” Includes related charts, links to other articles, and is part of an
essay series.
“TO GET RICH IS GLORIOUS” THE CULTURE OF ENTERPRENEURSHIP
Article: The Development of Modern Entrepreneurship in China
Debbie Liao & Philip Sohmen / Stanford Journal of East Asian Affairs / Spring 2001
http://web.stanford.edu/group/sjeaa/journal1/china2.pdf
This background piece is a good survey of the historical development of entrepreneurship in China
and, in particular, focuses on how certain characteristics of Chinese culture mesh with capitalistic
activity and whether this bodes well for their success. Their conclusion: “With accelerating reform
and increased exposure to the West, values in China are also changing. Perceptions of
entrepreneurs are improving, and people are rushing to [work for the foreign or private sectors].
Successful entrepreneurs are upheld as role models and idols. The Internet is changing the nature of
entrepreneurship by introducing stronger foreign involvement through foreign-educated
entrepreneurs and foreign funding.”
Article: Entrepreneurship in China: Let a Million Flowers Bloom
The Economist Staff / The Economist / March 10th 2011
http://www.economist.com/node/18330120
The authors document the emergence of small-scale business in China's smaller cities that operate
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outside of state supervision and are often funded through informal channels. Of interest is how they
function: “wealth is created quietly in Zhejiang's cities and other places that not long ago were
wretchedly poor. None of the people interviewed for this story wanted to be named. Their
companies tend to be small and privately owned. They make ordinary (but increasingly good)
products under their own names, or sophisticated ones under the strictest anonymity for wellknown foreign companies which demand silence as a condition of doing business.” Includes related
charts.
Article: Chinese Entrepreneurs in Africa, Land of a Billion Customers
Tessa Thorniley / Danwei / August 2nd 2010
http://www.danwei.org/china_and_africa/independent_chinese_entreprene.php
Tessa Thorniley reports on the rise of Chinese businesses (primarily small- and medium-sized
enterprises) in African markets that Western corporations have ignored or overlooked. According to
a consultant interviewed for the piece: “Across Africa today, everywhere, no matter how remote,
you'll find a Chinese restaurant and a Chinese shop or local traders. […] And African consumers are
buying Chinese products. More than two-thirds of the non-food products sold at Shoprite [a South
African retail and fast-food group with stores across the continent] are from China.”
Article: Development of Private Entrepreneurship in China: Process, Problems, and
Countermeasures
http://www.mansfieldfdn.org/backup/programs/program_pdfs/ent_china.pdf
Liu Yingqiu / Mansfield Foundation / April 16th 2003
This paper focuses on the economic, political, and
social hurdles that entrepreneurs face in China.
Although written primarily for a specialist audience, it
is worth skimming through in order to understand the
myriad factors that can influence the development of
the small-scale private sector. The author's conclusion:
“The movement by the government towards a rulebased environment is an essential step towards
removing the major impediments to the private sector
for realizing more rapid development and growth.”
Includes related charts and tables.
Slide Show: Foreign Policy: China’s One Percent – Portraits of the Lucky Ones, Living Large in
the People’s Republic (8/31/2012)
www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/08/31/chinas_one_percent
“As China’s economy has taken off, images of the country have become dominated by skylines
littered with cranes and glittering glass facades that bespeak a country that has arrived on the
world stage—and wans its competitors to know it as well. But Chinas rise has also been accompanied
by a revolution in the private lives of Chinese citizens, and it hasn’t always been smooth.”
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SEVEN: THE “C” AND “N” IN CHINA
Rampant corruption occurs at all levels throughout the People’s Republic. High government
officials amass fortunes and rural tax collectors siphon off a few yuan here and there. Urban party
bosses choose their children to run banks and businesses. Local officials embezzle public money to
build their own rural estates. Judges are easily bribed. These and other forms of corruption and
nepotism (“C” and “N”) are stories that often lead the daily news. Although a few senior officials
have been prosecuted, the majority escapes criminal prosecution—feeding public cynicism.
While the “rule of law” is slowly being instituted in China, the norm is still the “rule of men.”
With the absence of mechanisms such as an independent judiciary and free press to check the
misuse of power, corruption and nepotism continue to grow.
The popularity of the communist movement before 1949 and into the 1950s was due in large
part to its reputation for honesty and discipline, especially that of the People’s Liberation Army
(PLA). Over the years, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the PLA have lost this reputation and
some would say their mandate to rule. This development is of no small concern. Before Jiang Zemin
stepped down as General Secretary of the CCP in late 2002, he exhorted the 2,114 delegates at the
Sixteenth Party Congress: “If we do not crack down on corruption, the flesh-and-blood ties between
the party and the people will suffer a lot and the party will be in danger of losing its ruling position,
or possibly heading for self-destruction.” Current President Xi Jinping continues to echo these
sentiments: “Facts have shown that if corruption becomes increasingly severe, it will ultimately
lead to the ruin of the Party and the country.” He has vowed to go after both “tigers” and “flies”
(both high- and low-level corrupt officials).
CORRUPTION
Article: Growth and Corruption in China
Andrew Wedeman / China Research Center / December 30th
2012
http://www.chinacenter.net/growth-and-corruption-inchina/
Andrew Wedeman provides an interesting account of how
China can maintain high levels of corruption while also
maintaining high growth rates. He argues that this is a
function of transitioning from a planned to market economy
but that it is ultimately not sustainable: “ Ultimately, the
regime has to implement administrative and political reforms
that would increase transparency and accountability. Before now, progress on these fronts has been
limited, and even though the regime seems to understand that corruption has the potential to kill
the economy, many within the party and leadership seem to fear that fighting corruption will
certainly kill the party. As a result, many within the party have resisted the sorts of structural
reforms needed to deal with the root problem – the party’s monopoly on power and the resulting
extensive discretionary power wielded by officials – rather than its overt manifestations.”
Article: Corruption and Anti-Corruption in Reform China
He Zengke / Communist and Post-Communist Studies / 2000
http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/gpa/wang_files/Corruption.pdf
Although written for the academic audience, this piece is worth skimming through if only for its
very thorough account of the history of corruption in post-Mao China. His primary claim: “Ultimately,
the regime has to implement administrative and political reforms that would increase transparency
and accountability. Before now, progress on these fronts has been limited, and even though the
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regime seems to understand that corruption has the potential to kill the economy, many within the
party and leadership seem to fear that fighting corruption will certainly kill the party. As a result,
many within the party have resisted the sorts of structural reforms needed to deal with the root
problem – the party’s monopoly on power and the resulting extensive discretionary power wielded
by officials – rather than its overt manifestations.”
Article: Boss Rail
Evan Osnos / The New Yorker / October 22nd 2012
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/10/22/boss-rail
Evan Osnos documents how the source of Chinese national pride – a massive infrastructure system
built in a few short decades – is also the source of rampant and widespread corruption. The
Wenzhou train collision in 2011 brought all this to the forefront: “The crash struck at the middleclass men and women who have accepted the grand bargain of modern Chinese politics in the era
after Socialism: allow the Party to reign unchallenged as long as it is reasonably competent. The
crash violated the deal, and, for many, it became what Hurricane Katrina was to Americans: the
iconic failure of government performance. It is a merciless judgment.” Includes related tables.
Article: Billions in Hidden Riches for Family of Chinese Leader
David Barboza / The New York Times / October 25th 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/business/global/family-of-wen-jiabao-holds-a-hiddenfortune-in-china.html
This piece of investigative reporting is significant for several reasons: (1) it reveals the extent of
Wen Jiabao and his family's hidden wealth, (2) it challenges the carefully crafted populist image of
“Grandpa” Wen, and (3) it received immediate denial and blockade from the Chinese government.
The Chinese government has subsequently pressured other U.S. news outlets to block other similar
investigative reports as a condition for doing business in the country. (See “Bloomberg News Is Said
to Curb Articles That Might Anger
China”:http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/09/world/asia/bloomberg-news-is-said-to-curb-articlesthat-might-anger-china.html.)
Article: China's Crackdown on Corruption and Government Spending: A Timeline
Tim Donovan / China Business Review / January 23rd 2014
http://www.chinabusinessreview.com/chinas-crackdown-on-corruption-and-government-spendinga-timeline/
Tim Donovan reports on how the current president's anti-corruption campaign against conspicuous
consumption is improving public perception but also affecting luxury goods markets. Targets of this
campaign include luxury foreign automobiles, expensive and/or rare food items in state banquets,
and government privileges.
NEPOTISM AND THE “PRINCELINGS”
Article: Rule of the Princelings
Li Cheng / The Cairo Review of Global Affairs / February 10th, 2013
http://www.aucegypt.edu/gapp/cairoreview/Pages/articleDetails.aspx?aid=295
Li Cheng’s thorough account of Xi Jinping's administration attempts to divine the direction of the
current president's policies. Of interest are his observations on factional politics within the
government and how they might affect the direction of Chinese economic policy: “This bifurcation
has created within China’s one-party polity something approximating a mechanism of checks and
balances in the decision-making process. This mechanism is, of course, not the kind of
institutionalized system of checks and balances that operates between the executive, legislative,
and judicial branches in a democratic system. But this new structure—sometimes referred to in
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China as 'one party, two coalitions'—does represent a major departure from the 'all-powerful
strongman' model that was characteristic of politics in the Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping eras.”
Article: Children of the Revolution
Jeremy Page / The Wall Street Journal / November 26th 2011
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424053111904491704576572552793150470
The author reports on how the extravagant and ostentatious lifestyles of some government officials'
children have worsen the Party's image as being
corrupt. An interesting tidbit: “The antics of some
officials' children have become a hot topic on the
Internet in China, especially among users of Twitterlike micro-blogs, which are harder for Web censors to
monitor and block because they move so fast. In
September, Internet users revealed that the 15-yearold son of a general was one of two young men who
crashed a BMW into another car in Beijing and then
beat up its occupants, warning onlookers not to call
police. An uproar ensued, and the general's son has
now been sent to a police correctional facility for a
year, state media report.”
Article: China's Princelings Storing Riches in Caribbean Offshore Haven
James Ball & others / The Guardian / January 21st 2014
http://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2014/jan/21/china-british-virgin-islandswealth-offshore-havens
Title is self-explanatory. (All article titles should be written this way.) Includes related charts and a
link to the full report.
RISING INEQUALITY
Article: The Challenge of High Inequality in China
Terry Sicular / Inequality in Focus at The World Bank / August 2013
http://www.worldbank.org/content/dam/Worldbank/document/Poverty%20documents/InequalityIn-Focus-0813.pdf
This sweeping overview of key inequality indicators should be read in conjunction with several of
the articles below to get a full sense of how and why economic inequality has worsen since China
began economic reforms. The author traces China's growing inequality to three key sources: “(1)
Inequality in China is not the result of stagnant or declining incomes among poorer groups, but of
more rapid growth in incomes of richer groups; (2) Inequality in China is strongly linked to urbanrural differences; (3) Income from private property is a newly emerging and potentially long- term
source of inequality.” Includes related charts.
Article: Growing Concerns in China about Inequality, Corruption
Various Contributors / Global Attitudes Project at Pew Research / October 16th 2012
http://www.pewglobal.org/2012/10/16/growing-concerns-in-china-about-inequality-corruption/
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Pew Research's summary of the results: “After experiencing decades of impressive economic growth,
the Chinese express widespread satisfaction with the free market system and with the gains they
have made over the past generation. However, they have grown increasingly worried about major
domestic issues over the last four years. Today, the public is more likely to express concern about
many economic and consumer safety issues, such as food safety, old age insurance, education, and
conditions for workers. They also voice serious doubts about economic fairness, with a broad
majority saying there is a growing gap between the rich and the poor.” Includes related charts.
Article: The Rural-Urban Divide: Ending Apartheid
The Economist Staff / The Economist / April 19th 2014
http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21600798-chinas-reforms-work-its-citizens-havebe-made-more-equal-ending-apartheid
A succinct report on the urban-rural divide and its effects on social mobility in the city: “Migrants
encounter barriers of speech, habits and manners the world over, but in China these are heavily
reinforced by the system of hukou, or household registration, which permits routine discrimination
against migrants by bureaucrats as well as by urbanites (a term
applied in this special report to city-dwellers who have no rural
connections themselves, nor do their parents). In a survey
conducted by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, nearly
one-third of respondents in Shanghai said they would not like
to live next door to a migrant, against only one-tenth who said
they would rather not live next to a poor person. In Changchun,
a less outward-looking city in the northeast, nearly two-thirds
said they did not want to live next to a migrant. Chinese
urbanites seem as anxious as Europeans about migration from
poor to rich places, even though in China the migrants are
fellow citizens.” Includes a related set of charts.
Article: China's Post-Socialist Inequality
Martin King Whyte / Current History / September 2012
http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/martinwhyte/files/whytecurrent_history.pdf
The author recounts the history of economy and social inequality from the Mao-era to the present
day, touching on the well-tread issues of state employment, the opening of the private sector, and
institutional reform. The verdict: circumstances for absolute incomes and social mobility have
drastically improved since the Mao era but continual economic growth will be required to maintain
popular acceptance of increased economic inequality.
Article: China's Army of Graduates Struggles for Jobs
Andrew Jacobs / The New York Times / December 11th 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/12/world/asia/12beijing.html
Andrew Jacobs reports on the growing number of the “ant tribe:” lower-tier college graduates from
poor backgrounds who lack the social connections necessary to find suitable professional jobs in the
city. A typical example: “For weeks Mr. Li elbowed his way through crowded job fairs but came
away empty-handed. His finance degree, recruiters told him, was useless because he was a 'waidi
ren,' an outsider, who could not be trusted to handle cash and company secrets. When he finally
found a job selling apartments for a real estate agency, he left after less than a week when his
employer reneged on a promised salary and then fined him each day he failed to bring in potential
clients.” Includes related videos.
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SIX: THE PARTY'S NOT OVER
Front-page stories in the Western press in recent years report that the Communist Party,
which once insinuated itself into every “nook and cranny” of society, now seems irrelevant to the
Chinese in their day-to-day lives. Yet the party in China is far from over. Its grip on the government,
law enforcement, military, and the media remains strong. It is true that democratic elections at the
village level have brought in new blood, but locally appointed CCP officials continue to wield much
of the power in the small towns across rural China. And in urban leadership and senior management
jobs in rural and urban enterprises, party membership is crucial. Despite university students’
attraction to western fads and culture and their ambivalence toward Chinese politics, college
students continue to join the ranks of party membership as a way to get ahead. While overall
respect for party officials has declined and cynicism has increased, party membership is at an 86
million high—or 6 percent of the population.
The one-party political system may remain firmly in place, but it is facing new challenges.
The party is changing from its historical position as the vanguard of the working people to now
include its role as the vanguard of the “advanced productive forces.” Private sector millionaires are
becoming party members. Newly elected delegates of People’s Congresses are calling for open
hearings, asking to see budgets, demanding resignations of corrupt officials, and conducting
investigations of tax hikes. Non-party members are reading the local election laws and campaigning
for office. Party officials are faced with public discontent among the unemployed in the forms of
mass strikes, popular protests, collective petitions, organized blocking of highways, airfields, and
railroad tracks, and sporadic acts of violence. Chinese of all ages and backgrounds are demanding
improvements in water and air quality, education, pension pay, health care, public safety, and tax
relief. Some citizens are signing petitions demanding that top officials make public their family
assets. Today the burden of the Chinese Communist Party is to do three things at the same time:
keep the economy growing; deal with rising grievances and social inequalities; and maintain
leadership and control.
HOW THE PARTY FUNCTIONS
Article: China's New Leaders
Various Contributors / BBC News / 2013
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-11710880
The “China's New Leaders” series of articles on the inauguration of Xi Jinping is an excellent source
of background knowledge on the contemporary state of Chinese politics. Featuring several dozen
concise articles, the series covers profiles of the new leaders, reports on the Party's ongoing policy
challenges, and the economy. Includes related videos and links to relevant articles.
Charts & Graphs: How China Is Ruled
BBC Staff / BBC News / 2012
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-13904437
This very useful chart displays the relationships between the multiple government and party organs
and provides informative summaries of each group's functions. (Click on any particular group in the
chart to reach their summary page.)
Article: The Powerful Factions Among China's Rulers
Li Cheng / Brookings Institute / November 5th 2012
http://www.brookings.edu/research/articles/2012/11/05-china-leaders-li
According to the author, the Party is dominated by two factions: the “princelings,” individuals with
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family connections to the original Mao-era revolutionaries, and the “populists,” individuals from
less-privileged families who worked through way up through organizations such as the Chinese
Communist Youth League. A balance between the two groups have been maintained at the highest
levels of government but behind-the-scenes fighting may change this balance and China's
subsequent policy direction.
Article: After Deng: On China's Transformation
Joshua Kurlantzick / The Nation / October 17th 2011
http://www.thenation.com/article/163669/after-deng-chinas-transformation
While functioning as a review of Ezra Vogel's biography of Deng Xiaoping, the author provides some
interesting insights into the nature of Chinese politics in the post-Deng era. His primary claim is that
China's current lack of a strong “paramount” leader like Mao or Deng has increase the prevalence of
intra-party and inter-branch competition: “China’s leadership today is a mostly faceless group of
longtime party engineers who have scaled the ranks not by fighting in wars or developing political
and economic ideologies but rather by cultivating higher-ranking bureaucrats and divulging as little
as possible about their ideas and plans. The current Chinese president, Hu Jintao, epitomizes the
cipher-as-strategy approach.”
Article: Two Cheers for Jiang Zemin's Three Represents
Huang Yasheng / Project Syndicate / November 14th 2002
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/two-cheers-for-jiang-zemin-s-three-represents
Professor Huang Yasheng argues that the Jiang Zemin's “Three Represents” policy (from the 1990s)
is an important development because it acknowledges – behind all the ideological talk – that the
Party represents not only the peasants and the workers but also the “advanced productive forces,
cultures, and interests.” In other words, the Party formally recognized the importance of
entrepreneurs and business leaders and, in fact, extended Party membership to entrepreneurs and
business leaders in the years following.
Book: Following the Leader: Ruling China, from Deng Xiaoping
to Xi Jinping
David Lampton / University of California Press / February 2014 /
Book
http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520281219
From the publisher: “With unique access to Chinese leaders at all
levels of the party and government, best-selling author David M.
Lampton tells the story of China’s political elites from their own
perspectives. Based on over five hundred interviews, Following the
Leader offers a rare glimpse into how the attitudes and ideas of those at the top have evolved over
the past four decades. Here China’s rulers explain their strategies and ideas for moving the nation
forward, share their reflections on matters of leadership and policy, and discuss the challenges that
keep them awake at night. As the Chinese Communist Party installs its new president, Xi Jinping,
for a presumably ten-year term, questions abound. How will the country move forward as its
explosive rate of economic growth begins to slow? How does it plan to deal with domestic and
international calls for political reform and to cope with an aging population, not to mention an
increasingly fragmented bureaucracy and society? In this insightful book we learn how Chinas
leaders see the nation’s political future, as well as about its global strategic influence.”
DIRECTION AND CHALLENGES
Article: China's “Peaceful Rise” to Great-Power Status
Zheng Bijian / Foreign Affairs / September-October 2005
http://www.cerium.ca/IMG/pdf/Bijian_-_China_s_Peaceful_Rise_-_Foreign_Affairs.pdf
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Written by a senior policy expert in China, this oft cited piece presents how the Chinese (or at least
a particular subset) understand their economic power and subsequent role in international society.
Of interest is how Zheng Bijian describes the strategic direction of the Chinese government's
policies: “The policies the Chinese government has been carrying out, and will continue to carry out,
in the face of these three great challenges can be summarized as three grand strategies – or 'three
transcendences'. The first strategy is to transcend the old model of industrialization and to advance
a new one. […] The second strategy is to transcend the traditional ways for great powers to emerge,
as well as the Cold War mentality that defined international relations along ideological lines. […]
The third strategy is to transcend outdated modes of social control and to construct a harmonious
socialist society.”
Article: National Socialism with Chinese Characteristics
John Garnaut / Foreign Policy / November 15th 2012
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/11/15/national_socialism_with_chinese_characteristi
cs
The author reports on the efforts of one “princeling” to push for more liberal reforms in a political
environment that has increasing become more “leftist” (in Chinese politics, “leftists” are the
conservative faction): “His adversaries – many of whom call for a return to the ideals of a Maoist era
– are skeptical of private capital, appalled by rampant corruption, and antagonistic towards what
they see as dangerous Western values. These adversaries, whose heroes include the fallen political
star Bo Xilai and the politically wounded corruption-fighting general Liu Yuan, have a term for
everything that He Di's Boyuan represents: 'The Western Hostile Forces.'”
Article: The Challenge for China's New Leaders
Yukon Huang / Foreign Affairs / March 7th 2012
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137316/yukon-huang/the-challenge-for-chinas-new-leaders
Yukon Huang recapitulates the main social issues – with a particular focus on social program
spending as it relates to economic inequality – that Xi Jinping will face during his term. The
question for the new administration: “There were plans to strengthen the fiscal system to address
social equality and distribution imbalances during a time of rapid growth. Rigid controls over the
use of key resources such as land and labor have created distortions that exacerbate social tensions.
And this leaves a question for the next generation of leaders to be ordained later this year: Are they
willing to tackle the many vested interests that have impeded change thus far and set China on a
sustainable path into the future?”
Article: Bo Xilai: Power, Death, and Politics
Jamil Anderlini / Financial Times / July 20th 2012
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/d67b90f0-d140-11e1-8957-00144feabdc0.html
Although written like a sensationalist crime novel, the author neatly summarizes the events
surrounding Bo Xilai's downfall, something in Chinese politics akin to the Watergate Scandal in
political significance. Why is he important? “'Bo and his ambition were seen as the most dangerous
force in Chinese politics and people inside the party always compared him to Hitler,' said one senior
Chongqing official who worked closely with Bo. 'He was a Marxist-Leninist who opposed western
liberal democracy, but the irony is that if the Chinese people were allowed to vote, he probably
would have been elected president.'”
Article: Understanding Chinese Politics Today
Doug Guthrie / Forbes / March 16th 2012
http://www.forbes.com/sites/dougguthrie/2012/03/16/understanding-chinese-politics-today/
Doug Guthrie provides a good summation of post-Deng Chinese politics and how Bo Xilai presented a
direct threat to the system developed by Deng's successors. Of importance from his analysis: “What
does it mean if Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang [the current president and premier, respectively] are as
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weak as their predecessors? … And Bo Xilai was a candidate who was becoming too popular, too
charismatic and too attuned to the balance between state control and the rule of law and the
redistribution of wealth. Such a person could really capture the population’s imagination.”
Article: The Bo Xilai Crisis: A Curse or a Blessing for China? – Interview with Li Cheng
Anton Wishik / The National Bureau of Asian Research / April 18th 2012
http://www.nbr.org/research/activity.aspx?id=236
Not to overstate the point but the Bo Xilai scandal presents a very interesting window into the
usually opaque process of succession politics [e.g. succession to the nine-seat Politburo]. Cheng Li's
interview reveals a number of interesting bits about the fractional nature of Chinese politics: “The
balance of power within this system will not be easily changed. If the princeling faction collapsed,
this would constitute an unimaginable revolution with implications for Chinese politics and social
instability ten times greater than the Bo scandal…
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FIVE: DEMOCRACY BY STEALTH
Change in China often happens in zigzag ways. Although a number of Chinese were
imprisoned in 1998 while trying to set up China’s first opposition party, that same year village
elections (previously held on an experimental level) were mandated by law. And then when
unauthorized elections occurred at the township level and were declared unconstitutional, some
provinces “zagged” and conducted “voter-survey recommendations” on who should become the
town magistrate. There have even been reports at the grassroots level of non-party people electing
village party branch officials. This is more than a “zig”—this is a revolutionary idea especially if
instituted at higher levels.
Turn on the TV and follow an investigative journalist interviewing a fish farm owner whose
fish have died. Watch in living color as the reporter films factory workers upstream dumping
pollutants into the water. Boot up the computer and you’ve got mail— from chat rooms discussing
US foreign policy to Web sites or bulletin boards focusing on intellectual theories. Go out to the
movies and experience urban life through the eyes of the Sixth Generation filmmakers as they bring
contemporary problems of prostitution and economic disparity to the big screen. Flip on the radio
or lounge in a Beijing bar and experience popular songs as a type of musical protest.
Yet cases of persecution and exploitation continue. Political dissidents are detained,
Falungong members are sent to labor camps, other religious practitioners (such as Christians,
Tibetan Buddhists, and Muslims) are persecuted, labor disputes are muffled, internet access is
blocked, NGOs are under strict legislation, and prisoners are exploited for their labor.
Still, the voices of democracy stealthily seep through bureaucratic cracks (and computers)
across urban and rural China. Although the US was considered a democracy from its inception (when
only landowners could freely vote), it took the States almost 200 years to create civil rights
legislation and a more democratic society. As China’s middle class continues to grow and a civil
society carefully develops, the CCP leadership, under citizen pressure, may cut this time in half and
then some.
DEMOCRATIC CHANGE
Article: Village Democracy: A Revolution Fizzles
The Economist Staff / The Economist / October 20th 2012
http://www.economist.com/news/china/21564871-year-after-their-uprising-wukan%E2%80%99sleaders-see-drawbacks-democracy
The Economist reports on the political situation of Wukan, a small village in Guangdong that
successfully ousted several corrupted government officials last year and subsequently held local
elections for replacements. The current situation is disappointing to those who had hoped local
elections would become widespread: “But some Wukan villagers lament that their revolution has
failed to live up to its promise. On September 21st, the anniversary of Wukan’s first big protest,
more than 100 residents gathered outside the village government’s offices to complain. They
claimed the new leadership was slow in getting back the land Wukan had lost as a result of the
former administration’s corrupt dealings. Plainclothes security officers were deployed to keep an
eye on the protest and police cars patrolled the streets.”
Article: Chinese Democracy has its Benefits
Bob Davis / China Real Time at The Wall Street Journal / May 29th 2012
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2012/05/29/chinese-democracy-has-its-benefits/
This post summarizes the findings of a recent study conducted by economists that suggest local
elections may have provided some real benefits to the villagers: “Villages with elected officials
Top Ten Things to Know about China in the Twenty-First Century, August 19. 2014
23
spent substantially more on irrigation, primary schools, roads and trees plantings – and agreed to
tax themselves to pay for the improvements.” (See “The Effects of Democratization on Public Goods
and Redistribution: Evidence from China” referenced in this post:
http://www.nber.org/papers/w18101.)
Article: Village Elections in China – Democracy or Facade?
Richard Levy / New Politics / Winter 2010
http://newpol.org/content/village-elections-china-democracy-or-fa%C3%A7ade
The author discusses the development of village-level elections with a particular focus on “the
meaningfulness of elections, the increasing role of entrepreneurs in elections and in the
continuingly dominant Party, and the continuing male domination of the process.” The author's
answer to the question posed in his title: “Not likely: While these elections do create what the
Chinese have called 'sprouts' of (some form of) democracy in local social structures, they are very
contradictory phenomena. On the one hand, they do strengthen notions of voting and citizens' rights.
But competitive elections seem more the exception than the rule and, where they do exist, they are
far from institutionalized. On the other, they also allow the Party-state to legitimate itself by
maintaining Party leadership through a popular rather than top-down process.” (Another analysis of
the situation draws a similar conclusion: http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2014/07/22/villagedemocracy-shrugs-in-rural-china/.)
Article: China's Middle Class: A Driving Force for Democratic Change or Guarantor of the Status
Quo?
Peter Hefele & Andreas Dittrich / KAS International Reports / December 2011
http://www.kas.de/wf/doc/kas_29625-544-2-30.pdf
Written for the German business audience, this analysis looks at socio-political trends among the
growing Chinese middle class. The verdict: “A significant number, but not necessarily a majority, of
the middle class owe their position and prosperity directly or indirectly to having access to those in
political power. This interlocking of interests is likely to continue to be a key pillar of Communist
Party rule in the future. Another section of the middle class, perhaps in cooperation with the lower
classes, may continue to grow in confidence and be prepared more and more to express their
dissatisfaction with specific developments within the country, including the growing influence of
the state in business, widespread corruption and a lack of legal certainty. Because of the special
nature of the political and economic situation in the People’s Republic of China, it seems unlikely
that the Chinese society will follow the same path of modernization as other East Asian societies,
especially in the political sphere.”
Book: Allies of the State: China's Private Entrepreneurs and Democratic Change
Chen Jie & Bruce J. Dickson / Harvard University Press / June 2010
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674048966
“Are business people from the private sector agents for change? If
they were, then the Communist Party in China could be in trouble”
state these book reviewers: “Modern Chinese business people are
supporters, largely, of elections – but not democratic ones. They are
happy to cast votes in elections held within these party-approved
bodies. They are emphatically not supporters of multi-party elections.
And while they have a low opinion of the independence of the courts
(which shows their realism), they are surprisingly positive about the
efficacy of petitioning officials to sort out business problems. This
latter fact is surprising, in view of the low levels of faith in the value
of this sort of lobbying in the rest of Chinese society.” (The review can
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24
be accessed here: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/books/allies-of-the-state-chinasprivate-entrepreneurs-and-democratic-change/412604.article.)
Article: Five Ways China Could Become a Democracy
Pei Minxin / The Diplomat / February 13th 2013
http://thediplomat.com/2013/02/5-ways-china-could-become-a-democracy/
Summarizing the various views in the academic and policy worlds on the prospects of democracy in
China, the author notes five ways that China can become democratic: “Happy Ending,” “Gorby
Comes to China,” “Tiananmen Redux,” “Financial Meltdown,” and “Environmental Collapse.”
CHINESE JOURNALISM
Article: Command and Control: The State of Journalism in China, 25 Years after Tiananmen
Paul Mooney / Nieman Reports at Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard / Winter 2014
http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/article/103051/Command-and-Control.aspx
This piece takes a sweeping view of major developments in the world of Chinese political journalism
and American journalism on China. Two trends seem to dominate: the Chinese government has
clamped down on traditional journalist outlets but “citizen journalists” and bloggers have used new
technologies to fill this void and continue discussion on controversial issues. Includes charts, videos,
and links to related articles. This piece is part of a series of articles on the state of journalism in
China; the entire issue is worth reading and is available here:
http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/issue/100080/Winter-2014.aspx.
Article: Backgrounder: Media Censorship in China
Xu Beina / Council on Foreign Relations / February 12th 2014
http://www.cfr.org/china/media-censorship-china/p11515
This is a solid background piece to the current state of Chinese media with a specific focus on
official government policy, government censorship organs, issues relating to foreign media in China,
and existing means of censorship evasion. Includes related links to more resources.
Article: Moral Hazard
Yang Xiao / Nieman Reports at Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard / Winter 2014
http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/article/103057/Moral-Hazard.aspx
Chinese journalist Xiao Yang recalls his experiences circumventing censorship through the use of
chunqiu bifa, criticism expressed through subtle linguistic manipulation. (Mandarin Chinese
language has developed in such a way that puns, metaphors, and homophones are orders of
magnitude more common than in the English language. See article “Eluding the Ministry of Truth”
below for more examples.) His frustration is a common one among journalists: “But now, I worry
that this kind of expression will create in me a vicious circle of complacency, in which I know my
efforts to speak freely will be fruitless but can console myself with at least having tried. I fear that,
in China’s increasingly complicated and ambiguous media environment, chunqiu bifa may be
changing from a means of dissent into a tool of inadvertent self-censorship that may ultimately
deprive us of the ability to face the truth.” This piece is part of a series of articles on the state of
journalism in China; the entire issue is worth reading and is available here:
http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/issue/100080/Winter-2014.aspx.
Article: China's Censored World
Evan Osnos / The New York Times / May 2nd 2014
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/03/opinion/sunday/chinas-censored-world.html
Long-time China correspondent Evan Osnos discusses his run-in with censorship while working with a
Shanghai publishing company on a translation of his new book. His experience is that censorship is
Top Ten Things to Know about China in the Twenty-First Century, August 19. 2014
25
explicit but also requires an amount of complicity in the form of self-censorship from authors and
companies. (He ultimately decided not to publish in the mainland.) An example from his experience:
“In some cases, the censors’ requirements startled me: The former politician Bo Xilai, a one-time
rising star now serving a life sentence for corruption, was convicted in a trial covered by state
television, so why is discussion of him sensitive? The problem, it seemed, is how it can be
mentioned, and how much. When an official version of history has been written, an unofficial
version becomes unwelcome.”
Article: The Return of Activist Journalism in China
Wang Haiyan / Financial Times / July 15th 2012
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/41a9df86-cce5-11e1-9960-00144feabdc0.html
Chinese journalist Wang Haiyan reports that a new breed of “reform-minded” journalists have
became more active participants in social activism in response to the state's increasing crackdown
on investigative reporting: “They see themselves as both detached observers and engaged
organizers of social movements. […] Their names sometimes appear still in the licensed newspapers
or broadcasters but they are also in underground newspapers, independent documentaries,
alternative publications and, most prominently, online. In the past decade, reform-minded
journalists have vigorously pursued so-called 'investigative journalism;' tighter limits now push them
into activism.”
Article: Media: Scooped
The Economist Staff / The Economist / April 19th 2014
http://www.economist.com/news/china/21601010-crowd-funding-improving-journalism-scooped
The Economist reports on how some reporters have used crowd-funding sources (e.g. appealing
directly to Internet users for contributions) to support their investigative projects. The implication
of these new Internet platforms have obviously not escaped the government: “...new media are
undercutting traditional models. For profit-driven titles this means accepting a fall in advertising
revenue. For the party the battle is all about control. As micro-blogs and other media report news
that challenges the party line, official channels appear untruthful,
corrupt or both.”
Article: China's Weibo: Political and Social Implications?
Chang Xinyue / Education About Asia / Fall 2013
https://www.asian-studies.org/eaa/Chang-18-2.pdf
This article discusses the advantages of China's social media platforms
as compared to traditional journalism: “Weibo [a social media
platforms] provides social advantages that are lacking in traditional
forms of media. Supported by a massive number of users, it makes for
easier communication and fast news dissemination. The case of the
July 23th 2011, Wenzhou train collision is a good example of Weibo in
action. Two high-speed trains collided in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province.
The crash was widely reported by eyewitnesses via Weibo until
Internet censors blocked the site. Weibo users posted information
about the crash about four hours earlier than government sources.”
CITIZEN ACTIVISM IN THE SOCIAL MEDIA ERA
Article: China's Future: Enter the Chinese NGO
The Economist Staff / The Economist / April 12th 2014
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21600683-communist-party-giving-more-freedomTop Ten Things to Know about China in the Twenty-First Century, August 19. 2014
26
revolutionary-idea-enter-chinese-ngo
Everything is not exactly doom and gloom in the land of Oz: “A vast array of new non-governmental
organizations are trying to meet both middle-class aspirations to participate and also society’s need
for services. Some 500,000 NGOs have registered over the past 25 years, a figure that some think
will double over the next couple of years, as rules are relaxed. Many of these, admittedly, are
quasi-state bodies, like an official youth foundation, or businesses in disguise, like private schools,
but a growing number are the real deal. And a further 1.5m-odd NGOs operate without being
registered, including some that the party suspects of being too independent or confrontational.
They include everything from self-help groups for the parents of autistic children to outfits
defending the rights of migrant workers to house-church groups looking after the elderly.” Includes
related charts.
Article: Chinese Civil Society: Beneath the Glacier
The Economist Staff / The Economist / April 12th 2014
http://www.economist.com/news/china/21600747-spite-political-clampdown-flourishing-civilsociety-taking-hold-beneath-glacier
This piece, in conjunction with the previous one, provides a solid understanding of the current state
of Chinese NGOs. On the growth of the number of Chinese NGOs: “Behind the growth is the
irrepressible rise of a new middle class. It shares the party’s desire for stability. But some members,
at least, also want new ways to participate in society. Party leaders, now only vaguely constrained
by Communist ideology, have a new sense that something is to be gained by co-opting such activist
citizens rather than suppressing them. It may, they think, offer a way of providing some of the
social support that the party can no longer supply on its own. Thus the easing of the rules, not just
allowing NGOs to register without a state sponsor but actually encouraging them to do so. Since
2011 four types of groups have been able to register directly in a number of provinces: industry
associations, science and technology organizations, charities and outfits providing social services.”
Includes related charts.
After the Internet, Before
Article: An Interview with Gady Epstein on China and the Internet
Democracy (Johan Lagerqvist)
th
Gady Epstein, Sophie Roell (Interviewer) / Five Books / June 17 2013
The Power of the Internet in
China: Citizen Activism Online
http://fivebooks.com/interviews/gady-epstein-on-china-and-internet
(Yang Guobin)
Through a discussion of his recommended books (see box) on the topic of
Consent of the Networked
China and the Internet, Gady Epstein proposes that the Internet has made
(Rebecca Mackinnon)
Marketing Dictatorship
censorship difficult yet also enabled authoritarian rule in different ways: “But
(Anne-Marie Brady)
I think what they’ve done with the Internet shows that they can extend their
Treason by the Book
ability to rule, by making authoritarianism more flexible. […] He [a writer on
(Jonathan Spence)
China] supposes that one-party rule would be more stable under those
conditions [where a hypothetical China did not have to deal with the Internet]. I disagree. In my
view, allowing citizens to expose corrupt low-level officials or other wrongdoing that the centre
maybe doesn’t even know about is in the centre’s interest. It gives people some sense of freedom
and some real freedom, without necessarily challenging one-party rule.” His book recommendations
are also relevant to those who might be interested in further exploring this topic.
Article: East Meets Tweet
Rachel DeWoskin / Vanity Fair / February 17th 2012
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2012/02/weibochina-twitter-chinese-microblogging-tom-cruise-201202
This piece discusses the potency of one of China's largest
social media platforms: “[Says a former project manager
at Google China:] 'Government officials are being
encouraged to get on. It’s a gigantic threat to the
Top Ten Things to Know about China in the Twenty-First Century, August 19. 2014
27
propaganda department. Weibo is a great communication tool, a symbol that you’re closer to the
people. It’s grassroots. But it’s stripped the party of the ability to control communication. And
that’s revolutionary.' Yet it may also be the best service ever provided to the Chinese government.
Want to know what your citizens are saying, doing, thinking? Check their weibo’s.”
Article: How China's Internet Generation Broke the Silence
Tania Branigan / The Guardian / March 24th 2010
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/mar/24/china-internet-generation-censorship
The author discusses the tug-of-war between censors and Internet users over the sharing and
discussion of topics deemed sensitive. Her article focuses specifically on the creative ways that
Internet users have employed in avoiding censors: “'The internet community is diverse, lively, and
contentious, full of fun and dynamism,' said Guobin Yang, author of The Power of the Internet:
Citizen Activism in China. 'This aspect of Chinese Internet culture is not well understood by the
general public in the west. [The internet culture is] capturing more and more things, good or bad,
political or non-political, and then weaving them into all sorts of new creatures – new languages,
new relationships, new images … despite and perhaps because of political control.'”
Article: Here's How Chinese Censorship Works
Linda Kinstler / New Republic / December 3rd 2013
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115797/bloomberg-news-scandal-how-chinese-censorshipworks
This article reports on two recent academic reports highlight how the Chinese censorship system
functions (and doesn't function). The takeaway: China relies just as much on companies' preemptive self-censorship as they do on a complex web of human and computing resources. On the
efficacy of self-censorship: “[Self-censorship comes in the form of] the self-censorship by content
providers, who must make judgment calls on what needs to be censored in order to stay in the
government's good graces, and [of] self-censorship by users, who face the threat of being detained
and punished for anti-government posts.” Includes related charts and links.
Article: China's Cyberposse
Tom Downey / The New York Times / March 3rd 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazine/07Human-t.html
Tom Downey investigates the prevalence of renrou sousuo (human flesh search engine) “online
vigilante justice in which Internet users hunt down and punish people who have attracted their
wrath.” The targets of such campaigns typically include corrupt officials, the spoiled children of the
Chinese nouveau riche, and those caught on video committing injustices. These campaigns also have
wider implications, especially for the government: “The Chinese government has proved particularly
adept at harnessing, managing and, when necessary, containing the nationalist passions of its
citizens, especially those people the Chinese call fen qing, or angry youth.”
PERSECUTION AND POLITICAL DISSENT
Article: 2014 World Report – Chapter on China
Human Rights Watch Staff / 2014 World Report at Human Rights Watch / 2014
http://www.hrw.org/world-report/2014/country-chapters/china
From the introduction: “Rapid socio-economic change in China has been accompanied by relaxation
of some restrictions on basic rights, but the government remains an authoritarian one-party state. It
places arbitrary curbs on expression, association, assembly, and religion; prohibits independent
labor unions and human rights organizations; and maintains Party control over all judicial
institutions. The government censors the press, the Internet, print publications, and academic
research, and justifies human rights abuses as necessary to preserve 'social stability.'
Top Ten Things to Know about China in the Twenty-First Century, August 19. 2014
28
Article: Art?
Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore / Aeon Magazine / May 2nd 2014
http://aeon.co/magazine/altered-states/an-interview-with-ai-weiwei/
The author interviews the controversial artist Ai Weiwei at his art studio in Beijing. Although at
times meandering, the piece does reveal some interesting bits about the artist and his political
activism through art to those that are unfamiliar with his background: “His works often question
Chinese cultural pretensions and entrenched hierarchies. Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn (1995), in
which he smashes a 2,000-year-old antique, gives an irreverent middle finger to China’s claims to an
unbroken civilization of thousands of years. In an image of Tiananmen Square from a series called
Study of Perspective (1995-2011), Ai went a step further and photographed himself literally giving
the finger to a square that symbolizes the Party’s power and betrays its past bloodshed.”
Article: He Told the Truth about China's Tyranny
Simon Leys / The New York Review of Books / February 9th 2012
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/feb/09/liu-xiaobo-he-told-truth-about-chinastyranny/
A profile of the Nobel Peace Prize winner and current incarcerated dissident, Simon Leys recounts
Liu Xiaobo's works – including co-authorship of Charter 08, a human rights manifesto – earned him
the enmity of the Chinese government. On the values of contemporary society: “Now an 'erotic
carnival' (Liu’s words) of sex, violence, and greed is indeed sweeping through the entire country,
but—as Liu describes it—this wave merely reflects the moral collapse of a society that has been
emptied of all values during the long years of its totalitarian brutalization: 'The craze for political
revolution in decades past has now turned into a craze for money and sex.'”
Article: An Interview with Ma Jian on Chinese Dissident Literature
Ma Jian, Alec Ash (Interviewer) / Five Books / May 4th 2012
http://fivebooks.com/interviews/ma-jian-on-chinese-dissident-literature
Dissident writer Ma Jian reveals his thoughts on the state of Chinese
politics through his book recommendation on the topic of dissident
literature: “When I was thinking about this yesterday, I realized that the
history of Chinese literature has often been shaped from outside of its
society – by exiled writers and thinkers. From [3rd century BC Chinese
poet] Qu Yuan to Confucius, the Tang dynasty to the Qing dynasty, right
up to modern novels today, you find that those authors who in the end
became central to Chinese culture were at the time writing from outside
of their country – exiled, pushed out or banned.”
Check China Digital
Times regularly. CDT is a
bilingual news website
and brings together news
and analysis on China
from all over the world.
http://chinadigitaltimes.
net/
Article: 25 Years After Tiananmen, China's Underground Railroad Still Saves
Melinda Liu / Newsweek / June 3rd 2014
http://www.newsweek.com/2014/06/13/chinas-underground-railroad-253244.html
This piece provides an account of “Yellowbird” (a smuggling operation) from those who have
escaped throughout the years. On how the operation functions: “Yellowbird used whatever tools it
could muster to spirit dissidents out of the country. Gangsters lent smuggling boats. Cantopop stars
donated concert proceeds. Hong Kong police handled disguises. An academic study by Shiu-Hing Lo
said the CIA provided scrambler phones, night-vision gunsights and more. By 1997, Yellowbird had
Top Ten Things to Know about China in the Twenty-First Century, August 19. 2014
29
helped rescue up to 500 Chinese activists, including 15 of the 21 Tiananmen protest leaders on
Beijing’s 'most wanted' list.” Includes many related pictures.
Top Ten Things to Know about China in the Twenty-First Century, August 19. 2014
30
FOUR: NATIONAL PRIDE IS STRONG
“A more democratic China is not necessarily a less nationalistic China,” said Xiao Qiang,
executive director of Human Rights in China, a New York-based group. Similarly, the new generation
of Chinese youth who continue to don blue jeans, study English, play basketball, eat Kentucky Fried
Chicken, and openly express their opinions through chat rooms and call-in talk shows are not
necessarily pro-US. From the American bombing of the Chinese embassy in
Some might say
Belgrade in 1999, to the collision between the Chinese fighter jet and a US spy
that the Beijing
plane, to the Bush Administration “go-it-alone” policy with regard to Iraq,
Olympics was an
Chinese citizens are expressing their opposition to US policies and their support
over-the-top
for a strong China. More recent examples of large-scale nationalist protests
production (the
against alleged outside aggression include: controversy over history texts in
opening and
Japan, reaction against foreign demonstrations during the 2008 Olympic torch
closing
relay, and dispute over the ownership of the Diaoyu (Senkaku) Islands.
ceremonies) and
Some China watchers attribute the growing patriotism among the Chinese
effort (winning
the most gold
to a concerted effort by the Communist leaders after the 1989 Tiananmen Square
medals) that
protests to cultivate nationalism as a unifying force. With the party discredited
furthered the
after the violent crackdown on the student democracy movement, the leadership
CCPs goal of
hoped to bolster patriotism in order to stop the growing cynicism and alienation.
projecting
Both are still apparent among today’s youth. Although too young to remember
national strength
what happened at Tiananmen, many young adults, like their parents, are
and unity both to
disgruntled with the Chinese leadership due to rising corruption, lack of law
international and
enforcement, increasing unemployment, and widening gaps between rich and
domestic
poor. In addition, some say the Chinese are experiencing a type of spiritual void.
audiences. What
While Mao replaced Confucianism with a “serve the people” philosophy, and
might be some
more recent CCP
Deng replaced Maoism with a “to get rich is glorious” creed, the current
do
emphasis on materialism has contributed to spiritual emptiness among some. Growingattempts
nationaltopride
this?
may soften cynicism towards the party and fill some of the spiritual void.
NATIONALISM AS GOVERNMENT POLICY
Article: Backgrounder: Nationalism in China
Jayshree Bajoria / Council on Foreign Relations / April 23rd 2008
http://www.cfr.org/china/nationalism-china/p16079
This background piece on Chinese nationalism focuses on the growth of nationalism and how the
government has manipulated popular nationalism. Finally it looks at nationalism as a double-edged
sword. Includes related links to more resources.
Article: What's Really at the Core of China's Interests?
Shai Oster & others / ChinaFile / April 30th 2013
http://www.chinafile.com/whats-really-core-chinas-core-interests
The Bloomberg News reporter engages five China policy experts on the direction and intentions of
Chinese foreign policy with specific regard to the Chinese reference to “core interests” of the
country. The following responses from the experts provide interesting bits on how China
understands itself in relation to other countries in the area. Of note is this claim: “this notion of
'core' has deep resonance in modern Chinese history...Today the 'core' is about interests, not values,
which is in itself notable. But the basic mode of thinking – of dividing things into immutable core
versus changeable externalities – has deep roots in Chinese thought...”
Top Ten Things to Know about China in the Twenty-First Century, August 19. 2014
31
Article: Chinese Nationalism and Its Future Prospects – An Interview with Yingjie Guo
Jonathan Walton / The National Bureau of Asian Research / June 27th 2012
http://www.nbr.org/research/activity.aspx?id=258
The author's interview with Yingjie Guo touches on the historical development of Chinese
nationalism, the diffused nature of nationalistic sentiments today, and the dangers of government
manipulation. On how the Party attaches to Chinese nationalism: “Looking at the issue more
broadly, most Chinese nationalists do not differentiate between nation and state but take the two
as one and the same. The party-state latches onto nationalism parasitically and manipulates it by
claiming that the CCP represents the whole nation and that its mission is to advance the nation’s
interests rather than its own—in fact, the CCP pretends that it has no interests of its own. This
conceptual manipulation is coupled with political control of nationalist sentiments and expressions,
thus making Chinese nationalism subordinate to party-state interests.”
Article: Chinese Dreams (Zhongguo Meng 中国梦)
Germie R. Barme / Australian Centre on China in the World / 2013
http://www.thechinastory.org/yearbooks/yearbook-2013/forum-dreams-and-power/chinesedreams-zhongguo-meng
Germie Barme analyzes the new administration's latest slogan (China Dream) in the context of the
Party's long-term political goals and reveals how such language is
steeped in “the language of revivalism, continuity with past glories
and the realization of long-held hopes.” The author: “Both the
Chinese leadership and the media have previously used the world
'dream' (meng) metaphorically to describe the country's reemergence as a major power and other contemporary national
aspirations. They celebrated the 2008 Beijing Olympic, for example,
as realizing a century-old dream, and its slogan was 'One World,
One Dream' (Tong yige shijie, tong yige mengxiang).”
Article: Behind The Rise of the Great Powers
Liu Xiaobo, Josephine Chiu-Duke (Translator) / Guernica Magazine / January 1st 2012
http://www.guernicamag.com/features/liu_1_1_12/
In his essay, Chinese incarcerated dissident Liu Xiaobo uses a widely lauded (in China and the West)
documentary series on the rise of great powers to criticize the “sick man of Asia” complex that
underlies Chinese nationalistic sentiment: “Behind the superficial, arrogant nationalism lies a
national ethic that is disconnected from civil values. It is more nearly a primitive jungle ethic of
master and slave. In front of the strong, people act like slaves; in front of the weak, like masters.
Feeling very bad when utterly bereft, they feel much better in the secure status of slave; then,
after prospering as slaves, they have no time for anyone else, but borrow the mantle of their
masters to assume airs of superiority. With this sort of national mentality, it will be most difficult
for us Chinese, 'risen' in the world, actually to become an independent and self-respecting people.”
POPULAR NATIONALIST SENTIMENT
Article: Angry Youth
Evan Osnos / The New Yorker / July 28th 2008
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/07/28/angry-youth
Evan Osnos uses the narrative of Tang Jie, a doctorate student in philosophy and self-labeled
Top Ten Things to Know about China in the Twenty-First Century, August 19. 2014
32
conservative, to highlight the development and trajectory of China's new generation of “leftists”
(who represent, in Chinese politics, the more conservative faction). The article includes a number
of interesting insights: “'Because we are in such a system, we are always asking ourselves whether
we are brainwashed,' he [Tang] said. 'We are always eager to get other information from different
channels.' Then he added, 'But when you are in a so-called free system you never think about
whether you are brainwashed.'”
Article: Fenqing: A Study of China's 'Angry Youth'
in the Era of the Internet
Nina Baculinao / Columbia East Asia Review / 2012
http://www.eastasiareview.org/issues/2012/articles/
2012_Baculinao.pdf
From the introduction: “The fenqing discourse, with
its combative and anti-Western characteristics, is
challenging conventional theories about China’s statesociety dialectic. Some of the most educated and
globally engaged segments of China’s youth,
empowered by the Internet, are considered a natural
constituency for liberalizing China. But so far, they
have generally helped the party-state overpower the
liberal-democratic discourse, choosing patriotism over
democracy. On the other hand, they have also shown that, despite censorship and control, Chinese
public opinion is not an oxymoron, and that, lacking elective procedural legitimacy, the Chinese
party-state is also susceptible to popular nationalist pressures.”
Article: Diaoyu in Our Heart: The Revealing Contradictions of Chinese Nationalism
Helen Gao / The Atlantic / August 22nd 2012
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/08/diaoyu-in-our-heart-the-revealingcontradictions-of-chinese-nationalism/261422/
Helen Gao reports on the
…A web user named oncebookstore posted a question on Weibo, China's
contradictory nature of Chinese
twitter-style social network: "If your child were born on the Diaoyu Islands,
nationalism as revealed by a
what nationality would you pick for him/her: Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong or
popular poll on Weibo [social
the mainland?" (The islands, also known as the Senkakus in Japan, are
media]: how does “ the same
claimed by China, Taiwan, and Japan.) It went viral on Sunday, retweeted
over 20,000 times in nine hours before censors took it down around
Chinese nationalism that drives
midnight. The surprising results would seem to contradict the popular
citizens to stand up for their
anti-Japanese protests, undercut the government's efforts to stoke
native land when outside forces
patriotism, and may well baffle outside observers: Chinese respondents
challenge it” reconcile with the
overwhelmingly picked places other than mainland China. Around 40
percent answered Taiwan, followed by Hong Kong with about 25 percent,
pain these same people feel
followed by Japan. Mainland China was the least popular option.
“when they observe the
depressingly wide gap between
A formal poll, set up on Weibo after the original post was pulled, returned
China as it is and China as they
similar results, with Japan at 20 percent and the mainland at 15.
wish it could be”? The author's
Chinese will march in the streets to proudly declare their nation's
sovereignty over these five rock-like, uninhabited islands, but when it
answer: unclear, although there
comes to picking which flag could hypothetically adorn their child's
are clear implications for the
passport, China comes last. How could that be? Judging by the surprise and
Party's stability if this contradiction isdisbelief
not resolved.
in the poll's comment section, the result confuses even the
Chinese themselves…
Top Ten Things to Know about China in the Twenty-First Century, August 19. 2014
33
THREE: THE MEANING OF CHAOS
An underlying theme throughout Chinese history has been the quest for unity and stability.
Confucius lived in a tumultuous period more than 2,000 years ago and sought harmony and order.
Sun Yat-sen, father of the modern Chinese nation, described China as a sheet of loose sand and
agonized over the way to build a strong and united nation. In recent years China has seen growing
gaps between rich and poor, the developed east and the undeveloped west, urban dwellers and
villagers, and even between generations. Now with China’s population topping the 1.3 billion mark
and popular opinion more openly expressed, the fear of chaos continues to haunt the twenty-first
century leadership.
As mentioned earlier, far from a people marching in step to CCP directives, individuals as
well as regional leaders are exerting independent views. The provincial leaders of Guangdong, the
wealthiest province in China, have sometimes made decisions without consulting the central
government. Leaders in the Southwest hinterland of Chongqing have demanded (and received)
increasing autonomy. And like regional officials, the man or woman on the street is becoming more
politically assertive. Today both party officials and common people share the debate over the
proper balance between the risks of chaos and the demands for more freedom.
THE “CENTURY OF HUMILIATION”
Article: China's Viral, Nationalist Screed against Western Encroachment
Rachel Lu / ChinaFile / December 16th 2013
http://www.chinafile.com/chinas-viral-nationalist-screed-against-western-encroachment
Rachel Lu reports on how an online essay “You are nothing without your motherland” is receiving
significant media attention for claiming that the West is attempting to destabilize Chinese society
because of the government's refusal to cooperate on a number of issues. The author argues that
“None of this means the essay’s popularity was purely engineered—the crude logic it employs has a
receptive audience in China even without peddling from state-owned media. While China has
surpassed Japan as the world’s second-largest economy and is now poised to take its place as a
world power, many Chinese still cannot shake a deep-seated, almost primal fear that their country
will again be reduced to a state of utter weakness and dispiriting humiliation at the hands of
Western powers and Japan. The anxiety is rooted in China’s historical subjugation by foreign powers
in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in particular what Chinese call the 'century of
humiliation.'”
Article: China: Pride, Protest, and the Olympics Games
Orville Schell / Newsweek / July 25th 2008
http://www.newsweek.com/china-pride-protest-andolympic-games-93191
On how the Olympics relate to the national pride: “This
inferiority complex has been institutionalized in the
Chinese mind. In the early 20th century China took up its
victimization as a theme and made it a fundamental
element in its evolving collective identity. A new
literature arose around the idea of bainian guochi – '100
years of national humiliation.' After the 1919 Treaty of
Versailles cravenly gave Germany's concessions in China to
Japan, the expression wuwang guochi – 'Never forget our
national humiliation' – became a common slogan. To
ignore China's national failure came to be seen as
Top Ten Things to Know about China in the Twenty-First Century, August 19. 2014
34
unpatriotic. Since then, China's historians and ideological overseers have never hesitated to mine
the country's past sufferings 'to serve the political, ideological, rhetorical, and/or emotional needs
of the present,' as the historian Paul Cohen has written.”
Article: Before China's Transition, a Wave of Nationalism
Andrew Jacobs / The New York Times / May 25th 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/26/world/asia/wave-of-chinese-nationalism-as-communistleadership-change-looms.html?pagewanted=all
The author reports on how a wave of nationalistic sentiment sparked by perceived foreign slights
(prior to Xi Jinping's term) highlights the sense of insecurity that some Chinese have about China, its
government, and its role in the world. On these insecurities: “Hong Huang, an entrepreneur who
was one of the few Chinese to study in the United States during the peak of xenophobia in the 1970s,
says many Chinese were confused by the sudden change in official attitude that followed the end of
the Cultural Revolution in 1976. Once branded as enemies of the people, foreigners were placed on
a pedestal in the 1980s, when Beijing was eager to court Western expertise and capital. In those
days, she recalled, foreigners used special currency to shop at well-stocked Friendship Stores and
stayed in hotels that were off limits to Chinese. 'The government made people feel like second-class
citizens in their own country and inadvertently created these feelings of massive insecurity,' said Ms.
Hong, whose mother taught English to Mao and whose stepfather was foreign minister. 'When you
have this kind of insecurity, it doesn’t take much for people to turn uncontrollably emotional.'”
TIANANMEN SQUARE MASSACRE AND THE GRAND BARGAIN
Photographs: Tiananmen Square, 25 Years Ago
Various Contributors / The Atlantic / June 4th 2014
http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2014/06/tiananmen-square-25-years-ago/100751/
This essay reviews 44 photos taken during the protests and subsequent crackdown in Beijing.
Article: Tiananmen Square: Official Silence, Public Restiveness
Jonathan Fenby / Open Democracy / June 3rd 2014
https://www.opendemocracy.net/opensecurity/jonathan-fenby/tiananmen-square-official-silencepublic-restiveness
The author's argument recapitulates a commonly expressed theme – that the middle class accepted
economic growth and a subsequent increase in living standards in exchange for maintaining
Communist Party rule. In other words, the middle class “has done far too well out of the system to
want to spread political rights to hundreds of millions of poorer citizens or to dismantle the system
that gives it good incomes and the ability to pay for private health care, private education, old-age
provisions and foreign travel.”
Article: The Specter of June Fourth
Perry Link / ChinaFile / April 20th 2014
http://www.chinafile.com/Specter-June-Fourth
Profess Link argues that the Tiananmen Massacre caused the Party shift its claim of legitimacy from
socialist ideals to “nationalism and money-making.” The result has been that “the emphasis on
money, in combination with authoritarian limits on open discussion of other values, has led to a
poverty in the society's public values. […] In the end, as Rowena He puts it, China is left with 'a
generation that cannot even imagine a society whose youth would sacrifice themselves for ideals.'”
Article: Tiananmen Square Protests and Crackdown: 25 Years on
Tania Branigan / The Guardian / June 3rd 2014
Top Ten Things to Know about China in the Twenty-First Century, August 19. 2014
35
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/03/tiananmen-square-protests-crackdown-25-yearson
The author engages four experts to discuss “how the massacre has shaped today's China, the
alternative courses that the country might have taken, and the prospects for political reform.”
Several interesting observations are made including this: “We [the protesters] were idealistic; we
had been exposed to all those revolutionary stories. People saw it as their responsibility to help
improve the country. If another Tiananmen happened now it would not be out of idealism and
passion, but grievances and anger.”
Top Ten Things to Know about China in the Twenty-First Century, August 19. 2014
36
TWO: CHINA IS DIVERSE
“One’s approach to China’s diversity is first of all visual,” wrote the late China historian
John King Fairbank. Even if you have never been to China you know from postcards and coffee table
books that China conveys many diverse geographic images. You can picture the highest mountains in
the world and some of the most desolate deserts. You can imagine a landscape of rice paddies
carved into sides of mountains in southern China and the Great Wall snaking through the hills of
northern China. You can visualize sky-scraping buildings of Shanghai and the stilt huts of
Xishuangbanna.
China is that and more.
In addition to China’s varied climates and urban and
rural landscapes, China supports the largest and perhaps most
diverse population in the world. While the majority is Han
Chinese (quite diverse among themselves), China’s minority
population of more than 100 million is divided into fifty-five
officially designated “national minorities” (shaoshu minzu) or
ethnic groups. Many of these groups live in the remote and
mountainous areas of southwestern China or in the deserts and
steppes of northwestern and northern China. These include (to
name only a few) the Mongol, Yao, Tibetan, Yi, Miao, Uyghurs,
Hui, Bai, Korean, and Dai. A number of them still have their
own unique language, food, music, religious practices, and marriage customs.
With the economy growing so quickly, society is vastly different from what it was thirty
years ago. “Little emperors and empresses” are growing into big ones. Individualism is on the rise,
as young adults make their own decisions with regard to education, work, spouses, fashion, and
leisure activities. A generation gap is apparent as youth today follow a lifestyle far different from
that of their parents who grew up during the Cultural Revolution. Gaps between rich and poor
continue to widen.
China’s diversity in all these regards is important to help us discern between the
homogeneous, monolithic entity often portrayed in western media and the complex reality that
contours the country. Just as portraying the United States as an image of a Norman Rockwell “All
American” kid would undermine a meaningful understanding of the United States, so too does a
simplified and shallow image of “China.”
DIVERSE GEOGRAPHY
Article: Chinese Geography: Readings and Maps
Asia for Educators Staff / Asia for Educators at Columbia University / 2009
http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/china/geog/maps.htm
This page on geography from Asia for Educators features four topical discussions of China's
geography including its major geographical features, population and agriculture, geography and
regions, and political divisions. Includes related maps and pictures.
Article: Understanding the Geographies of China: An
Assemblage of Pieces
Robert W. McColl / Education about Asia / Fall 1999
https://www.asian-studies.org/eaa/mccoll.htm
This pieces focuses on the major geographical regions that
constitute contemporary Chinese boundaries. Includes related
Top Ten Things to Know about China in the Twenty-First Century, August 19. 2014
37
maps and pictures.
Lesson Plan/Slide Show: China Matters: Exploring this Multidimensional
Land and People
Tese Wintz Neighbor / World Affairs Council / 2012 /
https://www.world-affairs.org/?attachment_id=871
This unit features a vivid slide show with 100 images of China, divided into
categories. Captions are provided for teachers. Students will examine
their preconceptions about China and learn about China’s diversity. The
unit also includes a targeted resource list and a bridging document to help
students get started with the 'Why History?' CBA.” Includes related maps,
pictures, and links to other resources.
THE ETHNIC MINORITIES OF CHINA
Photographs: Family Portraits of All 56 Ethnic Groups in China
Chinahush Staff / Chinahush / December 6th 2009
http://www.chinahush.com/2009/12/06/family-portraits-of-all-56-ethnic-groups-in-china/
This series of photographs features the 56 recognized ethnic groups of mainland China in their
traditional clothes.
Article: How China Distorts Its Minorities through
Propaganda
Clarrisa Sebag-Montefiore / BBC Culture / December 16th 2013
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20131215-how-chinaportrays-its-minorities
From the introduction: “The People’s Republic wants Tibetans
and Uyghurs to sing and dance on TV – but do little else.
Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore reveals how the government
exoticises, and marginalizes, its non-Han Chinese ethnic
groups.” Includes related pictures and links to other resources.
Article: One Uighur Man's Journey in Two Cultures
Zhang Chi / Foreign Policy / May 14th 2014
http://www.chinafile.com/One-Uighur-Mans-Journey-Two-Cultures
From the introduction: “Kurbanjan Samat is a 32-year-old ethnic Uighur photographer working for
CCTV, China's state-owned television station. He is a native of Hotan, a predominantly Uighur oasis
town in the south of China's Xinjiang autonomous region that has an urban population of 360,000,
according to official data. Kurbanjan settled in Beijing, which lies more than 2,600 miles to the east
of Hotan. In part to reach out to Han who might want to gain more insight into what is happening in
Xinjiang, he spoke with journalist Zhang Chi in a lengthy first-person narrative article that was
published in the April 30 issue of Phoenix Weekly, a Hong Kong-based news magazine.”
Article: Aflame
Jeffrey Bartholet / The New Yorker / July 8th 2013
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/07/08/aflame
The author investigates the recent spade of self-immolation protests that have occurred in Tibet.
Top Ten Things to Know about China in the Twenty-First Century, August 19. 2014
38
Many are political and tied to the difficult situation in the area: “To promote integration, Beijing
has invested heavily in infrastructure, building roads and railways across the Tibetan plateau. This
has led to better standards of living, particularly for a Tibetan élite that has adopted the language
and entrepreneurial outlook of the Chinese. But Tibetans maintain that locals often lack the
education and the capital to participate in the boom and that the main beneficiaries have been
non-Tibetan migrants, mostly Han Chinese. Furthermore, the imposition of Mandarin Chinese in
schools and the settlement of nomads have diluted the Tibetan language and culture.”
Article: Central Asia's Most Important City is Not in Central Asia
Alexandros Petersen / The Atlantic / July 12th 2013
http://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/07/central-asias-most-important-city-is-not-incentral-asia/277764/
According to the author, Central Asia's most important city is
Urumqi in the Xinjiang province of China because of its
strategic location on the historic Silk Road and its cosmopolitan
population. To set the scene: “You regularly find pudgy
Guangzhou businessmen next to nervous-looking Pakistani
merchants from Peshawar, standing across the street from
entire Russian families, dressed in white, as if on vacation in
the Greek Isles. Iranian truck drivers commiserate with Farsispeaking Tajiks, and entrepreneurs from Mumbai and Bangkok
haggle in English with local Uighurs hocking goods
manufactured in Shenzhen. The Turkic peoples of Eurasia:
Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and Uzbeks, and even some Turkmen and
Azeris, mingle with Uighurs and Turks from Anatolia: all groups who share a language family that is
still prevalent in Xinjiang.”
POST-80s CHINESE AND THE GENERATIONAL GAP
Article: The Balinghou
James Palmer / Aeon Magazine / March 7th 2013
http://aeon.co/magazine/living-together/james-palmer-chinese-youth/
James Palmer documents the generational gap between the balinghou, those born after the 1980s,
and their parents vis-a-vis their views on jobs, marriage, and family. Here's the hook: “The young
get slammed for their supposed materialism, but it’s a set of values their parents hold more dearly
still, since the one constant source of security for their generation has been money. Money — at
least the fantasy of it — has never abandoned them. ‘The Chinese love money,’ the PhD student
Zhang told me, ‘because it has no history’. Having gone through the gangster capitalism of China’s
rush to wealth, the older generation’s bleakly amoral attitude toward how to get by can shock their
children. Huang Nubo, a poet, rock-climber and billionaire property developer, now in his fifties,
has been one of the few people to talk about this openly, speaking of the ‘devastated social ecology’
in an interview with the Chinese magazine Caixin. But Huang is a rarity, and cushioned by his own
wealth; far more parents are concerned that their children aren’t doing enough to get on.”
Article: Why a Great Wave of Nostalgia is Sweeping through China
Amanda R. Martinez / The New Yorker / May 30th 2013
http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/why-a-great-wave-of-nostalgia-is-sweeping-throughchina
The author links the post-80s generation's growing sense of nostalgia to the precarious situation that
this generation is facing today: “Now in their late twenties or early thirties, the post-eighties are
Top Ten Things to Know about China in the Twenty-First Century, August 19. 2014
39
trying to navigate a desolate job market, often as the sole financial providers for both their children
and their parents (as is China’s custom). Many left their rural hometowns for the more prosperous
cities only to face vicious competition for scarce white-collar jobs. To vie for scant promotions,
they work eleven-hour days and engage in brutal office politics. Housing costs are out of reach for
most, with the real-estate price-to-income ratio in cities like Shanghai and Beijing as high as
twenty-three to one, yet post-eighties men are under tremendous pressure to own a home before
they propose marriage. […] 'The uncertainty, the lack of control over our lives, is most unbearable
to the post-eighties, so we have to seek confirmation from the past.'”
Article: You'll Never Be Chinese
Mark Kitto / Prospect Magazine / August 2012
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/features/mark-kitto-youll-never-be-chinese-leaving-china
The author recounts the reasons for his decision to leave China with his family. The main issues?
Corruption, education, and propaganda. Although a bit one-sided (the nature of the article is more
opinion than investigation), his lists of grievances coincide with a number of problems the new
generation faces in China.
Article: Viewpoint: Fear and Loneliness in China
Gerard Lemos / BBC News / October 16th 2012
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-19827537
Gerard Lemos reports on how the rapidly changing economic situations in most Chinese cities have
affected China's oft overlooked elderly population. As the author reports, “Because people lived in
such uncomfortable and overcrowded conditions, these public spaces were claimed by residents
taking exercise, spontaneous groups performing tai chi or playing Chinese chess. Old men would
take their caged songbirds out for some air and a change of scene. But this way of life is
disappearing, in the cities and in the countryside. For many in China isolation is a new experience
brought on by economic transformation. In the neighbourhoods where I worked in Chongqing and
Beijing, loneliness was spreading like pollution. The new leadership scheduled to be announced in
November will not just have to address failing economic growth and foreign policy dilemmas such as
regional territorial disputes, but also the absence of a social safety net, the consequences of the
one-child policy and the unhappiness of migrants to cities and factories. Includes related pictures
and videos.
Article: The Startling Plight of China's Leftover Ladies
Christina Larson / Foreign Policy / April 23rd 2012
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/04/23/the_startling_plight_of_china_s_leftover_ladie
s
Article: China's 'Leftover Ladies' Are Anything But
Christina Larson / Bloomberg Businessweek / August 23rd 2012
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-08-22/chinas-leftover-ladies-are-anything-but
These two articles by Christina Larson draw attention to a major phenomenon in China (and other
rapidly industrializing countries in the region) brought about by breakneck economic development.
As she explains: “Unmarried women in their late 20s or older are often referred to in newspaper
reports and sitcoms as sheng nu, or 'leftover ladies,' a term that misleadingly implies these women
have failed to meet men’s standards, as opposed to having higher standards of their own. [...] The
survey confirmed the belief among Chinese women born in the 1970s and ’80s that the more
education they have and the higher their salaries, the harder the task of finding a husband.”
CHINA'S INTERNAL MIGRANTS
Top Ten Things to Know about China in the Twenty-First Century, August 19. 2014
40
Book: Eating Bitterness – Stories from the Front Lines of China’s
Great Urban Migration
Michelle Dammon Loyalka / University of California Press / 2012
http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520266506
From a review in the Asian Review of Books: “It is not an
exaggeration to say that China’s economic juggernaut and increasing
urbanization are heavily dependent on the sweat and tears of these
migrant workers. Yet who are these migrant workers and why do
they flock to the cities far from their homes to do hard, poorlyrewarded labor? Eating Bitterness – a new book by Michelle Dammon
Loyalka, a freelance journalist who has lived in China for 13 years – shines a small but significant
spotlight on this major segment of the Chinese people through the stories of several migrant
workers in Xian, the capital of Shaanxi province and one of China’s former great capitals.”
Book: Factory Girls – From Village to City in a Changing China
Leslie Chang / Spiegel & Grau / 2009
http://www.randomhouse.com/acmart/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780385520188
From the publisher: “In Factory Girls, Leslie T. Chang, a former correspondent for the Wall Street
Journal in Beijing, tells the story of these workers primarily through the lives of two young women,
whom she follows over the course of three years as they attempt to rise from the assembly lines of
Dongguan, an industrial city in China’s Pearl River Delta. As she tracks their lives, Chang paints a
never-before-seen picture of migrant life – a world where nearly everyone is under thirty; where
you can lose your boyfriend and your friends with the loss of a mobile phone; where a few computer
or English lessons can catapult you into a completely different social class. Chang takes us inside a
sneaker factory so large that it has its own hospital, movie theater, and fire department; to posh
karaoke bars that are fronts for prostitution; to makeshift English classes where students shave their
heads in monk-like devotion and sit day after day in
front of machines watching English words flash by; and
One Billion Stories is a series of short
back to a farming village for the Chinese New Year,
films set in Shanghai about the people
revealing the poverty and idleness of rural life that
we pass by every day. In this video, the
drive young girls to leave home in the first place.
BBQ street vendor Steven talks about
Throughout this riveting portrait, Chang also
his life as a migrant worker in Shanghai,
interweaves the story of her own family’s migrations,
his view on freedom and independence
within China and to the West, providing historical and
and his ideal China.
personal frames of reference for her investigation.
Leslie Chang TED talk: The Voices of China’s Workers:
Watch the four-minute video here:
http://www.ted.com/talks/leslie_t_chang_the_voices_
http://globalvoicesonline.org/2014/01/
of_china_s_workers
02/videoone-billion-stories/
Article: China: The Largest Migration
The Economist Staff / The Economist / February 24th 2012
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2012/02/china
This brief but informative video covers the major points concerning internal migration in China,
specifically those who leave the less-developed rural areas to search for employment in towns and
cities. Includes related videos and links to other resources.
Article: Backgrounder: China's Internal Migrants
Andrew Scheineson / Council on Foreign Relations / May 14th 2009
http://www.cfr.org/china/chinas-internal-migrants/p12943
This is a solid background piece to internal migration in China with specific focuses the causes of
internal migration, the difficulties that migrants face in the cities, and the steps the government
Top Ten Things to Know about China in the Twenty-First Century, August 19. 2014
41
has taken to address the migrants' situation. Includes related links to more resources.
Article: China's Young Rural-to-Urban Migrants: In Search of Fortune, Happiness, and
Independence
Hu Xiaochu / Migration Policy Institute / January 4th 2012
http://migrationpolicy.org/article/chinas-young-rural-urban-migrants-search-fortune-happinessand-independence
The author examines the plight of young migrants (who compose 85 to 100 million of the total
estimated 145 million internal migrants in China today) who are “young, lack experience in the
agricultural sector as well as in city life, and face a variety of challenges. […] Having migrated after
limited years of schooling, migrants face high pressure from work, low satisfaction in terms of their
wages, unsure self-identification (villager or citizen), and an overall lack of happiness.” Includes
related links to more resources.
Documentary: Last Train Home
Fan Lixin / POV at PBS / 2009
http://www.pbs.org/pov/lasttrainhome/
Every spring, China’s cities are plunged into chaos as 130
million migrant workers journey to their home villages for the
New Year in the world’s largest human migration. Last Train
Home takes viewers on a heart-stopping journey with the
Zhangs, a couple who left infant children behind for factory
jobs 16 years ago, hoping their wages would lift their children
to a better life. They return to a family growing distant and a
daughter longing to leave school for unskilled work. As the
Zhangs navigate their new world, Last Train Home paints a rich,
human portrait of China’s rush to economic development.
This site includes book lists, discussion guides, interviews, bios,
slideshows, etc.
Trailer and additional clips: http://www.pbs.org/pov/lasttrainhome/additional-video.php
Lesson Plans: Confucianism in a Changing World: http://www.pbs.org/pov/lasttrainhome/lessonconfucianism.php
The Ethics of Outsourcing to China:
http://www.pbs.org/pov/lasttrainhome/lesson-ethics-outsourcing.php
Article: What Happened to the Men who Built China?
Malcolm Moore / Danwei / October 26th 2012
http://www.danwei.org/migrant_workers/migrant_workers_past_their_use.php
Malcolm Moore reports on the situation of the first generation of migrants, those who were among
the first to leave the less-developed regions to search for opportunities elsewhere, and how this
experience has shaped their lives. On their prospects now (after several decades of hard labor): “As
they reach their late thirties, forties and fifties, the first generation of migrants is beginning to
outlive its usefulness, unable to shoulder the same backbreaking labor that they once did. Instead
of moving up in the world, many of them have found themselves moving in the opposite direction.
'More than half of them have gone back home as they got too worn out to continue,' says Dr. Liu.”
Article: Can Young Chinese Farm?
Top Ten Things to Know about China in the Twenty-First Century, August 19. 2014
42
Sacha Cody / The China Story at the Australian Centre on China in the World / July 3rd 2014
http://www.thechinastory.org/2014/07/can-young-chinese-farm/
A social anthropologist discusses his experience working in and with sustainable farming
communities around Shanghai. Among his many observations on rural farming in China is this: “I was
startled by his sharp tone. The plight of rural communities across China, which have witnessed an
exodus as young Chinese have left their villages to become part of China’s vast migrant population,
is well known. Few still farm in rural communities across China. Those that do are old and tired. I
was also moved by his [the rural farmer's] expression of helplessness concerning what will become
of the land and soil, to which his emotional connection was evident and deep. He spoke with
passion about having toiled in this area of Zhejiang province all his life.”
Top Ten Things to Know about China in the Twenty-First Century, August 19. 2014
43
ONE: NOT TO KNOW CHINA IS NO LONGER AN OPTION
Some would say that the relationship between the US and China is the most crucial
relationship in the world today. Whether you agree or disagree with this, “misunderstanding China”
or not wanting to know more about China carries risks that cannot be endured, if we wish to live in
a peaceful world. Despite some ups and downs, our two governments continue to foster a
relationship based on economic, military, and social ties; and shared concerns over terrorism, drug
trafficking, a nuclear North Korea, and security throughout northeast Asia. Due to globalization and
China’s massive economic take-off, over half of the clothes we wear and many of the products we
use are made in China. For more than a century, US entrepreneurs have dreamed of tapping into
the huge China market. Today companies are following their dreams, selling everything from coffee
to hamburgers to computer technology.
Learning about China today is no simple task, but gaining access to information is certainly
easier than it was a few decades ago. Through the information highway, we now have access to PRC
newspapers, foreign ministry Web sites, and list-serves on Chinese topics. We can and should use
this access to form opinions and ties.
As I review my own list here, I find I am missing a crucial
element of life in today’s China. Millions of people wake up in the
morning living a life far beyond their expectations of just a short
decade or two ago. Life is not all angst and issues for people in China.
They have more freedom to choose where they live and where they
work and whom they marry. Chinese parents spoil their “little
emperors and empresses” with ice cream and construct small family
shrines for their ancestors. They ballroom dance at sunrise in their
local park and take boat rides at dusk. They argue about politics and cards and joke with friends
and relatives. What keeps me going back to China year after year are not the economic wonders,
but the wonderful people, their amazing spirit, their generous hospitality, and their outspoken
dreams for a modern culture, prosperous economy, strong nation, and democratic system all with
Chinese characteristics.
THE U.S. RELATIONSHIP IN CHINA
Article: Timeline: U.S. Relations with China
Various Contributors / Council on Foreign Relations / 2013
http://www.cfr.org/china/us-relations-china-1949---present/p17698
This timeline by the Council on Foreign Affairs retraces major events in the U.S. relationship with
China from 1949 to the present.
Article: Viewpoint: China and the World
Kevin Rudd / BBC News / November 8th 2012
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-20217333
Kevin Rudd runs through a comprehensive list of foreign policy issues (and points of contentions
with the U.S. and its neighbors) that the Xi Jinping administration will face during its term. This is a
good background article. More detailed analysis articles are listed below. Includes related pictures
and links to related resources.
Article: Growing Concerns in China about Inequality, Corruption – Chapter 2. China and the
World
Various Contributors / Global Attitudes Project at Pew Research / October 16th 2012
http://www.pewglobal.org/2012/10/16/chapter-2-china-and-the-world/
Top Ten Things to Know about China in the Twenty-First Century, August 19. 2014
44
From the introduction: “Overall, the Chinese public holds mixed or negative views of other major
countries and international institutions such as the United States, United Nations and European
Union. And while a plurality of Chinese describe their country’s relationship with India and the U.S.,
two of its major trading partners, as one of cooperation, that view has become less common in
recent years. Meanwhile, China sees its relationship with Japan as one of hostility. Globally,
perceptions of Chinese power have increased in recent years, and in nine of the 21 nations surveyed,
majorities or pluralities now believe that China is the world’s leading economic power. The Chinese,
however, still tend to see the U.S. as the global economic powerhouse.” Includes related charts and
graphs.
Article: Guiding Principles of China's New Foreign Policy
Zhao Kejin / Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy / September 9th 2013
http://carnegietsinghua.org/2013/09/09/guiding-principles-of-china-s-new-foreign-policy
Chinese academic Zhao Kejin offers a Chinese perspective on the direction of China's foreign policy
as well as its relationship with the United States. On how to improve U.S. relations with China: “The
two countries will need to respect each other’s core interests and avoid challenging each other’s
bottom lines on these issues. For China, these interests are Taiwan, the South China Sea, Tibet,
Xinjiang, and the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands territorial dispute. This also means that China must not
challenge the United States’ position as the global leader, and the United States must not challenge
the ruling position of the Chinese Communist Party.”
Article: The Future of U.S.-Chinese Relationship
Henry A. Kissinger / Foreign Affairs / March-April 2012
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137245/henry-a-kissinger/the-future-of-us-chineserelations
Statesmen Henry Kissinger offers his view on the relationship with a specific focus how the U.S. can
cooperate with China in a way that assuages both countries' security concerns. At the crux of the
issue according to the Kissinger is how both nations view each other: “U.S. strategic concerns are
magnified by ideological predispositions to battle with the entire nondemocratic world. […]
Universal peace will come, it is asserted, from the global triumph of democracy rather than from
appeals for cooperation. […] On the Chinese side, the confrontational interpretations follow an
inverse logic. They see the United States as a wounded superpower determined to thwart the rise of
any challenger, of which China is the most credible. No matter how intensely China pursues
cooperation, some Chinese argue, Washington’s fixed objective will be to hem in a growing China by
military deployment and treaty commitments, thus preventing it from playing its historic role as the
Middle Kingdom.”
THE EFFECTS OF GLOBALIZATION
Article: The iEconomy: How The U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work
Charles Duhigg & Keith Bradsher / The New York Times / January 21st 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america-and-a-squeezed-middle-class.html
In this first part of a series on the increasingly globalized tech industry, the authors focus on how
the Chinese manufacturing sector has outmaneuvered its American competition to win key contracts
from technology giants. China's advantage lies not just in wages but also logistics: “Another critical
advantage for Apple was that China provided engineers at a scale the United States could not match.
Apple’s executives had estimated that about 8,700 industrial engineers were needed to oversee and
guide the 200,000 assembly-line workers eventually involved in manufacturing iPhones. The
company’s analysts had forecast it would take as long as nine months to find that many qualified
engineers in the United States. In China, it took 15 days.”
Top Ten Things to Know about China in the Twenty-First Century, August 19. 2014
45
Article: The iEconomy: In China, Human Costs are Built into an iPad
Charles Duhigg & David Barboza / The New York Times / January 25th 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/business/ieconomy-apples-ipad-and-the-human-costs-forworkers-in-china.html
The second part in this series reports on how popular demand for consumer electronics has put huge
pressure on Chinese logistics and hence create incentives for worker abuse and overwork. On
corporate oversight: “Some former Apple executives say there is an unresolved tension within the
company: executives want to improve conditions within factories, but that dedication falters when
it conflicts with crucial supplier relationships or the fast delivery of new products. […] Executives at
other corporations report similar internal pressures. This system may not be pretty, they argue, but
a radical overhaul would slow innovation.”
Article: How China Profits from our Junk
Adam Minter / The Atlantic / November 1st 2013
http://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/11/how-china-profits-from-our-junk/281044/
China's decades-long economic growth – fueled by a construction boom – has created an enormous
appetite for every major raw resource involved in the process. Recycling what the West throws
away helps meet some of this demand: “When people ask me why China needs all the scrap metal
Americans send to them, I wish I could show them the view from my hotel room that day. 20 stories
below is that shopping mall, as big as anything I grew up visiting in suburban Minneapolis. […] On
the other side of the mall, in all directions, are dozens of new high-rises – all under construction –
that weren’t visible from the subway and my walk. Those new towers reach 20 and 30 stories...”
Article: What's in a Dumpling?
Seanon Wong / Stanford Journal of East Asian Affairs / Winter 2006
http://web.stanford.edu/group/sjeaa/journal61/china2.pdf
From the introduction: “Critics of globalization who bemoan the corruptive effects of McDonald’s
and KFC on fragile local cuisines often overlook the interesting corollary that globalization also
serves to export local cuisines, stimulating instead of stifling cultural diversity. Taking as her major
example Chinese fast-food, Wong makes a strong case that, far from being subsumed, local cultures
have thrived in today’s globalized environment by benefiting from enlarged markets and modern
business management.”
Article: China U.
Marshall Sahlins / The Nation / October 29th 2013
http://www.thenation.com/article/176888/china-u
Professor Marshall Sahlins recounts his
experience with Confucius Institutes –
Mao to Now: What Students Need to Know
language and culture institutes funded by the
about China
Chinese governments that are often affiliated
https://www.worldwithin specific American universities – and
affairs.org/?attachment_id=3370
questions their effects on academic freedom
From the authors: “With China’s rapid economic
of speech, especially at a time when most
development since Mao’s death in 1976, China
university budgets are under financial pressure
has become an increasingly complex and
and humanities are under-funded and underdynamic society. How can we integrate China
staffed.
into our teaching and situate China in a global
context? How do we support students to read
THE ENGLISH MEDIA ON CHINA
behind the headlines, break down stereotypes
and misconceptions, and distinguish between
The following resources feature some
fact and opinion? How can we explore global
newspapers and journals that provide full
themes such as sustainability using China as an
coverage of China-related news and
example? Tese Wintz Neighbor presented this
Top Ten Things to Know about China in the Twenty-First Century,
August
19. National
2014
topic
at the
Council for the Social
Studies Conference in Seattle on November 16, 46
2012. From Mao to Now is a huge topic which
cannot be covered in one hour (nor in 66
pages!), but to start you on your way to
approaching this dynamic and complicated topic,
contemporary issues.
The New York Times – China subsection
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/china/index.html
The New York Times – Sinopshere: Dispatches from China
http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/?module=BlogMain&action=Click&region=Header&pgtype=Blog
s&versi on=Blog%20Post&contentCollection=World
Wall Street Journal – China subsection
http://online.wsj.com/public/page/news-china.html
Wall Street Journal – China Real Time
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/category/china-real-time/
The Economist – Asia section
http://www.economist.com/world/asia
BBC News – China subsection
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world/asia/china/
China Digital Times
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/
ChinaFile
http://chinadigitaltimes.net
China Media Project
http://cmp.hku.hk/
The Diplomat – China subsection
http://thediplomat.com/regions/east-asia/
EXERCISE: CHANGING SHOES
While we explore this final theme, I would like us to do an “exercise.” Let's try to take our U.S. shoes off
and slide our feet in Chinese shoes. For now as you read about China, start reading between the lines and
ask “Is this written from a Chinese or Western, a rural or urban, a Han or Tibetan, a young or old, etc.
perspective?”
This New York Times Op-Ed from Zhang Weiwei, a professor at the Geneva School of Diplomacy and
International Relations and former senior English interpreter for high-level officials (including Deng
Xiaoping) in the 1980s, offers a “Party”-aligned perspective on the Chinese government's “big ideas.” This
was written on the eve of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China.
Eight Ideas Behind China’s Success
(http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/01/opinion/01iht-edzhang.html):
Beijing is celebrating the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic on Thursday, and the fanfare will
undoubtedly irk those whose ideological inclinations do not tolerate a 'Communist country' being so selfrighteous.
Top Ten Things to Know about China in the Twenty-First Century, August 19. 2014
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Yet it is worthwhile to look at China objectively, to see what has enabled it to change within one generation
from a poverty-stricken country to one of the world’s largest economies.
Critics of China like to claim that despite its economic success, the country has no 'big ideas' to offer. But to
this author, it is precisely big ideas that have shaped China’s dramatic rise. Here are eight such ideas:
1. Seeking truth from facts. This is an ancient Chinese concept, as well as the credo of the late Deng
Xiaoping, who believed that facts rather than ideological dogmas — whether from East or West — should serve
as the ultimate criterion for identifying truth. Beijing concluded from examining facts that neither the Soviet
Communist model nor the Western democracy model really worked for a developing country in terms of
achieving modernization, and that democratization usually follows modernization rather than precedes it.
Hence Beijing decided in 1978 to explore its own path of development and to adopt a pragmatic, trial-anderror approach for its massive modernization program.
2. Primacy of people’s livelihood. Beijing has embraced this old Chinese governance concept by highlighting
poverty eradication as the most fundamental human right. This idea has paved way for China’s enormous
success in lifting nearly 400 million individuals out of abject poverty within one generation, an unprecedented
success in human history.
China has arguably corrected a historical neglect in the range of human rights advocated by the West, which
since the Enlightenment have focused almost exclusively on civil and political rights. This idea may have
lasting implications for the world’s poor.
3. The importance of holistic thinking. Influenced by its philosophical tradition, China has pursued a holistic
strategy for modernization from the early 1980s to this day. This has enabled Beijing to establish a clear
pattern of priorities and sequences at different stages of transformation, with easy reforms usually followed
by more determined and difficult reforms — in contrast to the populist, short-term politics so prevalent in
much of the world today.
4. Government as a necessary virtue. In China’s long history, prosperous times were all associated with an
enlightened, strong state. Contrary to the American view of state as a necessary evil, China’s transformation
has been led by an enlightened developmental state. And contrary to Mikhail Gorbachev, who abandoned his
old state and then found his empire shattered, Deng Xiaoping reoriented China’s old state from pursuing the
Maoist utopia to promoting modernization.
The Chinese state, however flawed, is capable of shaping national consensus on modernization and pursuing
hard strategic objectives, such as enforcing banking sector reforms, developing renewable energies and
stimulating China’s economy against the global downturn.
5. Good governance matters more than democratization. China rejects the stereotypical dichotomy of
democracy vs. autocracy and holds that the nature of a state, including its legitimacy, has to be defined by its
substance, i.e. by good governance, and tested by what it can deliver.
Notwithstanding its deficiencies in transparency and legal institutions, the Chinese state has presided over the
world’s fastest growing economy, vastly improved living standards for its people. Seventy six percent of
Chinese surveyed in 2008 felt optimistic about their future, topping the 17 major countries surveyed by Pew,
a Washington-based research center.
6. Performance legitimacy. Inspired by the Confucian tradition of meritocracy, Beijing practices, though not
always successfully, performance legitimacy across the whole political stratum. Criteria such as performance
in poverty eradication and, increasingly, cleaner environment are key factors in the promotion of officials.
China’s leaders are competent, sophisticated and well-tested at different levels of responsibility.
Top Ten Things to Know about China in the Twenty-First Century, August 19. 2014
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7. Selective learning and adaptation. China represents a secular culture where learning from others is prized.
The Chinese have developed a remarkable capacity for selective learning and adaptation to new challenges,
as shown by how quickly China has embraced the IT revolution and then excelled in it.
8. Harmony in diversity. Beijing has revived this old Confucian ideal for a large and complex society. Rejecting
Western-style adversary politics, Beijing has worked hard to emphasize commonality of different group
interests, to defuse social tensions associated with rapid change and to establish as fast as it can a social
safety net for all.
China is still faced with serious challenges such as fighting corruption and reducing regional gaps. But China is
likely to continue to evolve on the basis of these ideas, rather than by embracing Western liberal democracy,
because these ideas have apparently worked and have blended reasonably well with common sense and
China’s unique political culture, the product of several millennia — including 20 or so dynasties, seven of
which lasted longer than the whole of U.S. history.
While China will continue to learn from the West for its own benefit, it may be time now for the West, to use
Deng’s famous phrase, to 'emancipate the mind' and learn a bit more about or even from China’s big ideas,
however extraneous they may appear, for its own benefit.
This is not only to avoid further ideology-driven misreading of this hugely important nation, a civilization in
itself, but also to enrich the world’s collective wisdom in tackling challenges ranging from poverty eradication
to climate change and the clash of civilizations.”
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