I never thought I’d see it. The Guardian/Observer (and their China-hand Jonathan Watts) has managed to find something positive to say about China.
No no, that’s not gracious of me… let me just say, Mr. Watts and his employer have typically been very critical of modern China and the Communist Party. But with Mr. Watts’ recent trips across rural China, they’re getting a more nuanced look at modern Chinese society that explains the optimism and pride most Chinese feel today.
‘In China now there are no beliefs. People’s lives are empty. They need a dream. The economic situation is getting better and better, but in politics there has been no movement,’ he tells me. -from the article you mentioned in your post. Further down the reporter talked about great optimism and energy. So it seems more people are happy, but they have no beliefs? I don’t get it.
It is a subjective criticism to say their happiness is not authentic.
Akin to saying “The rich are unhappy”
He quoted a man that was imprisoned for associating with spying missionaries; of course in his view unless you accept his religion your life is unfulfilled.
I think that’s the perspective you’d expect from someone who sought comfort in spirituality, wouldn’t you say? I don’t want to discount his opinions; I only know what makes me happy, and spirituality isn’t a big part of that.
But I will tell you a few things that contribute to my happiness:
And I don’t exaggerate when I say none of the above was available to me as a child in the '80s. And while southwest China lagged my hometown by a decade or two, they’re moving in the same direction. So, yes, I’m wildly content, and I’d say they’re optimistic.
[quote=“cctang”]
But I will tell you a few things that contribute to my happiness:
Aren’t you in the US?
:roflmao:
“Pride”? Or you could call it the Chinese National Inferiority Complex.
However you can’t blame people living in medieval conditions for wanting money. And it is as good an economic policy as any: encouraging rich Chinese to spread their money around the hinterland. Remember Chinese tourists will go where they’re told, too. It’s all carefully managed by the government.
So they’ve destroyed Lijiang. Pity. It was nice eight years ago when I was there. However, God had already visited an earthquake upon it (in 1994?) and most of “old” Lijiang had been rebuilt even when I was there. Another thing worth pointing out is that the Chinese (and the Taiwanese) tend only to go to places that are “renao”, i.e., have loads of other Chinese people there. China is huge, and it’s simply impossible to fuck it all up. Chinese conurbations are filthy industrial cesspits, but so were European conurbations duing the industrial revolution. The miracle is that urban China is not even worse than it is now, and the author appears to point this out. None of this means there aren’t lovely unspolit parts of China. All you have to do is go to a travel agency and make sure you go to none of the places advertised.
One final point that I think is worth mentioning is that the idea Chinese people are obsessed with ripping foreigners off is misleading. They rip each other off with reckless abandon, too, as any Shanghainese person shopping in Hangzhou will testify (for example). And can you blame them? There has to be something in all this economic development for the poor man. It’s all rather socialist. With Chinese characteristics, of course.
Right now the Chinese economy seems to be about where industrialized Western economies were circa 1910. The faces of Chinese workers tumbling out of their factories after working fourteen hour shifts bear a stark resemblance to the faces of Western factory workers in photos from the early 20th century – dazed but faintly happy to have a real paying job after centuries of hard-scrabble subsistence, appearing as if they know some collective secret about the looming future their bosses haven’t caught on to yet.
On my frequent trips to China the one thing that puzzles me though is where the heck is the Communist Party? I keep asking people I meet: are you a communist? do you know any real communists?
The only answers I’ve gotten so far are ‘I was when I was young’, ‘no’ and ‘we need a president like George Bush.’
I’d thought I’d hit the jackpot once when I was in Nanjing and had the opportunity to have dinner with some local Communist Party officials. Judging from the things they wanted to talk about though and their preoccupations and aspirations, I’d say about the only thing left of the Communist Party is the party part.
Well, party on, China, is all I can say. A little ‘good times’ never hurt anyone.
Tee hee! 
I currently work and live in the US for more than half of the year. I was born and raised in Nanjing. And yes, even for a professional/educated family in Nanjing (the former capital of the ROC), life through the early '90s was exactly as I described above.
As it happens, I have several Party members in my extended family. I also happen to have numerous extended family members who’ve spent time in prison in the '60s (for political and historical reasons) and the '90s (for economic reasons)… and happen to hate the Party with a passion.
There are 70 million Party members, and the majority are in urban areas. Do the math, and you’ll figure out that probably 5%-15% of the people around you on any given day are Party members… probably the ones with horns on their heads. I certainly don’t disagree with spock’s glib motto; Party members certainly don’t drink less than any other urban Chinese professional.
As I said in a different thread in the Taiwan politics forum, the Communist Party of China isn’t about Communism… in terms of practical impact, it’s an organization for the best, brightest, most motivated (by power/wealth/success) to gain leadership training. You guys have the Freemasons; we have the Communist Party.
Why can’t I call it both?
We were inferior. My parents generation owned one pair of winter pants per family. I bathed in a wooden tub, outside; for the 3-4 winter months, I didn’t bathe. I used folded up homework pages as toilet paper (which was kind of a psychological perk, actually). I never drank cow’s milk. I ate meat perhaps 2-3 times a week. Open sewage flowed through our front yard. My immediate family shared a 2-room unit that was probably ~25 m2 (200 sq ft). Every piece of furniture we owned was built my dad. Our family income was approximately $10/month… and heck, this was Nanjing in the '80s-'90s. Let’s not talk about the lives of the 5 Chinese generations that preceded mine; they would’ve all envied the little that I had. The national inferiority complex was well deserved.
And now, we’re putting that behind us. And damn straight, I’m proud.
[quote=“cctang”]I currently work and live in the US for more than half of the year. I was born and raised in Nanjing. And yes, even for a professional/educated family in Nanjing (the former capital of the ROC), life through the early '90s was exactly as I described above.
As it happens, I have several Party members in my extended family. I also happen to have numerous extended family members who’ve spent time in prison in the '60s (for political and historical reasons) and the '90s (for economic reasons)… and happen to hate the Party with a passion.
There are 70 million Party members, and the majority are in urban areas. Do the math, and you’ll figure out that probably 5%-15% of the people around you on any given day are Party members… probably the ones with horns on their heads. I certainly don’t disagree with spock’s glib motto; Party members certainly don’t drink less than any other urban Chinese professional.
As I said in a different thread in the Taiwan politics forum, the Communist Party of China isn’t about Communism… in terms of practical impact, it’s an organization for the best, brightest, most motivated (by power/wealth/success) to gain leadership training. You guys have the Freemasons; we have the Communist Party.
Why can’t I call it both?
We were inferior. My parents generation owned one pair of winter pants per family. I bathed in a wooden tub, outside; for the 3-4 winter months, I didn’t bathe. I used folded up homework pages as toilet paper (which was kind of a psychological perk, actually). I never drank cow’s milk. I ate meat perhaps 2-3 times a week. Open sewage flowed through our front yard. My immediate family shared a 2-room unit that was probably ~25 m2 (200 sq ft). Every piece of furniture we owned was built my dad. Our family income was approximately $10/month… and heck, this was Nanjing in the '80s-'90s. Let’s not talk about the lives of the 5 Chinese generations that preceded mine; they would’ve all envied the little that I had. The national inferiority complex was well deserved.
And now, we’re putting that behind us. And damn straight, I’m proud.[/quote]
Got to respect that personal experience, cctang. One of the local party guys I had dinner with in Nanjing was surnamed Mao. I never got around to asking him if he was a close relation of the Chairman. Are you familiar with the gentleman and his personal history?
[quote=“spook”]
Got to respect that personal experience, cctang. One of the local party guys I had dinner with in Nanjing was surnamed Mao. I never got around to asking him if he was a close relation of the Chairman. Are you familiar with the gentleman and his personal history?[/quote]Appreciate that spook.
As far as Mao… no, not familiar at all. With a population somewhere between 7-15 million in Nanjing, there’s probably also 500k-1 million Party members. I know only a handful out of that very large number. Mao Zedong is from Hunan. Unless your local party guy was senior enough in the Jiangsu provincial administration that he was rotated around, courtesy of the central government, it’s very unlikely he’s also from Hunan!
First of all, I’m not negating anything of what was just said, just a comment. Happiness is a funny thing- the experiences and expectations of one generation to the next can be as different as night and day. When you know what it’s like to go without basic comforts, and then you get those comforts, it is so easy to be appreciative. But when you have always grown up with those comforts, you take them for granted and you have no perspective. Even wihin the space of a couple of months perspective and expectations can change. I remember in 2000 I got a group of refugee Afghani kids to teach in elementary school. They had never been to any kind of school and couldn’t read in their own language let alone English. They used to look in the trash cans at the school and take out paper to draw on. Everyone in that school would give them stuff- clothes, toys, money for field trips. It wasn’t long before they were expecting more and more. They said to me, Ms.—, are you going to give us a treat for doing— ? Or, 'Are you going to give us a present for—? I’d say ‘Sorry. I need the money to buy my children stuff.’ They would say, ‘But you’re rich!’ Like I should buy them stuff anyway. To bad for them they got a xiao qi guai for an ESL teacher. When I feel down about something, I think to myself: my kids are still little and still always want to be with me and they are healthy, my mom is still alive, I have my health, I have a secure job- it’s not always going to be as good as it is now so I better appreciate it now.
v,
I don’t disagree with you at all, and it sounds like an interesting experience you went through. There’s a vast amount of information published out there about the hierarchy of human need, in which food/warmth/security are only at the very bottom of the chain.
But for those who’ve grown up with those things… please don’t discount their importance. The fact that they’re at the bottom of the chain doesn’t at all mean they’re less important; it just means they’re the foundation and prerequisite to ALL other desires!
So, I look at the urban poor in Baghdad or Rio… do these people desire spirituality, “freedom”, or self-actualization in their lives? No, let’s give them the same material comforts and basic stability we already have before speaking of the importance of saving their souls.
Now, will my children come to expect more out of their lives than 4 walls, a roof, and indoor plumbing? I’m pretty sure the answer to that is “yes”. I’m as curious as anyone else what they will demand… but I’m not really sure worshipping Gucci and Brad Pitt really qualifies as spiritualism.
Along a similar vein…
China nomads on energy’s cutting edge
cctang, tell me how you see the evolution of democracy unfolding in China. Will China ever have a system like the US? After my stomach stops growling and I don’t need to worry so much about how I’m going to survive- I can start to use my brain to think more broadly. At that point I can begin to see what is best for me- I don’t need you to tell me. I want to decide. That is the starting point for democracy. I’d say many areas of China have already reached that point, but where is democracy? People need to start learning how to judge if they are being lied to. People need to start learning how to exchange ideas without losing their tempers. People need to start learning about the ‘common good’ and how they benefit when people all work for that. Are Chinese learning these lessons? Or is the CCP keeping their people in an infantile state by denying them these lessons through tightly controlling the exchange of ideas and information? How would the CCP deal with something like Tiananmen today?
I expect any Freemasons among “us guys” would not be impressed by this comparison.
Why can’t I call it both?
We were inferior.[/quote]
You were not inferior. You’re mixing up material “inferiority” with the mindset of people who believe they have been mistreated by others who should have lower status. The desire to rise to a level of optimal comfort is universal. Using poverty to seed jingoism is not. It is the latter that people outside China find worrying, not the former. And for good reason.
No, it is Chinese wealth that is well-deserved – at least for those who earn it. An inferiority complex is evidence of immaturity and anger that has the potential to threaten this wealth. And this complex predates concerns for the material wealth of the average Chinese by many decades indeed.
I know you believe that’s convincing, but the truth is, it isn’t. There’s only one word to characterize your belief that “a system like the US” is the penultimate solution when people have “used [their] brain to think more broadly”: arrogance. Well, maybe there’s another word… I’d call it “wrong”.
Do you understand that when you say “a system like the US”, you could’ve also said “a system like Taiwan”, a “system like Brazil”, a “system like India”, a “system like Mexico”… and if that’s the case, why do you think I would aspire to achieve that goal?
Let me give you the simple answer, although I thought I had already answered it earlier: I hope to never see China emulate the US political model. I hope to never see the sacred responsibility of government reduced to a stage act between two well-funded marketing groups. I hope to never see national policy decided by focus groups and 30 second commercial spots. I hope to never see populist myopia replace long-term strategic planning. I hope to never see national policy decided by a single “critical” issue which… in fact, impacts some 5-10% of the population in so-called key states. I hope to never see a government which bounces from one political extreme to the other every x years, rather than making compromise and consensus a political requirement. I hope to never see a government which believes lying and dividing is acceptable, as long as it leads to an election win.
What happens if China had to face another Tiananmen today? The point of Tiananmen isn’t that millions of students called for “democracy”. Hundreds of millions of Chinese would’ve called for “wealth and stability”, if someone in the Western media had bothered to point a camera in their face… and you know what? Our wildest desires have been fulfilled. I think the real lesson of Tiananmen is to always build consensus, rather than assuming that the hammer can resolve all problems. The lesson of Tiananmen is that the Communist Party leadership must not surround itself with ideologues unable to compromise; before 1989, Deng Xiaoping stocked the Communist Party with two opposing groups of ideologues and thought they’d balance each other out… he was wrong. Tiananmen happened not because Chinese society rose up; it happened because segments of the Communist Party leadership rose up against itself. Both sides of the Party thought they could use traditional “revolutionary” methods to win that battle of ideology… the end result? Both sides lost, although the reformers lost worse.
Managing policies that serve 1.3 billion well is difficult, but it isn’t impossible as long as we approach the problem scientifically, aned seek consensus. Welcome foreign investment and capital, but make sure they aren’t here to exploit. Encourage private enterprise and SOES reform, but do not focus on only the winners of economic reforms… invest in the impoverished West (check!), cut taxes to the rural poor (check!), find some way to support the tens of millions of workers laid off by state-owned enterprises (check!).
Will the Chinese leadership always have the wisdom to skirt the middle? It’s not easy. All Chinese dynasties have started off with enlightened rulers but eventually sank into corrupt decay. Clearly, there must be a mechanism put in place for revitalization. I still reject the notion that this is best done with an organized multi-party orgy of lies (also known as a “popular election”). Maybe we’ll vote for anonymous candidates. Maybe we’ll randomly appoint a jury of 100 everyday Chinese… which, just like the juries in Western courts, will study all available evidence and make an educated choice for the best candidate available. In that light, by the way, I see the HKSAR as a great “experiment” for learning about what might one day work in China. (By the way, I would point out that the US Supreme Court and the US Federal Reserve board, probably two of the most influential/significant institutions in the US today are not democratically elected.)
In other words, I hope to see a Chinese government which is “democratic” in nature, if not “democratic” by your simplistic definition. I hope to see a Chinese government which allows true freedom of speech and press, in a transparent society in which the light of truth and justice is shined in every corner. I hope to see a Chinese government which is always consensus seeking and conflict avoiding, which benefits from unity rather than partisanship. Like I said on the TP side: perhaps we’ll be like Singapore, but 300x bigger… but I’d like to think we can manage even better.
Jingoism? Where? Dig around, help me understand where my jingoism is. In my posts expressing my pride in what China has achieved… did anyone else detect chauvinistim? I surely didn’t imply it.
You’re manufacturing a pathetic spin on my words. I never alleged my poverty was a direct result of foreign mistreatment, and I hold no grudge towards anyone. I have absolutely no interest in destroying the United States or the European Union, even if a century ago they marched on Yiheyuan. Just as it says on Tiananmen next to Mao’s picture… Long Live Unity for the World’s People. History is history; we should learn from it, but it’s not as if China will build long-lasting prosperity by pillaging Paris or London. I’m certainly a bit of a cynic: I understand that the citizens of America and the Europe will always watch out for their interests first and foremost, and I know that (at the end of the day) those nations will not care enough about my hunger to sacrifice their own lunch. Right? Do you disagree? I don’t have a grudge about that. I think that’s common sense.
I don’t think the Chinese are any better than the people anywhere on this planet. 20th century Chinese history clearly shows we’re very much susceptible to the same sins as humans everywhere else on this planet: we have been greedy, power-hungry, petty, violent, and hateful. I’m just thankful and proud that we’ve finally gotten our act together that we’re able to move past that point and finally reach a stable, harmonious society in which we can labor and create productively.
Tell me again what’s wrong with that perspective, zhujianlun. Explain to me, and the rest of Forumosa, why I’m a dangerous nationalist for feeling that way.
Why can’t I call it both?
We were inferior.[/quote]
You were not inferior. You’re mixing up material “inferiority” with the mindset of people who believe they have been mistreated by others who should have lower status. The desire to rise to a level of optimal comfort is universal. Using poverty to seed jingoism is not. It is the latter that people outside China find worrying, not the former. And for good reason.
No, it is Chinese wealth that is well-deserved – at least for those who earn it. An inferiority complex is evidence of immaturity and anger that has the potential to threaten this wealth. And this complex predates concerns for the material wealth of the average Chinese by many decades indeed.[/quote]
What he said. 
Making Chinese people feel bad about themselves has been a tool that governments have used for “unity” with the principal target being “goddamn foreigners”. However it has backfired before and it could do again. There is no reason for Chinese people to feel inferior to anyone, nor do they have anything to prove. They are still being fucked over by governments who provide only one path of national unity: a hatred of someone external. Not that the Chinese are unique in this, of course, but the “we must show those foreign scumbags what’s what” line has been repeated so often it is beginning to sink in. Anyway, it’s not as bad as it could be as I think Chinese people are inured to believing in anything anymore, which may be a better thing than it sounds. Jesus, that was fucking coherent, wasn’t it? I’m off to the pub. 
CC, you think I’m being arrogant just because I talk about the US system rather than another one? I talk about that one because its the one I know best. Sounds like you got a chip on your shoulder and I didn’t put it there son. You talk about the fact that the CCP needs to build consensus. How do you propose to do that? Marketing like we do here in the good ole US? What if the people don’t go along with the CCP line? Take out the hammer! You talk about a mechanism for revitalization- that’s what elections are. At what critical mass for corrupt, power hungry officials do you start this mechanism you talk about? And who’s going to initiate it, another corrupt, power hungry faction? You think the corrupt officials are just going to go peacefully? As for the members of the Supreme Court and the Federal Reserve board, they are appointed and approved by democratically elected representatives- China got that? No. I believe people in the US are lazy and squander the power democracy gives us, but we can get better. I see it in my own little town close up, so don’t tell me its imposible. I believe that the elite in China, like you, think that the ordinary person can’t be given too much power because they are too dumb and selfish- only the elite can rule. Problem is superior intelligence and strong ambition do not necessarily make for superior morality and strong compassion. Taiwan will be a model of how the Chinese can rule themselves- they are making mistakes, but they are learning. The CCP won’t allow the people of China to learn. They want obedience, not discussion.*** Listen, CCtang, I think you’re an intelligent man. Tell me why the CCP refuses to let at least a sector of its highly educated, hard-working citizenry participate in decision-making? You don’t like what I’m saying? Ok, I call you out :fume: 